My first seminar this morning was "Identifying Women: The Ultimate Brick Wall" by Barbara Vines Little, CG, FNGS, FVGS. She talked about the early laws governing women and what their legal rights were or weren't and how that affected the types of records they would leave behind and how to find those records.
My 9:30 seminar was "West Florida Pre-1830: the History, the People, and the Records" by Sharon D. Monson. This was a class on the early history of West Florida under different countries and how that affected the types of records that were created. She provided a list of websites that had some of the early West Florida records. I'm especially interested in this because Mike's Fletcher and Manning ancestors lived in West Florida before 1845.
The 11:00 seminar was "The Hidden Gender - Finding Women in Courthouse Records" by Janice Lovelace, Ph.D. As in my seminar at 8:00 this morning, Janice covered the types of legal documents and records that women could be found in. She spoke about what legal rights women had and didn't have. I know it sounds like I basically repeated my first seminar, but each speaker sometimes will cover one type of record in more detail than another speaker will or will have a different way of researching to find records.
I took a break from attending any of the lunch break seminars today. I decided to get some Chicken Fingers with coleslaw and a soda for lunch ($14). After eating I stopped by some of the vendors' booths in the Exhibit Hall to see if I found anything interesting that I might have missed before. Then I realized that I REALLY missed
having a cup of coffee in the middle of the day, so I got a small Coffee Latte ($5) and sat out by escalators where it was quieter than in the Exhibit Hall.
My 2:30 seminar was "Okay, I 'Got the Neighbors' Now What Do I Do with Them?!" by Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG,FNGS, FUGA. This is basically using the neighbors found in census and land records to help you locate where your ancestors moved from or to. Frequently people moved from one place to another in a group. If you can't find out where your ancestors came from or moved to, if you can find that their neighbors moved from or to somewhere it could give you a clue to look in that location for your ancestor.
My final seminar was "Backtracking Your Migrating Ancestors: A Methodology That Works" by Barbara Vines Little, CG, FNGS, FVGS. This is somewhat similar to the previous seminars in using siblings, cousins and neighbors to find your ancestors. By using the information that you already have on your ancestor such as where the children were born and where the parents were married can help in locating where they moved from.
I have learned a lot the last few days and look forward to putting to use what I learned. Some of the seminars covered subjects or areas of research that I use, but I still learned some new techniques or new resources or at least had a refresher course. I am glad that today was the last day. I attended 5 one hour seminars each day and some 30 minute seminars 3 of those days and did a LOT of walking getting from one seminar room to the next room.
When Mike and I got back to Fletcher's house, he said that he would be grilling steaks and vegetables for dinner tonight. That sounded so good - and it was!
No comments:
Post a Comment