Put that in the recording, cause, I always forget to turn it on the classes being recorded, and they'll be available as soon as the video gets processed, and we'll send out another email to everybody with the link for how to get to that and the handout let me know in.
Chat. If you did not receive the handout, and I'll put it out.
There for you. So let me introduce our speaker Ruth Ferris Armstrong has been a volunteer at the Cedar Rapids Area Genealogical Library since 2015, after returning from teaching music in Iowa, public schools for 34 years she grew up in Mary in Iowa and Earned a
Bachelor's of Music Education from Simpson College, a desire to learn about her paternal roots sparked her interest in genealogy while in college Ruth is currently vice president for the society arranging monthly programs and handling publicity and social media she's
married to Steve Armstrong and lives in Cedar Rapids. With that I'll turn it over to you, Ruth.
Thank you. Sherri.
No worries.
It's going.
Well, thank you very much for having me, and I'm very happy to share with you what we have in the Cedar Rapids Area Genealogy Library.
We are staffed in, maintained by the Genealogical Society of Lynn County. I'll give you a little history.
We were organized in 1965 with 16 members.
They first met in private homes, using their resources. Some of them had contacts with the Recorders Office, and we're able to.
Secure some records and some vital things through Cedar Rapids and Lynn County they eventually moved to a room in the Cedar Rapids, Public Library, and then in space in the History Center and in 1,998 in October we moved to our current location in
the lower level of the Masonic libraries. In Cedar Rapids.
In the mid quarter, and in 2,016 we decided to change our name, to reflect more of what we do to the Cedar Rapids area.
Genealogy, library.
Our mission and objectives, we are dedicated to the preservation of family records and historical documents by promoting and assisting anyone with an interest in genealogy with an emphasis on Lynn County, Iowa.
Our motto is family trees, family stories, family matters.
And just a question, Sherry, I'm I'm saying.
All the the people on the right. How do I get rid of that?
Up at the top. There's a little view option with a little grid, and you can pick the one that you want.
Probably you want this. The speaker view.
Okay, I've got to stop share. I think.
Which?
So up at the very upper right corner that little view.
Yeah, right? I've got it on. Speaker.
Yeah.
You got it on Speaker View. Well, there's an option that this says, hide self view or hide non video participants.
So you have an option. There!
No worries.
Okay. No, I'm still seeing I'm still seeing us.
Okay.
Okay, go ahead and do your share and see how that works.
It's there's 3 there. But that's okay.
No!
We can work with that. Are you? Seeing that you're not okay?
Then we're fine. Okay, I'm sorry. Sorry about that.
No worries.
Again with our mission. We maintain a genealogy library to preserve Lynn County records of birth, death, divorce, military cemeteries, funeral homes, obituaries, churches, schools, courthouse, docks, documents, directories, town documents, maps, family histories.
scrapbooks, and more. In 2020 we were named a family search Affiliate library, and this, of course, provides access to record images on family search that are viewable only in family history.
Centers, or a library of Philadelphia.
The services we provide are one on one assistance, with a knowledgeable volunteer.
While in the library. Also we have volunteers that will help you with online research of the online websites, such as family search and ancestry and find a grave.
And others. We copy and scan documents. We provide research for those who can't come to the library themselves for $15 per hour, and there it costs less than that for members, and we provide genealogy education to groups that come to us or out in the community.
We receive our support as a non profit through membership dues pioneer certificates, monetary donations, memorial gifts, research fees, copy fees, sales of T-shirts, genealogy forms, maps, books, grant donations, of genealogical books, and
materials and fundraisers, such as our book and bake sale.
Which is this coming? Saturday, June tenth.
We have wonderful volunteers. We are staffed weekly by 10 regular volunteers.
We have 16 to 20 volunteers. That work throughout the week, and on monthly work days which our held on the first Monday of every month.
We have 6 volunteers that serve as board of directors, and many others serve on various committees in 2,022 volunteers gave more than 5,420 h.
We're very proud of our hard working volunteers.
The projects we are currently working on are the Cedar Rapids, canceled voter registration cards from 1966.
This has been about a 5 year project. We had to prepare the cards before we could scan them, as they were scanned and then indexed on our server.
