Are you an advancing genealogist?

BCG trustee and forensic genealogist Debra Mieszala of Lake County, Illinois, is now posting at The Advancing Genealogist: Genealogy, Experience, and Education. Illinois researchers in particular should check out her posts on statutory law links and indexes.

From where I sit, we can always use more educational blogs with high standards. This one comes with resource links on adoption, a perennially hot topic where people want to learn fast.

What you might not know if you haven't heard her speak is that she does great stories too. A few days ago she had a timely guest post over at Ancestry, profiling a fallen Korean War veteran.



Harold Henderson, "Are you an advancing genealogist?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 November 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.

FYI: A new institute that Midwesterners can drive to!

Internet genealogy, Germanic genealogy, intermediate genealogy, advanced genealogy -- these are the four courses that will be offered May 28-June 1, 2015, in Galesburg, Knox County, Illinois, at the Carl Sandburg Institute of Genealogy.

Michael John Neill (probably the first "real" genealogist I was ever aware of) is the organizer; course coordinators in order are Cyndi Ingle, Teresa McMillin, CG; Debra Mieszala, CG, and Neill. Details are in the works and you can sign up for updates via their Facebook page, but if for some reason you can't wait, ask Michael at mneill@sandburg.edu.




Harold Henderson, "FYI: A new institute that Midwesterners can drive to!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Good lessons in NGS Magazine April-June 2012

You could get a darn good genealogical education just by reading every issue of the National Genealogical Society Magazine for a few years. The lessons are readable, bite-size, and engaging. This quarter, four how-to pieces stood out for me:

* Debbie Mieszala on plagiarism and how not to commit it. BTW, although I have heard rumblings to the contrary, there is NOTHING about blogging that makes plagiarism either necessary or acceptable. By linking as well as giving credit, bloggers can if anything credit their sources more easily than pen-and-paper writers can.

* J. H. Fonkert on using newspapers to (almost literally) bring an ancestor back to life. His own grandfather provides the example. I wanted to say that this works best when the ancestor is engaged in work that actually appears in the newspaper, but we won't know until we look!

* Kathy Petlewski on immigration research, a very helpful piece with a sequel promised. I especially appreciated the discussion of oft-neglected ports of entry Galveston and New Orleans. One point I would add: the several "waves" of immigration in US history have had their roots in politics. Going back to the presidency of John Adams, changing tides of political opinion (including episodes of fear and racism) have changed the immigration laws and often determined when a "wave" of immigration began and ended. (Those waves in the pool where we research aren't natural, dude. There's a wave machine out there.)

* Patricia Walls Stamm with a solid article on research planning. I appreciate these, because this is something I struggle with on a daily basis.

I also enjoyed records-oriented pieces by Claire Prechtel-Kluskens (did you know there may be Compiled Military Service Records for your Civil War ancestor that did not get filed in his "jacket"? and how to find them?), Bryna O'Sullivan on using Confederate pension applications in African-American genealogy, and Harold Hinds on autograph books, yet another underused genealogical resource.

This magazine alone is worth NGS's annual dues -- and as readers here know, NGS offers many other benefits as well!



All in NGS Magazine, vol. 38, no. 2 (April-June 2012):
Debbie Mieszala, "Stop, thief! A plagiarism primer," 17-20.
J. H. Fonkert, "The threshing engine: Newspapers breathe life into a photo," 25-31.
Kathy Petlewski, "Reference Desk: An overview of immigration records," 48-53.
Patricia Walls Stamm, "Targeted Research Plans," 44-47.

Harold Henderson, "Good lessons in NGS Magazine April-June 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day Three (Friday the 11th)

At this stage of a national conference, many of us are operating like the elevator we tried to ride down in our hotel this morning: arriving at the 3rd floor, it announced the 1st floor, but never actually reached the first floor (we got out and took the escalators). Like that elevator, we're still in action, but not necessarily functioning on all cylinders due to information and sociability overloads.

My talk on the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum and its records was cordially received. It was part of an all-day same-room Indiana track, beginning with Dave McDonald on Indiana history and settlement patterns, and ending with Michael Lacopo on tips and advice in hard-core research in the state. His tour of courthouse records was very informative, especially the figures that less than 5% of 19th-century Hoosiers left wills, and perhaps four times that number had probates. "You can never have too many records."

For me as spectator Friday was Law Day. Michael LeClerc gave a virtuoso performance on Advanced Probate, minus his slides which had just been eaten by Dropbox. Two of many points to remember: read Inheritance in America, and be aware that when an estate has to be re-administered or is contested, the case may go direct to the appellate court without any obvious signals in the regular probate records.

After lunch Debra Mieszala gave the most fact-packed lecture I have yet had a chance to hear this week, on taking the "awww" out of the law library. I am looking forward to upgrading my legal knowledge and application. Knowing the difference between slip laws, session laws, code books, and annotated statutes will definitely help. (They're all good, but in different ways.)

The evening was spent in many pleasant conversations in the Hyatt lobby, the NGSQ centennial reception, and the ProGen Study Group dinner. Tomorrow is the last day of a conference that on Tuesday seemed like it would last forever.


Harold Henderson, "NGS Day Three (Friday the 11th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Words from IGS Conference Day

Several admonitions are echoing in my mind from the Indiana Genealogical Society's day-long conference in Fort Wayne; other attendees' mileage may vary.

More than half of the 111 attendees also attended the business meeting, where we heard that our 76 volunteers had helped index 100% of Indiana's portion of the 1940 census in less than a month, far ahead of all neighboring states.

* Speaker Michael Hall, deputy chief genealogical officer of FamilySearch: “Every one of you should be writing in the FamilySearch Wiki [page about your county] about your libraries and resources,” thus helping draw genealogical tourism.

* Speaker Debra Mieszala, who works in the genealogical part of the process of identifying and returning remains of US soldiers long lost in action: The military now uses all three kinds of DNA -- Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and autosomal DNA, so relatives of missing soldiers may have new opportunities to provide reference samples. Of the 88,000 missing, 78,000 are from WWII.

* IGS president Michael Maben, who asked for volunteers for an advocacy committee and identified the State Archives (long relegated to an outdated warehouse) as a problem to be addressed: “We need to press our legislature to replace that facility."

* Mieszala again (part of an informative talk on finding the patent filings of inventive ancestors): The Great Lakes Regional Branch of NARA has a Facebook page, and we should "friend" it. Among the many great examples they post from their holdings, one is a patent infringement case.

Lots of good people and good laughs, all in a day's genealogy work . . . the April 2013 conference in Bloomington will feature Josh Taylor.


Harold Henderson, “Words from IGS Conference Day,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

More Third Coast genealogy

In the April-June issue of NGS Newsmagazine, Debra Mieszala, CG, of Lake County, Illinois, describes records of the Coast Guard predecessor United States Life-Saving Service (USLSS), begun in the 1870s. If you have a research target involved, these records are a treat -- everything from logbooks to correspondence to "articles of engagement." And check out the list of articles for further study.