FGS 2013- A Recap

I admit it, I wasn't very diligent about blogging this trip. I'm sorry. The Allen County Public Library was a huge distraction and staying at a hotel farther away from the conference center was an added obstacle. By the time I made it back to my hotel in the late evening, after being gone since the early morning hours, I was exhausted. So I'll give you a rundown of the sessions I did attend.

Thursday marked the opening of the exhibit hall, which is always cause for a lot of excitement. I had a few things in mind to purchase this trip. My first purchase was a magazine from the publishers of Family Chronicle titled, Tracing Your War of 1812 Ancestors. It has a good overview of events and gives suggestions of others sources to read.

The first session I attended was Craig Scott's Records of Forts and Posts. This was a very good session. Craig as always is extremely knowledgable about military record groups at NARA. It's amazing he can keep track of them all! I learned that their were two kinds of people in forts; people who ran the fort and the regiment in the fort. I had never thought about it in this way, but it makes sense. Regiments move around, somebody has to stay at the fort and maintain it. Craig went on to discuss textual records, search strategies, finding a post, and information that would be found on various records.

Next, I attended Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens session on Finding a Needle in the Haystack of Territorial Papers. I learned a little about the Territorial Papers at IGHR at Samford this past summer in the Understanding Land Records class. As you might imagine this record set deals with territorial land purchases. It is an interesting group of records, but there is no guarantee that your ancestor is mentioned in them. However, that doesn't mean that their neighbor, brother, or cousin isn't in them so it doesn't hurt to check it out. Elizabeth also mentioned Record Group 28 that has the Records of the Post Office Department. Somebody had to deliver your ancestor's mail, or maybe it was your ancestor!

The last session I attended for the day was Huguenots in New Amsterdam and Early New York presented by Karen Mauer Green. If ever you want to learn about Huguenots then Karen's lecture would be an excellent choice. Although my Huguenot ancestors did not settle in New York it doesn't matter. The background history is the same and the research methodology can still be applied. Karen gave historical background information and told us that there were two waves of French Huguenots to New York. She also showed us examples of how many variations there could be to one surname in the records. It seemed that this was the result not only of the ancestor but of the person/institution who was creating the record. The possibilities were mind boggling.

Friday and Saturday morning I ended up in the library researching. I had planned to attend a couple of sessions during that time, but I was lucky enough to find a truckload of information about my ancestors. Although I didn't win any prizes or giveaways, I still felt like I won the information jackpot. Saturday afternoon I attended two sessions. The first was, Obtaining the 20th Century Military Records From the National Records Center by Patricia Wall Stamm. I have a WWI veteran and I would like to order his file from the Records Center. Patricia did a good job of explaining the history of it, the fire that consumed the old location, the procedures of the new location, and what records are available. I always hear people complain about the length of time it takes to get records from this repository, and I was aware that they get a lot of requests. However, I didn't realize that the Records Center receives somewhere between 5,000-6,000 requests per day. Per day. How crazy is that? Now wonder it takes them a while. Not only that, priority is given to urgent requests that come in. For example, a veteran who is still living and needs his records for hospice assistance, etc.

The very last session I attended was another of Craig Scott's on The Indian Wars. He told us there were four periods of Native American conflict, and reviewed the conflicts that fell into those time periods. Again, many record groups were discussed and what you would find in them. He referred us to the Mitchell Map on Google. I love maps so I was pretty excited about that mention. There are so many records for this particular subject it is dizzying. Needless to say, if your ancestor took part in any Indian War, then you have a lot to work with even if your ancestor is not mentioned directly.

Other conference news that you have probably heard about by now is that a new version of Family Tree Maker will be released in September, the next FGS conference will be held in San Antonio, and the one after that will be held with RootsTech in Salt Lake City. During the conference there was a big push to raise money for Preserve the Pensions of 1812. The money raised will be used to scan these documents and put them online at Fold3. There were a few companies that pledged to match the money raised at the conference and this all added up close to 1 million dollars in all, with the matches included. Pretty impressive.

I had a great time and met some interesting people. It is always fun to see your friends, talk shop, get ideas, ask for advice, and hash out a problem or two. For a week you get to live in a genealogy bubble, and it's pretty amazing.

FGS 2013- The Kick Off

I arrived here in Ft. Wayne on Tuesday and I've been slightly remiss in not filling you in. I'm staying at a hotel that is about 5 miles from the conference center, but it feels more like 10. The shuttle times that the hotel is providing are slightly strange and somewhat constricting. Note to self: Don't stay this far away from the main conference action again, unless I have my car.

