The NCGS 2010 Awards were presented at the NCGS annual meeting held in conjunction with the Fall Workshop on 13 November 2010 at the Brownstone Inn, Raleigh.
Several individuals were recognized for their contributions to the North Carolina genealogical community through their published efforts and to the North Carolina Genealogical Society. Many thanks to this year’s judges: Carrie Henry, Jane Johnson, Pam Toms, and Phyllis Matthews Ziller.
- The Award for Excellence in Periodical Publishing for a periodical published by a local North Carolina genealogical society was presented to the Old Mecklenburg Genealogical Society Quarterly. Co-edited by Mary Utting and Ellen Poteet, this journal covers a large area of North Carolina and has a wide variety of articles including abstracts, transcriptions, family histories, and methodology articles. The editors include more source documentation than is found in many other journals reviewed for this award. Citing sources is a crucial element in genealogical research and in writing about our genealogical findings. It is important that published articles include these all-important source citations that add credibility to the research findings and enable other researchers to retrieve those original documents.
- There was a tie for the Award for Excellence in Publishing for a book of family history relevant to North Carolina.
Peggy Lefler accepted the award on behalf of the Gates County Historical Society for their publication Just Down the Road … in Our Own Words. The society has captured “times past” by writing down their stories and those of people in their county. The remembrances take the reader for a visit to each beloved hamlet in Gates County. Peggy compiled and typed the book and received help and encouragement from her ninety-one-year young mother, Edith F. Seiling, who gently persisted in getting submissions contributed and edited.
This award was also presented to Jonathan A. Underwood for his book The Underwood Family of Stanly County, North Carolina: A Biography and Genealogy. This book began as a project to document his grandmother’s family stories, a noble endeavor. The book is beautifully done and has a guide for how to use the book which will help the novice and the experience reader. Illustrations and pictures, including tombstones, family members, records, charts, and maps, are presented throughout the book. Explanatory footnotes bring in history and Quaker traditions. The family stories and hard facts are interwoven nicely making a very readable family history. - The Award for Excellence in Publishing for a book, or set of books, of abstracts or transcriptions of original North Carolina primary source material was awarded to the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Society for their publication, Minutes of the Henderson County, NC Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, 1839-1848, Volume 1. Co-edited by Raymond R. Rhodes and Virginia Thompson, this is a beautifully bound volume of true transcriptions for the first ten years of Henderson County Court Minutes. It is easy to read and cite with the court session identified at the top of each page. The introduction covers the history of the county, the types of proceedings, the process, and style of the book. Place names are included in the index and the introduction contains a glossary of legal terms and abbreviations. Virginia Thompson accepted the award on behalf of the society.
- The Award for Outstanding Contribution to NCGS by a Member for an individual whose work within the NCGS has been outstanding was awarded to two members this year: Louise Miller Cowell and Victoria P. Scott.
Louise Miller Cowell joined NCGS in the late 1980s. She attended her first annual meeting in 1992 and couldn’t quit coming. Louise says that her first love is NCGS and she has left us lots of evidence to back up her claim. She joined the Board of Directors as membership chair and was elected director in 2004, a position she held until December 2006. She has served on the nominating committee and helped with the Bylaws and Standing Rules Committee. She represented us at several local society meetings and workshops and at FGS and NGS conferences where she helped at the NCGS booth selling books and memberships. It was when she began working with registration for our workshops in 2002 that she became the face of NCGS. Louise was our registrar for workshops from 2005 until 2009. As registrar she greeted people so warmly they looked forward to coming and seeing her at the workshops. When NGS came to Raleigh in 2009 for their annual conference and we needed a registration chair, we all knew it had to be Louise Miller Cowell.
Victoria Scott became a director in 2007. She was appointed second vice president in 2008 and still serves the society in that position. Since 2008 she has chaired the publications committee and they met long and hard to bring that division to a profitable state. She and her committee re-evaluated each publication and culled and planned new projects. She organized the huge Loose Estates Records of North Carolina project that will index and publish an alphabetic surname listing of all extant loose estates found within the North Carolina State Archives county record series. She became the NCGS book distributor in 2009, moved all the NCGS publications to new storage, re-evaluated each one, and proceeded to update our inventory, a process which had not been done in many, many years. She then opened and operates an online store for NCGS. She has represented NCGS at conferences in several states by operating the NCGS booth which included transporting and selling the NCGS publications there. During preparation for the 2009 NGS Conference in Raleigh, Vickie was publicity chair and helped design the beautiful flyer. Victoria, we thank you.
