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]

Reading Two Top Genealogy Books Together

The best two books for serious genealogists are Thomas W. Jones's Mastering Genealogical Proof  and Robert Charles Anderson's Elements of Genealogical Analysis.

But they are different enough in their emphases and terminology that reading both may induce vertigo. My review essay in the December 2015 National Genealogical Society Quarterly may help. (Jones co-edits the Quarterly but was not involved in the editing of this piece.) It is free on line to NGS members and available at good genealogy libraries.

And if the review essay doesn't float your boat, enjoy the substantial articles by Laurel T. Baty (AL, GA, NC), Ronald A. Hill (Cornwall), and annual writing contest winner William A. Cox (VA, PA).

And if these don't float your boat either, well . . . back in the 1700s Samuel Johnson said, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." I would venture an update: "If you're tired of NGSQ, you're tired of genealogy."



“Review Essay: How to Solve Genealogy Problems, and How to Know When They Have Been Solved: A Guide to Elements of Genealogical Analysis and Mastering Genealogical Proof,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 103 (December 2015): 304-308

Methodology Monday and Labor Day with Philippina Kicherer

Genealogy is about remembrance, not just descendants. Or as Tom Jones puts it in Mastering Genealogical Proof, genealogical questions are usually about a relationship, identity, or activity (pp. 7-8).

Judy Kellar Fox's article leading off the June 2014 National Genealogical Society Quarterly is an example of an activity question, but not one like whether someone served in the Revolution. Her subject, Philippina Magdalena (Kaiser) Kicherer, emigrated and married late, helped raise stepchildren, ran a Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, farmhouse, and died in 1909.

How and why did she come there?

Without the aid of family letters or reminiscences, Fox spotted the name of a man who was Philippina's associate, not her husband's, and the name of a particular part of Germany rarely included in US census designations -- and worked out Philippina's otherwise forgotten story. Sometimes the supposedly dry bones of technical genealogy are the only way to learn those stories.





Judy Kellar Fox, "Why and How Did Philippina Kicherer Immigrate to Jefferson County, Pennsylvania?," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (June 2014): 85-92.

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday and Labor Day with Philippina Kicherer," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday: From Confusion To Conclusion at the January 2015 Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy

If you're wishing that this post was about another NGSQ article, then you might be interested in the course Kimberly Powell and I are preparing for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (12-16 January 2015; registration 9 am MDT June 14).

"From Confusion to Conclusion" will focus on the last three requirements of the Genealogical Proof Standard:

• analysis and correlation, 
• resolving conflicts, and 
• writing a clear and coherent conclusion.

The course will approach these subjects using examples of published and unpublished research. The road from confusion to conclusion has some twists and turns that we can learn to recognize, but do not always appear in published articles.

In keeping with this bottom-up case study approach, the course will include hands-on workshops and exercises as well as lectures. It will emphasize technical writing -- as opposed to narrative or instructional writing. But this is not just a writing course. We will delve into useful tools and practices for the analysis and correlation that is part of both our research and writing. We will also jump into the organization and presentation of a written argument -- "What do I put first?" "What should I leave out?" and "When should I use a chart or graphic for clarity?" Several well-known genealogical authors will share examples of how they've handled these and similar choices. Those attending should have read and studied Mastering Genealogical Proof by Thomas W. Jones.

[slightly revised since first posting]

P.S. So if my posts are on the irregular side for the next eight months, now you'll know why.




Photo credit: Ben Salter's photostream, "The Tower," https://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_salter/4542942524, used without alteration per Creative Commons

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday: From Confusion to Conclusion at the January 2015 Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday with a golden oldie in Kentucky (NGSQ)

It just takes a while for people to "get" indirect evidence. I read and annotated and discussed "The Parents of Joseph Rhodes of Graves County, Kentucky" in the March 2009 NGS Quarterly five years ago. Most of my notes have to do with picking at the details, and I may have been looking for a full account of the family rather than a proof.

When I read it now I'm trying to figure out the logical skeleton of that proof. Tom Jones identifies four common logical skeletons in Mastering Genealogical Proof: single hypothesis, multiple hypotheses, building blocks, and "syllogisms" (AKA if-then statements). Basically the article follows the subject, Joseph Rhodes, forward from his first known record appearance in 1831. Then it follows an older 1831 neighbor, Benjamin Rhodes, forward from his revolutionary war service. There's direct evidence here involving his Benjamin's Edens in-laws, but in the end the author has sifted out eight shiny nuggets of indirect evidence that Benjamin was Joseph's father.

