WSGS 2011 Building Ancestral Bridges, Day 1

My sister Jacque & I left Spokane about 8:30 a.m. September 16, 2011 heading for Richland, Washington and the 2011 WSGS Conference Building Ancestral Bridges. This was a fitting name for the Richland, Pasco and Kennewick area has many bridges crossing the Columbia River. We arrived about noon and leveled the mini-home so the refrigerator keeps working. We warmed up some frozen home made soup and some corn from our garden for lunch and then I headed for the WSGS board meeting at 3 p.m. since I am a committee chairman. After the meeting I picked up my registration paper sack with all the goodies the Tri Cities Genealogical Society had worked so hard to collect and put in all the bags.

This first picture is the Richland Baptist Church. I always thought the church I went to here in Spokane was pretty big, but this Baptist Church was really huge, the Sanctuary where Patricia Walls Stamm talked was bigger than my whole church.


When we arrived the vendors were busy setting up, and as these pictures show, were busy during the two days of the conference.


This was the opening Flag Ceremony by the SAR group from Spangle, Washington.

After the good buffet dinner, Patricia Walls Stamm gave the first of four talks; Social Networking for Genealogists where she briefly pointed out the major social working websites, Facebook, Linkedin, My Space, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. While many of the WSGS board sat together I wanted to meet others so sat at a table away from the board and met Lee Smith one of the TCGS member volunteers that helped put on this conference. He also took many pictures of bridges around the area and they were used as centerpieces, and in the syllabus.