Association of Professional Genealogists

A big thank-you to those readers who are members of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) and who, in a pre-Thanksgiving surprise, elected me to a two-year term on the organization's board. (And I hope that any reader who is not a member will consider becoming one.) I expect to learn a lot, but here is where I started (from my pre-election statement):

Over the past three years I have benefited from listening and participating on APG's email list, from reading the quarterly, from attending the Professional Management Conference, from involvement in the Great Lakes Chapter -- and from working the table at conferences! I'd like to put my experience to work, and build on past volunteers' accomplishments, by helping APG become both more inclusive and more professional.

Inclusive: by making transparency a priority, including prompt publication of board and EC minutes.

Professional: by encouraging, recognizing, and eventually requiring continuing education among members -- or in some other appropriate way acting on Tom Jones's critique published in the December 2007 APG Quarterly. His point was that for genealogy to mature, its professional organization needs to ask more of its members than just to pay dues and subscribe to a code of ethics.

Back from Ohio Genealogical Society in Toledo

The biggest state genealogy organization in the country wound up its annual conference yesterday in Toledo. High points for me were working with fellow Great Lakes APG members in the meeting, roundtable, and Ancestors Road Show; meeting old, new, and prospective ProGen Study Group members at lunch Friday; and hearing Connie Reik on farm sources, and Craig Scott on World War I and colonial wars. The syllabus has plenty of material to catch up on, and to make me sorry I couldn't go to more.

Saturday's variable weather gave me an opening to walk over to the Toledo-Lucas County public library. Newcomers are well advised to study the library's web site before going. I didn't, and wound up getting lost (there are two different third floors -- for local history you want the elevators at the back of the building, not the front). The library has great resources for its locality (which I didn't get to work with), and the very busy librarians were kind and helpful. For out-of-towners with Lucas County roots, the web site has an index to Toledo Blade obituaries, 1970-present.

But for Ohio counties and other states, the collection is saddled with a peculiar cataloging decision. Within each Ohio county and each other state, books are ordered by author or title, rather than by subject! This works fine if you happen to know the authors of all the books pertaining to, say, Green County, Kentucky, but most of us don't conduct our research that way. A glance at the online catalog ("classic catalog" allows search by subject) would have helped me make the most of the situation.

One last thing: the ongoing tragedy of inadequate library funding was much in evidence. The library's hours are limited, and the joint was jumping midday Saturday, with a lot of folks hoping to be able to use local history computers for general purposes and not being able to do so. We as genealogists need to step up to the plate and say it straight out: free public libraries are a resource provided by the community for the community, an investment in equal opportunity. Taxes paid for libraries are a good thing. Period.

One other last thing: I took the scenic route home in order to take some cemetery photos. If you fail to associate "scenic drive" with Toledo, try taking Ohio 25 and US 24 southwest out of the city in mid-spring, with enough flaming purple redbuds along the river to light up the gloomiest day.

Methodology Monday with Basil Williams

"Perhaps more frequently and firmly than many genealogical sources, land records enable kinship determination." That's Nicki Peak Birch, CG, writing in her article, "Tracking Basil Williams of Maryland and Pennsylvania Through Changing Residences and Multiple Marriages," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 96:23-37, March 2008. Some members of the Great Lakes Chapter of APG discussed it a couple of weeks ago.

One of the article's basic questions is whether the Basil Williams of Frederick County and Anne Arundel counties in Maryland and Washington County in Pennsylvania are the same man. The answer is, yes and no. "Debt books" recording land in Maryland help show that there was only one Basil Williams there, but Revolutionary War pension files show that there were two Basils later. The argument is not simple, and it may get another workout in a discussion session at the spring Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Toledo.

In any case, Birch's message could use some repetition. I find county land offices (by whatever name) some of the easiest places to work -- they're used to people coming in and going about their business -- but rarely are my elbows jostled by fellow genealogists.