We have a World war, one book that we're assembling.
To gather information about any person who served in World War.
One, no matter where they live. It's not just for Lynn County, but for anywhere.
Anyone who has a World war, one veteran in their family.
We are trying to to remember them. We're currently working on the Check National Cemetery records.
The Czech National Cemetery is in Cedar Rapids, and we have those records.
They are in check, and we're transcribing and translating and then ongoing, indexing of obituaries, funeral cards, books, and other materials in our collection.
The goal is to have everything with an index.
And of course we do ongoing updates to all the Lynn County semiaries.
We average about 3 cemeteries in a season to do the updating, sometimes more.
If the semitaries are small, and sometimes we only do one.
If the cemetery is very large, as in Oak Shade Cemetery in Marion couple a couple seasons to finish that one.
We do many outreach programs. We have monthly programs in our in the library.
We either have a speaker come in to us, or we have a speaker present on Zoom, because they are far away.
We do. Genealogy presentations for groups, social clubs, retirement homes, family reunions, and any other group that would like us to share about genealogy.
And every Wednesday morning at the Marion Public Library we have a group of people that meet, and they call themselves the genealogy junkies.
Whoops every holiday season. In December we have a holiday open house.
It is not only a place for us to gather together to enjoy the holidays, but also we invite community leaders, mayors, city council, members of those cities and towns in Lynn County.
They don't all come, but we've had a good showing in the past, and it's very interesting to them to know that we exist and the things that we do.
This is just an example of 3 of our zoom programs that we've had in the past.
The case of a Colorado murder and it's ties to Iowa.
Was presented by a woman in Colorado, and Linda Mccann.
You've probably heard of her. She's she's an Iowa lady that writes books about Iowa.
And then Sandra Hudson came to us on Zoom from Iowa City.
We are planning a genealogy summer camp for middle schoolers, and we participate in community celebrations.
We've marched in the Marion Swamp Fox Parade.
We have a table setup at the Cedar Rapids Community Cultural Celebration expo, and also at Brown Farm. Pioneered days in Central City.
We always have a annual road trip, and your lower left is Sadie's farm, Sadie's house and Heritage Farm at Lewis Bottoms, near pay, low in the center.
We are at the Cedar County Historical Museum in Tipton.
The upper right with the Iowa Gold Star Military Museum at Camp Dodge, in Johnston, and then the bottom right.
We are at the Delaware County Historical Society and Museums in Hopkinton, Iowa.
We always combine these trips with a lunch at a local restaurant and seeing some other local sites.
And these trips are open to anyone. It's not just for members, but we invite the public as well.
Friends. We've been featured in newspaper and magazine articles.
We have a little blurb in this Cedar Rapids, Tourism Euro magazine.
We got a nice write up in the Cedar Rapids Gazette when we had our fiftieth anniversary in 2,015, a nice article in the Gazette about our work on the cemeteries, and then one of our volunteers was highlighted in
a local neighborhood magazine.
This is an award that we got in January of 2,019.
The genealogy guys and vivid picks awarded us.
The very first unsung Heroes award citing our Project. Scan and Index. Our collection of the Canceled Cedar Rapids Voter Registration Guides.
This award is given quarterly, and it's designed to recognize and celebrate members of the genealogical community who digitize their index photos and other documents of value to researchers.
In March of 2022 we were featured on the preservation.
Oaks. Podcast this is a twice monthly podcast posted by Sean Radcliffe out of Salt Lake City, Utah, hey, highlight, museums, cultural and heritage institutions historical and genealogical societies across the United States, so very proud to be a part of.
You maintain a web page and our Facebook page. These are nice ways for people to get in touch with us.
The webpage also includes downloads of membership, forms books for sale.
What our programs are for the year, and pioneer certificates.
Now I'll have that information at the end. Those links.
We have our own server in the library, and we have an extensive database with over 1.9 million surnames the caterpillar is voter registration cards.
The birth records again. Cedar Rapids, birth records Cedar Rapids, death records our funeral card collection, and any item in our library that has an index.
So a person can come into the library and give us a name, and we can type it in to the access query, and it will give us a list of all indexed items that we have on that person.
