Welcome to the Wichita Genealogical Society Web Site!
Our Mission is:
"to facilitate the gathering of genealogical and family history information for the researcher and
to support the Local History and Genealogy Department of the Wichita Public Library"
The Wichita Genealogical Society (WGS) is an important link between you, the researcher, and gaining information, sharpening your research methodologies, seeking and understanding sources, and applying your genealogical knowledge.
Whether you are researching Sedgwick County, the surrounding counties, or nation wide, you may want to consider joining the Society. WGS has regular meetings which offer helpful lectures and workshops to benefit your genealogical research. To learn more about WGS click About WGS. To learn more about joining WGS click Membership in WGS.
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Upcoming Events
(for more detail click Calendar )
Where:
Lionel Alford Branch Library
3447 S. Meridian
Wichita, Kansas
Map to Alford Branch Library
When:
Every third Saturday at 1:00 p.m.
Mike is a respected paleontologist and adjunct curator of palenontology at the Sternberg Museum of natural History in Hays: His exciting tales are not fiction about the huge fish that got away, but are true stories about the 85 million-year-old fish he discovered buried in Kansas soil, which had never been seen before in the former Kansas ocean.
Researching your family can be your most exciting hobby. It is fun to search for your ancestors or other family member's ancestors. It gives you the opportunity to know your own family better or meet new family members. Knowledge will be gained in using libraries and research maps and connecting dates in history with wars or other important events. Each part of your research will make you more aware of the hardships your ancestors encountered as they made their mark in history. This session is planned to give everyone a review and kick start your research for a new year.
The Courthouse contains many records that will give you clues to your family history. Many people are intimidated by all the offices and records available. This session will help you decide where to look and what you will be looking for at the courthouse. We will review terms used and what records may not be open to the public.
For more information click NGS
Ms Penner will present an introductory story of how and why three German groups (Catholic, Lutheran or Protestant, and Mennonite) went to Russia, their villages, colonies, and where they lived in Russia, then concentrate on why they left, and how they ended up in Kansas (and other areas of Germans from Russia).
Mary Brown will be our speaker and will share her extensive family Quaker research.
Genealogical research is more than finding records or sources. We need to have a system. Many researchers do not know how to keep track of their historical research. During this lecture we will look at steps to planning, source extraction, organizing and compiling our genealogical records.
For more information, click FGS
Find out how stern Puritan tombstones, romantic nineteenth-century inscriptions, and today's more secular markers provide clues that help us 'read' historical changes.
Marcia Newton will share information from the German lectures she attended at the Library in Salt Lake City.
Reading older documents takes patience and practice. The original writer did not write with the intent that researchers would be able to read handwriting several years later. In some cases the writer's objective may have been to create an impressive looking document. Whatever the reason for writing, the scribe obviously had some latitude in using his own abbreviations and punctuation. We will examine and compare words, letters and characters to help understand what was written on the documents.
This program examines these early trails, plus the forts, trading posts and battles occurring along these trails adding another chapter to the history of Kansas' first transportation network.