IGHR 2012-Day 1

Today class started bright and early at 8 a.m. sharp! We spent the entire day with Elizabeth Shown Mills (ESM). She started out with a lecture on the Genealogical Mindset. This was followed by the "Chain of Life" of one's ancestors. Other topics covered in the morning session were analysis of the research problem, analysis of the records, and analysis of statements within a record.

One of the many things that I admire about ESM is her ability to milk out every detail in a record, and make an interpretation of it that is significant to the research. We used this skill on a few examples in class today. We also had a pop quiz on citations! This led into the homework, which is to do a much better job on the same citations and compare the two results. Both are due Tuesday morning.

In the afternoon we discussed Tax Rolls, and census records. We learned that it is important when analyzing the census records to be familiar with the instructions given to the enumerator. With this in mind, we did an in depth analysis of a family in a census record. By the end of the day we were all a little tired.

Dinner in the cafeteria was loud and extremely crowded. It is freshman orientation here so there are a lot of people crowding into the cafeteria all at once. After dinner I attended the evening session titled, "The Library of Congress: An Introduction and Overview for Genealogists" presented by John Colletta. As always John is an entertaining lecturer and his presentation was very informative. He gave a lot information on materials located at the Library of Congress, and websites where some of this material can be found. Once this week is over I have a lot of websites to explore.

Finally, I came back to my room to start homework. It's a good night to be inside as heavy rainstorms are passing through the area. During the storm I completed my homework in a timely manner (yay!) and I think I've done pretty good. Well, at least respectable anyway. We'll see. Time to rest up for tomorrow.