Online, we have our obituary index from 1950 to 1985.
That can be accessed at the cedar Rapids, and Marion.
Public libraries. And we have our cancelled Cedar Rapids voter registration index on the Lynn County, Iowa.
Genu website.
Now for our collection in the library are, we have city assessors, books, photographs, the canceled Cedar Rapids, voter registration cards, and duplicate city directories, and I'd like to direct your attention to an example of one of these voter registration
cards. This person gives his name all the places he has lived in Cedar Rapids, where he was born.
You can see Copenhagen, Denmark when he was born.
If he was naturalized. The date he was naturalized, and where he was naturalized.
So this information, which was going to be simply thrown away by the city, we luckily of maintained, and have this list of these cards, and for someone who hasn't found any other information, here's a great source.
So these cards are very valuable.
We have extensive collection of items on microfilm town newspapers in Lincolnshire, as well as Cedar Rapids newspapers, the probate records, land records.
And met much, much more on microfilm, and I can.
Tell you a little bit more about that later. If you have questions about specifics.
But land records, death, marriage, some adoption, naturalizations and military and census records on microfilm.
The Cedar Rapids papers that are on Microfilm.
The Cedar Valley. Time starts June eleventh, 1857.
In our map collection. We have maps of Cedar Rapids, maps of Lynn County, other counties in Iowa, Lind county schools, Lynn county cemeteries and maps of Iowa and photographs.
In this part of the library we have addresses. Genealogy, forms, genealogies.
Bible records, scrapbook, index, and the Lynn County Recorder records on Microfilm.
And in the close up here you can see in Bible records we have the Bible records of Charles Ingalls, the father of author, Laura Ingles.
In the style. We have obituaries, corpor record books, 0 cards, naturalization record books and scrapbooks.
Very interesting things can be found in court record books. If you're willing to take the time to read them they're not easy to read but a person who was researching in one of those books found a manumission paper.
A manumission is when a person gives freedom to a slave and a woman who was a slave that lived in Cedar Rapids was granted in Cedar Rapids, was granted in a Lynn County Court.
Her freedom from slavery was signed in August of 1857.
This is an example of our obituary books, which we have 1894 to the present.
And funeral card collection.
Many books of feral cards. Again, if a person didn't have an obituary, this is another source for finding information.
These are examples of applications for citizenship on the left, and declaration of intention records.
And our pioneer certificates. This is one way we get support.
We charge $10 for a person to have a certificate made a gold certificate is offered to those whose ancestor arrived in Linn County in or before 1,850, and then a silver certificate is offered for those whose ancestor arrived at
least 100 years prior to the application.
We have a wonderful set of 50 scrapbooks on people in Lynn County, and these are all indexed.
So if you're looking for a particular person, you can go to the index file, and they will tell you what scrapbook they're in and what page it's on.
And there's wonderful things in here. These are just 3 little examples.
We have 4 computers in the library, 4 in the library, work room, and 2 laptops available for volunteers, and or patrons coming to the library.
We normally allow just the volunteers to sit at the computer and help people who are coming in.
But if a person has been in many times and has a lot of experience, we'll we'll let them.
You buy themself at a computer, we use our own personal accounts for ancestry and find a grave.
When people come to the library, if they want to search online.
The microfilm machines.
And our Lynn County mortuary records. We have.
These are one of a kind and originals from these mortuaries that were in Lynn County in the past, and these are our wonderful source for information.
Here's an example from Barta. Funeral home.
Not only does it give this person's name, and when she died where she lived, but it also has where she was born.
When she was born. Her father's name, where he was born.
Her mother with maiden name, where she was born, where she was buried.
Information about the service, and then on the back of the page are her survivors, and it also includes the date.
She was married, and to whom she was married. So again. This is in a funeral home book.
This is a wonderful story, a family information.
There were 100 past and present cemeteries in Lynn County, and we have extensive records for all of them.
One of our volunteers has spent the last 2 years making a book of information for each seminary with contact names and numbers, as well as detailed directions on how to get to it was a wonderful resource.
This is an example from the Czech National Cemetery records.
As you can see, it is in check, and when we are finished transcribing this book, we will then go out to the cemetery and do our checking.
