The Shamrock Genealogist

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Showing posts from January, 2018

RootsTech is Almost Here!

It's T minus 27 days until RootsTech 2018! And of course I have been counting. It's the largest genealogy conference that I have ever been to. Last year was my first time and I can honestly say it was one of the most amazing experiences I ever had. It's such a lovely feeling to be surrounded by others that share your love (read addiction) of genealogy and to meet so many friends that I met online in Facebook groups and my #genchat and #iamnextgen friends. RootsTech was the first time I really took a solo vacation. To spend an entire week devoted to something I'm so passionate about. I feel like I've come a long way since I first started researching when I was 18 years old and just trying to learn more about my paternal grandmother. It feels fitting that I was just accepted to have my photo below displayed at the RootsTech Photo + Story Competition. This is my paternal grandmother who really inspired my start of genealogy - I feel her with me and I'm glad that ...

Protesting Runs in the Family

The art of protest and practicing civil disobedience is a trait that I have seen in many families, including mine. In particular several members of my family like to participate in marches. My father marched in Washington, D.C. during the Vietnam war. He was near peope that were tear gassed. You could say he was just another hippie but he didn't believe in the war. He reported for his medical physical and was one number away from being called up for the draft. During college I participated in several marches, including Take Back the Night as well as the March for Women's Lives in D.C. This is when I started to practice activism with the Women's Center at SUNY Oswego. These experiences truly changed my life as it gave me a voice to my experiences. When I was a young teenager I was involved in a very abusive relationship that nearly killed me. It has been hard to trust others with my story as not everyone believed me. That's why the #MeToo movement is so powerful and...

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words and is a Snapshot of Memories

Over the past week I have been re-examining and seeing out more pictures of my family and ancestors. I love to find documents detailing my ancestors' service in the military, when/whom they married, how many children they had. That doesn't compare to seeing a picture of a family member I never met or seeing a picture of a family member when they were about my age in the prime of their life, getting married and starting to have children. As I mentioned in my blog post last week I officially started doing genealogy when I was 18. That wasn't when I started to seek out family pictures. I was probably about 10 years old when I started digging through the photos that we had put in some photo boxes, not sorted, no names or dates on the back (with the exception of a few Polaroids and more recent photos where the date was time stamped - a great feature!). I would bug my mom and ask her "Who is that?" "What year/". I later invested in photo safe pens so I ...

What Was My Starting Point for Genealogy?

I'm participating in the 52Ancestors challenge issued by Amy Johnson Crow and the AncestorChallenge2018 issued by David Allen Lambert. Each involve hightlighting an ancestor in genealogy, which I will be blogging about and sharing via social media. The prompt for 52 Ancestors is "Start". I've decided to start with how I got started in genealogy, a question that I am asked frequently at conferences and other events. I want to say out loud no, I'm not a beginner. I've been researching for 15+ years. I just have a really young face. I first started researching my family history when I was 18 years old. I was a first year student who was taking a genetics course for my zoology major. One of our assignments was to build a family tree and conduct interviews with family members to obtain detailed medical history. It felt awkward to ask the females in our family when their last menstrual period was, how many pregnancies, how many miscarriages, etc. Really perso...