Each individual piece could be explained away; to explain away all eight would be a heroic task. Still, I know good genealogists who don't quite seem to believe in indirect evidence. It just seems fragile somehow -- although it would be much harder to forge, especially given the diversity of records involved in this case.

Reading the article now, I can't help but think the author had a hypothesis in mind for Benjamin as soon as it appeared he was nearby and the right age to be Joseph's father. But the article is presented  more in a building-blocks format, in which first Joseph's and then Benjamin's life stories are surveyed for evidence pro or con. The way the building blocks are constructed -- mostly following the two lives in chronological order -- may make it easier to grasp than other articles with the same skeleton.



Sarah R. Fleming, "Indirect Evidence for the Parents of Joseph Rhodes of Graves County, Kentucky," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 97 (March 2009): 5-15.

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with a golden oldie in Kentucky (NGSQ)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 May 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday with William Gray and an earthquake (NGSQ)

What's worse than a burned county? Would you believe an earthquake county? In the September 2013 National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Melinda Daffin Henningfield expertly traces a common-name ancestor, William Gray, who was briefly a judge in New Madrid County, Missouri Territory, just after the gigantic earthquakes of 1811-1812, during which the Mississippi River briefly ran backwards.

Those who have common-name brick walls, missing records, and tantalizing potential records scattered across several states can pick up ideas from Henningfield's account, even if their problem family has another name. They will also appreciate the variety of records she brings to the table.

Readers of Thomas W. Jones's Mastering Genealogical Proof will find here an example of one of the less common ways to structure a proof argument: the "building blocks" approach (p. 89). The author moves from one cluster of evidence to the next, but the clusters are organized more by relevance to the case than by chronology or other logic. Gray was in middle age at New Madrid; gradually his later Kentucky and earlier Virginia residences come to light, as do the family Bible. Census evidence, church records, handwriting samples, and onomastics (naming patterns) come late in the story. No piece of evidence names William's father, but the combined weight of the evidence from seven counties and four states is as hard to resist as -- an earthquake.





Melinda Daffin Henningfield, "A Family for William Gray of New Madrid County, Territory of Missouri," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 101 (September 2013): 207-28.

Photo credit: Richard Miller Devens, Our First Century (Springfield MA: C. A. Nichols, 1881), 220; digital image, Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=XJU_AAAAYAAJ : viewed 21 April 2014). Also,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811%E2%80%9312_New_Madrid_earthquakes

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with William Gray and an earthquake (NGSQ)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 April 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday: The questions we ask in genealogy

Most genealogical questions, according to Thomas W. Jones in Mastering Genealogical Proof, ask about relationship (R), identity (I), or activity (A). Of course we can think of much more tangled ones, but usually they are "supporting questions" enabling us to better answer one of the basic ones. (p.8)

After a Facebook discussion the other day, I wondered how this idea checked out at the top end of the field in 2013. Classifying articles this way turned out to be more difficult and more subjective than I expected, and I never found anything that quite fit "activity." Activity-type questions may end up in DAR applications more often than in published articles.

The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (NEHGR) and American Ancestors Journal: R 14, I 3, A 0, others 2.

The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (NYGBR): R 10, I 1, A 0, and others 3.

The National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ): R 11, I 3, A 0, others 2.

The Genealogist (TG): R 6, I 1, A 0, others 0.

Totals: R 41, I 8, A 0, others 7. Roughly three-quarters ask about relationships. The "others" are generally individual life stories, or ask what would usually be supporting questions, such as, "Where was he buried?"

How does this play out in less formal publications like NGS Magazine, American Ancestors (NEHGS), and some state magazines? What questions do their articles answer? Your turn!



Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday: The questions we ask," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

The intimidated genealogist?

A fellow blogger recently introduced me to the idea that discussions of advanced genealogy might scare off beginners. The idea came as a surprise, but it sure made me think.

* I reflected on my experience as a one-day attendee at the 2006 National Genealogical Society conference in Chicago. I attended a talk and walked around the booths and asked some questions. But I just didn't process most of the stuff I didn't understand. I wasn't discouraged, but I didn't learn a whole lot either.

* Intimidation might be a factor when I think I know something (or how to do something) and it soon becomes clear that I really don't. Sometimes I choose to dive in and learn more. Often I choose to back off -- either to focus on other activities; or to save time, money, and exasperation; or both. (That was my lesson in do-it-yourself car repair!). We can't all be good at everything. But in order to make the decision we need to know that there is more to learn.

