This past week I attended the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium (http://www.nergc.org/) in Springfield, MA. It was my first solo road trip to Massachusetts and was overall a great conference.
Here are some highlights from each day:
Wednesday (Pre-Conference Day)
Springfield Genealogical Bus Tour - we visited the Forbes Library to see the presidential Calvin Coolidge collection, lunch at the new Irish Cultural Center, a visit to the Springfield Armory and then a quick drive by the Springfield cemetery. Very fun tour - only wish we had more time to see more.
NextGen Meetup - we had a happy hour meet and greet with a few members and discussed genealogy.
MOSH Reception - meet and greet reception at the Lyman & Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History and Archives. There was also a tour of the local archives and library held at the museum.
Thursday
Opening session with Mary Tedesco. She discussed how genealogy research has evolved over time from the earliest genealogical society to the GEDCOM file development.
Luncheon with speaker Thomas MacEntee - he discussed how we have more privacy today than our ancestors, where so many details were captured in newspapers
Death Records as a Starting Point by F. Warren Bittner - open discussion on different questions to ask when reviewing a very small death notice record
Genealogy Do-Over: A Year of Learning from Past Mistakes by Thomas MacEntee - this course discusses how to conduct a genealogy do-over and do a "reset" on your research
The Cemetery: A Valuable Resource for Genealogists by Brenda Sullivan (The Gravestone Girls) - this course discussed the different symbols used on headstones that tell more about an ancestors life (occupation, social memberships, etc).
Friday
Jewish Names and Eastern European Locations: Who the Heck is Ida Gerskill by Meredith Hoffman - discussed how to search for records using different Yiddish variations and Soundex techniques
Locating Famine Immigrants in Griffith's Valuation by Donna Moughty - excellent course on how to read Griffith's Valuation records
Mapping Irish Locations Online by Pamela Guye Holland - discussed the different locations and jurisdictions of Ireland and how to review each of the maps available.
Jumping the Pond: Finding the Origins of Your Irish Ancestor by Donna Moughty - discussed how to use records in the U.S. to get back to Ireland
Ukrainian Genealogy by Michelle Chubenko - this course had a lot of great information for conducting Eastern European research
Banquet with speaker Kenyatta Berry - she discussed some favorite moments behind the scenes of Genealogy Road Show
Saturday
NYC Municipal Archives: Undiscovered Collections & Vital Records - gave an overview of the types of records available at the NYC Municipal Archives with some samples from the NYG&B book on the NYC Municipal Archives
Using Online Resources to Find and Analyze the Law - this was an interesting approach that I haven't seen in other conferences about the different legal resources available to look at cases that involve your ancestors
Luncheon with speaker Jane Wilcox - she shared stories from her female ancestors and the types of artifacts left behind that tell more of their stories
Understanding Probate and Deed Records in New England by David Allan Lambert - a great overview of the different types of probate and land records available with most collections available at the New England Historical Genealogical Society
Family Clusters and Chain Migrations: Keys to Tracing Immigrant Ancestors by Shellee A. Morehead - discussed how to trace entire clusters of families, friends, neighbors that may come from the same area of Europe
Banquet with speaker Thomas MacEntee - he discussed some tips on how to work with other genealogists and archivists
A family history blog where I share stories and tips to help you with your family research.
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Tracing My Prince Edward Island Ancestors Through Newspapers:
Several generations of my father's family immigrated from Ireland to Prince Edward Island, Canada before ultimately coming to the United States. One of my favorite web sites to research my ancestors is http://islandnewspapers.ca. It's a web site managed by the Robertson Library at the University of Prince Edward Island. Newspapers are digitized back to the early 1800's through the early 1990's. My favorite newspaper to find obituaries and other articles is The Guardian. It contains a wealth of information, including information about current events going on at that time throughout the world.
Sadly the newspaper articles aren't indexed like other newspaper sites (think: Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank). I would love to help out on an indexing project for this site to help make a database available. Optical character recognition software was used to digitize the newspapers that is used through the search function. This site can be compared to Old Fulton Post Cards. You have to use different search terms to find articles that pertain to your family and not every reference will come up if a character was read differently by the OCR software.
Some tips for using IslandNewspapers:
1. Don't rely on asterisks for wild card searches - due to the OCR you may be drastically reducing your search
2. Try different spelling variations for surnames
3. Not all women are recorded with their first name. You may have to use variations of the following "Mrs Bernard Rooney, "Mrs Rooney", "Miss Rooney" to pull up possible articles
4. Browse newspaper editions around the time of the event you're researching to see if you can find articles pertaining to that event. Obituaries were recorded weeks, sometimes months after the time of death (particularly if the person died overseas).
5. Use the year filters on the left hand side to narrow down your searches based on when your ancestor lived.
6. Search using the towns your ancestors lived in along with the surname. It will help bring up other possible ancestors living in the same area.
7. Don't discount smaller articles - there's a wealth of information about people that lived on Prince Edward Island. Newspapers were akin to our social media today for keeping in touch on what everyone is doing and where they are going.
Sadly the newspaper articles aren't indexed like other newspaper sites (think: Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank). I would love to help out on an indexing project for this site to help make a database available. Optical character recognition software was used to digitize the newspapers that is used through the search function. This site can be compared to Old Fulton Post Cards. You have to use different search terms to find articles that pertain to your family and not every reference will come up if a character was read differently by the OCR software.
Some tips for using IslandNewspapers:
1. Don't rely on asterisks for wild card searches - due to the OCR you may be drastically reducing your search
2. Try different spelling variations for surnames
3. Not all women are recorded with their first name. You may have to use variations of the following "Mrs Bernard Rooney, "Mrs Rooney", "Miss Rooney" to pull up possible articles
4. Browse newspaper editions around the time of the event you're researching to see if you can find articles pertaining to that event. Obituaries were recorded weeks, sometimes months after the time of death (particularly if the person died overseas).
5. Use the year filters on the left hand side to narrow down your searches based on when your ancestor lived.
6. Search using the towns your ancestors lived in along with the surname. It will help bring up other possible ancestors living in the same area.
7. Don't discount smaller articles - there's a wealth of information about people that lived on Prince Edward Island. Newspapers were akin to our social media today for keeping in touch on what everyone is doing and where they are going.
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