The South Okanagan Genealogical Society is reaching out for help as they vacate the space that has been connecting family trees in Penticton for 21 years.
“We’re in turmoil,” Kathy Corbett, co-ordinator of presentations at SOGS, said.
The society has been given until the end of May to vacate its space at the Penticton Museum and Archives. The museum is expanding its own archives and needs the space.
“They no longer feel they can share it with us. They want it for their own use so they have asked us to leave,” Corbett said. “They have been a bit flexible on it because it’s impossible to find an adequate place for materials. We can store them in boxes and put them in somebody’s garage until we can find something. It’s very, very stressful.”
Corbett has been with the society for six years and helps put together workshops for them. During her time there she has made her own family connections half a world away.
She discovered her biological great grandparents came from Sweden through a family tree on Ancestry.ca and asked her son to go to the library there during a trip to Europe. He was able to get in touch with a genealogist in Sweden.
The genealogist helped her through any roadblocks and the connection to Swedish archives turned up some real life results.
“I was contacted by a very distant cousin who lives in Sweden now and was descended from the same great, great grandparents,” Corbett said.
Their great grandfathers ended up being brothers.
“That was just so interesting. So she told me a story about her great grandfather and I had written a story about mine and shared it with her, “ Corbett said. “I thought I’d never find anything like that and you never know where you’ll find that information.”
Corbett’s husband was also connected through online archives to a distant cousin who lived in Naramata.
Connections like these would be impossible without the Genealogical society and the research materials it provides.
The ideal new space for the society would have a room large enough to house the library, be able to hold workshops with approximately 50 people, be handicap accessible and have access to wi-fi.
“We have a library that needs to be rehoused, hopefully we can find a space that would fit the library,” Corbett said.
SOGS currently has a membership of 60 people.
Anyone who knows of an available space that would fit the society’s needs contact society president Nola Reid at sogsnola@shaw.ca.