Events & Resources
Fairfax County and Vicinity
(Click on Image for View):
Map by FxGS member Paul Johnson
Resources:
Fairfax City and County:
Click here
for a printable two page guide to Fairfax County genealogical resources.
Note that the Guide is formatted as a tri-fold.
The Virginia Room of
The Fairfax County
Public Library is a major regional center for Fairfax County and Virginia
Historical and Genealogical resources. It is located on the second floor
of The City
of Fairfax Regional
Library in Fairfax City. The Virginia Room has recently purchased the
compiled Confederate service records microfilm for all southern states. As of
20 December 2005 VA, NC, SC, TN, AL, MS, and LA have been delivered.
The Historic Newspaper Indexes is now available
at The Fairfax County
Public Library web site. This database includes information on every
article from the microfilms of eight historic local newspapers on file in the Virginia
Room. This large database contains over 1.2 million citations, going as far back as
1785. It should be useful to historians, genealogists, archeologists and others
interested in the history of Northern Virginia.
Fairfax County
VaGenWeb contains links to many Fairfax County organizations, locations of
County records, a list of publications about the County, a list of researchers in
the County, and many other genealogical resources.
The official government web site
for Fairfax County contains links to many resources of the County.
The Fairfax
County History Commission site contains an historical sketch of the County and
information on historic places of interest.
The Mount Vernon
Genealogical Society is active in the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax County. It
encourages the affiliation of persons interested in the pursuit of their ancestral
heritage and promotes fellowship and cooperation among them.
The Fairfax
County Cemetery Preservation Association, Inc. web site is a place for
learning about and helping preserve and protect Fairfax County, Virginia’s
endangered cemeteries. Check back often to learn about current projects, what
volunteers are doing and how you can help.
The Town of Vienna
web site is the official site of the Town of Vienna in Fairfax County. Information
on Historic Vienna, a non-profit corporation dedicated to preserving Vienna’s
heritage can be found by going to the Site Index.
Fairfax County Genealogy queries and discussion groups.
Genforum maintains regional forums for genealogical queries and discussion. The one
for Fairfax County is http://genforum.genealogy.com/va/fairfax/.
City of Alexandria
The
Special Collections division of Alexandria
Library, has an extensive collection of genealogy reference materials and materials on
Alexandria and Virginia history. The "useful links" on the
Special Collections division page includes a directory of libraries and
other resources in the area.
Arlington County
The Arlington County
VaGenWeb site contains links to many resources in that county and the surrounding
area.
The ROOTS
Users Group of Arlington, Virginia (RUG) is open to anyone interested in genealogical
computing and treats a variety of genealogical software programs. Meetings are held
on the second Saturday of each month.
The Lee Center Genealogy Group, 5722 Lee
Highway, Arlington, VA 22207, meets from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. the 4th
Wednesday of every month. Everyone is welcome. The Group
encourages individual family research, documentation, and recording through
interaction with group members, demonstrations, and visits to local sites.
For information, please call (703) 228-0550.
Loudoun County
Loudoun
County VaGenWeb
Thomas Balch Local History and Genealogy Library of the Town
of Leesburg. The collection of this library focuses on Loudon County
History, Regional History, Virginia History, and Family History. Included in the
collection are microfilms of Loudon County newspapers dating from 1800, obituary indexes
from 1817-1841 and 1858-1898, the collection of the Loudon County Historical Society, and
a collection of genealogies and other family information with emphasis on Loudoun County
families. Deeds and Wills, Cemetery Records, Marriage Record, and Tax Rolls are also
included in the collection. Located at 208 West Market Street.
For further information visit the web site of the Thomas
Balch Library, or call 703-737-7195.
Prince William County
Prince William
County VaGenWeb has a forum for posting queries and surnames.
Historic Prince
William
RELIC
(Ruth E. Lloyd Information Center for Genealogy and Local History)
District of Columbia
GenWeb is the District of Columbia site for USGenWeb. This site has links to
many resources in the District.
See also Metropolitan
Area of Washington DC below.
The National Archives and Record
Administration - a national asset just a Metro ride away from Fairfax County.
Check their genealogy page for detailed
guidance to their services, regional facilities around the nation, workshops, and guides
to web resources.
The National Society Daughters of the
American Revolution maintains one of the largest genealogical libraries in the world
in the District.
