Manitoba Genealogical Society

Beautiful Plains Branch

Contact 

Contact: Don McGillivray
P.O. Box 2620
Neepawa, MB R0J 1H0
Tel: (204) 476-5131 

Meetings

3rd Wednesday of each month at Access 2 Books on Mountain Ave.  

Executive

President:  Don McGillivray 
Vice President:  Hector Swanson
Publicity:  Leonard Kaspick & Ruth Dorling Kaspick
Newsletter:  Carol Bray 
Secretary:  Norma Forsman 
Treasurer:  Victor Deacon

Cemetery Project 

In the summer of 2006 we started transcribing the grave stones at Riverside Cemetery in Neepawa and this was complete as of September 2006. With the help of a grant, we had a database developed to enter all this data. The entering of this data has been complete for some time and we were in the next stage of merging our data with the Lot, Block, and Range from data provided by the Town of Neepawa Administration Office.  Norma Forsman has done a lot of work and is now 95% complete with only some crosschecking left to do. In addition, we have to include any new burials that have taken place since the original transcriptions were done in 2006. From then on it should not be too difficult to update this project every 6 months.  

Eventually we will be sharing this data with MGS so that others who have connections to the Neepawa area from their past or present can have access for doing their research.

Library 

We have a growing library of excellent resources for our members and the public to do research. We have been fortunate to have had community history books and articles donated from several different sources as well as we have made an effort to try and purchase some of these books whenever we could get them at a reasonable cost. At this stage, we have a fair number of history books that cover our immediate area so that we can accommodate any search requests from both our members and the public at large.

Actually, for a while, our library was growing faster than we were able to document what resources we really had available. Several months ago, one of our members, Maxine Woodcock, stepped up to the challenge and decided to do the job properly by sorting all our material into categories. Maxine has classified each book with a Dewey Decimal number as well as an Accession number. She is now in the process of cataloguing all these items and entering them into a database along with index cards. Maxine has done a remarkable job and at this stage is nearly 90% complete. Not doubt this will make searching for the correct source much easier for all of us.

People are welcome to visit our Branch anytime, Monday to Saturday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, providing we have prior notice so that one of our members can be on hand to assist you. We will be glad to help research your family and a small fee will be required from non-Beautiful Plains Genealogy members. This will go towards improving our library selection. If some advanced research would be required, we could recommend one of our Genealogy Researchers to be contracted to assist with your project.

Available on CD

Occasionally we have had requests from people for the early Neepawa history book Neepawa Land of Plenty. These are difficult to find and very expensive when the do turn up. We have the next best thing; we have had the book put on CD. It is available to the public for $35.00 (case included) and $25.00 for MGS Members.

Newspaper Project

About a year ago, we had someone drop off several boxes of Neepawa newspapers going back to about 1980. A paper cutting project was arranged over several evenings so that all articles pertaining to births, marriages, deaths and family reunions were snipped out and saved. Again, Norma Forsman, along with some of our other volunteers took on the monumental task of placing these articles on pages so that they could be photo copied and put in 3 ring binders. This process is now complete and she is in the next stage of indexing these pages for easy access.

United Empire Loyalists' Meeting

On September 26, 2009, Don McGillivray hosted the Manitoba Branch of the United Empire Loyalists' Association. The meeting was held here in Neepawa at the Presbyterian Church that was designated a Provincial Heritage Site in 1992. At 118 years old, it was an excellent location for them to hold their meeting. The occasion proved successful as some of those attending already knew their Loyalist connections with suggestions being put forward to others who were in the process of finding out how these connections applied to their own family background. After their meeting and lunch, the members broke up in groups for tours of the Beautiful Plains Court House, the Beautiful Plains Museum, the Margaret Laurence Home and the Riverside Cemetery.