Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Was the First Genealogical Society You Joined?

Jacquie Schattner has been coming up with several suggestions lately for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topics for Randy Seaver.  This week we were treated to another of her ideas:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible music, please!):

(1) What was the first genealogical society you joined?  Why did you join that one?

(2)  Share your response in a comment on this blog post, in your own blog post (and provide a link in a comment on this post), or on Facebook or Google+.

I started my genealogy research before Randy, in 1975.  This of course was before the ubiquity of personal computers, so my initial research was also on paper, most of which I have kept.  I had several family lines fairly well detailed by 1979, when I moved back to California from Florida, where I had graduated high school.

I spoke to many relatives and added to my information for the next ten years.  Soon after I moved to the San Francisco area in 1989, I started to visit the Oakland Family History Center on a regular basis.  I think it was there that I read something about a meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society.   The first meeting I went to was probably in Berkeley, since that was close to where I lived, but I don't actually remember.  The meetings were (and are) free to attend, and many interesting and useful topics were covered.  I joined not long after the first one I went to, because it was inexpensive and it was a way to support a group from which I was benefiting.  A few years after I joined, the president announced the society needed someone to help with publicity, and I was foolish . . . er, generous enough to volunteer.  And I've been doing that since then, along with adding the responsibilities of vice president, journal editor, and programming.

And like Randy, I didn't stop with SFBAJGS but joined additional societies:  African American Genealogical Society of Northern California, California Genealogical Society, California State Genealogical Alliance, and Gesher Galicia.  And then I went and volunteered with them also!