* In the course of events I do a lot of driving. I have no interest in professional driving of the NASCAR variety, and if I ran into one of their professional discussions it wouldn't intimidate me or make me quit driving.

* To take a humbler but topical example, shoveling snow. Here I was a very slow learner even though I was exposed to better. Our neighbor is an expert. But it took me a decade or more living in a snow belt to appreciate the value of a simple tool she used: a snow scoop rather than a snow shovel.

* Arguably a bigger problem may be that beginners aren't exposed enough to advanced material. I "did genealogy" for most of a decade before I realized there was anything more advanced. I think of the story Tom Jones tells in the introduction to Mastering Genealogical Proof, in which he almost quit genealogy -- not because he'd been intimidated, but because he had not been exposed to advanced work and believed that his family's brick walls were insurmountable.



[FYI: tomorrow is this blog's 6th birthday; according to Blogger, this is the 1306th post.]


Harold Henderson, "The intimidated genealogist?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 22 January 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Is there a finite amount of genealogical evidence?

Tony Proctor has a thoughtful post over at Parallax View, discussing the concept of "proof" and how it differs in science and in genealogy. I encourage you to read the whole thing as he has a lot to say. Since thoughtful theoretical discussions are scarce in genealogy, I thought I'd add three thoughts.

(1) I'm surprised that neither the post nor the comments allude to the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) or the recent book that explains it most thoroughly, Thomas W. Jones's Mastering Genealogical Proof.

FYI if you're new: the GPS is the only widely accepted standard of proof in genealogy, and it states that no conclusion is proved without five things: thorough research, good citations, analysis and correlation of evidence, resolving any contradictions, and a written account. The best genealogists then working put this GPS together at the end of the 20th century under the auspices of the Board for the Certification of Genealogists (BCG_, as an improvement for our purposes on the "preponderance of the evidence" standard borrowed from the law.

(2) Tony writes,

"Science is about the here-and-now whereas genealogy is about the been-and-gone. What this means is that genealogy only has a finite set of evidence available, and although more of that set may be discovered over time, no evidence outside of that set will ever be found. It also means that evidence cannot be created on demand in order to solve a particular problem, or to support/refute a given proposition. On the other hand, in science — technology permitting — an experiment can be conceived purposely to test a given theory, or to separate two competing theories. . . . Whereas science can usually conduct a specific experiment to disprove some of the candidate theories, and so support the remainder, genealogy can only search for more items of evidence that already exist. If they don’t exist somewhere now then they never will in the future either."

Some sciences, such as paleontology, are about the been-and-gone. I suppose that in the abstract both genealogy and paleontology only have "a finite set of evidence available," but in practice nobody knows all of it or even where it is. Both paleontologists and genealogists find new evidence all the time.

It's true that paleontologists and genealogists cannot conduct laboratory experiments on the past. But they do have the ability to make predictions based on what they know, and then see whether further research supports those predictions. These predictions and tests are quite similar to an experiment. If I find that a man's wife is named in a deed where he sells property, I can predict that there is likely to be some additional evidence of the marriage that I have not yet seen (whether a formal record of the event or an appearance in an obituary), and go look for it.

But I have a quarrel with the whole idea of a "finite" amount of evidence anyway. Evidence is information that can be used to answer a specific question. (That is the agreed genealogical definition.) Sometimes ingenious genealogists find evidence where others might not have perceived any at all.

In a recent NGSQ article by Judy G. Russell, she used records of people working on roads to ascertain when someone died (who had never worked on the roads). Many genealogists would not have thought of using that information as evidence to answer the question "When did Mrs. X die?"

I'm inclined to think that even if the amount of genealogical information is finite, the amount of evidence is not, because it depends on human ingenuity in the use of the information -- much as scientists use ingenuity to design experiments. (Improved indexes can also make information much more available to be used as evidence, as in this example from a few days ago.)

(3) IMO, it's useful to figure out just what constitutes "proof" or "evidence" in different disciplines. I don't think it's useful to fuss about whether one discipline can use the word in a different sense than another discipline, because that's just not going to change. It's not that hard to understand that new evidence can supersede a past proof in genealogy as in science, and that that kind of thing does not happen in mathematics.


(Happy New Year! By Blogger's count, this is MWM blog post #1300.)



Judy G. Russell, “'Don't Stop There!,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 99(1):37, March 2011.

