Jefferson County Genealogical Society

Mission

To bring together persons who are researching family history and to promote fellowship and cooperation. To foster, stimulate, and share ideas, information, methods and practices in family research. To collect, preserve and make available material on family history, with special emphasis on research data concerning past and present families in Jefferson County, Washington. To encourage officials in charge of public records and genealogical collections to preserve and make them accessible.

Description

Jefferson County Genealogical Society (JCGS) collects and preserves records relating to individuals and families who have lived in Jefferson County, Washington, providing family and local historians with valuable information. We also provide a social and educational framework within which our members, many of whom do not have Jefferson County ties, can improve their skills as family historians and further their own research.

Our focus this year is to update and refresh our website so our users can experience a quicker and more robust search of the many thousands of county records we have compiled.  We also hope to provide a modernized website that provides an inviting viewing experience of the society’s events and offerings while making the website easier for volunteers to manage going forward. This is a process in which we will be needing to hire the expertise of people who understand website design as related to our organizational needs.  A successful fundraising drive will assist us in achieving our goal.

We are passionate about helping you find and preserve your family history, whether your family is from Jefferson County or anywhere in the country or the world.  We support family history researchers by offering educational presentations and classes, as well as informal resource corners and study groups that provide information about how to research and preserve your genealogy.  We also maintain a Research Center in Port Townsend where we keep a library of databases, books, journals, and state-of-the-art computers where you can access Ancestry and other online tools and resources.  Our Research Center is staffed four afternoons every week and the third Saturday of each month by volunteer genealogists who can assist you to search and interpret your DNA, and guide you to resources that may reveal the elusive information you are seeking.  We are an all-volunteer organization, funded through membership fees, class registrations, and donations.