I am honored to be serving as GHS President this year and look forward to a very productive year. I will be working with a great bunch of people who are all very devoted to our work as volunteers and who put so much time and effort in all they do. I've had the pleasure of working with many of the GHS officers and volunteers for many years now. Working behind the scenes has always been more comfortable for me, but behind the scenes or not I will always have the best interest of the society in mind (and focus on the importance of the work we do).
To tell you a little about me personally, I was born in Buford in the old Hutchins Memorial Hospital on Scott Street. My mother's family has been in Gwinnett County in the Sugar Hill district since before 1836. My father's family is from Forsyth County. The Holtzclaw family has been traced back to 1714 when they came to America from Germany.
I have been interested in genealogy since before I was 16 years old. After getting my driver’s license, I started getting documents together, going through records in the basement of the historic courthouse and finding copies of some marriage records. As I got older, it became an on and off affair with Genealogy.
When computers became such a great tool for genealogists, it sparked my interest in Genealogy once again and it has been stronger and stronger ever since. After learning and using computers for four or five years, I became interested in creating web pages. It was amazing to see the rapid changes.
I joined the Gwinnett Historical Society in 1997 (one year after I created my personal web site). After meeting Bill Baughman, I volunteered to create a website for GHS and still maintain it today. One day I was doing some research using the Cemetery book and thought it would be great if we could somehow search the Cemetery Book using a computer. I asked Tony DiMaio if he could write a program to do this and he developed the program and made this information searchable for GHS members from our website. When Phyllis Davis became President in 1998, she asked me to be on the Membership committee which I have been on and off for about ten years. At the end of 2000, I became editor for 14 Newsletter Issues through the summer issue in 2004. I had to give up being editor to make time for other projects, but then started back in the spring of 2009. I plan to continue publishing the Newsletter while I am president as I enjoy it. I've also worked on about 5 books, and currently working on the revision of the Gwinnett County Families 1818-1968 book Edited by Alice McCabe. This book has been out of print for a while and hope to have this completed and printed by the end of 2011.
It's going to be an exciting year and I look forward to seeing what it brings!
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns at scott@gwinnetths.org
Scott Holtzclaw,
President
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