Hi, all! It’s just about time for my favorite genealogy event of the year — RootsTech! I’m particularly excited about the classes I am teaching this year, and I hope to see lots of you there!
The Margarine Moonshiners from Minsk: How Curiosity and Persistence Uncover Buried Secrets: Thursday, 4:30 PM, Ballroom A. (RT1670)
My first class will use the amazing story of the Margarine Moonshiners from Minsk, my ancestors who were imprisoned for selling margarine as butter, as a framework for discussing how crucial it is to be curious and persistent if you want to make big discoveries about your ancestors. I guarantee you the talk will have you gasping and laughing as you learn about a wide range of sources and research techniques that will help you become better researchers, too.
Conducting Story-Driven Research: Saturday, 10:30 AM, Ballroom I. (RT1680)
My second class is about how thinking like a storyteller, and not just a genealogist, can help you improve the quality of the family history you’re sharing with your relatives. This class isn’t only for people who want to write their family history, but for anyone who wants to understand their ancestors’ lives better. If you feel like you’re adding people and records to your tree by rote, you’ll learn something useful!
First things first, the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree starts today, and I’ll be speaking twice!
Today, 4 PM: Story by Story, Preserve Your Family’s History. Stop being daunted by the enormous task of writing your family’s whole story. Learn how to break down your research into individual storylines, tell each one in a compelling way, and over time link these stories together.
Saturday, 3:30 PM: Family Timelines with Treelines.com. With just a few clicks, visualize a set of life events for a group of your ancestors. Learn how to choose the theme for your timeline, select the events, illustrate them, and share the results with family.
I hope those of you who are at Jamboree will stop by and say hi!
My arrival in Burbank caps a few weeks of travel that began with a week of research in Pittsburgh, partly to prepare for my Margarine Moonshiners talk at IAJGS in late July, but mostly to pursue my favorite line of research on my Hepps ancestors from Homestead. This was the family that got me interested in family history as a child and turned me into a genealogist as an adult:
It took two visits to the courthouse to get the records, as it was unexpectedly closed on Tuesday for primaries!
I am very fortunate that for the family history that interests me most, amazing records survive in the Rauh Jewish Archives in Pittsburgh, and this trip was only my second time perusing them. But my trip wasn’t just to go deeper into that material. It was also to speak with archivists around the city to get expert advice on how to pursue all the different leads I have here. Lisa Alzo, David Grinnell at the University of Pittsburgh, Susan Melnick at the Rauh Jewish Archives, and Martha Berg at Rodef Shalom were indispensable in helping me to structure my week. I spent most of my time researching at the University of Pittsburgh Archives Service Center, Carnegie Library, Heinz History Center, and Allegheny County Courthouse (which took two tries, and the second visit I found them about to pack up the records I was looking for to move them permanently to the Carnegie Library!). But I also found time for a quick cemetery visit to see the grave of a great-great-grandmother whose location I discovered a couple years ago.
Even with a whole week, significantly longer than my first visit, I only scratched the surface of what I had hoped to accomplish. Nevertheless, my investigation has exploded into a number of new directions, from tracking down possibly-lost records in the small towns around Pittsburgh to exploring fraternal organizations my ancestors belonged to. I look forward to getting to know even more Pittsburgh-area researchers and archivists in the coming months to start tracking down all of these leads!
But first: lots to do and learn here at Jamboree as I wrap up my two-week stay in California!
Although my great-grandma Fanny arrived at Philadelphia, not Ellis Island, telling her story a couple weeks ago to my fellow participants in Immigration Nation‘s launch event — with the Manhattan skyline behind me and the Statue of Liberty in front of me — enhanced its meaning for me in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Fanny’s story came alive for me years ago when I put myself in her and her mother’s shoes and tried to experience how their separation in Liverpool, 1905 must have felt to them. That exercise was half-imagination and half-empathetic reading of the scant historical record. But that day on Ellis Island, I was surrounded by recent immigrants who shared their own, often difficult, and still ongoing stories to the group, and suddenly immigration no longer felt like this century-old disruption to rescue from history, but a very immediate challenge shaping the lives of those around me, people I would have passed on the street or sat next to on the subway without attempting a similar exercise in empathy.
Collapsing time and cultures in this way was precisely Immigrant Nation‘s goal in bringing together this diverse set of people. Their mission is “to collect a vast range of unique immigrant narratives and experiences and share them with the world,” and even at this one event the range was, indeed, vast. The introductory ice breaker compared how many different languages people at each table spoke (the tables of recent African immigrants won by a wide margin) and how many years spanned the first and last immigrants (a woman at my table with Palatine ancestors helped us to beat the second place table by three centuries). Such incredible diversity! But the mural drawn over the course of the day to illustrate our answers to the universal questions of, “What does home mean to you?”, “Where does your family’s story begin?”, and “What family tradition is meaningful to you?” brought us back to how much more we shared.