Harold Henderson, "Is there a finite amount of genealogical evidence?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 January 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Rearranging the genealogical furniture

At least one part of my attraction to genealogy was a taste for neatness (not, however, expressed so much in my workspace). There's a special satisfaction in putting people in their right places with their own children in the right order, and so forth. And many of us are on a quest to find the very best way of putting people in order, either via new genealogy databases or new numbering systems.

Basically I think this is a harmless impulse -- until it comes to the research process. It has taken me a long time to realize that there is no ideal arrangement for evidence as it comes in.

The truth is exactly the opposite. The harder the case, the more evidence there is, quarried from many different kinds of sources at many different times. And it can be easy to miss the implications of deeds, court appearances, and the like for other genealogical facts. It can also be easy to miss the patterns that may be hidden in the mass of material.

That's why a fresh eye on the subject (friend or hired hand) can help. It's also why we should not succumb to neatness too soon. We need to think of as many different ways as possible to rearrange and summarize the evidence, to compare and contrast once each piece has been analyzed. Chapter 5 of Mastering Genealogical Proof is the best reference I know to the main ways to do this, but it is not exhaustive.

Rearranging actual furniture is a lot of work. Rearranging evidence is more like making a little map of the living room and shifting furniture tokens around on it. Exhaustive research has shown that there is no ideal way of arranging our living room. Similarly, the only (temporarily) ideal way of arranging our evidence is the way that helps us see new patterns and connections and gaps within it.




Photo credit: Steinar B [Topguy]'s photostream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/topguy/1206543519/m per Creative Commons.


Harold Henderson, "Rearranging the genealogical furniture," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 9 September 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

The books I bought at FGS

For moderately regular attendees, a national genealogy conference is an oasis of extreme sociability in a normally quiet, if not quite solitary, life. I love conferences, but they do make it difficult for me to work, blog, think, research, compose presentations, or otherwise do the things that give us food for conversation when we're there.

I did not buy a single book at full price during last week's FGS conference in Fort Wayne, but if I hadn't already bought it at NGS, I would have purchased Tom Jones's Mastering Genealogical Proof. I did have occasion to recommend it to many ambitious people. Here's what I did buy at Maia's Books, the Ohio Genealogical Society booth, the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania booth, and the perpetual used-book sale just inside the east end of the Allen County Public Library:

Scott E. Casper, Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

Leslie Brenner, American Appetite: The Coming of Age of A National Cuisine (New York: HarperCollins, 1999).

James M. Duffin, comp., Guide to the Mortgages of the General Loan Office of the Province of Pennsylvania, 1724-1756 (Philadelphia?: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1995).

Dale Roylance, Graphic Americana: The Art and Technique of Printed Ephemera from Abecedaires to Zoetropes (Princeton: Princeton University Library, 1992).

Charles E. Rosenberg and William H. Helfand, "Every Man his own Doctor": Popular Medicine in Early America (Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1998).

Roberta P. Wakefield, ed., Special Aids to Genealogical Research in Northeastern and Central States (Washington DC: National Genealogical Society, 1962).

Milton Rubincam, ed., Genealogical Research: Methods and Sources (Washington DC: American Society of Genealogists, 1960).

Encyclopedia of World History (New York: Facts on File, 2000).

Were they worth it? You tell me, I've got a deadline!



Harold Henderson, "The books I bought at FGS," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 26 August 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

"Good enough" citations? We can do better.

Have you heard all the talk? Some people are afraid to write anything because they might make a mistake. So -- instead of helping them learn, the idea is that people should just . . . rite enny way she, yknow, feelzlike, cuz y'all'll B all lk aright I git it man so

No, I just made all that up. But it is essentially the argument prolific geneablogger James Tanner (Genealogy's Star) and his commenters have made about citations: don't worry about doing them right, just do them. As long as we can manage to figure out how to find your source, it's OK.

I think Mr. Tanner is about 50% right. We all hesitate to try things when we're not sure we can succeed. Encouragement is in order. As I said in my February 2013 Illinois State Genealogical Society webinar on citations, "Something is better than nothing." But better somethings are better. Education is also in order. (Hobbyists who don't want to be educated, please consult this post from last November.)

Contrary to Mr. Tanner, citations have more than one purpose. As Elizabeth Mills has said repeatedly in Evidence Explained and elsewhere, they are not just about finding the source again, they are also about evaluating the source's quality and quirks. And as Thomas W. Jones adds in his new and excellent book Mastering Genealogical Proof, they also communicate to our readers how well we have made our case, how well we understand the sources, and how solid they are.

