Arphax goes digital with more maps

Several years ago, Arphax Publishing Co. popped into the genealogical spotlight with its historical land ownership maps.

Arphax is the brainchild of Greg Boyd, who defines himself as lawyer, software engineer, and family historian. His credentials probably are the magical combination that have allowed him to make such a huge contribution to the genealogy world, and it looks as if the gift is about to increase substantially.

The original Arphax product was a series of "Family Maps" of individual counties showing original purchasers of land indexed through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management or the Texas General Land Office.

Now Boyd is going digital with HistoryGeo (www.historygeo.com). The formal announcement for this site is promised for Thanksgiving week, but a limited number of folks are jumping the gun (because Boyd was just too excited to keep it to himself for a few more weeks) and getting charter memberships.

If there are no charter memberships left, readers can register at www.historygeo.com/index.php without actually subscribing. This will allow you to poke around in the site and see what it's all about. If you decide to subscribe, you'll be able to access all the state and county maps from the original Arphax "Family Map" books. From the site, subscribers can choose either 500 or 1,000 maps, depending on their level of subscription, to build their own custom map collection.

Boyd promises to grow this service. I've known Boyd for several years and am confident he will keep his pledge. Arphax has always provided a quality product, so his track record says HistoryGeo is worth checking out and watching closely.

Daughters of the Confederacy

Tampa Chapter 113 United Daughters of the Confederacy will meet at 10:45 a.m. Saturday at the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City. Frances Zink will talk about South Carolina Confederates — Soldiers and Families. Her focus will be ancestors from Williamsburg County during the War Between the States. For information, email pooh1314@verizon.net.

Jewish Society Meeting

Social events, legal advertisements and church notices. Those are just samples of newspaper items in which genealogists can find "pearls of information" about their families. Accredited genealogist Debbe Hagner will talk about these and other tips at the Nov. 13 meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Tampa Bay.

The group will meet at 2 p.m. at the Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services, 14041 Icot Blvd., Clearwater. For information about the organization or directions to the meeting, call Sally Israel at (727) 343-1652.

South Bay Meeting

"Men in Funny Hats: the Pilgrims, Social Historians and the Declension of America's Founding Society" is the intriguing title of Kim Garvey's Nov. 15 lecture to the South Bay Genealogical Society.

The group will meet for lunch at 11:30 a.m. at the SouthShore Regional Library, 15816 Beth Shields Way, Ruskin. The program will begin at 1 p.m. Reservations are required by sending a check for $13 to the society at P.O. Box 5202, Sun City Center, 33571. The checks must reach the society no later than Tuesday. Once reservations are made, attendees should call Beth Clarke at 813-642-9329 to make a menu selection.

American Genealogy Studies

The cost of everything seems to be going up these days, so it is no surprise that the National Genealogical Society is raising the price on its online American Genealogy Studies courses. The new prices for each course are $45 for society members and $70 for nonmembers.

Among the topics offered in this course are Introduction to Civil War Research; Introduction to Religious Records; Social Security Sleuthing; Special Federal Census Schedules; Working with Deeds; and Transcribing, Extracting and Abstracting in Genealogical Records.

Full descriptions of each course are online at www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/online_courses.