Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Impromptu 30 x 30 challenge!

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Today’s June 1 and I decided I really need a 30 x 30 challenge. I’m planning to take a research trip the last week in June and as I started thinking about how I really wanted to do some great pre-planning for it, I realized I would  benefit from a 30 x 30 challenge.

Will you join me in committing to 30 minutes of genealogy research a day for 30 days (or whatever incarnation of the challenge works for you)? With a challenge, I am more likely to do daily work on planning my trip and the whole month (including the research trip) will have less stress and more ease.

I’m so glad these challenges are helpful to many of those who participate, but with this post I’m making it clear that I do it for myself! I find the accountability extremely helpful. With this particular challenge I’ll be focusing on those families I plan to research in Kentucky and on planning the logistics of the trip.

Please let me know in the comments if you’re in!

Free live streaming of this weekend’s Genealogy Jamboree!

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The Southern California Genealogical Society puts on a terrific conference each year. It’s called the Genealogy Jamboree and it’s being held this weekend in Burbank, California. I attended the Jamboree in 2015 and it was excellent. Since I’m not able to go this year, I was thrilled to learn that 12 sessions will be live streamed and that there is no charge to watch!

It gets better: You don’t have to watch the sessions live (though you can). They will be available for viewing until July 31, 2019. The live stream is being made available free of charge through the generosity of Ancestry.com.

To take advantage of this, you must register by filling out a simple form. You don’t even have to be a member of SCGS.

Check out the conference’s website to see a listing of the 12 sessions that are available for free viewing. Syllabuses will be included!

Note: Free live streaming is available for the non-DNA portion of the conference only. Two days of the four-day conference are devoted to genetic genealogy and those sessions are available for streaming as well, but a fee applies. Here’s a link more information on the streaming the genetic genealogy sessions.

The genealogy community is so generous. There are so many opportunities to learn without paying much. The hard part is finding time for all the learning!

Planning my Kentucky research trip

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One of my goals for 2019 is to take another research trip to Kentucky. My people were from western Kentucky: McLean, Hopkins and Muhlenberg counties, primarily. I’m really fortunate in that Kentucky has many wonderful repositories. I had a brief visit to the Kentucky Historical Society (or was it the State Archives?) in Frankfort when I was there on a bourbon trip with my husband in 2014. Earlier that year, I visited cemeteries and a library in McLean and Daviess counties.

On both those trips, I did do some preparation but I really floundered a bit when I got to the repositories. I don’t want to repeat that feeling of not knowing what to research. I went to a talk on Kentucky resources at the NGS conference, so I have a great list of places I could visit. And I went to a talk on organizing a research trip and have lots of great logistical ideas in terms of the travel.

Here’s what I’m struggling with today: What’s a better way to go about planning what I want to find out? It seems like I have a couple of options:

  • Come up with research questions and then figure out which respositories might have the answers
  • Research the repositories’ holdings and then figure out what I records I need from each of the repositories

My gut tells me to do the former. Figure out my burning questions and seek out the answers that I can’t find online. But I’m not sure.

These are the places I’m thinking I’ll go:

  • Kentucky State Archives (Frankfort)
  • Martin F. Schmidt Research Library at the Kentucky Historical Society (Frankfort)
  • Office of Vital Statistics (Frankfort)
  • Filson Historical Society (Louisville) [I made a connection with a curator there when I was at NGS!]
  • Kentucky Room of the Daviess County Public Library (Owensboro)
  • Western Kentucky University Manuscripts and Folklife Archives (Bowling Green)
  • McLean County Courthouse (Calhoun)
  • Various cemeteries in McLean County

That’s kind of a daunting (but exciting!) list.

I’d love to hear comments from any of you who are familiar with Kentucky research or have advice about planning my trip, which I’m hoping to take in late June. If there’s an approach you recommend for preparing or if there are places you’d suggest I go, I’m all ears!

 

 

Highlights of the NGS conference

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I was so glad I attended last week’s family history conference from the National Genealogical Society. It was a terrific conference for me. I attended NGS four years ago, the last time it was in the St. Louis area, but I got more out of this year. I think that’s because I’m further along in my research so the more advanced classes were more helpful to me. Sometimes we hear talks that we need to hear just at the right time.

Over the course of four days, I attended 14 classes. My brain hurt a little at the end! I used the terrific NGS app to select my classes before the conference and I was so grateful that I didn’t have to make on-the-spot decisions. I did a great job of selecting because all the classes I took, except one, were very helpful.

One highlight of the conference was attending four classes taught by Elizabeth Shown Mills. Of course I was familiar with her work (Evidence Explained is legendary!) but I don’t think I’d ever actually listened to her speak, certainly not in person. Without exception, all of her classes were excellent, but her class on Context was mindset-shifting. She offered an explanation for why context is so important, along with specific suggestions for how to find context for our ancestors’ lives. I was so grateful for the opportunity to briefly chat with Elizabeth after that session and tell her how valuable I thought it was.

Elizabeth sets some impressively high standards but if I can strive to come close to them, I know I will be upping my game.

Another highlight of the conference was meeting up with some blog readers as well as talking with a podcast listener. And I met some really terrific folks just by sitting next to them in sessions.

I’m planning to take a research trip to Kentucky next month and many of the classes fed right into that. I took classes on planning a research trip, on Kentucky resources, on locating obscure and hidden resources, and of course the class on context. Also helpful will be the classes on breaking through brick walls (which Elizabeth Shown Mills prefers to call stone walls–more on that in a future post). I hope to do some thorough preparation so that I can make the best use of the local resources when I’m in Kentucky.

Next year’s NGS conference will be held in Salt Lake City from May 20 to 23, 2020. Based on the quality of this year’s conference, I’m planning to attend! If you’ve ever wondered whether going to a genealogy conference was worth the time, expense and effort, for me the answer is most assuredly yes.