There are over 9,000 burials and 40 acres for this cemetery was quite extensive.
Sherry. You might find a relative in here.
We have an extensive collection of books for sale.
When we get duplicates of books donated to the library, we keep a second copy on the shelf, or in storage, but anything above that we sell we have a volunteer that devotes all of her time to selling these items on ebay so this is a big big moneymaker for
our organization, and it it helps people, gives us support, and slowly makes more room on our shelves.
We claim Grant Wood in Lynn County, although he was born in Jones, Jones County, but he spent a good deal of his life in Cedar Rapids.
We have a wonderful timeline on the wall of his life and his families.
We have some books and some scrapbooks. And he was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Lynn County, at Rosedale School.
So here's a picture of Grant with his students in Ninth 12.
These are 3 of his sketches from his High School yearbook.
As an artist he was probably assigned or wanted to create these sketches for the yearbook, and these are just 3 of my favorites.
This was a 1908 Year Book.
I love the yawning freshman must be bored.
On these shelves we have an extensive collection of military books from all the conflicts Lynn County church records Lynn County school records, and Lynn County yearbooks, and this is from the colleges as well as the high schools, in some junior highs.
We're looking for college community or Cedar Rapids Prairie.
Yearbooks. So if you have any connections there where we could use some of those.
And then these are big binders about their one room.
School houses in all the townships in Lynn County.
City directories are another wonderful resource. We have the Cedar Rapids directors from 1869 and the Marion Directories from 1916.
A wonderful source of information for people and businesses.
The vertical files include newspaper clippings, and we have a lot of index that goes with these.
Everything, from businesses to houses, to people, to organizations, anything you can imagine that has then saved on a newspaper clipping are filed in this file cabinet.
And here's just an example from one of the files.
This is from the Hubbard Ice Company.
And I'm not sure what that record behind it is.
I thought it was a census, but.
If I'm not sure what it is, Judy. Maybe you know what it is, but it does give a name, and their sex and their age, and what they do.
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know, either. Should I go back it might be a census, but it doesn't say it just says record no.
We do have a lot of Lynn County divorce records.
This is not complete, but if we're as many as we have, I would think it is.
There's many, many in here.
And pictures. We have pictures and files, pictures and boxes and pictures on the wall. The pictures on the wall are from businesses, from organizations, churches, family reunions, Lynn county Pioneers.
On our Lynn County shelves. We have information from about every Lynn County town.
Lynn, County history, books, biographies, marriage licenses, anniversary announcements, and the county home records.
Photos and postcards, the Probate Index books, plat books, farm directories.
And many others about Lynn County.
We have an extensive collection of family history, books.
Everything from just a simple, simple binder to hard, hard back.
Nicely published books like in the picture. Here.
And binders anything anyone is willing to donate to us.
We have something from all. 98 Iowa counties.
We are missing Sioux County. So if anyone has anything from Sue County they'd like to doate that.
Would complete our collection. But on these county shelves everything from county histories and town histories, obituaries, cemetery books, churches, yearbooks, directories and phone books, newsletters and lots of miscellaneous books and documents.
Our lineage books, the Da. R. Lineage Books, Mayflower books, the Mayflower Quarterly, from 1965 to the present.
And books from other countries. We have Canada, England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Czechoslovakia, Wales, and New England. And these folks are history books, genealogy, sources, maps.
In Czechoslovakia. We've got the cheque in Illogical Society periodical.
The Naasi.
And we have migration, immigration books, passenger lists.
And all States, except Hawaii.
Similar items to what we have on the county shelves.
So county histories, cemeteries.
Directories. We had a volunteer that donated her entire collection of phone books, telephone books from all over the country.
She used them in her job as a private detective, and when she retired she donated them to our library.
We are very grateful for that.
And many books on Iowa, including the annals of Iowa.
Reference books, lots of genealogy, how To's and the Who's Who box?
We have a map on the wall where we put a sticker for people that come to visit us from where they are from, and it's just nice to see the whole country from east to west, many of the States that have have people that have come to visit our library.
So we're very proud of that.
This is our contact information we are open to the public from Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 to 4.
We don't charge any admission, but donations are always welcome we're in the lower level of the Masonic Library in museums, in the mid quarter, so we're next door to the fire station.