On Tuesday night I attended the blogger dinner hosted by FamilySearch. They announced that Diane L. Loosle is the new Director of the Family History Library. After dinner we were shown an example of a new feature to some of their libraries throughout the world, which are the Family History Discovery Centers. These are places that you can conduct oral interviews, say with granny, and it will be recorded on video. This video will be saved on a thumb drive which you get to walk away with. The cost is only $8.00 US. I think this is a pretty neat concept. For attending the dinner FamilySearch also gave us these cool solar chargers that have a flashlight feature.

Wednesday I was going to catch a little extra sleep in the morning, but then realized that I needed to catch the last morning shuttle at 7:30. So I was up bright and early. I sat in on Cyndi Howell's (from Cyndi's List) opening session. She discussed society websites and made some really good points. Your society should take a really good look at their website and determine if the information on it is; current, informative, linking to other useful sites for research in the area, and visually pleasing. She went on to discuss examples of sites she has seen that haven't been updated since 1998, or that are so visually busy that it is difficult to take in what the society is about.

After Cyndi's session I headed over to the Allen County Public Library. It is chock full of genealogists. I have a list of research items that is near absurd so I got busy. Overall it was a strange research day for me. The people I was searching out remained illusive, while other ancestors elbowed their way forward. How did this happen? I would turn to pages in any given book looking for a particular person, and out would pop another ancestor I hadn't planned on looking for on this trip. It is always strange when this happens, but I roll with it. Instead of standing in the ever growing line for the copiers I used the Genius Scan app on my iPhone. I can scan an image, save it as a PDF or JPEG, and then save into DropBox. It does a pretty good job and it saves me time.

Last night I also attended a social at the Botanical Gardens. It was very pretty but slightly warm. The line for food was surprisingly slow moving. They had music there and three raffles. I didn't win, but was happy for the people who did. They were excited and that's always fun to see. I was able to catch up with friends, meet new people, and talk genealogy. A perfect evening.

My One Day at FGS

I only live about 2 1/2 hours away from Birmingham, Alabama where the FGS conference is this year. When you live that close to a big genealogy event, how can you not go? Due to my husbands business travel plans I was only able to attend for one day. However, one day is better than none, right? Thursday was going to be it.

The exhibit hall opened a little before 10:00 a.m. and there was a gathering crowd eager to charge in. Once the color guard arrived the doors opened. My first stop was the BCG table to look at portfolios. I looked at one a few years ago and was completely overwhelmed. Well, I was still overwhelmed but this time I was able to focus a little more. I understood what I was looking at a whole lot more than last time.

At 11:00 the sessions started and the one I attended was "Finding "Unfindable" Ancestors," given by Tom Jones. Tom said that you have to believe you will find your ancestors when you hit that "brick wall." If you don't think you will ever find them, then chances are you won't. He proceeded to discuss reasons ancestors could be unfindable and strategies to use in trying to find them. Tom broke it down into steps and stated that if these steps didn't work then you need to go through the same steps with the next descendant. This idea sort of piggy backs onto Elizabeth Shown Mills' FAN club process.

For lunch I attended the luncheon held by the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR). The guest speaker was Elizabeth Shown Mills and her talk was titled, "Walkabouts and Chicken Men: Tales of the U.S. Census Takers." With a title like that how could you not go? Anyway, she discussed experiences of census takers that she had discovered in written works and also talked about some of her own. It is always a pleasure to listen to her speak.

After lunch there was a little time to run to the exhibit hall before the next session. I made a bee line for the Arphax booth. The company publishes books on original land owner records for some counties in the U.S. This enables you to see who your ancestor was neighbors with, where they owned the land within the county, water ways, churches, graveyards, and roads. If you get a chance you should check out their website.

Next, I ran over to listen to Paul Milner present, "Irish Emigration to North America: Before, during and after the Famine. I have Irish ancestors as does my husband so I thought this session would be interesting. I've also never heard Paul Milner speak and this was a good opportunity. He pointed out that the Irish that arrived pre-famine were following the religious leader and it usually involved a whole group or parish. Paul also discussed the different famine influx and the Scots-Irish.

After Paul, I attended the session "Understanding Your DNA Test Results and What to do Next," presented by Robert McLaren. I had the opportunity to meet him earlier in the day and was really impressed with his knowledge regarding DNA. His session was chock full of information, some of it I'm still trying to understand, but the questions I had were answered.

By this time I needed some caffeine. I had one more session to go, was a little bleary eyed from the DNA session, and had a 2 1/2 hour drive ahead of me. Sadly all of the concession stands were closed. No tea or coffee to be had anywhere! Drats!! Back to the exhibit hall. My last purchase was "North Carolina Research, Genealogy and Local History" by Helen F.M. Leary. This book has been on my mind for quite some time. It is rather large, so this was my chance to save on shipping charges.

