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Iowa City Genealogical Society P.O. Box 822, Iowa City, IA 52244-0822
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Charter Member Beverley Lindsey Tells How It All Began Forty years ago Char Hixon and I signed up for a genealogy class offered by the Cedar Rapids adult education. The class met for two hours, 7 to 9 PM, once a week for six weeks. It must have been about the fifth class we'd attended and we were heading home to Iowa City. We discussed what had gone on in class and I said I thought that we could run a class as well as Mrs. Paxton (How bloated can an ego get?) By the time we'd reached Iowa City, it was decided I'd put an ad in the newspaper announcing' our" workshop and Char was to make arrangements at the library for the meetings. And we spread the word. The library was the old Carnegie Library and the meeting room in the basement was called the reading room. The first meeting was February 6, 1967 and was well attended. I remember Bessie Smith, Sarah Cox Rigler, Sue Liesch, Joanne Wolf, Dr Chapin. Norman Rogers, Roberta Parks. Char and I. We decided there would be no officers, no fees, and no formalized agenda, just people with like interests getting together to discuss our genealogy problems and successes to help each other. I did keep a record of attendance, meeting dates, etc in a spiral bound stenographers notebook which I think is now in the archives Well, the group got larger and larger so we finally had to elect a president and secretary to keep organized. We had outside speakers. I remember especially George Goble and Mrs. Paxton. Time went on and we became the Iowa City Genealogical Society, affiliated with the Iowa State Genealogical Society. We recorded and published cemetery records, indexed the Johnson Co. Probate records, indexed the births, marriages, divorces, and deaths from the Iowa City Press Citizen, copied courthouse records, etc. In 1994 when I was President and Roberta Parks was Vice President for Projects, I wrote a letter to Christie Dailey. Director of the Historical Society, proposing that we start a project to preserve the clippings files. We started the work on the World War II clippings that year. For the Iowa Sesquicentennial Project we gathered information on the repositories of records in Johnson County That was the year we received the Irving Weber Award from the Johnson Co. Historical Society. Char, Roberta, and I belong to several Hereditary Societies and our groups have purchased the Iowa City Genealogical publications through the Stec Game Society and have placed than in libraries all around our country. I think it is very important to keep copying records and preserving than for future generations
Beverly B. Lindsey August 25, 2007 |
Iowa City Genealogical Society Members of the Iowa City Genealogical Society met at the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) Library for the monthly meeting and celebration of the society’s 40th anniversary. Char Hixon, society President, dispensed with the formal business meeting. Char, a charter member, introduced Beverly Lindsey, also a charter member. Beverly explained how she and Char decided to organize a genealogical workshop. With time the workshop numbers grew and the decision was made to form a genealogical society. The ICGS joined the Iowa Genealogy Society (IGS), becoming one its charter chapters. Char also shared some of her own personal reflections of the early days of the society. Those present introduced themselves and told how long they had been a member of the society. Members of the library staff, Heather Hildreth and Charles Scott, conducted tours of the main library area and manuscript room. Following the tours, refreshments were served by members of the board. |
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Click the photos by Kathy Wachel to enlarge them |
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