We're very near the Pci building in Cedar Rapids, and we're right in between St.
Luke's Hospital and Mercy Hospital, on First Avenue Downtown.
Here's our phone number, our email, our web page and our Facebook page.
So I'll just leave that up there. You want.
Yeah, I've got a couple Yup.
So sherry, if you've got questions from people, if I okay, if I can't answer them, Judy can answer that.
Oh, I'm guessing. I'm guessing you can.
So dirty poor stays on, so go ahead.
The first one is, can someone bring their own laptop?
Yes, yes.
Okay. And I guess that, begs, do you? Still, you have Wi-fi.
There's Wi-fi. Yes, there's wi-fi. Yes!
Okay, alright. And the other one is, did you have any damage in floods?
No, we were just enough up just far away enough that we did not, so we were very, very fortunate.
Okay. Great. Well, that's all.
Yeah, now, Mini, speaking of the flood, I mean the county or the town, the county and city offices were down, were damaged, and many, many records were lost in the flood.
But we had the same records. So whenever a city official needs something from a particular time and a particular record, they come to us.
So we have lots of people doing research.
Okay. And Gail is asking, do you allow pictures?
Yes, now we charge 25 cents, whether we copy a document or you take a picture of it.
It's the same same cost.
Okay, good to know. And that wraps up the questions in the chat.
I'll go ahead and just ask anybody if you have any questions. Go ahead and open your mic up and ask Ruth directly.
Ruth did. We mentioned that we have no paid employees.
Everything is volunteer.
Messages, podcast.
You, Roberta, do you have a question?
No sorry!
Oh, well, Judy, yeah, I didn't specifically say, non paid.
But well, everything is volunteer. Yes, no one gets paid.
Just the joy of participating right.
Yes, and we depend on support, because where we're located we do have to pay rent.
We have to pay our telephone bill and our copy machine bills. So.
Yes.
Ruth, I had a question about the naturalization record books you met that you talked about. Do they come?
Are they distributed? Court type thing that they would cover a lot of Eastern Iowa, or they just Lynn County.
That's a good question. I'm looking in my microphone.
Okay.
I think the the books we have on the shelf are specifically Lin County, but in our microfilm collection we have Benton County.
I was thinking Muscatine County.
Okay, probably not. No Lynn County or Benton County is what I see.
We have.
Okay.
Alright. Thank you.
Any other questions for Ruth.
Sounds like we could just come over and get lost in the stacks.
Yes, which I do frequently.
And there you go.
And in other I mean, none of my family is from here, so I have found things on my family on our county shelves and on our state shelves, and from other States.
So, and we probably have. Excuse me. Many more State books from like Illinois and Ohio and Pennsylvania, as that was the westward movement of our ancestors to Iowa.
New York. A lot of New York works.
So if someone wants to, is your catalog available online.
No!
Okay. So if someone wants to know if you have a book, they need to give you a call.
Right.
Yeah, the only thing online to anybody anywhere is on the gen website.
The, Iowa and the Lynn County, Gen. Webb, and that would be just the index of those canceled voter registration cards for Cedar Rapids.
That you can see online.
Still have to come to the library to get a picture of it.
You get the actual document.
Good to know. Alright anybody else have any questions. You're all figuring out when your calendars, when you're gonna make our trip over to Ced Rapids.
We hope you do.
There should be something for everyone there, though it's a good library.
It did seem like it should cover us all.
Yeah.
Alright!
I'm not seeing any more questions. I just wanna take a moment.
Ruth and Judy for helping with this, for putting this together and spending some time with us on your lunch hour.
Yeah. Lunches when we were on it. Yeah.
I'm sure, for those of us that are retired, and lunch is kind of, you know, whenever that's right, that's right.
Oh, good! Where?
I'm getting some hearts and some thanks, so we appreciate the opportunity. Kathy said.
It's one. It's a great presentation. Lots of information in the handouts.
So we'll know how to find you guys.
Good. Well, thank you so much for having me, and thank you, Judy, for chiming in.
And.
Got some hand clapping going on so good time.
Yes.
Alright. I'm gonna go ahead and stop the recording.