Time is not on our side

For those planning to submit a portfolio to the Board for the Certification of Genealogists, BCG proposes a 12-month timetable.

Is it a good timetable? That depends on you and your situation. For me, the task was so much bigger than any other genealogy project I'd ever done that it was just hard to wrap my mind around it. But I think we all could use some such timetable . . . and then use it to track our progress so that we can see whether we are likely to get done in time, or whether we will need an extension. I'm a great believer in breaking tasks down into manageable components.

If you're going to seek certification (or undertake any comparably large project), figure out what you're going to give up for the duration. Even if you follow Michael Hait's path of submitting samples of your everyday work on randomly chosen families, it will take longer than you think. 

Seriously. All the genealogists I know are overcommitted. Those I know who are on their second or third extension to complete their portfolios are not there because they don't know how to do the work and write it up. They don't have time.

A former employer evinced little sympathy for people who told him that: "We all have 24 hours a day." He was right in the sense that priorities have to be set. A segmented schedule of the kind BCG proposes will give us a way to measure whether we've got them set right yet, while there is still time to make mid-course corrections.


Harold Henderson, "Time is not on our side," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy registration for January 2015

The following is the SLIG press release on registration for the 12-16 January 2015 session. Obviously I have a vested interest here since I'm co-coordinating one of the courses, but seriously -- if none of these twelve tempts you to spend a week in Salt Lake City next winter, check your pulse.

Registration for SLIG 2015 opens on Saturday, June 14, 2014 at 9:00 AM Mountain Time! Pick your course, so that you are ready to enroll when registration opens as there are limited seats and the courses fill fast. The following tracks are being offered:

• The Family History Law Library (Judy Russell, JD, CG, CGL and Rick Sayre, CG, CGL)
• Beyond the Library: Researching in Original Resource Repositories (John Colletta, Ph.D., FUGA)
  
• Advanced Genealogical Methods (Thomas W. Jones, Ph.D., CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS)
• Finding Immigrant Origins (David Ouimette, CG)
  
• Advanced German Research (F. Warren Bittner, CG)
• Advanced Research Tools: Post-War Military Records (Craig R. Scott, CG, FUGA)
  
• Resources & Strategies for United States Research, Part I (Paula Stuart-Warren, CG, FUGA, FMGS)
• From Confusion to Conclusion: Writing Proof Arguments (Kimberly Powell and Harold Henderson, CG)
• Getting Started with Genetic Genealogy (Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, CGL)
  
• Advanced DNA Analysis (CeCe Moore, Angie Bush)
• Diving Deeper into New England (Advanced) (D. Joshua Taylor, MA)
  
• Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum (Angela McGhie)

Immerse yourself in a specific genealogical topic for a week-long educational opportunity that is unparalleled. Many of the courses are interactive and highlight on site research at the Family History Library (FHL) as well as one-on-one consultations with the course coordinators and instructors. These individuals are genealogical experts and provide guidance and insight that may help you overcome those brick walls and move forward with your research.

Attendees have time to explore Salt Lake City’s many attractions as well as spend time outside of the course researching at the FHL. The library is a short walk from the Institute’s location.

When making your travel plans, you may also want to consider attending the Association of Professional Genealogist’s Professional Management Conference (PMC), which will be held the 

Thursday and Friday before the Institute begins. You can check their website (https://www.apgen.org/conferences/index.html) for more information. You can experience two great events being held back-to-back at one location!

Sign up before October 31st and you will save over 10% off your registration. Become a member of UGA and increase your savings even more. 

​For more information on the Institute and registration information go to 

http://www.infouga.org/cpage.php?pt=42.

Harold Henderson, "Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy registration for January 2015," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday: Genealogy in bulk? Twelve suggestions

When I have a choice, I prefer to work on one genealogy problem at a time. But there are other times -- such as when the task becomes identifying and documenting all descendants and spouses in three of four generations.

And in order to meet standards, we have to find the people first. Most of the following items work better when working on people who lived on both sides of the Dark Age in the US (that is, before and after 1850). Deep in the Dark Age or well up into the 20th century would be another post, actually several different posts depending on the location.

* When possible, do the work in a good library or archive where it's easy to switch from on line to on paper. Some on-line materials are hard to navigate, and some on-line providers omit crucial material like prefaces and introductions where authors and compilers tell something (intentionally or otherwise) about how they did their work. For me that place is in  Fort Wayne. More info here.  One practical reason to make it the HQ-away-from-home for this work is that it has the world's best collection of genealogical periodicals, indexed on PERSI. Get the basic info from Find My Past and then get the relevant call numbers from the online catalog.

* If this is a perennial project, check the old folders, binders, emails, and notes created long ago and scattered on various web sites or cloud locations for clues that may mean more now than they did at the time.

* Use property and probate records if they are within reasonable driving distance, or if they have been digitized. (Not using property records could land you in trouble. Using probate records will not be the death of you.)

* Don't start by searching broadly. Approximate a birth/marriage/death date and place and look for candidate parents/spouses/children then and there. Check metasites for digital newspaper availability.

* If you have a region or state, search broadly within those confines, for instance New England. Peruse Michael Hait's inevitably incomplete Online State Resources for Genealogy 3.0.

