Training Session on Collin County Historical Assets Project
Brenda Kellow
February 5, 2012
The Collin County Historical Commission and the Parker Historical Society join together to present a training session to learn how to identify collect and catalog all historical sites in the county. Collin County is the only county in Texas to undertake such a project on a countywide basis. The survey uses the criteria of the National Registry of Historic Places.
A training session by the Chairman of the Historical Assets Project, Loydell Seward, will give a training session on the Assets Project on Friday, February 10 at 1 p.m. with a brown bag lunch starting at 12:30 at the historic Corinth Presbyterian Church, whose congregation has been active since August 2, 1846, located at 5609 E. Parker Road in Parker.
Potential sites sought by the Assets Committee include cemeteries, buildings, event locations and other historically significant locations. They need volunteers with an interest in and knowledge of local history to document the places and events that have shaped the county. There is a committee to coordinate the findings and document the information. Volunteers in the four quadrants of Collin County concentrate on the area in which they live. Come be a part of this history project in a historical setting.
Jim Ryan, the Director of the Historic Asset Project, and Chairman Loydell Seward can both be reached at [email protected].
For more information on the Parker Historical Society, contact Ed Standridge at [email protected] or
Linda Nelson at [email protected].
ARE YOUR FILES SECURED? The unthinkable happened this week. My cousin’s house was struck by lightning and burned fifty years of memories. He was the genealogist on his side of the family and whether he can recover any files from his damaged computer is still unknown. His computer with the bill paying information and genealogy may be gone. Tragic isn’t it?
If your files are not backed up and stored off the premises, you should do this ASAP. We make sure my files are backed up and stored in the cloud and in a safety deposit box when we leave for vacation. Before traveling, we may also store discs or thumb drives in my husband’s desk at work.
Are you backing up your files at least on a weekly basis? Mine are backed up in the middle of each night because I am usually not on the computer then. Sometimes this fails, and when I check I find a week or more has gone buy without a backup, I panic. Not only are all my genealogy files on my computer—at least the one I was working on after I began to enter data into the computer in the 1980s—but my columns are there from the first one in 1995. Old files in three-ring notebooks are usually not in the computer at all.
Let us all make a pact to store off-site and carefully back up our files so the unthinkable will not happen.
PLANO CITY COUNCIL MINUTES WITH INDEX GOES ONLINE: Volunteer Carol Hofer announced that an improved version of the City Council Minutes project that she and Sandi Bradshaw have been working on is finally online. She said the purpose has been to index and abstract the Plano City Council minutes working from microfilmed copies of the handwritten minutes. Deciphering the handwriting and some of the terminology has been interesting and challenging as well as learning to format and work in Excel.
To view their work online go to www.plano.gov/Departments/Libraries/Pages/default.aspx and click on the Genealogy tab near the center of the page. Scroll down and click on “resources can be found here.” That should bring you to the link, www.plano.gov/Departments/Libraries/Genealogy/Pages/Resources.aspx. There you will find Plano City Council Minutes Index, by name, 1891-1899 and Plano City Council Meeting Abstracts, by page, 1891-1899. Thank you, Carol, for this information.
Brenda Kellow has a bachelor's degree in history, teaches, and lectures on genealogy. Before retiring to publish her family’s histories in 2007, Brenda held certification as a Certified Genealogist and as a Certified Genealogical Instructor. Send reunion announcements, books to review, and genealogy queries to: [email protected].