Thanks for joining us!

 The 2024 SGGEE convention has ended, and it was a real learning experience! It started with the best genealogy tip ever and closed with our open forum where participants helped each other.

If you attended, please do complete our convention survey: https://forms.gle/G1w7RbGxsjuzLKKSA Your feedback is always the starting point for planning the next convention.

Recordings of the programs as well as speaker handouts are available to members only via the "Virtual SGGEE" web page.

Thanks again to our wonderful speakers and see you in 2025.

Registration is open!

Registration for the 2024 convention is now open. Visit the registration form here. There is no cost for members or guests, but only members will have access to recordings and handouts (if offered) after the weekend.

If you do register, mark your personal calendar. If your plans change, use the link in the confirmation email -- which you should keep around because it contains the Zoom link to join -- to cancel and make space for someone else.

Questions may be sent to convention-sggee@googlegroups.com.

Convention weekend schedule

 

Touring the SGGEE library

Barbara Stenzel is a retired German teacher, with experience from grades 6 – 12 in the German Bilingual Program in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She has volunteered for HSGPV – Historical Society of German from Poland & Volhynia for a number of years. Her father was born in Volhynia and thus her interest in the area. She is currently working on her family history.

Barbara has joined our speaker team for the 2024 convention on the topic "SGGEE Library Tour …. We’re happy to help you!"

The SGGEE Library is located in central Edmonton, Alberta in the heart of the Strathcona historical district. It is hosted by HSGPV – Historical Society of Germans from Poland and Volhynia – home of Ewald Wuschke’s Wandering Volhynians. Barbara will provide a tour of the resources and how volunteers can help with your research, whether you live in the Edmonton area or further afield.

HSGPV has hosted the SGGEE library since 2019 and its volunteers catalogued the collection. HSGPV also hosts the Edmonton chapter of the AHSGR library, as well as having its own library collection. Volunteers enjoy helping people with their family research, whether in-person, via email, telephone or Zoom. Do you have a copy of your family history in our library? SGGEE’s home page has a link to the library and it is keyword searchable. Each family history also includes a short summary with main geographical locations and surnames to facilitate your research.

Leaving home for the world

Volhynia, in the northeast region of Ukraine, was not like other areas in the Russian Empire that were settled by Germans. The Germans arrived there much later, and some started leaving within a couple of years of arrival. There was a steady drain of people over about eight decades -- to other parts of Ukraine, back to Germany, to South America, or to Canada and the United States.

There is no single story about the emigration process. This session will look at some of the ways and routes of departures.

Dave Obee has worked as a journalist in British Columbia and Alberta since 1972, and has been researching family history since 1978. He has received several honors over the years, including an honorary doctorate by the University of Victoria for his work as a historian, genealogist and journalist, as well as national and provincial awards for community service.

Time travel to boost your research

As the saying goes, "Everything Old is New Again." And that can be true in family research, as Edie Adam will show in her presentation at the 2024 convention.

Revisiting resources that have been around as long as you've been researching can still provide clues to move your family history forward:

• If you're a novice, there's a lot of material you may not have seen before, from "ancient" discussion boards to original Journals. Being decades old is not a drawback.
• If you've been researching for decades, you've learned a lot along the way. Revisiting material you already have may now make more sense or provide new clues you didn't know enough the first time to appreciate.

Edie will use examples from her research to make the point that you can find new clues in familiar places.

She is a former board member and president of SGGEE, and currently is involved in the website refresh project for the society. She also is on the board of the International German Genealogy Partnership, in which SGGEE participates. She has been researching her family in Poland-Volhynia-Russia for the last 30 years and has turned what she learned along the way into presentations for SGGEE, FEEFHS and the IGGP.