Montgomery County, MD
Montgomery
County MDGenWeb
Montgomery County
Historical Society
Prince George's County, MD
Prince George's County
Genealogical Society
Prince
George's County MDGenWeb
See also District of Columbia
above.
Professional Genealogists in the DC Metropolitan Area
The National Capital Area
Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists maintains a list of
members with their credentials and research specialties.
Mid-Atlantic Germanic Society (MAGS)
The Mid-Atlantic
Germanic Society (founded in 1982) mission
is to stimulate and facilitate
research on Germanic genealogy and heritage in the mid-Atlantic region and
to promote genealogical research of Germanic ancestors who settled in the
Mid-Atlantic Region in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The MAGS is
holding a Spring conference in Bowie, MD on Saturday, 24 March 2007:
"Overcoming Obstacles to German Research". See their web
site at the foregoing link for details.
VaGenWeb is
the Virginia site for USGenWeb. This site has links to almost all counties in the
State as well as other State resources.
The Virginia Genealogical Society
The Library of Virginia
The Virginia Historical
Society
The NVAH Directory of Northern Virginia History Organizations,
January 1997, is published by The Northern Virginia Association for History, Inc., P.O.
Box 1366, Fairfax, VA 22030.
The Shenandoah Valley
Genealogical Society presents monthly programming at the Stewart
Bell Jr. Archives, Handley Regional Library, 100 E. Piccadilly Street in
Winchester, on genealogical and historical research. The programs are free and
open to the public.
Maryland
Heritage Books in Westminster, Maryland specializes in genealogy reference
materials.
Nationwide and Webwide
Different web search engines use different approaches and give
different results. Don't be satisfied if your first search with your default
browser doesn't find what you are looking for. If you are not sure exactly what you
are looking for (and who isn't?) be sure to try several.
A powerful combination of search engines for the most obscure data:
is
www.alltheweb.com and www.google.com
Both use image capture not meta file indexing so they can provide
long-lost data from dead sites as well as connect to about anything on any topic.
The National Archives and Record
Administration is a national asset just a Metro ride away from Fairfax County.
Check their genealogy page for detailed
guidance to their services, regional facilities around the nation, workshops, and guides
to web resources. Check out the Archive
Research Catalog,
their on line database of selected holdings.
The USGenWeb project is
a non-commercial project committed to providing Internet web sites for genealogical
research in every county and every state of the United States.
Comprehensive indexes of genealogy sites:
Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet
The Genealogy Home
Page
Several web sites facilitate the location and contact of researchers
with whom it might be useful to share information. Here are two of them:
Rootsweb is the home of
Rootsweb Surname List, containing over 782,000 surname entries.
Genforum maintains many
forums for genealogical queries and discussion including forums for specific surnames,
geographic regions, and general topics.
Christine's Genealogy Website
has many links to African-American websites and resources. Check the contents page
for regional listings, including Virginia and Washington DC.
KBYU, affiliated with Brigham
Young University, maintains a list of genealogical resources and a set of printable blank
forms at it's web site - click the "Ancestors" button.
FxGS is a member of the Federation of
Genealogical Societies. FGS provides a variety of products and services to aid
genealogical societies and marshals the resources of its member organizations. Their web
site describes many of these products and activities. The Federation conducts annual national conferences. Information can be found on the
FGS web site.
FxGS also belongs to the National Genealogical Society The
National Genealogical Society is a service organization with over 17,000 members including
individuals, families, genealogical societies, family associations, libraries, and other
related institutions. A user has alerted us to an apparent problem
with the NGS web site and so our link to it has been deleted until we find
that the problem has been solved.
The National Institute
on Genealogical Research, an independent, private, non-profit corporation. has been a
leader in the field of genealogical education for more than 45 years. The NIGR program
takes an in-depth look at federal records of genealogical value located primarily in the
Washington, D.C. area.
The Social Security Death Index can be searched at Rootsweb.
Commercial genealogical software programs are revised so frequently
that comparisons have a short shelf like. When looking for a particular capability
or when choosing among alternative software suites be sure the descriptions and
evaluations used are up-to-date.
George Archer, author of Archer's Directories of Genealogical
Software and Utilities, has prepared a Guide to Online Searching for Genealogical Software.
| 