The session I attended was decided at the spur of the moment. I ran into a colleague who was also a little bleary eyed from the day. Originally we were both going to attend different sessions but then decided that Warren Bittner's presentation "Understanding and Researching Illegitimacy: A Case Study." This was a great session and some fascinating research that was done by Warren. If you are interested in it then you will have an opportunity to read his article in the next issue of NGSQ.

I said my good-byes to friends and left Birmingham. It was a little sad as I listened to dinner plans being made, and schedules for the next day being determined. I also didn't get to talk to some of the vendors I wanted to, but there is only so much one can accomplish in a day. On the drive home I thought about all of the sessions I attended, the friends I was able to connect with, the new friends I made. I had a great time and a very full day.

Are You Going to FGS?

The Federation of Genealogical Societies is holding their annual conference this week from August 29th through September 1st, in Birmingham, Alabama. As usual it promises to be a good event, chock full of great speakers. The only hiccup so far is the weather. Hurricane Isaac is not only causing problems on land, but with people's travel plans too. The impending inclement weather has also caused the cancellation of the Thursday evening event at Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark.

I managed to figure out how to get down to the conference for just a day. I'll be driving down on Wednesday, attend the conference on Thursday and drive back that night. Why am I doing this? Well, Birmingham is only a two-and-a-half hour drive away for me. I'm really interested in the DNA track, and I really want to look at the BCG portfolios at the BCG booth. I looked at a portfolio a few years ago, was completely overwhelmed, and didn't quite understand what I was looking at. Now I understand the required elements better and would like to take some more time looking at a completed binder. There are also a few vendors I want to check out as well. It will be a very busy day and I've got my list ready so that I don't forget anything while I'm there.

NGS, SLIG, FGS... Oh My!

It has been a week since NGS ended and it sounds like it was very successful. I kept up to date with many of the bloggers who were there blogging about the sessions they attended, products they saw in the vendor hall, and the lastest news being released at the conference. There was a Kentucky session I wish I could have sat in on, since I have ancestors who made a pit stop there for a generation or two in their migration westward. Well, if you missed this year's NGS conference the 2013 conference will be in Las Vegas. NGS is already advertising it, and you can book your hotel now. Should be fun, after all it's Vegas Baby (sorry couldn't help myself).

If you are looking for something a little more focused on a single subject you might want to consider SLIG which runs January 14-18 2013. Registration opens up on June 2. There are a lot of wonderful courses to chose from and they go quick. There are also evening sessions and the benefit of the fabulous Family History Library to research in.

The next major conference to round out our current season is the FGS conference, taking place August 29-September 1, 2012 in Birmingham, Alabama. Early registration ends July 1st, so if you want to go you need to decide soon for a good discount. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm going to this one or not. It's a two hour drive away from me, so it is very convenient. However, due to other circumstances at that time I would need to figure out childcare. Which means I may not be able to go. The timing of both the NGS and FGS conferences are just not good for me this year. Oh well.... there's always 2013 and Vegas Baby!!! (he he he)

Not Going to the FGS Conference?

I'm not able to go either. Admittedly, I'm a little envious of those that are able to attend. Going to conferences is a wonderful way to connect with other genealogists, talk shop, view merchandise in the vendor hall, and attend lectures to expand your genealogical knowledge.

So what will I do instead of going to the conference? Well, my four-year-old will finally start back to preschool, so that will free up a little time. I need to continue on my organization projects around the house. Those have been a frustration of starting and stopping. My computer is going to the computer doctor to be "cleaned." I'm hoping this means I won't be without a computer for the whole week. If it is, I can catch up on my reading.

I'm an avid reader and am in the middle of Isle of Canes by Elizabeth Shown Mills. It is an historical novel that is a fascinating study in the lineage of a slave couple's daughter, and her children. At times it can be a little difficult to keep straight of the many different people in the novel. Fortunately, there are several lineage charts to refer back to when confused. If you have any Creole, French, African American, or Louisiana heritage you may find this book very intriguing on a personal level. Even if you don't have any ancestors with these heritages, this book required an amazing amount of research that is impressive. As mentioned above it is written by Elizabeth Shown Mills who, in the in the field of genealogy, is highly respected and has many accolades. She will also be speaking at the FGS conference. So if like me,  you can't attend, at least you can read her book.

*I have not been hired to endorse this product in any way. However, I have provided a link for the product below.