The Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society will hold its monthly general meeting from 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday Oct. 20 at First Presbyterian Church, 21 E. Constance St. in Santa Barbara.
Special interest groups will meet at 9:30 a.m. for Beginning Genealogy, German Ancestry, Italian Ancestry and Computer Genealogy, and at 9 a.m. for JewishGen. The featured program will start at 10:30 a.m.
This month’s meeting will feature Sheila Lodge presenting a talk on “Two Extraordinarily Distinctive and Different Women and Santa Barbara.” Those women are Huguette Clark, owner of the Clark Estate, and Queen Elizabeth II, a visitor to Santa Barbara in 1983.
Clark was an extremely private person. While she didn’t stay at her 23-acre, oceanfront estate off Cabrillo Boulevard after her mother died in 1963, she kept a very careful watch over it, often talking to staff several times a day. When she died at almost 105 in 2011, she left two wills signed six weeks apart. Lodge will talk about those wills and what they mean to Santa Barbara.
The Queen of England’s stormy day visit in March 1983 to the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, which created quite a stir in Santa Barbara, will be the second topic for Lodge. Hundreds of people turned out to see the queen. Lodge will discuss what went on in preparing for the visit of this very public person.
Lodge served on the Santa Barbara City Council starting in 1975 and was elected mayor of Santa Barbara from 1981-93, serving three terms. She has been a resident of Santa Barbara for the past 60 years and has been active with the city Planning Commission, as well as a past member and board member of numerous local organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, League of Women Voters, the Citizens Planning Association and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
She attended Stanford and San Jose State, and completed her degree in English with honors from UCSB in 1961, continuing postgraduate work there in urban affairs. Her late husband, Joseph, was a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge.
Come join us. You do not need to be a member to enjoy this wonderful presentation.
Click here for a calendar of genealogical events.
— Glenn Avolio is publicity chairman for the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society.
