4th Annual Stokes Family History Conference

If you need documents like Birth, Death or Marriage certificates, you can get copies while you are there. Look up deeds and other documents. The Register of Deeds and members of our group will help you to find what you are looking for. The library history room will be open and have people to help you locate books you can use for research.

Also not only will there be time for research but we will have people on-hand to help with one-on-one research if you need help with a brick wall.

Members of GSRS will hold small workshops and at the end starting at 3:00 pm the Register of Deeds office and the Danbury Library will be open for research.

Click on this link to see the agenda.

Rough and Ready Research Class

Have you ever wondered what other documents might exist for an ancestor and what you might learn from those documents? This program will collect some basic ancestor information from conference attendees, and over the course of the day, research will be done to find available online information for the ancestors collected utilizing familysearch.org, newspapers.com, and others as time allows. For the last presentation of the day, the search sources, techniques, and results will be shared with attendees. Jeff Bullins, former Museum and Archives of Rockingham County (MARC) president and local historian will conduct the research and present the results. This program is experimental and results are not guaranteed but we hope to have some fun with it.

Bill, a native Virginian, holds a BS in History from Virginia Tech. After a career in newspapers, he served as the Public relations Coordinator for Wytheville Community College for 26 years. Following his retirement, he became the archivist for the F. B. Kegley Library in Wytheville in 2015. He has more than 45 years experience as a genealogical researcher and writer.

Bill has authored articles for the National Genealogical Society Magazine, the Magazine of Virginia Genealogy, Stripes( The Journal of the Texas State Genealogical Society), The Wisconsin State genealogical Society Newsletter, and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. He is the author of the 143rd Regiment: Smyth County's Citizen Militia, published in 2023. As archivist, he successfully acquired partner library status with Family Search.org for the F. B. Kegley Library. Bill also serves on the Board of Governors of the Virginia Genealogical Society.

Attendees will not have to leave to get lunch. Lunch will be provided and donation appreciated to help off set the cost.

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