(And before anyone starts up with horror stories about the so-called "citation police" who abuse people who misplace a semicolon: Prove it. I have never met any such person. Elizabeth and Tom are the kindest people I know, even when correcting gross errors.)

Citations are a language. We need to learn the language for all the reasons above. We can get by with a few phrases laboriously memorized and mispronounced from a tourist book, or we can immerse ourselves in the language and learn it well. Our choice will depend on our purpose: a weekend in France, or convincing colleagues and relatives who our French ancestors were.

If we speak broken French we may be able to find a bathroom, but we are not likely to persuade any French speaker that we know what we are talking about. It's the same with citations and genealogy: We may be able to understand someone who cites incompletely and carelessly, but we may not value their opinion highly. That's just the way of the world. Knowing the language makes it easier for us to talk together, and it shows that you care.

One other point: even if citations were only for finding our way back to the source, we don't always know what the future holds. What is obvious to us sitting in the library or archive may not be obvious to our grandchild 60 years from now. Today it seems hilarious overkill to identify the URL of a census on Ancestry.com or the NARA microfilm publication it derives from. But when Ancestry gets bought or merged out of existence by some as yet unborn Chinese corporation, our descendants may appreciate any clue they can get as to where that information was found. Of course this goes double for less stable web sites.

As genealogists we have to take a wide view. I cannot assume that La Porte is only in Indiana, or only in the United States. One goal of standard citations is that they will be understandable to anyone coming from a different time or place. That's why we put in a lot of context that we personally may know by heart. All those dedicated old folks who carefully pasted newspaper clippings into scrapbooks without labeling or dating them -- they were provincial. We may be grateful to them, but we can't afford to be like them if we want our family histories to last.

And, yes, this does have a personal dimension. I recently encountered the following informal citation:

"Bible record published 1939 by Noel C. Stevenson, Alhambra, California, vol. 1, bible #91."

I can't find it. I am asking an expert genealogy librarian for help, and I'm now asking the readers of this blog: Please embarrass me by locating it easily! If the person who wrote this "good enough" citation had taken only a little more care, there would be no problem.




Harold Henderson, "'Good enough' citations? We can do better," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 June 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day 3 Friday May 10

For logistical reasons only, Friday was my last real day at the conference. Please refer to other bloggers for Saturday!

My day began about 6 am in the nearly deserted free internet area (no problem with too many connections) and segued into the invitational FamilySearch breakfast (assigned tables and assigned places at each), where we learned that they add about 1.7 million new records per day, are desperately in search of Italian-speaking volunteer indexers, and are exploring ways to adapt facial-recognition software to word recognition as a way of indexing handwritten documents.

Dawne Slater-Putt's 8 am talk, "Fail! When the Record Is Wrong," was a boon to note-takers in that she spoke clearly and not too fast. Her bouquet of original records giving direct but erroneous evidence was striking. Takeaway: "Know your ancestor as a person so as not to be blinded by incorrect evidence."

I spent the rest of the morning in a New York intensive. NYGBR co-editor Karen Mauer Green emphasized the difficulties researchers from record-rich areas like New England and the Midwest will find in New York, where some record types are missing, and each of the 62 counties was to some extent a law unto itself. "Clerks essentially did what they want . . . plan to start over with each new county." A substantial aid in this process, the New York Family History Research Guide and Gazetteer, is forthcoming later this year.

NYGBR co-editor Laura DeGrazia gave a more upbeat perspective on the same situation, showing some of the records finds there to be made, such as town clerks' Civil War registers that can include time and place of birth and parents' names. I concluded that New York is the mother of innovative research techniques. And I have to say that if you must leave home for days to hang out in a desert filled with casinos in order to learn about genealogy, there is just no better place to be than in the front row of the hall, hearing DeGrazia and trading thoughts and wisecracks with Kimberly Powell and Michael Hait.

Melinda Henningfield and I chatted with visitors to the APG table in the exhibit area during the lunch hour, and then I retreated to become ready for my 4 pm talk on a Chicago-to-Ohio case study. The evening saw a meeting of mentors in preparation for the early June debut of small discussion groups on Tom Jones's popular new book Mastering Genealogical Proof, being organized by Angela McGhie.

And I know just from syllabus browsing that I had to miss great talks by Debbie Parker Wayne on DNA and Elizabeth Shown Mills on discoveries in the details.

It's now five years since my first NGS conference and I haven't even come close to regretting attending one yet. Don't miss it when it comes within your travel area.



Harold Henderson, "NGS Day 3 Friday May 10," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]