This weekend is the Ancestry Day conference, sponsored by the Midwest Genealogy Center of the Mid-Continent Public Library and Ancestry.com. It’s being held near Independence, Missouri, about four hours from my home in St. Louis. I love conferences and learning opportunities, so I’m really excited to attend.
Attending the conference has given me the perfect opportunity to do a little family history research and meet more-distant family members. My mother was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, and moved with her family to Spokane, Washington, when she was three. I was born in Seattle and moved to Walla Walla, Washington, when I was five. I moved to Missouri in 1989, but have never made the trek to western Missouri to meet my mother’s cousins there.
So on Friday, I will meet several first cousins of my mother, along with her aunt (my grandfather’s sole surviving sibling) and also visit the graves of my mother’s paternal grandparents. I’m really looking forward to meeting these family members ands seeing family landmarks.
The day after the conference, I’m going to travel to Meyer Cemetery, in Hudson, Missouri, to visit the graves of my mother’s maternal grandfather, great grandparents and great great grandparents. I sure hope they have gravestones to provide me with some data. (I struck out last summer with another ancestor’s graveyard.) I had downloaded the book, Genealogy: James McKinley, 1792-1872, Richard Anderson Jeffries, 1823-1914 and Joseph Price, 1818-1904, from Scribd. It’s providing me with plot numbers for the graves in Meyer Cemetery, so I’m hopeful!
It’s already Wednesday so I’m busy trying to get myself together for my first research trip. I figure the things I need to get together are:
- Directions (of course)
- Registration information for the conference
- Synched family tree on my iPhone
- My file of handwritten (unverified) ancestry charts from previous research attempts, which provide valuable clues and which I suspect I’ll want to refer to during the conference
- The old photos my mother has given me, in case my cousins haven’t seen them
- The printed out pages from the e-book, containing directions to Meyer cemetery and plot numbers
- Chargers so all my devices are working!
It’s so nice to make a list–I already feel less overwhelmed! I’ll be sure and blog about some of the insights I gain at the conference, as well as reflections upon meeting my family members.
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