GREETINGS

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA

ACTIVITIES
FOR MEMBERS

ACTIVITIES
FOR MEMBERS & PUBLIC

CALENDAR

MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION

HOW TO CONTACT US

OUR LIBRARY

MEETINGS

TOURS

WORKSHOPS

FOLLOWING FOOTPRINTS
SEMINARS

GENEALOGY SEMINARS

HOMECOMING

CEMETERY PROJECTS

PUBLICATIONS

WHEN YOUR OX
IS IN THE DITCH

QUERIES

LINKS TO GENEALOGICAL & HISTORICAL SITES

LINKS TO OTHER GENEALOGY SOURCES

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.

4 JUNE 2009

"VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT MAKES EXPERIENCES AVAILABLE TO RESEARCHERS IN LIBRARY OF CONGRESS" by Fred Gehle

Fred Gehle, Director of the Veterans History Project in the Augusta area, will speak to AGS at our regular monthly meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday, 4 June, at the Augusta Museum of History, 560 Reynolds Street.

Gehle leads a group of about forty volunteers sponsored by the Augusta Richmond County Historical Society who interview and record the stories of the 250 area men and women who have volunteered as subjects for the project. Interviews are videotaped and three copies are distributed: one to the subject, one to the archives of Augusta State University, and one to the Library of Congress. The Augusta interviewers are presently concentrating on the pool of World War II veterans who are in the 80-90 age range.

Congress created the Veterans History Project in 2000 with authorizing legislation receiving unanimous support in both the House and the Senate and with the signature of President Bill Clinton. Purposes are to collect, preserve and make accessible the personal accounts of war veterans as well as U.S. civilians who supported war efforts. Stories of industrial workers, USO participants, flight instructors, and medical personnel are among the tens of thousands that are being recorded so that future generations may hear directly from those who experienced the realities of war. Subjects may be from World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Personal narratives (audio and video taped interviews and diaries and other written memoirs), correspondence (letters, v-mail, postcards), and visual materials (scrapbooks, photographs, artistic renderings) are some of the means by which stories are told and preserved. The material will be available to students, teachers, researchers and the general public. Some of the collections are already available in the American Folklife Center Reading Room of the Library of Congress.

Those who are interested in volunteering for the Project as a subject or as an interviewer may call Fred Gehle at 706-738-8242.

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.

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

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.

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 Query page.

For links to other genealogical society Web sites click here.