On Sunday, November 17, at 2 pm, the annual meeting of the Owen County
Historical and Genealogical Society will take place in the fellowship hall
of the old IGS building in Spencer. Mark Rogers will present a program and
afterward there will be an election of officers.
I will be running against the incumbent, Jason Kinney, for the position of
board president.
For those of you who do not know me, I have lived in Owen County for 22
years, a place where my maternal ancestral family, the Hubers, lived many
years ago in the vicinity of Jordan Village. Before that I was in
Bloomington, Monroe County were I met and married my husband in 1969 and
graduated with a master's degree plus 30 from IU in 1980.
Soon after graduation I became involved in the Monroe County History Center
and have been active as a volunteer in the genealogy library for more about
20 years, have been a member of the library committee for more than 10 years
and for several years was in charge of arranging speakers for the bi-monthly
genealogy programs presented by the library.
I am also involved with the Indiana Genealogical Society (IGS) serving first
as the county genealogist and during the past few years as the south central
district director with 12 counties under my purview. Those counties are in
pre-arranged districts and, unfortunately, the south central district does
not include Owen County. However, I met Jana Trace while volunteering at
the Indiana Archives and recruited her as the Owen County genealogist.
My area of expertise is research and databases. I have contributed more
than 20 databases to the IGS website for Monroe County, an additional 5
databases for Owen County and a number of databases for the other counties
within my district. The databases for Monroe County represent more than
100,000 records.
I also facilitate two very active Rootsweb lists with a total membership of
more than 200. The INMONROE Rootsweb list was established 16 years ago.
Ten items from a variety of sources go to that list every single day. More
than 60,000 of those items have been archived through the years making it an
incredibly rich source for genealogists. The second list encompasses the
other 11 counties in the south central district of Indiana. On average, I
send five items to this list every day and rotate the county focus. I also
contribute to the Owen County Rootsweb list and of the 103 items sent to
that list in 2015, about 20 percent have come from me.
I am eager to bring my interest in genealogy, knowledge, expertise and
enthusiasm to bear in Owen County and give my home place a boost in
preserving the county's past and creating genealogical change in the future.
I want to re-invigorate the society. With your vote we can make a
difference.
Please plan to attend the annual meeting on Sunday.