No historian needs to be taught the similarities between the past and the present, but rarely does the lesson come across with such immediacy. I am grateful to have been a part of the day.
Five days later I was in Baltimore speaking to the Jewish Genealogy Society of Maryland about trees and stories on Treelines.com. What an impressive group — though the society re-formed less than a year ago, they drew an engaged audience of more than fifty people. I hope they learned something from me about the importance of putting as much effort into sharing our discoveries as we do making them, and I definitely learned a lot from them, as many of the attendees had invaluable research ideas and insight into the WWII family story I used as my main example in the class. (Thanks, guys!)
Now I’m gearing up to speak in a couple days at NGS in Richmond, VA. My talk, “Tools to Help You Share Family Stories,” was selected as the featured talk for the Youth Camp! I’ll be sharing some general storytelling advice, as well as reviewing specific applications that allow you tell stories in different multimedia formats. The talk is targeted as genealogists of all ages, not just the kids, so if you’re looking for ideas and programs for sharing your research with your family, please join me!
And next week I am teaching at the New York Public Library! My class is a computer lab about how to use Treelines to create a family history website for you and your family. If you’re in the NYC area, I would love to see you there.
Dear friends, I sure hope third time’s the charm, because today is supposed to be my Timeline Creation Applications class, presented through the Southern California Genealogical Society’s webinar series. The explanatory timeline above shows how bugs affected first the webinar service provider, then me, causing the delays.
Assuming humans and computers cooperate, the talk will take place this evening from 6-7:30 PM Pacific Time (9 PM Eastern Time, 8 PM Central Time, 7 PM Mountain Time). You need to reserve your spot in advance by following the instructions at this link:
Excited to give my first talk since RootsTech last month!
This Sunday I’ll be speaking to the Monmouth Country Genealogy Society, one of the larger societies in the northeast, about Improving Your Storytelling: Trees and Stories on Treelines.com. What is the point of becoming a better researcher if we don’t become better sharers? Hear ideas for better engaging our families in our genealogical discoveries, and see how the various tools on Treelines.com can bring your whole family together around your shared history.
If you’re in the NY/NJ area, do stop by the Eatontown Community/Senior Center at 72 Broad Street, Eatontown, NJ at 1:30 PM.
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If you can’t make this talk, I have a number of other engagements, online and off, coming up in the next few months. Here’s the list:
Southern California Genealogical Society Webinar Series
The SCGS is one of the preeminent genealogy societies in the U.S., and I will be part of their evening webinar series this year. You can watch me speak from the comfort of your own home!
Wednesday, March 12, 6:00 PM Pacific: Timeline Creation Applications. Learn about tools and techniques for visualizing data in a timeline to make sense of what we know, identify what we don’t, put it all in the context of history, and share findings more clearly.
Tuesday, 5/13, 5:30 PM: Family Timelines with Treelines.com. With just a few clicks, visualize a set of life events for a group of your ancestors. Learn how to choose the theme for your timeline, select the events, illustrate them, and share the results with family.
Saturday, 5/10, 9:30 AM: Tools to Help You Share Family Stories. Whether you’re creating a book, photo album, movie, or website, learn about the latest and greatest tools to make the job fun and easy.
SCGS Jamboree
For me it’s a long haul from the east coast, but Southern California always delivers a great conference with a lot of enthusiastic participants.
Friday, 6/6, 4 PM: Story by Story, Preserve Your Family’s History. Stop being daunted by the enormous task of writing your family’s whole story. Learn how to break down your research into individual storylines, tell each one in a compelling way, and over time link these stories together.
Saturday, 6/7, 3:30 PM: Family Timelines with Treelines.com. With just a few clicks, visualize a set of life events for a group of your ancestors. Learn how to choose the theme for your timeline, select the events, illustrate them, and share the results with family.
IAJGS
This is the first conference I ever attended, but this year is the first time I will be a speaker, and it will be the first time I will give a full-length talk about the famous margarine moonshiners featured in my RootsTech talk!
Tuesday, 7/29, 3:15 PM: The Margarine Moonshiners from Minsk: Conducting Story-Driven Research. In spring 2011 a routine search on my great-grandfather revealed the shocking surprise that he had been incarcerated in Leavenworth. What followed was a rollicking genealogical journey tracing a group of brothers and brothers-in-law recently immigrated from Minsk, who set out to sell margarine as butter in defiance of one the stranger pieces of legislation ever passed. As I retrace my multi-year journey to get to the bottom of his long-concealed chapter in my family learn how you can better pursue the fascinating leads in your own tree when you think like a storyteller.
Wednesday, 7/30, 4:45 PM: Creating a Collaborative Family Website using Treelines.com: In this class you’ll learn how to upload your existing family tree to Treelines or create a tree from scratch, how to add and edit people in your tree, and most importantly, how to create interactive, timeline-driven digital scrapbooks for all the meaningful people and events from your family’s past. At the end you’ll have a solid understanding of the unique ways Treelines allows you to present and share family history, and you’ll be ready to invite family members to join in the fun with you.
