Western Michigan Genealogical Society

05/12/2025

Meeting Announcement: The DNA Interest Group (DIG) will be meeting this Thursday, May 15, at 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. This is our last meeting before our summer break (next meeting September 18). We meet in the Vander Veen room on the 4th floor of the Main Branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library.

For the first part of the meeting we will go over some opportunites for DNA self-study over the summer. Then one of our members is going to be presenting a DNA mystery to us. If you are brand new to DNA and have not come to a meeting before please consider joining us. We love to have new people at our meeting!

12/09/2024

From Linda Wells:

Monday, December 9th at 6:30PM, Linda Wells will be teaching a genealogy class at the downtown Grand Rapids Library. The class will be on the History floor, 4th floor, in the VanderVeen room.

We will be going over Researching Newspapers for genealogy results. The newspapers of a community chronicle the successes, failures, and everyday lives of the people who live there.

We will be going over:
• Obituaries and death listings
• Birth announcements and christenings
• Engagements, weddings & anniversary announcements
• Society news and local gossip
• Public announcements and advertisements
• Legal articles
• Church announcements
• Military news
• School news and activities
• Misc
We'll also go over a handful of great websites to use in your research.

12/06/2024

Please join us tomorrow, Saturday, December 7, 2024 for our monthly presentation at 1:30 p.m. at the Grand Rapids Public Library – Main Branch in the Ryerson Auditorium. Jim Jackson will be speaking about the War of 1812.

More specifically he will give an overview of the causes and significant events of this war, the only war partially fought on Michigan soil. Also, how to research military, bounty land and pension records online or at local, state or national archives.

10/16/2024

MEETING NOTICE: The DNA Interest Group (DIG) will be meeting this Thursday, October 17, at the Main Branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library in the Vander Veen room on the 4th floor. We have a meeting at 3:30 p.m. and one at 6:30 p.m. We are going to learn about ISOGG (International Society of Genetic Genealogy). This is a great organization with a lot of resources. Hope to see many of you at either meeting!

Need help with genetic genealogy? Established in 2005, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy is the first society founded to promote the use of DNA testing in genealogy.

08/01/2024

Meeting Update: The DNA Interest Group (DIG) is NOT meeting in August. Enjoy the rest of summer and keep working on your individual DNA projects! 🙂 Our next meetings will be on Thursday, September 19, at 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on the 4th floor of the Main Branch of GRPL in the Vander Veen room.

04/16/2024

MEETING REMINDER: The DNA Interest Group (DIG) will be meeting this Thursday, April 18, at the Main Branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library in the Vander Veen room on the 4th floor. We have a meeting at 3:30 p.m. and one at 6:30 p.m. We are going to learn about the "What are the Odds" tool. This tool uses calculations to determine probabilities of possible relationships with DNA questions. Hope to see many of you at one of the meetings!

Multiple Relationship Probability Tool for DNA

03/19/2024

Hello Everyone,

This is a reminder that we have our DNA Interest Group meeting this Thursday, March 21, in the Vander Veen room on the 4th floor of the Main Branch of GRPL.

As most of you know, we now have a day offering of the DIG meeting. We have our regular 6:30 p.m. DIG meeting and we have a 3:30 p.m. version of this meeting on the same day.

Each meeting will have the same content so feel free to attend either meeting.

This week we are going to talk about X-DNA again but with a little more depth. I have an interesting X-DNA chart that can be used to track your own X-DNA inheritance pattern.

I hope to see many of you this Thursday!

02/09/2024

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT: Our next regularly scheduled DNA Interest Group meeting is going to be this Thursday, February 15 at 6:30 p.m. We meet in the Vander Veen room on the 4th floor of the Main Branch of GRPL.

And.....we are going to try our day meeting again. We will have our first day meeting of the DNA Interest Group on Thursday, February 15 at 3:30 p.m. in the same place as the evening meeting. This will be an organizational meeting to see how many people are interested and where these members are at with using DNA for genealogy.

I am looking forward to both meetings and can't wait to see everyone!

01/17/2024

MEETING ALERT: The DNA Interest Group meeting is canceled for tomorrow, Thursday, January 18, at 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Between the cold, the possibility of more lake effect snow on Thursday, and the treacherous driving, we are going to take both meetings off.

This was going to be our inaugural day meeting, but we will start up again in February. Check here for updates. If you want to add your name to our email list, make a note in the comments.

Stay warm and safe everyone! See you all in February.

01/12/2024

NEW CLASS ALERT: I know we are all at home, bundled up and not even thinking about next week, but….we will be having our monthly meeting of the DNA Interest Group (DIG) on Thursday, January 18, at 6:30 p.m.

However, we have heard that this is some interest in a day version of the DIG meeting. We will be offering our first day session on Thursday, January 18, at 3:30 p.m. This class will be a planning session and a meet-and-greet to determine the viability and necessity of a separate day class.

We don’t know if the day class will be a monthly offering or if we will have it quarterly. We are still in the planning phase. But, if you have been wanting to attend DIG during the day, please join us at 3:30 p.m. in the Vander Veen room on the 4th floor of the Main Branch of GRPL. We will still have our regular 6:30 p.m. meeting that day as well (Thursday, January 18).

01/07/2024

We are having a 2 hour class tomorrow, Monday, January 8, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. at the GRPL VanderVeen Room, 4th floor

Dating Old Family Photos by Clothing and Hairstyles

What do you do when you have a box of old family photos and none are dated or labeled? With some reference points and knowledge of your family history, it is possible to figure out a date range and even the identity of who is in the picture. In this presentation you will learn some of basic concepts of dating clothing and hairstyles from the 1860’s to the early 20th century.

Instructor: Jessica Riley

01/03/2024

Please join us this Saturday, January 6, at 1:30 p.m. in the Ryerson Room at the Grand Rapids Public Library. Sue Irvine is going to be presenting: WMGS Databases.

Have you ever checked out all of WMGS databases? There is a lot of local (Western Michigan) information right here at WMGS. We'll look into each of these. We'll also take a look at CommonCorners.com. You can't imagine what's here right under you nose.

Sue Irvine is on the board of the Western Michigan Genealogical Society and she wears many hats. She has coordinated the bus trips in the past to Fort Wayne, Indiana. She takes care of manuscripts and has printed the WMGS newsletter and magazine. Sue is a regular fixture at our meetings and can always be counted on to pitch in with WMGS.