NGS Day Four (Saturday the 12th) -- the end . . . or is it?

Leaving the Saturday midafternoon lecture, we walked past the windows that overlook the exhibit hall. The vendors and organizations were taking down their booths.

The little world of the conference was being dismantled before our eyes. "Our revels now are ended." I don't suppose any non-genealogist would be able to take what we genealogists do as serious reveling, but we enjoy it.

My talk on indirect evidence was well-attended and well-received. Other events I saw:

David Lambert, the "online genealogist" of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, gave a quick outline of emigration from New England and wound up with an eloquent appeal for the listeners not to lose any more stories, and write them up before it's too late.

Michael Hait alerted his audience to the many state and local sources for genealogy records available OUTSIDE OF Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. They may not be immediately obvious to search engines, and the sites themselves may not be logically organized, but being able to access the records from home is worth some extra effort. In Chester County, Pennsylvania, the recorder of deeds has deeds online from 1960 forward. Elsewhere, in the county archives portion of the site, are indexes to deeds 1688-1830.

Having shown the good stuff out there, he also reminded us not to let internet availability determine our research plans! Most records aren't on line and won't be soon.

Word in the hallways is that during the conference APG, BCG, Indiana, Kentucky, Germany did well in attracting new members. (I did not do a comprehensive survey.)

I had hatched nefarious plans to take Thomas Jones, Elizabeth Shown Mills, and Barbara Vines Little home with me -- or rather, to purchase CDs of their talks to listen to in the car on the five-hour drive home. Unfortunately, the demand was such that the good folks at Jamb had run out of all the ones I wanted. I will get them later on by mail. So our revels really aren't quite ended, now or ever.


Harold Henderson, "NGS Day Four (Saturday the 12th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 13 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.]

NGS Day Two (Thursday the 10th)

Games conferencegoers play: Many vendors and groups have little ribbons that can be stuck on in layers so that they trail down from your NGS nametags. Some folks compete to get the longest string of ribbons. My friend Michael Hait doesn't go for that, but he does have two ribbons that you don't see the same person wearing very often: one identifis him as a speaker (two talks Saturday), the other identifies him as attending his first national conference!

Other things that came my way today:

Jana Sloan Broglin explained Ohio's fantastically complex systems of distributing land in the state. I believe sixteen different systems were tried out. She gave accompanying glimpses of the relevant American history and idiosyncratic Ohio pronunciations (Newark = Nurk, Putnam = Putman). In some counties you need to know both the metes-and-bounds land system AND the rectangular survey system (or an experimental variant) in order to research land records. In her home county of Fulton (as well as Williams and Lucas), early deeds in the northern part of the county have to be sought in Michigan, a result of the Ohio-Michigan War ("a cow died"). If you love land records -- and genealogists pretty much have to -- you'll love Ohio!

Stefani Evans carefully described an ongoing project under the title "Red Herrings and a Stroke of the Dead Palsy," which included a monumental red herring in which a Revolutionary War regiment's record somehow migrated 500 miles! I took away this quote: "If we don't look at each detail in each document, we're going to reach wrong conclusions." Stefani's reflective style itself was a reminder that, as researchers, we need to remain calm in the midst of conflicting and ambiguous records.

The Association of Professional Genealogists' "Gathering of the Chapters" had representatives from all over the US. Many chapters cover a wide area, and the new availability of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar should make it easier to meet and greet without enduring long car trips. We even had a five-week-old "member" in attendance.

The "night at the library" -- the renowned Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County -- was in full swing when I left early, having located one of my coveted obscure articles. The genealogists outnumbered the staff, who were good-natured about the crowd, and in my case went the extra mile to find a periodical that the regular retrievers couldn't.

Tomorrow's my turn to do some talking instead of listening, with a talk in the 9:30 am slot (Indianapolis Orphan Asylum), so it's early to bed...


