The Genealogy & Family History Social Network

"First Families" projects?

Hello everyone! I'm brand new to this site so please forgive me if I'm going about things the wrong way.

I'm a member of the Southern Indiana Genealogical Society and last year we had a First Families of Floyd County (Indiana) program in honor of the bicentennial of New Albany. This year we want to branch out to include "first families" of other counties in our jurisdiction such as Clark and Harrison. We're using the qualifications provided by the Society of Indiana Pioneers as guidelines for accepting applications.

My question is: if any of you have done a similar program, what do you do with the accepted applications? Do you keep them on file somewhere and allow others access to them (or at least to some of the more historical information in them)? Do you shred the information on living people (or at least their documentation like birth certificates, etc.) but keep the rest open? Do you keep them as closed records, basically just so you have proof that someone did submit the proper documentation, etc.? Or do you just get rid of them?

We are trying to start advertising our programs but we want to be able to tell people what we intend to do with the information they are giving us. Some people are obviously wary to hand out copies of private information so we want to make sure we are meeting our own standards but still protecting everyone's privacy.

Thanks for your help!

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ellen Healy on January 23, 2014 at 11:35am

Hi, Allison, This is very interesting to me, too, because our new President of my gen club has suggested this type of project for our club, too. I'll be interested to read any other responses. You mention Society of Indiana Pioneers guidelines- what are they, and are they on the internet somewhere? Thanks, Ellen Healy

Permalink Reply by Allison Fredrickson on January 23, 2014 at 11:50am

Hi Ellen. The Society of Indiana Pioneers' website is here: http://www.indianapioneers.com/. The site uses frames so I can't link to the exact page, but in the "Membership" tab they list the qualifications for regular membership as

"men and women eighteen (18) years of age or older, who prove one or more of his or her ancestors meets the qualifications of an Indiana Pioneer. An Indiana Pioneer is one who lived within the present boundary of an Indiana county on or before December 31, 1840."

They had a couple of special cases for years for other counties but we used the 12/31/1840 cutoff date for our program and based our application materials off of the ones provided on that membership page I mentioned. I believe we are still modifying ours but hopefully they will be finished soon and put up on our website so I can link you to them. Good luck with your program! :)