Dauphin Branch of MGS Update

Report for Dauphin Branch of MGS  –  October 25, 2023
Submitted by Virginia Fox, President, Dauphin Branch

The Dauphin Branch of MGS is getting back into the swing of things this fall.

Our executive had an enjoyable trip to Keld, Manitoba on October 10^th to visit the cemetery of St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church .   We went through the cemetery searching  for the grave of Pawlo Tracz.  He settled in the Keld rural municipality of Dauphin in the year 1897.  Mr. Tracz passed away on June 18^th, 1925.

Our search did not yield the information we were looking for, – but there are many graves unreadable  so we are going to go back after researching records that we have in our library holdings.  Jean Tucker did a great deal of research at both cemeteries at Keld.

Our trip has inspired thoughts on research and people who we can contact on this matter.

While on our jaunt out to Keld, we visited the reservoir for Dauphin and district and went through the beautiful farmland in the area. We also learned how to find our way around using rural addresses and rural maps with townships, sections and ranges.  Much thanks to Don White for guiding our trip.  It was a great day.

Several of us also took  in the Senior’s History Month event held on October 17^th and presented by Family Ties .  Two of our MGS members had displays at this event.  Darlene Rayson and Shirle McGimsey both did a great job of their personal history displays.

Family Ties Leader, Al Gray spoke at this  event and had many informative photos of the Riverside Cemetery in Dauphin, showing broken grave stones and then the replenished or repaired stones after the work that has been done on them.  They are doing great work on this project.

September brought members to visit our library holdings and to do research for their families.  Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Zihrul from Salmon Arm, B.C. spent time going through our obituary files and selecting information that they needed for their families.  They brought our group two books on Ukrainian Genealogy as well as a book on the Icelandic Settlements in Manitoba.  We very much appreciate their generous support.  Darlene Rayson and Don White were on hand to assist them.  Jerry also expressed a desire to help with the Cummins Maps Project .  We have referred their offer to the MGS Projects Committee.

We also enjoyed meeting with two sisters from Calgary, Alberta who utilized our resources at the library to help them fill in some blanks in their genealogy research.   They selected 6 Dauphin Herald reels in our files from which they were hoping to find obituary information.

Our AGM, which we had planned for last spring had to be cancelled due to the motor vehicle crash at Carberry, Manitoba.  Some of our members had family or friends involved in that sad incident.  We have rescheduled our AGM for November 23^rd, 2023.