NERGC 2017 - Thursday

My Day 1 of #NERGC2017 began by meeting some blogging buddies (in person!) and then Mary Tedesco's inspirational opening talk. Genealogy is more popular than ever and we have so many more tools than when I began 19 years ago.

Mary pointed out that microfilm technology revolutionized genealogy by unlocking documents that were once only available in person.

Now DNA is revolutionizing our way of thinking about building family trees as well as expanding our knowledge of ancestors. The conference was buzzing about DNA!

I attended Carol McCoy's excellent talk on finding elusive ancestors who seem to be missing from the census. She showed that some ancestors are really there, simply misindexed or not on the correct page. Top tip: Compare the census images and indexes from multiple sources (Family Search and Ancestry and Heritage Quest, for example).

My wonderful friends Mary and Ray helped me set up the projector in room 3 for my talk Planning a Future for Your Family's Past. Lots of good questions from the audience about protecting photos, in particular, and how to resolve potential fights over family artifacts when more than one person wants them. My top tip: Start now to caption your photos so the next generation will know who's who!

Next, I attended Kathryn Smith Black's presentation, "Lawyer or Sawyer? Using the British Census." Good techniques for finding my hubby's UK ancestors. Especially liked audience participation guessing what the handwriting says on these old census forms!

Then my conference day ended with the blogging SIG, led by Heather Rojo. Great fun to visit with bloggers from around New England and swap stories, tips, plans. And the conference is in full swing...more posts to come as the sessions continue.