2016 TxSGS Awards: Reference Books by Non-Professionals

The Texas State Genealogical Society (TxSGS) is proud to host a robust awards program each year, with the winners announced at our annual banquet. This year’s awards banquet was held at our 2016 Family History Conference in Dallas on Saturday, October 29, 2016. Bill Buckner, our TxSGS Awards Chair, oversees the annual awards program and emceed the awards ceremony.

About the Award

Category I of the Writing Awards, Books by Non-Professionals, in the subset of references include county or community histories, cemetery or census transcriptions, extracts and abstracts of newspapers or records of local and county agencies and courts, and other references of genealogical value.

These books should be written, compiled or edited by an individual who is not a professional genealogist. Entries must contain at least 51 pages, and be hard, soft or spiral bound, and published in 2015 or 2016. Deadline is September 15. Books will be rated for each of six criteria: quality of binding, design, organization of topics, readability/overall usefulness, indexing, and adherence to current genealogical standards including numbering system and citation of sources.

Award Recipients

Thank you to all who participated, and congratulations to the following winners!

First Place ($200)

Everything Lake View (Almost) from 1908 to 1949: A Pictorial History (2016), by Duane Helweg.

Book jacket for Everything Lake View

Second Place ($100)

Abstracts from the The Age a Democratic Newspaper Published in Houston, Harris County, Texas from 1871 to 1879 (2016) by Lynna Kay Shuffield.

Book jackets of Abstracts from the Age

Thank you also to our volunteer judges!


Bill Buckner, TxSGS Awards Chair, contributed to this post.

Colleen Greene

The TxSGS DNA Project