03/21/2024
Watertown Regional Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Mar. 12th, 2024 Meeting
The Mar. 12th, 2024 meeting of the WRGS was held at the Watertown Library. The meeting was called
to order by Pres. Erland Carlson. There were 7 members present, Alan A., Wanda C., Marie B.,
Donna C., Shelly M. and Laurie M. One guest, Jim Josephson
The meeting minutes and treasurer's report were given for the month of Feb. 2024 and were approved as read.
Old Business
Erland talked with Ann R. at the courthouse and said that we could record records if we stayed in
the room where the records are. That limits us to two people.
The theme for the 2024 State Fair is "Farm Life". This includes farming, homesteads, Century farms
and farm machinery. Be sure to include the location of the farm, they will place a pin on the SD map.
New Business
The Watertown library has a "translation machine" outside of the computer room. You run your paper
through the machine, then e-mail home to yourself. There is no charge for this service.
I brought 2 items along to try. One was an obiturary from a newspaper, so type written, the other was
a hand written piece from a church record. We used German as the language. The obit came back as
jibberish, the hand written item, I received nothing. So I went back and we tried again, this time we
tried using English as the language, thinking that maybe we needed to say we wanted it to translate to
English. Both documents came back as jibberish. Josh if you have any thoughts on this, please let us
know. It would be an awesome thing if it works.
Eralnd now has more research cards.
Tri-state Genealogical Society is located in Belle Fourche, SD. They are hosting a seminar along with
with the SD Gen Society on April 20th. The speaker is Paul Higbee, historian and author of the
book, The First Strike. The fee is $30.00. If anyone is interested in attending, please let me know.
I have a registration form.
The Kingsbury County Gen Society is asking for copies of obituaries from anyone in Kingsbury county.
Or with connections to Kingsbury county. They also have several years of obituaries. If you would
like to contribute or request an obituary, this is the address -
KCGS
P. O. Box 328
DeSmet, SD 57231
There was no other new business, the meeting was adjourned and opened for discussion.
Laurie Musch, Sec/Treas
Open discussion
Talked about how you would find where someone lived when renting property. Old plat maps only show
land ownership. Possibly an older person from the area, school records, etc.
School records show teachers, students, and teachers salary.
I came across an interesting website. It has many interesting articles on doing geneology research.
The website is reclaimingkin.com