Harold Henderson, "NGS Day Two (Thursday the 8th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day One (Wednesday the 9th)

Some folks sleep through the opening plenary session; today they missed the amazing story of the 1848 Cincinnati panoramic daguerreotype and the details of everyday life it captured -- now that it can be digitally and microscopically examined. Check it out.

Later on . . .

. . . Jeanne Bloom explained proof arguments. “If you want to break through a brick wall, write down what you know and it will reveal the holes in your argument." In an interesting analogy she also compared the elements of a proof argument to the loom, warp, and woof that go together to make up a tapestry.

. . . Marie Melchiori gave an always-helpful introduction and review of ways of accessing military medial records in the National Archives, followed by a series of examples that left us wanting to camp in the National Archives for a year or two. "You don't ever use one set of records as an end result, you use them as a stepping-stone to others." Thus the file of a US medical officer who later served for the Confederacy included a postwar request for amnesty, opening up a new record set for investigation.

. . . The annual writing contest of the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE, nevertheless frequently pronounced "Ifshwee") remains open until June 3. Visit ISFHWE for more information and to download the PDF informational package.

. . . I haven't heard and haven't asked about the conference attendance this year. But at the two booths where I'm volunteering, the Indiana Genealogical Society and the Association of Professional Genealogists both had successful days making new friends and acquiring new members too.

. . . in my continuing series of scheduling train wrecks, the Ancestry "VIP Reception" came at the same time as the Geneabloggers' meetup. I finally ended up at Ancestry, where I heard that they now have 10 billion records on line. Their $99 autosomal DNA program is coordinated with Ancestry trees, so the results may (for example) actually name your (alleged) fourth cousin. Their new semantic index for city directories is a major improvement over OCR in that the computers can now understand which words are names, which occupations, etc. Among newly added collections is a 1798 London land tax never microfilmed or digitized. They're emphasizing mobile devices more and more. Their 1940 census indexing reportedly continues to involve "select offshore vendors" who are indexing "almost every field."



Harold Henderson, "NGS Day One (Wednesday the 9th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day Zero (Tuesday the 8th)

Cincinnati, National Genealogical Society --

Arriving at a conference is the best of times and the worst of times -- you don't know where ANYTHING is, but old friends pop up at random intervals. I knew I was in the right place when the registration clerk said, "The elevators are right over there by the brick wall."

FamilySearch held a blogger-appreciation-and-encouragement dinner, inviting bloggers to join their "Blog Ambassador" program for the 1940 census indexing project. We also learned that Chief Genealogy Officer David Rencher has started blogging, but it will be his observations, not official FamilySearch stuff. The food was local and excellent, although the "Chip Wheelies" would not fit well into a long-term low-calorie regimen.

Several of us had to leave (reluctantly) in the midst of Paul Nauta's presentation, but not before we learned that FS has 530 million images on line (37% from the US) and 1.7 billion indexed (63% from the US).

We whizzed down one flight of stairs to the Association of Professional Genealogists' roundtable on mentoring. (I was a panelist along with Stefani Evans, Jay Fonkert, and Claire Bettag; Craig Roberts moderated.) From the APG point of view, mentoring takes many forms, some of which we can facilitate more easily than others. Claire suggested that APG needs to emphasize that the mailing list, the webinars, the mentoring discussion sessions are all in fact forms of mentoring although they don't all bear the label. Craig reported his finding that when someone asked him to mentor them it rarely worked well, whereas when he took the initiative and offered to mentor someone else that worked better. It was also suggested that I put forth a book on the subject, but a later blog post will have to suffice for now.

As is usually the case with APG roundtables, the participants stuck around and talked afterwards. It was a good hour after the end of the formal program before the last three holdouts actually left the room, still talking (but you knew that) and realizing that tomorrow is another day filled with enough formal conference activities that Tuesday will seem like an oasis of tranquility.


Harold Henderson, "NGS Day Zero (Tuesday the 8th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 9 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]