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AUGUSTA GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, Inc.



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AUGUSTA, GEORGIA

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The Society meets at 7:00 pm the first Thursday of every month in the second floor auditorium of the Augusta Museum of History.
 

ABOUT AGS

The Augusta Genealogical Society is a nonprofit organization. It was founded in Augusta, Georgia in September 1979, by 84 charter members and now has well over 1500 members in 44 states as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, Singapore, Germany and Ireland. AGS maintains a genealogical library, publishes a newsletter and journal, presents monthly lectures and semi-annual "Footprints" methodology seminars, co-sponsors semi-annual seminars with Augusta State University, and specializes in cemetery surveys. The Society is the proud recipient of four Certificates of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History. All mail should be directed to P.O. Box 3743, Augusta GA 30914-3743. We are located at 1109 Broad Street, Augusta GA. Our phone number is 706-722-4073.


WHAT'S NEW



PROGRAM PREVIEWS

by Janice M. Johnson

7 FEBRUARY 2008

"HISTORICAL MARKER PRESERVATION"

Eugene P. Hough, President of Heritage Guild Works based in Bryn Mawr, PA, will speak to AGS on his latest project in a presentation entitled “Eugene P. Hough, A Pennsylvania Patriot in Oglethorpe’s Court” when the Society meets on Thursday, Feb. 7, at 7 pm at the Augusta Museum of History. Hough’s consultations and services have taken him up and down the East Coast as he restores cemeteries, individual internment and mausoleum sites, and historical monuments, markers and statuary.

His association with Augusta began with the restoration and preservation project of the Oglethorpe Society at St. Paul’s Church in 2005. St. Paul’s was the site of the original Fort Augusta and Fort Cornwallis, British forts in the Colonial Era. Hough became an active participant in the events surrounding the celebration of the anniversary battles of Cowpens, SC and Augusta, GA as a member of several 18th Century Living History Dragoon Cavalry units with both Southern and Northern Revolutionary War groups. His work at St. Paul’s continues, with a recent project concerning the restoration of urns among the markers of the Phinizy family in the graveyard that surrounds the church.

Hough believes that restoration of the hallowed grounds of the indigenous populations and the early colonial settlers is overwhelming in a spiritual sense. The goal of his projects is to get the local community involved through education efforts and community participation.5

The regular monthly programs are free and open to the public.
They are held at 7 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History, 560 Reynolds Street. Entrance to the museum at night is from a well-lighted parking area entered from either Sixth or Broad Streets.


Saturday, 16 FEBRUARY 2008

AGS SPRING SEMINAR

Professor Robert Scott Davis Returns

Register early to be assured of a handbook and lunch

Always enthusiastically received by an Augusta audience, Robert Scott Davis, Director of the Wallace State Family and Regional History Program in Hanceville, AL, will return to the campus of Augusta State University on Saturday, February 16, for the annual AGS Spring Seminar. The all-day event at University Hall will include three lectures by Davis, a box lunch, and numerous opportunities for attendees to learn while mingling with fellow “genies.” The seminar is open to family historians and the general public.

Topics for the program include “Biographical Sketches of Your Ancestors and Searching Newspapers on the Internet,” “What Your Mother Never Told You about Federal Census,” and “The Secrets to Research in Georgia.”

The Family and Regional History Program at Wallace State received the Award for Outstanding Leadership in History from the American Association for State and Local History in 2006. The college was one of the first in the country to offer genealogy as a course on the college level. Davis has led his students on field trips to libraries throughout the United States, built huge genealogical collections, organized a microfilming facility, and taught courses in geography and history as well as genealogy. He has spoken to hundreds of civic, historical, and genealogical organizations and constantly works to raise public awareness about the importance of saving local government records.

Saving records has been a link between the work of Davis and AGS for many years. Back in the 1986, he shared his transcription of the Monthly Meeting Records of the Quaker settlement at Wrightsborough, GA, giving AGS permission to publish the records and ship passenger lists from Scotland. His early work in Georgia centered on a passion for the records of the revolutionary battle at Kettle Creek in Wilkes County and census and military lists from Wilkes and Burke counties. Since that early period in his career, he has written hundreds of articles on a wide range of subjects and interests that have appeared in national professional and educational publications and in historical and genealogical journals. He has been quoted in Time, Smithsonian, and the Wall Street Journal and by the NBC and CNN television networks. A prolific writer of over thirty books about history and genealogy, Davis also wrote the chapters on Alabama and Georgia for the current edition of Ancestry’s Redbook. His long-time interest in the Civil War prison that had the highest mortality rate (33%) led to the publication of Ghosts and Shadows of Andersonville in 2006.

