Ohio Genealogical Conference 2017

The Ohio Genealogical Conference was 26-29 April at the Kalahari Resort outside of Sandusky, Ohio. While it is too late for you to attend this year's conference, there is always next year!

This is an incredible opportunity for genealogists to augment or refresh their research skills. The conference always includes nationally renowned speakers on a vast array of topics.

I attended one day of the three day event on Friday, the 28th. There are six sessions each day and the biggest problem is that there are so many really great programs, that it is nearly impossible to choose which one to go to. But choose we must.

Pictures and recordings are not allowed during the session but I did steal a couple of fuzzy opening screen shots.

1. The first session of the day started at 8 a.m.. Since I was attending for only a single day, that meant leaving Medina very early in the morning. I arrived at 7:45 and got my registration packet and made it with time to spare to listen to Peggy Clemens Lauritzen's presentation on West Virginia genealogy.

The statues in the corridors were adorable.

Peggy stressed the importance of knowing the historical timeline for Virginia and West Virginia's history. She also emphasized the importance of knowing the migration trails, so you can better understand WHY your ancestors moved into an area. She recommended the Wiki at FamilySearch.org to learn more about migration trails. That is available HERE. The third topic that Peggy spoke about was knowing the ethnic background of your ancestors. The English, Germans and Scots-Irish tended to settle in separate areas and followed different customs.

                ENGLISH               SCOTS-IRISH           GERMAN
Settled -  E. Shenandoah         W. Shenandoah             E. Shenandoah 
Religion - Anglican/Baptist     Presbyterians                Lutheran/Protestant
Built first - Church                     Tavern                          Barn   

Finally, Peggy talked about two important online resources when researching West Virginia ancestors:
FamilySearch.org
West Virginia Archives and History

2. Chris Staats is  a well known speaker in the Ohio genealogy sphere, so I was really looking forward to his presentation on Blogging. He specifically covered blogging with WordPress. I don't use WordPress, so it was very informative to me. It seems like an easy and versatile software to use.

He was specifically talking about blogging on your family history. You can use a blog to get help with a research problem or to post about a solution to a problem. Some of the blogs that he recommends are Lisa Also's and Randy Seaver. He also mentioned several other  tricks, such as using draw.io for making graphics and using a chart generator from Kid Zone.

3.  The next session I attended was about tracking your ancestors who liked to move around a lot. Titled "Tracking Your Spinning Ancestors Without Getting Dizzy" by Tina Lyons.

Sometimes, your ancestors weren't really moving from place to place, but the county's, state's or country's borders changed around them. The research techniques to solve the issue is the same in either case.

4. This was my favorite session of the day! Using Social Media for genealogy. Amie Browser Tennant was an energetic and entertaining speaker. When you have hit a snag in your research, consider turning to social media for FREE HELP when the resources you need are too far away or you just don't know what is out there.

She covered Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

On Facebook, she recommends using the FB groups for the state or county where you're researching and for Special Interest Groups (SIG) like for DNA and genealogy. I immediately tried this on my smart phone and found a group for one of my surnames in southern Ohio, the TAGGs.

Twitter is text based and she recommended following relevant people, experts and groups. Each tweet is limited to 140 characters, so you quickly learn to be concise. I may tiptoe into these waters over the next several months.

Pinterest is driven by pictures whose captions are hyperlinks to more information. By "pining" the ones you like, Pinterest "learns" to feed you more of the same.

She would be a perfect speaker for here in Medina!

5. OneNote software comes with the Microsoft Office Suite. Kelli Bergheimer covered its features. Basically, OneNote is:

• A Digital Notebook
• Structured place for random notes & ideas
• An area for collections
• Is SEARCHABLE

She prefers OneNote to Evernote because  your files are always under  your control. Evernote stores your information on the "cloud" which I think makes it more accessible.

If your favorite history book has been digitized and is available as a downloadable PDF, you can save it to OneNote and access it anywhere you can access your OneNote folders.

For genealogical purposes you can:

• Track your DNA matches
• Take notes
• Keep track of cousins
• Have folders for each surname where you store your research.
• Save your lists of IDs and passwords for all your different digital accounts.
• Can be password protected.

Adorable hippos

6.  Dr. Michael Lacopo covered researching your ancestors in Pennsylvania. He started by emphasizing following the Genealogical Proof Standard. He covered all the different resources:

• Check out the Family Search Wiki on Pennsylvania
• Church records, unlike other records, your ancestors didn't have to have money to go to church.
• Tax Records - for anyone who lived in Pennsylvania after 1750
• Court Records
• Court of Common Pleas
• Court of Quarter Sessions
• Court of Oyer & Terminer
• Business Records
• ArchiveGrid - the new endeavor from the folks at WorldCat that describes and directs you to historical collections in archives around the world.

All in all, it was a very educational, exciting and exhausting day!

That evening, I was inducted into the First Families of Ohio lineage society.

 

Ohio Genealogical Society Annual Conference

Logo from the 2016 Ohio Genealogical Conference

The Annual Ohio Genealogical Society Conference was this past weekend, April 28-30 at Great Wolf Lodge in Mason, Ohio. The agenda was packed full of wonderful genealogical opportunities, offering 86 different sessions. As there were 5 time slots a day, meaning the most you could attend was 15 sessions, it was hard to pick out which ones to attend.

