A week to remember

Genealogy institutes are a hybrid between national conferences (lasting a few days with something new every hour or two and attendance in the thousands) and regular college courses (lasting a semester or so). At institutes (attendance in the dozens or hundreds), several courses are offered but genealogists spend five days in just one of their choice. Compared to conferences, there's more time to focus, and more opportunities to find like-minded friends, but not as many topics covered. I've been a fan ever since I first discovered them in 2009 in Salt Lake City and Birmingham.

At the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) last week, Kimberly Powell and I taught the third iteration of the course "From Confusion to Conclusion" on writing proof arguments -- with great help from William Litchman, Karen Stanbary, and Melissa Johnson, plus a cameo appearance by retiring New York Genealogical and Biographical Record editor Karen Jones.

 Our students were outstandingly inquisitive. Two of them -- Pam Anderson and Shannon Green -- will soon have articles published in the June National Genealogical Society Quarterly, and so were obliged to host the traditional GRIP Thursday night party. (This is Pittsburgh -- we don't do banquets.)

It's a small and intense world but big news still percolates in: this was the week FamilySearch announced the end of microfilm loans. Meanwhile GRIP keeps rolling along, with three separate week-long sessions and several new courses on tap for 2018, including various levels of DNA studies.

From Confusion to Conclusion: How to Write Proof Arguments! at GRIP

This summer -- July 22-27 at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh -- Kimberly Powell and I will again be coordinating a week-long course that focuses on tools we can use to meet the last three prongs of the Genealogical Proof Standard:

* analysis and correlation,

* resolving conflicts, and

* writing a soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion (without which no genealogical conclusion can be considered proven).

We don't mean to neglect the first two prongs -- thorough research and good citations -- but we think many genealogists are ready to zero in more closely on these three. (If you need citations consider this June offering.)

Much of the course involves taking apart published articles and considering how they work and (in some cases) how they came to be. There will also be daily interactive analysis and writing exercises and discussions.

There's a reason for this case-by-case and hands-on approach: every genealogical problem requires different tools and approaches; very few general rules work. Every confusion is different, and it reaches conclusion in a different way. So we will try to fill your toolboxes, and not say that you should solve all problems by using (say) a screwdriver.

Thomas W. Jones PhD, CG, CGL, FASG, FNGS, FUGA, and Melissa Johnson CG will each be teaching two sessions.

Quick info here.

A bunch of additional details, day by day, here.

We're in the process of updating the linked information to reflect the fact that William Litchman cannot be with us this year and Melissa Johnson will be bringing knowledge gained from her publications in NGSQ and NYGBR.

Signup for this second session of GRIP begins [CORRECTION!] Wednesday, March 2, at noon Eastern, 11 am Central, 10 am Mountain, and 9 am Pacific. For many inhabitants of the first two time zones, Pittsburgh is within reasonable driving distance. 

When last offered, the course filled very quickly. This year we do ask students to be familiar with the concepts presented in the relevant chapters of Mastering Genealogical Proof (Arlington, Va.: National Genealogical Society, 2013). We hope to see you there!

[slightly amplified about an hour after first post]

Shedding light on the Dark Age of American genealogy

One of the commonest problems that people bring to consultants or to professionals is how to identify people, especially parents, once they get back before 1850.

The period from the late 1700s (upheavals preceding and including the American Revolution) to 1850 (first US census that aimed to name every person) could be called the "Dark Ages" in US genealogy. Many of the records we rely on for research after 1850 didn't exist then, or existed only in bare-bones form.

To put it another way, before 1850 is where we see the final breakdown of the dubious idea that genealogy is just a matter of "looking up" your ancestors in the records. Those accustomed to doing that kind of genealogy may find the pre-1850 research environment bewildering.

Of course it's not barren, just different. But we do need to know where to look, and what to look for. The first step is to change our attitude:

• look for clues (indirect evidence), not only direct statements;
• search as much by area or associates as by name;
• pay more attention to the historical context (emphasized in the course I took at the Genealogical Research Insitute of Pittsburgh on the Northern part of this topic), especially since the past gets weirder the further back we go; and
• don't yield quickly to the temptation of trying to "connect" with a likely-looking individual in 1760.

The second step is to consider some of the solid sources that are available:

•  land records (federal, state, local), including tax records;
•  probate records;
•  military records;
•  any post-1850 records that cast light backwards into the Dark Age (such as a late-life marriage application, or an obituary that tells more than the death certificate, or a grandchild's mug book entry);
•  unsourced books and online trees (with appropriate caution);
•  newspapers (advertisements much more than obituaries) and early ephemera (called "imprints");
•  court records; and
•  manuscript collections, including business records. (In western New York, as Josh Taylor will explain if you give him an opening, the early land records often are business records.)

Good luck!




Photo credit: J. C. Loudon, (1826) An encyclopædia of agriculture (London: 1826, 2nd edition 1831), figure 512, "Trenching"; digital image, Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/marceldouwedekker/7468901744 : viewed 11 August 2013), Maarcel Douwe Dekker's photostream, per Creative Commons.

  
Harold Henderson, "Shedding light on the Dark Age of American genealogy," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 August 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]