Update: Due to emergency Citrix/GoToWebinar maintenance, this webinar had to be postponed to April 9. Boo!
The first timeline (1765)
The Southern California Genealogical Society, sponsors of the popular, annual Genealogy Jamboree Conference, have an amazing webinar series that takes place throughout the year, and I’m excited to take part this week. From the comfort of your own home, you can hear my talk on Timeline Creation Applications. Learn about tools and techniques for visualizing data in a timeline to make sense of what we know, identify what we don’t, put it all in the context of history, and share findings more clearly.
The talk will take place this Wednesday evening from 6-7:30 PM Pacific Time (9 PM Eastern Time, 8 PM Central Time, 7 PM Mountain Time). You need to reserve your spot in advance by following the instructions at this link:
The idea for the talk came to me in the summer of 2011, believe it or not, though I’m glad I waited a few more years to give it, because I’ve made some much better discoveries since then. For an idea so long in gestation, it meant that much more to me that the talk was so well received. Throughout the conference people stopped by my booth or tweeted to say how much they enjoyed it, and last night popular genealogy blogger Randy Seaver posted a review of it.
What a treat – it is informative, funny, and instructive… What an excellent presentation! I loved it. I think every genealogist will love it – please don’t miss this one!
Of course, nothing’s an unqualified hit in this world, and alas, the negative reactions I’ve received so far have come from my nearest and dearest. First, there was my newborn niece (pictured above), who slept through the whole thing! Devastating! Then there were her big sisters, who did manage to sit through part of the talk, but their reactions unfortunately did not suggest that they were especially engaged:
“Can she see us?”
“Is that her house?”
“She said ‘what the heck!!'”*
“Can we watch Caillou instead?”
My older nieces are slightly more engaged… at least while the camera is on them…
(Incidentally, the two five year-olds who watched my talk had a very interesting reaction to the technology. Raised on video-chatting (FaceTime, Skype, &c.), they expected to be able to interact directly with me. My oldest niece moved the cursor on top of my face and wondered why I wasn’t bothered, my friend’s son kept trying to click on me to see what would happen, and neither understood why I wouldn’t answer them.)
Thanks to all of you who watched the talk and shared with me your reactions. It’s been an extremely gratifying experience, but until my nieces’ excitement matches yours, I have more work to do!
* I’m a New Yorker. They’re lucky something much saltier didn’t slip out!
I’m excited to share that starting tomorrow RootsTech will be live-streaming 15 of its sessions, and the very first one will be my talk, “Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family from My Couch: Beginning Internet Genealogy.” There’ll be something in this talk for everyone — if you’re a newbie, you’ll get a comprehensive introduction to the kinds of online resources available to you — and if you’re an experienced genealogist, you’ll hear how I broke down the toughest brick wall in my family tree, plus nine other great stories of surprising, even shocking discoveries.
Best of all — you don’t need to leave your own couch to watch me! Just head to http://www.RootsTech.org at 10:30 AM Mountain Time (12:30 PM Eastern Time, 11:30 AM Central Time, 9:30 AM Pacific TIme) and click on what I’m told will be a very prominent link to the live-streaming section of the site (it’s not there yet, though).
With RootsTech starting on Thursday, I’m excited to share that I’ll be speaking and teaching a number of times in the coming days!
Thursday, 2/6, 10:30 AM: Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family History from my Couch: A Beginner’s Introduction to Internet Genealogy (Hall E — just stay in your seat after the morning keynote!)
Thursday, 2/6, 2 PM: Family Tree Management on Treelines.com (Demo Theater)
Friday, 2/7, 1 PM and Saturday, 2/8, 10:30 AM: Family Timelines with Treelines.com (limited-seating computer lab classes; reserve a spot when you register for the conference)
Friday, 2/7, 4 PM: Story by Story, Preserve Your Family’s History (Ballroom I)
Treelines.com will be in booth 432, right by the Demo Theater. Please stop by to say hello and see the latest-n-greatest on the Treelines site!
And for those of you not attending RootsTech in person, I will have some exciting news to share shortly with ways you can participate from home. Stay tuned!
Yesterday NGS announced the program for its 2014 Family History Conference, which will be held May 7–10 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center and Marriott Hotel located in downtown Richmond, Virginia. The registration brochure is now available online for you to peruse the full conference schedule, including more than 175 lectures, given by a variety of nationally-known speakers and experts including… the founder of Treelines!
Saturday, 5/10, 9:30 AM: Tools to Help You Share Family Stories. Whether you’re creating a book, photo album, movie, or website, learn about the latest and greatest tools to make the job fun and easy.
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Now I’m gearing up to speak in a couple days at NGS in Richmond, VA. My talk, “
Thursday, 2/6, 10:30 AM: Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family History from my Couch: A Beginner’s Introduction to Internet Genealogy (Hall E — just stay in your seat after the morning keynote!)
Yesterday NGS announced the program for its