Two events to fit into your Salt Lake City plans!

Midwestern genealogists have two new reasons to wish that their ancestors had been more tolerant of the Mormon settlers in Nauvoo in western Illinois in the 1840s. If they had, then two big genealogy opportunities coming up in Salt Lake City might have been a lot closer!

On Saturday October 11, the Board for Certification of Genealogists will present six lectures from top genealogists Elissa Scalise Powell, Judy G. Russell, Stefani Evans, and Elizabeth Shown Mills -- free and open to the public at the Family History Library.

And this coming January 8-9, the Association of Professional Genealogists will hold its annual star-studded Professional Management Conference, with talks and workshops focused on professionalism both in the business and the expertise senses, at the downtown Hilton Hotel.

Both are open to anyone, not only to members of any particular group. APG is offering a discount to young (under-25) genealogists.



Harold Henderson, "Two events to fit into your Salt Lake City plans!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 October 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

More on the Toughest Genealogy Course

Your tutors: William Litchman, Thomas W. Jones, Jay Fonkert, Stefani Evans, and Marke Lowe. Your task: figure out their genealogy puzzles, one a day, until the week ends and the 2013 Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy closes shop until next January.

Last year I described the 2012 version of this Advanced Evidence Practicum as the toughest genealogy course I ever took, but now, after this second round (with different problems) I think it may be the toughest course I ever took in any subject. For me it re-emphasized the difference between being able to say what the right research step is, and being able to recognize the situation and do it in real time. It can be crushing to work for 23 1/2 hours and come to late-afternoon class discussion with 16 fellow students and the puzzle-poser, and learn how and where your research went off the tracks. But if genealogists can be mules, this two-by-four definitely gets their attention.

Some think that doing "speed genealogy" reinforces bad habits. Others say that getting prompt decisive responses to research mistakes will reinforce good habits. The course will be back for a third incarnation next year at SLIG, under the careful coordination of Angela McGhie and Kimberly Powell.

Meanwhile, a lot of potential variants on the practicum model are being discussed around the tables in Salt Lake City. Look for them -- and related approaches to advanced genealogy education -- to start popping up in the not too distant future.


Harold Henderson, "More on the Toughest Genealogy Course," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 January 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Are you On Board?

Arguably the thrice-yearly newsletter of the Board for the Certification of Genealogists, OnBoard, has the highest information per ounce of any genealogy publication. In the current (May) issue it's Tom Jones 1, "source snobbery" 0; and Stefani Evans shows just how closely we can analyze even a derivative source.

You do not need to be certified in order to subscribe, and a subscription also supports an organization crucial to maintaining and advancing genealogy research standards.

If you don't have $15 to spare, or aren't sure, check out the generous sampling of articles published 1995-2010 under "Skillbuilding" on the BCG web site. Whatever our level of research, reading these short articles will make us better.





Thomas W. Jones, "Perils of Source Snobbery," OnBoard, vol. 18 no. 2 (May 2012):9-10, 15.



Harold Henderson, "Are you On Board?" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 June 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.]

Methodology Monday with Stefani Evans and Alletta Sadler

Does a genealogist really need to read "Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century America: The Case of the Middle Class" from a 1993 issue of the Annual Review of Sociology? Or The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class (2001) by Burton J. Bledstein and Robert D. Johnston?

Hint: The third footnote in the second article in this month's National Genealogical Society Quarterly cites these two publications and four more like them.

Knowing the workings of class divisions in eighteenth-century America helped Stefani Evans, CG, to identify two of Alathea "Alletta" Sadler's children in New York City and Poughkeepsie when no records of any kind did so. (Between them they went on to have 21 children, so there's genealogical significance here.) Her husbands, their associates, and her descendants were skilled artisans and craftsmen -- people who "built houses, published newspapers, crafted watches, stitched clothing, and populated cities. They employed unskilled laborers from the bottom of the social pyramid, and they sought patronage from the upper classes, who sat at the top and did not work with their hands."

IOW, "occupation" is not just a blank to fill in on some ancestral checklist, it can be a methodological tool. Join NGS and read the whole thing to find out how.

Connoisseurs of documented negative searches (hello, fellow transitional genealogists!) will like this article. The sentence, "James and Henry Sadler's numerous transactions reveal no contact with Alletta or her associates," has its own 20-line footnote in fine print documenting all the places where they didn't meet up.

And connoisseurs of "difficult" sources will enjoy seeing how Evans deals with a 1928 transcript of an alleged 1851 Bible record that includes manifest errors but also forms a part of her case. It's from the Kewanee Chapter of the DAR in Illinois.

South Bend in NYGBR

In the January 2008 issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (contents not on line), Stefani Evans, CG, finds circumstantial evidence of the identity of Nathan MacCorkle's wife Catherine that might satisfy a hobbyist. She pursues the case to find an unusual piece of direct contemporary evidence confirming Catherine's Dodge parentage. Nathan and Catherine lived in New York and Pennsylvania; their youngest two children wound up in South Bend (St. Joseph County), Indiana -- Emma Elizabeth (MacCorkle) Housekeeper 1850-1918, and James Monroe MacCorkle 1853-1925.

The article doesn't carry them forward, so of course I had to go look. The 1900 census enumerated J. M. and Anna (____) "McCorkle" and six children in the city's First Ward, and "Nick" and Emma Housekeeper with one child present (out of a total of four) in the Second Ward. J.M. was a clerk, and Nick a blacksmith.