Friday in Little Rock

Not entirely random tidbits from the September 4 sessions at the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference:

* Richard Sayre on different indexes to the United States Serial Set: on Lexis/Nexis he gets 2,189 hits on "Sayre." On HeritageQuest, he gets 93. The nicest thing he could say about that discrepancy was, "There's a big filter there."

* Elizabeth Shown Mills on finding evidence of parentage in a deposition made 115 years after the child was born: "Do you carry your research down that far?"

* At the Association of Professional Genealogists' 30th anniversary luncheon, Desmond Walls Allen read extensive excerpts from her copy of the June 2030 APG Quarterly. I look forward to obtaining the confirmatory evidence 21 years from now.

* Beverly Rice on diaries and letters: "Too many people read them once, and don't read them [or transcribe them] again."

* Barbara Vines Little found the only evidence for the father of an illegitimate child in -- Baptist church minutes, where the relevant couple was "dismissed from the church for violating the seventh commandment."