The South Carolina backcountry could be the US headquarters of brick walls, so it behooves dedicated researchers to pay attention when Elizabeth Shown Mills devotes an entire lecture to the region, as she did Saturday, the final morning of FGS 2012 in Birmingham. It doesn't matter whether you have, or ever expect to have, research targets there. To paraphrase an old song about a big city, "If you can solve it there, you can solve it anywhere." My only problem with the talk was that not everyone at the conference was there to hear it.
Squeezed in around the lecture I enjoyed a pleasant breakfast with fellow APG board members Joan Peake and Kimberly Powell, picked up a 75%-off book at the Genealogical.com booth, and got to the Birmingham airport before midday, leaving plenty of time to chat with the selection of early-departing genealogists in Concourse C. (Speaking of vendor booths, earlier in the conference I was pleased to meet up with a new and very promising hybrid that could be the answer to the riddle, "What do you get when you cross an antique dealer with a genealogist?" -- to be blogged about in the near future.)
By leaving midday Saturday, I missed another very interesting-looking talk about exceedingly obscure federal pension records by Kenneth W. Heger, on NARA Record Group 48 (Records of the Department of the Interior) including pension commissioners' reports on appeals and correspondence.
Thanks to all the volunteer workers who made this conference possible. I'm looking forward to next year's edition in the Midwestern research mecca of Fort Wayne, Indiana!
Harold Henderson, "FGS Day Four (Saturday September 1)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]
Sunday, September 2, 2012
FGS Day Four (Saturday September 1)
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3 comments:
Harold, inquiring minds want to know more. What was the name of ESM's lecture, so I can find it when the recordings come out? And what was the title of the book you scored at 20% off?! Good deal! Thanks for sharing the conference with us poor folks stuck at home.
Thanks for the prompts, Cathi. The lecture was S-414, "Problem-solving in the Problem-Riddled Carolina Backcountry." The book, which was 75% off, was Thomas Allen Glenn's century-old _Welsh Founders of Pennsylvania_. Can't say anything about the book yet but it could have relevance to my Welsh gg grandmother and her immigrant father and sometime Baptist preacher Simon James of Beulah PA and Granville OH.
Thanks for the updates. I've enjoyed them.
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