Davis balances the depth of his scholarship with a subtle sense of humor that permeates his lectures. His talks are punctured with wry witticisms that entertain his listeners, and therein lies his popularity as a speaker for genealogical groups such as ours.

The following may be of interest to those who wish to attend the Spring Seminar. AGS has worked to contain the rising costs in presenting activities for our members and the public. The registration which includes the box lunch remains at $25 per person for AGS member/ ASU student, staff, faculty; $30 per person, non-member; $35 at the door. Checks may be mailed to AGS, PO Box 3743, Augusta, GA 30914-3743. Information: 706-736-8912 or the Adamson Library at 706-722-4073.


GEORGIA BIBLIOGRAPHY

Prepared by Kathy Jarvis

Click here for bibliography


AGS TRUST FUND

Imagine That!! Donors Set Up AGS Trust Fund And Give Large Donation For Virginia Records. Two magnanimous AGS members brought new meaning to us of the word generosity when they endowed the Society with our very first ongoing private trust fund, to ensure the Society's future stability, and then made available another large fund to be used exclusively for colonial Virginia records for our Library.

The donors, who Insist on anonymity, have spent many years assembling details of the lives and times of their ancestors. Trips to research centers throughout the South and East enabled them to identify sources many genealogists only dream of finding. It is their wish that these types of documents and records be made available locally, hence the gift restricted to colonial Virginia, the home place of untold numbers of Southern families.

What a splendid piece of generosity, to their fellow members, and to their community!


Available for Purchase

WILKES COUNTY, GEORGIA
TAX RECORDS, 1785 – 1805


Volumes One & Two

Compiled & Published by
Frank Parker Hudson


AGS is happy to announce that Frank Parker Hudson’s 2-volume/1520 page Wilkes County, Georgia Tax Records, 1785-1805, is available for purchase. We raved about the books when we first saw them, and still consider them one of the finest additions public and academic libraries with genealogical collections, or genealogists with early Georgia ties, can make to their libraries.

And do you need the set? Consider this: Your late-18th century Georgia research is centered in Wilkes County, where nearly half of the population of Georgia was clustered in 1790. Then you learn that someone has published 1520 pages of names of all Wilkes Taxables for 1785-1805, with adjoining landowners and original grantee – 47,000 tax returns from all extant tax records, some never before microfilmed.

All genealogical data in the tax records is in the abstracts. Thousands of free white males 21 years old or older, owning no property, are also identified. Not only that, the microfilm roll & frame number of all returns found in the original records provide a splendid finding aid unavailable for any other set of Georgia records! That’s far from all! Locations of Militia Districts (using current maps as backgrounds!), names of successive captains of Militia Districts 1806-1830 as finding aids for future research, lists placing watercourses in counties, variant spellings of surnames, even a listing of current counties encompasssed by Wilkes County in 1785 is included.

It took Mr. Hudson more than 30 years to compile all the data; his presentation is bound to answer questions genealogists from Georgia to Texas and other points West have been posing for years in their attempts to sort out names and residences of Georgia ancestors. This is to say that the books could be helpful in any research.

To quote from Marguerite Fogleman's review of the books: "to say that the project of bringing these tax records to publication for genealogists was 'monumental' might be an understatement" is an opinion with which we agree wholeheartedly!

Printed on 1520 pages of acid-free paper, with library quality binding, the handsome set is sold only as a 2-volume set, due to 104 page common index.

Now On Special Sale! Now On Special Sale!

$30.00 at AGS Library; by mail for $30.00 + $5.00 p&h.
Check to AGS, P.O. Box 3743, Augusta GA 30914-3743
Phone 706-722-4073 or 706-738-2241


OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST

65,000 Individual-Name References in Ancestoring. The Augusta Genealogical Society began publishing its official journal, Ancestoring, in 1980. Each issue contains several thousands of individual-name entries from cemeteries, churches and other rich resource records in the Central Savannah River Area of Georgia and South Carolina. All 13 Volumes include historical background articles, cemetery articles, cemetery records from St. Paul's Episcopal Church, First Presbyterian Church, Magnolia Cemetery, Cedar Grove Cemetery, courthouse records, naturalizations and more. For more information on Ancestoring, click here.

Do You Have Suggestions For Improving The AGS Web Site or Need Help in Constructing Your Own Genealogical Society Web Site? If so please contact our AGS Web Master, by clicking here.


Like To Visit Our Self-Posting Query Page?

If you would like to view queries posted by past visitors to the AGS Web site seeking genealogical information relative to their ancestors who might have once resided in, or passed through, the Augusta, Georgia region, or, if you would like to post your own query for such information, you may do so by clicking here. This will take you to our self-posting query page.


For links to other genealogical society Web sites click here.