October 1997 Meeting Minutes



Present: Cheryl Lemanski, Peggy Perry, Richard Rohowetz

This was the organizational meeting of the Iowa County Genealogical Society by the 3 present people who felt that this kind of organization had a home here.

* Cheryl mentioned that while she was in Platteville at the Wisconsin Room, she mentioned to the director about our meeting tonight. A patron in the library spoke up and asked to be included in our membership list. It was decided that a letter be sent to Mr. Chuck Sanders of Ottawa, IL to notify him of the organization of the society and the membership dues.
* It was decided that we will at some near future time become affiliated with the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society. Membership includes their newsletter and another newsletter titled "Chapter Chatter". We felt it was more important at this time to spend money on advertising our new society.
* We decided to combine some of the offices of the Society until the need came about to split some of them out. When that time comes, the decision to separate the offices will be voted on by the Society and ratified according to the bylaws.
* Non-Profit status will be looked at after we are a bit more established and have elected officers.
* Decided that our membership year will run on a calendar year of Jan 1 to Dec 31. Memberships received during the remainder of 1997 will be good through Dec 31, 1998. Membership prices were established at $10 for an individual or $15 for a family household. Family members receive a single newsletter per household. Newsletters will be done on a quarterly basis to be published in March, June, September, and December with the first one being dated March 1998.
* Advertising will be done in the Dodgeville Chronicle Newspaper. We will look into the possibility of using the "Update" Column to announce meeting dates and such. Will also place a 2 x 2 ad in the "Advisor" newspaper to announce our formation meeting.
* Posters and flyers will be made up and placed around the different libraries, the courthouse, and some mailed to other genealogical and historical societies in the surrounding counties. Peggy will put a notice in the Lands' End Genealogy Club newsletter this month also.
* We will hold a public organizational meeting on Wednesday, November 19, 1997 at 7:00 p.m.. Peggy will check to see if we can use the staff meeting room at Memorial Hospital here in Dodgeville for this meeting.
* Discussed the idea of a logo. Cheryl suggested we use the outline formation of Iowa County and place a pedigree form inside the outline. Peggy will work on getting this logo created for us to look at.
* Lots of different projects that we could do was discussed. Some that were definetely decided upon were: Pioneer certificates. The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society, LaFayette County, and Grant County socities are having great sucess with this program. Richard felt that a charge of $10 per certificate would be reasonable. Another project is Founder Certificates. These could be issued to all members that join our new society before December 31, 1998. Peggy, Cheryl, and Richard have all been indexing various dates of the Dodgeville Chronicle newspaper. it was decided that this would be a priority and on-going project.
* Also talked about contacting the Iowa County Historical Society. They have lots of back issues that they have slowly started indexing. Cheryl is helping with that project. We thought some kind of exchange would work, but tabled that discussion for another time.

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