Some time prior to May 1992 David Birley contacted The Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and discussed starting a PAF User Group in the Tulsa Okla. area. In May of 1992 most of the people that had purchased the PAF Genealogical Software Program, received a letter from the church informing them that there would be a meeting at the Main Library in down town Tulsa.
The purpose of the meeting was to see if we wanted to start a PAF Users Group. David Birley conducted the meeting and at its conclusion, it was agreed that we would start the group.
On June 6, 1992, at the Tulsa Vo-Tech on Memorial Ave, the first meeting was held and 37 people joined. We continued to meet at Vo-Tech until they began to charge for the room and the cost for it and insurance was too expensive for us to continue to meet there. Consequently the only place, at the time, that we could find was at the Tulsa Rudisill North Regional Library. A number of members would not attend meeting at that location, so in the fall of 1994 we started attending meetings at the Tulsa Hardesty Library and continue meeting there at the present time. We still have our board meeting at Rudisill Library.
Our PAF group has made great strides since our beginning: 131 members as of April 1995, the newsletter being exchanged with a number of other PAF groups around the country, the newsletter is being mailed to people in other states and also other countries, productive monthly meeting, regular PAF training sessions, personal help (from a number of members) for any member or non member that needs help on PAF or DOS problems, a large library of PAF Utilities and we have been able to acquire books, computer programs and other data for our members.
Also we have had a Sat PAF seminar with a guest speaker, Joan Lowrey in Oct. 1993 and again in Oct. 1994. It is planned to have another one in Oct. 1995 with a different speaker. These seminars plus other fund raising actives has enabled us to purchase many items for our group. We acquired a lap top computer, over head projector, a computer telephone announcing system, 2 panels that work with the computer and over head projector to project large computer images and text on a screen and also a number of other items.
From the beginning, most of our members have been senior citizens, with about the same number of women as men. We had a large number of members from Bartlesville but some time in early 1994 they formed their own PAF Users Group and many of them left our group. As of April 1995 there were still 8 members from there. There are a lot of members from Tulsa but we have a number from near by communities such as Broken Arrow, Sapulpa, Sands Springs, Catoosa, Muskogee, Claremore, Chelsea, Bixby, Jenks, Collinsville, Council Hill, Coweta, Porter, Cleveland, Edmond and some from out of State. Our meetings are held on the first Thursday of each month for approx. 2 hours & the board meetings are held the last Thursday of each month.
In the early part of the 1995/1996 year we started to support Ancestral Quest as well as to continue with o support PAF. Near the end of the 1996/1997 year the board realized that our membership had leveled off and attendance to the regular PAF meetings were down. We then decided to change the form of our group to support all genealogy computer software programs. This proposal was accepted by a vote of the membership and on the first meeting the 1997/1998 season we started this concept.
The group name was changed from North East Oklahoma Personal Ancestral File Software Users Group (NEOPAFSUG) to North East Oklahoma Genealogical Software Users Group (NEOGENSUG). We have people with PAF, Ancestral Quest, Family Tree Maker, Family Origins, Family Gathering and are now supporting these programs. We hope to bring in Roots and some of the other genealogy programs. We now have more interesting meetings, there is a answer & question session at the beginning & at the close of each meeting. Also there are people available a hour before the meeting starts to help with problems or to discuss genealogy.
For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here