Turning the Page on Wake Treasures: A Legacy of Genealogical Riches Continues to Shine

By Carla Stancil, WCGS President

 

Wake Treasures is our multi-award-winning journal first published in 1991. Over the years, Wake Treasures has brought us a mountain of primary source documents with historical or genealogical significance for Wake County. It has also published primary source documents from related counties when there was no other outlet for those records. 

As technology has evolved and record access has improved, the WCGS Board of Directors has made the decision to combine the journal with the WakeCoGen blog and Wake Genealogy Watch, our award-winning newsletter, to better bring our members and researchers the best possible resources.

 To our current editor, Donna Shackle, we can only provide humble thanks for curating a wonderful archive of important Wake records and information. Donna has been editor of Wake Treasures for the past several years and has worked diligently to provide well-sourced and documented data and records that cannot be found online and have not been published elsewhere. Donna plans to return to graduate school to prepare to work in historical archives – a perfect fit and surely a benefit to all researchers. 

Our previous editor, Diane L Richard, massaged the journal into the masterpiece it is today before handing over the reins to Donna and continuing her own genealogical journey that has benefitted Wake and North Carolina researchers as the current editor of the North Carolina Genealogical Society journal. 

To Donna and Diane and all of our past editors and volunteers….THANK YOU for the gift of Wake Treasures. We have been very blessed to have such talented editors and a multitude of dedicated volunteers to assist in creating Wake Treasures. You can be sure your efforts will continue to give back to researchers for many years to come.  

This news doesn’t mean the journal is completely going away, however!  There is still one issue of new content in the pipeline to publish sometime this fall or winter. In addition, the 30+ years of journals that are archived on our website for members to use in their research. All the rich content curated for the past 30+ years is still at your fingertips! There is also a subject matter index that anyone can use for free for volumes 1 – 25.   

As the Society moves forward, look to the WakeCoGen blog and Wake Genealogy Watch newsletter to continue to provide curated Wake centric content in the same tradition as our journal editors. Cyndi Deal has long been the editor of both the blog and newsletter, as well as managing WCGS social media efforts. She intends to keep focus on the Society’s commitment to provide Wake researchers with the records and tools we need to further our research.