Mr. Matt Rutherford from the Newberry Library will tell us about the insurance records acquired from the Polish Women's Alliance of America.  In the summer of 2006, the Newberry Library received early insurance files from the Polish Women's Alliance of America.  These records are of great value in researching Polish-American family history because they provide information about female immigrants.  Each file typically contains a member's birthplace and her parents' names, as well as a wealth of other family data that can help in identifying and tracking your ancestors.  Newberry librarian Matt Rutherford will present some examples of the records as well as discuss the efforts by the Newberry to make the files available for research.

 Bio - Matt Rutherford

 Matt Rutherford, MLIS, has been a local and family history reference librarian at the Newberry Library for five years, during which time he has answered thousands of questions on a wide range of genealogy topics.  He has spoken at the Illinois State Genealogical Society and the Polish Genealogical Society of America Conference, as well as several local genealogy societies, including the North Suburban Genealogical Society, the McHenry County Illinois Genealogical Society, and the Illinois St. Andrew Society.  In addition, Matt teaches several seminars on genealogy topics, including researching pre-fire Chicago, adoption searches, non-population census schedules, and the Social Security Death Index.  

Mr. Walter L. Sojka will be our speaker. He is a well-respected undertaker in Chicago and is very active in Polish organizations and functions as evidenced by his being the recipient of the prestigious Polish Spirit Award in 2005. Mr. Sojka will be speaking on various facets related to funerals, practices, traditions, etc. Points of interests will include (membership questions encouraged): Unusual requests for funeral arrangements; Funeral home records in re genealogy; Are funeral home records archived? ; When a funeral home sells the business or goes out of business what happens to the records?; When wakes were held in private homes, what were the practices?; Burial practices?; Grave numbers of loved ones but no coordinates recorded?.

Our speaker will be Mr. Eric Basir of Photo Grafix of Evanston, Illinois who has previously presented to our membership over the last few years and is familiar to many of our members.  He will show us the dos-and-don'ts on photo scanning and how to make repairs to those precious photos we have. He will be using a Photoshop-type program that is available for home computers.

Members are asked to bring a photo along with them to this meeting and perhaps Eric will use it to show us how to repair it. Eric will donate 10% of profits to the PGSA for members that hire him to restore photos as well.

Experienced genealogists will be available for consultation.  They will be there to assist with your research, introduce you to and help you use information available in the library. Place a copy of the Genealogy Saturday Poster in your local Library and your special research area.

with interesting speakers and time reserved to solve personal genealogical problems

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