Hello Sheldons!

This afternoon we had a nice and productive business meeting, and some important decisions were made.

First we would like to give a warm welcome to Paul Sheldon, our new webmaster!  Paul hails from England and has a great deal of experience, we are very fortunate to have him onboard.  We would also like to thank George Sheldon, our previous webmaster, for all of the wonderful work and long hours he dedicated to developing this site.  He has been invaluable and we all look forward to seeing what he does next.

Meeting Schedule: To further our goal of creating active, interesting, and productive participation – while allowing individual flexibility – we will be adjusting our zoom meeting schedule going forward.

• 1st Sunday of every month, 12 noon PST: Now dedicated as a work party for our Sheldon Magazine Project.  In this project we will be transcribing the data from the original Sheldon Magazine, various volumes published in the 1850’s, into our tree database.  All participants will learn how to do this and be given access to make updates to the database for this purpose.
• 3rd Sunday of every month, 12 noon PST: Now dedicated as a work party for our Census Project.  We are currently working on the 1790 US Federal Census.  Once this is done we will move onto the 1800 US Federal Census and so on.  The focus of this project is to locate each Sheldon in the census and attach this source to their profile in our database.  All participants will learn how to do this and be given access to make updates to the database for this purpose.  This project is also an excellent opportunity to learn more about census records, their purpose, how to read them, and how to use them to our advantage in genealogy.
• All other Sundays, 12 noon PST:  All other Sundays will be left open for volunteers to host.  The host will be given access to open the meeting and will stay for its duration.  The subject of the meeting will be up to the host.  It may be to continue the above projects, work on other projects, or just have a genealogy “sewing circle” to work on your tree and socialize with no specific agenda.  If you would like to host a meeting at a different time then Sunday at 12 noon PST, please let us know.  We will confirm the time is free.  We want to be as open and flexible as possible for everyone.

We also had some reports:

• Sue Sheldon, our Treasurer, gave a report of our finances which are looking good with special thanks to those who are making monthly automatic donations.  If anyone else would be willing to donate just $5 a month (cheaper than a Starbucks coffee!), it would be greatly appreciated.  These small donations add up quickly and make a big difference.  As we are a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation, all donations are tax deductible in the United States.
• We also made a $300 donation to the Sheldon surname DNA project held by ftDNA last year, and will continue to support the project as more funds become available.  That project is currently focused on testing the y-chromosome (passed from father to son) in male Sheldons in the UK and Australia with the hope of better tracing those various unique Sheldon lines and finding matching counterparts to the American lines.  The data already gathered has been invaluable and has lead us to multiple exciting discoveries previously covered in our blog articles.
• Our last count update on the tree database was in May 2023 with 5,549 individuals and 8,411 documents.  As of today we now have 6,395 individuals and 10,351 documents.  Note that most documents, like census records or the Sheldon Magazine, are shared among multiple individuals.  All people in our database either carry the surname Sheldon/Shelden, or are their parent, spouse, or child.  There is no requirement to be descended from any specific historical Sheldon – we have included many examples of families who have adopted the surname in the last century or two.  We do include living people, but their data is hidden in the public website for privacy reasons.

Thank you! – Dale Sheldon