I have written before about my 6th Great Grandfather, Jean Baptist Gamache, who was one of the first 30 original founders of St. Louis, MO. I discovered a few years ago that the St. Louis Genealogical Society has a certification and membership program for family genealogists that have founding roots in St. Louis City. To qualify for enrollment to this lineage society one must show a family succession from their founding ancestor to themselves (with approved documents).
The documents required for submission are what I call the Genealogy Trinity.
The three necessary documents must be proof of birth, marriage, and death. To be fair, these documents are not always available, and they have listed other acceptable documents like baptism records, military documents, etc. When I first learned about the lineage society I was shoulder deep in renovating a family pioneer cemetery and in medical school. Now that I have a more balanced lifestyle it was time to begin the process of collecting and submitting my documents to qualify for First Families of St. Louis. The St. Louis Genealogical website states, ‘First Families of St. Louis is a lineage society whose objectives are to identify, recognize, and archive the lineage of historical St. Louis families.‘
finally, i thought, THE RIGHT TIME TO OFFICALLY RECOGNIZE MY founding ST. LOUIS LINEAGE IS NOW.
The benefits listed for becoming a member of the First Families of St. Louis Lineage Society are: personal family lineage is archived for the future generations, a certificate, a lapel pin, and a mention in the genealogical society publications. On their website it is stated, ‘If you descend from one of the First Families of St. Louis, you certainly want your family’s Longevity, Courage, Fortitude, and Pioneer Spirit to be preserved and celebrated.’ Yes, I certainly do want to celebrate all of these things in addition to a shiny new lapel pin to prove it.
I WILL WEAR THAT PIN WITH PRIDE.
Now that I knew I wanted to participate in this membership program it was time to collect the documents needed to prove the straight-line lineage to my founding ancestor. I printed the forms and began to fill them out. I knew I had the genealogy trinity for these ancestors. This was going to be a piece of cake. I retrieved my records and began with my founding ancestor and I had the needed documents. Score! As I made my way to my fourth great grandfather I had his baptism record, his marriage license, and no actual death record.
this actually wasn‘t a piece of cake.
I didn’t have an official death record for him. What I had was a copy of the undertakers invoice for his funeral/burial and a picture of his headstone. I was so confident before and now I feel like a total…flunky. So I searched and searched online and enlisted my sister as well. We came up short. Finally I found his official death record. Yay! Then it happened again. I didn’t have a birth record for my great grandfather, Ameda Gamach.
I was again having a hard time locating a record. The free Family Search website was my biggest help in finding my needed record. I was impressed with their search engine. It takes all the information you input and it gave me imperfect matches too. Boom. The information showed a transcription that completely spelled my ancestors name wrong and in a way I had never seen before. I took that spelling and entered it into Ancestry and the birth record popped up immediately. That website was a game changer.
genealogists should periodically go back to the basics and check their holy trinities.
I say this because I am one of those family genealogists that should have gone back through and checked out all documentation before I was needing them. Alas, the needed records are now complete. With confidence I can say that their holy trinities are in place and accounted for. This was due to previous research being already done. If I was starting from scratch I would have quite the monumental task.
The next step in this journey is to prove residency for my founding ancestor which was easy. Now that each document is sourced, cited, and transcribed I am ready to submit my records and application. St. Louis was founded more than 200 years ago so my stack of records for submission is quite large. I am submitting my application this Saturday morning. They promise to assist in any part of the process if needed so if you have roots in St. Louis, or if you have a society like this where your founding ancestors lived, go for it! This was a fun and exciting process.
I will let you know how my submission and application process goes! This is beyond thrilling to me and my family.
Update 04/09/2024: My submission was approved!
Want to know more about this society? Here is a copy of their brochure: click here!
Roots of Discovery 
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