Sun City Vistoso Genealogical Society

The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) is holding its 2013 conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from August 21st to 24th. There are over 20 talks on Midwest genealogy, religious groups, and record repositories. If you’re a snowbird summering in the Midwest and serious about genealogy, you’ll want to consider attending this convention.

Additional details about the talks are available at the Program Page.  Events include “Journey Through the Generations with Our Veterans” at the Allen County Public Library, and the Exhibit Hall will have more booths than an Irishman has cousins. You can register online for $190 for the four-day conference; see the Registration Page. Special rates at convention hotels start at $119/night (Lodging).

The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Library in Fort Wayne has over a million books and microform sources. It’s open extra hours for the convention and will give you an opportunity to do genealogy yourself, as well as listen to others talk about it. The location of this year’s FGS convention adds greatly to its interest.

If you do decide to go, please let me or Darwin know; maybe you could report back to the club in the fall. I wish I could make it myself!

WOW ! Friday was quite a day. 13 hours total including the banquet. Lots of awards went to very deserving individuals from the national scene. Also, many drawings for lots of prizes from various vendors, sadly. . . they all missed my card in the barrel. As the headliner at the dinner, we heard from Mark Hall-Patton. He’s the expert on History Channel’s TV show “Pawn Stars”. If you haven’t watched it, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? It is set in a pawn shop in Las Vegas and they have all kinds of people bring in their (at least they think they are) antiquities. Mark wears a red shirt and an Amish hat and sports a long grey beard. He’s quite the expert as he runs 3 museums here in Clark County, Nevada. His story was very entertaining. This was after sitting in on sessions including: Planning “Reasonably Exhaustive” research or a lecture about Google and ALL of it’s search abilities. I hope I can use just a few of the ideas that were proposed to the attendees. By the way, there were 1981 total entered into this conference, and I sat next to Betty from NE Tucson who belongs to Pima County GS. She’s been reading my posts and out of 7-800 people she choose to pick a chair next to me. (Betty, I’ll be talking with you again.) I didn’t have enough strength to post something last night which is why there are two days in today’s post. On Saturday, we knew it was the last day, so we were scouring the days events (all 56 of ‘em) just to see what we might be missing out on. I watched the lecture on the Family Tree. I think I made a mistake about trying to be so possessive of my tree. So what would be wrong with letting others latch onto my tree (wherever they would join in to it) & possible adding to it. OR correcting it. Who out there KNOWS that all of their tree info is 100% correct? Darn few, I bet.
Anyway, I will remember everyone I shared a biz. card with, with the personal discussion with a lot of the speakers and with the very friendly vendors. Right there you can get so much info. I have lots of handouts from them and will be sharing their website with all of you over this summer.

Someone asked what NGS was all about. Well, they have been around since 1903 and have been responsible for setting the standards for the Certified Genealogist (CG) and related titles. Belonging to NGS will get you to free education on their website on the avocation of being a genealogist. They are really trying to make sure when you hire someone with their designation, that you will get someone who is Board Certified and knows how to do the research you are asking them to do for you. No more ‘brick walls’ because of their abilities. My hat is off to anyone who holds that (or higher) designation.
Lastly, go check out the website http://www.JustaJoy.com . They are a repository as a “Family Heirloom Exchange”. They have items associated with nearly 50,000 families. It’s like antique hunting on the internet. Some are letters from the civil war and if they belonged to someone in your tree wouldn’t you want that in your collection? Check ‘em out.

I’m heading over for the casino buffet right now. See you next Tuesday at the meeting.

We started out with a “First Timers” breakfast with about 200 who were attending the conference for the very first time. Exchanged biz cards and related a short story about our research, etc. I’ve met some from outside Atlanta, Carnation, WA, from Virginia (where next years conference with be hosted by Richmond.) We had a NGS Board member sitting at our table and she peppered us with questions about what can they do better. (I dunno, I’m just gettin’ my feet wet with so many lectures to attend.) One really good lecture about Google Earth and making a story with photos or videos and then able to show other family members about one of their ancestors. None of my Dad’s G-kids knew him, so telling them a story woven around a map of the earth with pinpoints where he lived, plus his work and his other family might make a decent presentation some day. I’ll have to work on that. Todays’ talks were about newspapers, females with no maiden name known, a big push from MyHeritage.com to line up more subscribers. I forgot to tell you about the ‘big deal’ from a vendor, HeritageBooks.com . If you go to their site and order any book(s), at checkout use the code ngsvegas and you will receive a 20% discount. I haven’t looked at all of the various books they offer, but I’m sure there is something in there for everyone.
I’m still trying to find anyone else doing research in Iceland. 2 days to go and 2000 more attendees to talk with. More tomorrow.

Chris Seggerman wasn’t able to visit us in February as originally scheduled, but he’ll be here Tuesday to speak on the same topic:

Phoenix librarian and genealogist Chris Seggerman will be back to speak at our general meeting at 1 PM in Navajo.

Last time Chris told us about newspaper research. This time he’ll give us a brief history of handwriting from the 18th Century onwards, including: earlier handwriting styles and tools; where genealogists can expect to find handwritten documents; special techniques used in reading handwritten documents; and samples of several different styles of handwriting for analysis.

This will be our last monthly meeting until October.

In a word – - – WHEW ! ! First hour and a half was the opening of the conference, giving awards to good newsletters from around the US, recognizing people for their efforts in the past year, then hearing the first of several talks about GPS. Not the GPS for your car but Genealogical Proof Standards. The ‘Proof’ is what good research is about. As we heard today you must prove with Reasonably Exhaustive Research. They stories the speakers related about today are examples of what has to be for all genealogists. Of course they were not talking about near history events, but when you go back a century or more, ya’ gotta’ do more than copy someone else’s tree that doesn’t contain even one citation. Sitting along side many other amateurs like myself, we listened together and made the commitment to follow their lead and do the work. YEAH !
And no, I didn’t get my name picked from any of the drawings, darn. Maybe tomorrow.
It starts even earlier on Thurs. . . 7AM. As I read the other syllabus content for talks that I’m not attending, I get pumped about things to do for the club. A couple of months back we tried out World Vital Records and today I approached another data base to see if we can “try” them out. We’ll wait to get an answer from them.
Watch for another blog tomorrow, I have to end this now as I must get up early in the AM.