* Ancestry and FamilySearch have some of the same data, but their indexes are not interchangeable. Search both. If you have candidate parents, search Family Search's main site using only their names in the parent boxes.

* Google Books and Internet Archive often harbor old periodicals as well as old genealogy books. A lot of microfilms have been digitized and uploaded to Internet Archive as well.

* Less famous venues can be useful when searching broadly, such as the GLO site for federal-land states. While we're waiting for the master newspaper site to emerge, give a try to the larger collections of on-line city directories on Fold3 and Ancestry as well as local providers. For tips see this metadirectory. (But as you close in on the person, the ability to survey every year of a given city's directory becomes crucial.)

* Find A Grave is the best, but it is not the only cemetery site. Also, it contains random unsourced assertions about unpictured grave markers. Which brings me to . . .

* Don't be a source snob. Put on your hazmat suit and acid-resistant gloves, or whatever you think you need, and dive into genealogical dumpsters. Source-free clues appearing there may be verifiable elsewhere -- or at least may lead back to a contemporary document of some kind.

* Use ArchiveGrid within reason, especially if your target people had literate and gossipy neighbors, or belonged to record-creating institutions or societies.

* Don't forget to write it up! Local, state, or national, genealogy editors everywhere are waiting for you.

Enjoy the bulk-genealogy chase. In my experience, it is likely to provide both surprises and -- a bouquet of interesting problems, each of which will require up-close and personal work to solve.




Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/6208669725 per Creative Commons


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday: Genealogy in bulk? Twelve suggestions," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 9 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy resources for La Porte County, Indiana -- work in progress

Some of the northwest district Indiana county genealogists will be getting together today in La Porte, so I finally got serious about starting to put together a list of research resources for this medium-sized county. (You can either follow the link or go to midwestroots.net and click on "La Porte County Indiana" in the lower right-hand corner of the page.)

It's amazing what local genealogists have accomplished over the years. Except for the obituary indexes, where I got overwhelmed, I have tried to credit the authors/compilers when I could identify them.

The guide at present comes in four unequal-sized sections:

• Local Repositories and Societies (courthouse; libraries, archives, and museums; and on-line)

• Periodicals (two county newsletters and the two state periodicals)

• Indexes and Abstracts (70 and counting: for births, cemeteries, court records, deaths, divorces, funeral homes, land, marriages, military, naturalizations, newspapers, obituaries, periodicals, probates, professionals, and schools)

• Other Guides (the FamilySearch Wiki, the Indiana Genealogical Society's research page, the 1939 WPA Inventory of County Archives, and Linkpendium).

So far it's up to eight pages printed out, and as you can see I've stuck pretty much to indexes and the like, without yet starting to describe the actual records! It is a work in progress, so corrections and additions are welcome.

Harold Henderson, "Genealogy resources for La Porte County, Indiana -- work in progress," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Wandering through the wilderness

Item: I am in possession of a new hardbound self-published genealogy book with enough hundreds of pages that it could be dangerous to try to pick it up one-handed. It obviously cost plenty of time and money to create. It contains a fair number of original documents and many photographs; few if any reference notes; a name index but no place index. For relatives who are not close, the organization is hard to follow; for non-relatives looking for possible cousin connections, it's discouraging.

Item: Several recently self-published books persist in using the Henry system of distinguishing relatives. (I did too, back in the day.) By this system I can easily distinguish 1-11-10-12-8-1-1 from his cousin 1-11-10-12-5-1-4. Got it?

Item: The largest US genealogy society surveyed its members last month. Nearly half of those responding plan to attend NO genealogy conferences this year. Bear in mind that these are people who already care enough to (a) send the New England Historic Genealogical Society at least $75 per year, (b) read their weekly on-line newsletter, and (c) respond to their weekly poll. Imagine the percentage for those who lack these characteristics! (Actually I don't have to imagine. In one society I know, the attendance rate at a national conference two hours away last year was 2%.)

Item: And among those who do attend conferences and the like, prolific blogger and instructor James Tanner finds little to cheer about. He taught a class on MyHeritage.com in which "only three or so participants in a class of thirty . . . had even heard of the program." On other occasions he fielded comments from people who weren't interested in the program because it was based in Israel, who weren't interested in FamilySearch because it was "Mormon," and who asked "whether FamilySearch owned Ancestry.com."

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that a lot of people are not learning. I don't think it follows that we should quit. Clearly we need all kinds of genealogy education, more of it, and new ways to spread the word.



Harold Henderson, "Wandering through the wilderness," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 June 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.]

Good news for Ohio researchers: two lifetimes of newspapers!

These may not be news to you, but they're new to me and in a quick look I didn't find them in Michael Hait's compendium Online State Resources for Genealogy 3.0, nor on James Marks's The Ancestor Hunt:

Newspapers for Johnstown, Licking County, Ohio, have been digitized and are searchable 1884-1987. If you're close enough to wonder, Johnstown is in the northwest quarter of the county, near the Franklin and Delaware County line.

Likewise the Grove City Record in southwestern Franklin County, 1927-2011 with eight outliers in 1908.




Harold Henderson, "Good news for Ohio researchers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 May 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]