The Quesnel Genealogical Society (QGS) has been working to preserve the history of the region and support its members with navigating databases and libraries to discover their ancestry since forming in1980.
"The whole idea of the genealogy society is to help people with their research," said Kathie Edwards from the QGS. "It's just to aid people in their research and suggest places to research."
Edwards has been involved for around 30 years and enjoys the search and research into history and geography.
In 1984, the organization put out its first newsletter and presently prints one three times per year, sharing them with other genealogical societies across Canada, the U.S., Australia and the U.K.
"There are articles of local history in them," said Edwards. "Some articles are like a brick wall. A brick wall is where you have gone so far and you're having problems progressing any further."
They also include stories about people who have died that the society doesn't have very much information about.
"We've done a lot of investigating and sort of filled out their history, their background. Because most of them came from somewhere before they came here," she said. "So there's quite a variety in the newsletter and the members have the opportunity to have a listing of the names that they're researching."
When it comes to researching peoples' history, Edwards said it's important to not rely exclusively on big websites like Ancestry and to broaden the search.
"There are what most people would probably call obscure websites. They're small, localized so people aren't aware that they even exist," she said. She added that with the newsletters there are often some of those small, obscure websites, they include when they receive them from other societies, and they can be very helpful in continuing research into family trees.
The society meets once a month on a Tuesday evening at the Church of Latter-day Saints in Quesnel. They have a library where they keep newsletters that have been exchanged including a club computer which has digital versions of newsletters.
"We have a substantial library of local books, history books. Some are biographies, some are about peoples' lives from the area," she said. While they do have a broad range of province-wide books, the society tries to keep its focus on Quesnel and the surrounding area.
They also do projects to preserve community history. Edwards said taking photos of the graves and cemeteries throughout the area is one of those projects.
"The city map for the pioneer cemetery was very poor in the indexing and we totally re-mapped it," she said. They gave each burial a plot number and searched through church records to find out about people who were buried there but don't have headstones. One reason for that is there used to be wooden headstones that didn't hold up to weather and time and have since been lost. "A number of grave locations have been lost between that and the vandalism that was done over the years."
She said the society always welcomes new information about people who may have been buried in the pioneer cemetery but don't have markers.
Edwards said she has been interested in researching her family tree since she was very young. She had family living in England who she had never met but sent letters around holidays. She was interested to learn more about them and how they fit into the family tree and she began connecting with them. She now knows about family she has across commonwealth countries.
"The accessibility of many databases since the evolution of the computer is huge. And every month there's a million more records," she said of how things have changed over the years.
Some of the successes she's seen include members travelling to visit family in places as far as Sweden after hitting brick walls and then finding new information that helped them to connect with distant relatives.
When the society meets they go around the room and share what research they've been working on. They share some of their success stories and if they have been unable to go any further in their research. They also share suggestions for how to break through barriers and offer each other resources that individual members might not have known about.
For people who are starting out digging into their family history, Edwards has some suggestions.
"You can't find it all online. There is a case where you do have to write letters," she said. She added that when looking at websites where people have public family trees, people need to be careful about making sure the information is correct. If one person has some incorrect information on an individual and someone else takes it for their family tree, it can spread to many more people. She also said it can be difficult if someone has created a family tree on a website but left it on private so nobody else knows about it.
She also recommended spelling out things like months when searching for information because of inconsistencies between day-month-year or month-day-year formats.
She suggests spelling out acronyms as well, giving the example of PGE, which was the Pacific Great Eastern Railway. She said many people might not know what PGE stands for due to its age so spelling it out is essential. It also works to future-proof information so if someone goes looking for information in 100 years, they can see it spelt out rather than an acronym.
She added that different jurisdictions having different rules and guidelines around things like death, birth and marriage certificates can be a challenge. It varies from country to country, even province to province. She said one of the most difficult areas to get information from is Kansas where only children of a person can access their death record.
"We're always welcoming to new members," she said. "I think it would benefit quite a lot of people that are searching to belong to the society. We're always willing to help."
The society will meet Tuesday, Nov. 14 at the Church of Latter-day Saints at 1490 Beryl Road.