Meeting Lisa Louise Cooke

Lisa Louise Cooke has taught me many genealogy methods & tricks online for the past year or so. Yesterday, I got to listen to her in person! I told her how much I appreciated all that she does. And, we posed for a quick photo!

Meeting Lisa Louise Cooke from Genealogy Gems
(at Houston Genealogical Forum's meeting on May 1, 2014)

Lisa was giving three lectures at the Houston Genealogical Forum. She has recently moved to Texas, so I hope we get to see even more of her!

Her first lecture was about newspapers. I have a membership to newspapers.com and have found a few interesting clips. But, I haven't had much luck finding FREE newspapers online! Lisa showed us multiple sites that will help us find newspapers whether they are digitized or not! I'll be digitally digging into the papers over the next few weeks!

Below is an article from 1904 about a party some "young people" attended including my great grandparents before they were married, Myrtle Coppenbarger and Emil Peters. They were married about 10 months later! I love that it says "Many parlor and outdoor games were enjoyed by all." I wonder what types of games these young people played!

Found on Newspapers.com

Her second talk was about Google. I believe I've watched her Google talk online, but I still got a lot out of this. For the past few years, I've used the "+" operator to tell Google I want them to include something in a search. Well, that doesn't work any more! Instead, you need to put a word or phrase in a quotation marks to make sure it's included! I've already been putting that tip to use today!

And, her last talk was about Google Earth. Wow! There is so much you can do with it, but I still feel pretty lost. Thankfully, I have the handout & notes I took. But, I also bought her book & CD's. So, hopefully I'll be using Google to enhance my genealogy soon!

By the way, she said most (all?) of these talks are also available to premium members. I've been a premium member for awhile, but haven't looked at these videos! So, I'll be hopping over there this week & seeing what else I've paid for but haven't used yet!

If you don't listen to her free podcasts, you should give them a try! She has two sites...   www.genealogygemspodcast.com and www.lisalouisecooke.com

Do we share common ancestors? I'd love to talk! Please write me at drleeds@sbcglobal.net