The Ohio Genealogical Society (OGS) is the largest state genealogical society with 95 chapters and over 6000 members. The conference had attendees and speakers from all over the U.S. If you are working on genealogy in Ohio, or have Ohio ancestors, you should really consider joining. Their website offers wonderful databases that are only open to members. But more than that, they offer wonderful learning and sharing opportunities.

I could only attend for one day, and with some consideration, picked out the 5 sessions to attend. Since this year's conference was held in the southwest part of Ohio, I didn't expect to see many familiar people. I don't have family or ancestral roots in the area. But a few familiar faces did pop up.

First, there was Margaret Cheney, current president of OGS and past president of both the Medina County and Lorain County Chapters. She gave me some tips on my application for the Society of Civil War Families of Ohio.

Tom Neel, director of the OGS Library in Bellville was there, staffing the exhibit table for OGS, as well as presenting  a couple of the sessions.

Cheryl Abernathy, Deb Knox and Mrs. Blaha from the Wayne County Chapter also had a display table. As Medina County shares her southern border with Wayne County, we often call on each other for research help for citizens that lived near, and often crossed the county line.  It was nice to see their cheerful faces.

So the sessions I  attended were:

1. 'Cuz We're Cousins: Autosomal DNA Tests by Debra Renard - this was a comprehensive look at DNA tests: the peculiarities of the different companies; the meaning of centimorgans, alleles & the acronyms IBS, IBD, IBP, IBC; what do those estimates of ethnic make-up really mean; and the range what percentage of shared DNA you can expect from different degrees of relatives. She got pretty technical at the end with triangulation and downloading the results as an Excel spreadsheet and merging with the matches to see just where the DNA matches occur.

Drew's book - due out in July

2.  Organizing Your Genealogy Files and Correspondence by Drew Smith - Drew is an established & well respected speaker for OGS and is one of the "guys" from the Genealogy Guys Podcast. I was hoping to learn how to tame the paper dragon that accompanies the genealogy hobby. But one of the first things Drew did was confess about the multiple giant Rubbermaid tubs in HIS house of his "waiting to be filed" papers! So it is an issue that ALL genealogists struggle with.  I did learn about a computer file naming technique that I hope to implement. And like me, Drew is not a fan of the color-coded hanging file system.

3.  Turn Tablets & Smartphones into Genealogy Powerhouses by Lisa Louise Cooke - Lisa was a fun presenter with a lot of energy. Her talk was about the many shortcuts and apps that help your mobile device work as well as your desktop computer for doing research. I can't wait to try them out on my iPad and my new Samsung phone!

4.  Crowdsourcing Your Brick Walls by Drew Smith - crowdsourcing is a new term for what genealogists have been doing for decades: networking with other genealogists to help find the answers to our "problem" ancestors. Besides the listservs, message boards, and forums, we now have communities/groups on social networking sites such as Facebook and Google+ communities. Drew spend a fair amount of time covering how to frame your query to get the maximum responses. Choosing an informative subject line, directing your query to the right group, include the alternate spellings, tell where you have already looked, be precise about what you are looking for, limit long "signatures" and what to do once the problem is solved, are all important in getting the best responses.

Confession: I wanted to go to Sunny Morton's session on "Lies, Errors and Bias-- Oh my! Consider your Sources" but couldn't locate the room. Perhaps it was cancelled. So the last session of the day for me was:

5. Analysis and Correlation: Two Keys to Sound Conclusions by Chris Staats -  Chris is also a well-known speaker for OGS. Chris used a personal case study to walk us through solving a

genealogical quandary when you have little direct or primary evidence and what you do have contains conflicting information. You start by analyzing every detail of the information you already have. Then you create a timeline or spreadsheet to compare the information. He had to condense his research to fit into the presentation time slot and he admitted that we might not agree with his conclusions. And I didn't. But it is very possible that there was information he had to omit that would have changed my mind. I was also pleased to realize that I have been using the techniques he described in my own research.

The syllabus for the conference was 330 pages long and it includes outlines from all the sessions. A copy is included in the conference price.

A banquet on Friday evening was held for all members who were being inducted into the lineage societies, First Families of Ohio, and the Society for Civil War Families of Ohio. Around 100 people attended. Most were being inducted into the First Families of Ohio. To qualify, they had fill out an application and present solid, documented proof that an ancestor had settled in Ohio prior to 1820. Many family members were being inducted together, fathers/daughters, mothers/daughters, sisters and one whole family that included dad/mom/4 teenage children.

I was inducted into the Society for Civil War Families of Ohio. This was for proving my ancestor, William Preston Williams served in the Union Army as part of the 3rd West Virginia Cavalry. The medal and ribbon presented to me, pleased me much more than I had anticipated. A very kind lady helped me pin it on when I got back to my table. Certainly, there was a feeling of accomplishment. But maybe my ex-military days were surfacing?

I think it is pretty cool looking! What do you think?

Certificate and medal with ribbon for the Society of Civil War Families of Ohio