This group has met monthly since 1993 in the Elizabethton\/Carter County Library, located at 201 N. Sycamore Street in Elizabethton.<\/p>\n
Meetings are the second Thursday each month from 6-7:30 p.m. Members are available to guide researchers who visit.<\/p>\n
Below is an article from the Elizabethton Star<\/em> newspaper in 2019.<\/p>\n History worth preserving: Genealogy Club works with county library<\/p>\n by Amber Wadovick<\/p>\n [photo caption: “City Archivist Joe Penza said the Genealogy Club stems from a genealogy book that published in 1993. The members kept up the tradition in the form of the Genealogy Club to this day, and meet once a month to continue their work.”]<\/p>\n Family histories often contain as much value as the families themselves. A community of people in Elizabethton has been working day by day to preserve centuries of this information under one roof, so people a century in the future can feel the same sense of wonder and discovery as they do right now. The Genealogy Club started out as a committee developing a genealogy book titled \u201cCarter County and Its People.\u201d After the book published in 1993, the people working on the book decided to continue to work on preserving that history. City Archivist Joe Penza said the work the club does is invaluable for the community.<\/p>\n \u201cI go out to talk with businesses and individuals to collect records,\u201d Penza said. \u201cThere is great research value there.\u201d He said genealogy constitutes the vast majority of personal research done at the public library. \u201cPeople do not often come in to look up historical records about the Covered Bridge for example,\u201d he said. \u201cThe most common form of research is genealogy.\u201d<\/p>\n Penza said the archives constitute the bulk of local tourism to Elizabethton. He said people from 25 to 30 states come to Elizabethton to discover ancestral links and history they never knew existed. He said seeing people find those \u201cmissing links\u201d that connect their history with important people in history is part of why he loves his job. \u201cI am a third-generation American, so we do not really have that kind of rich history, but other people do,\u201d Penza said.<\/p>\n He said his job helps connect people with their past, their flesh and blood, and he said this connection is part of their identity.<\/p>\n The Genealogy Club meets on the second Thursday of every month from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the archives room of the Elizabethton\/Carter County Library at 201 N. Sycamore St.<\/p>\n The club is associated with the Watauga Historical Association and partners with them for a number of activities and acts of historical preservation.<\/p>\n Penza said the library is able to assist anyone who is looking to either examine historical documents or artifacts or even those looking to learn how to preserve them.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can help them figure out how to archive documents into digital, or even to help preserve textiles and other artifacts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Above all, Penza said the club is open to anyone who is willing to have an open mind.<\/p>\n \u201cThe club is for people who like mysteries, who like to follow the history and see where it leads,\u201d Penza said. \u201cSometimes people learn they are tied to famous mayors or other leaders, while others learn they are descended from notorious people like criminals and mass murderers. It is all about seeing where the facts lead you.\u201d<\/p>\n Source: https:\/\/www.elizabethton.com\/2019\/01\/04\/history-worth-preserving-genealogy-club-works-with-county-library\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This group has met monthly since 1993 in the Elizabethton\/Carter County Library, located at 201 N. Sycamore Street in Elizabethton. Meetings are the second Thursday each month from 6-7:30 p.m. Members are available to guide researchers who visit. Below is …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-repositories-contacts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tngenweb.org\/carter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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