My second day at the 2016 NGS Conference

We're up again early this morning and left Fletcher's house about 7:15 to go to the conference center. Mike dropped me off at the front entrance and I had plenty of time to locate the room for my first seminar this morning at 8:00.

The seminar is "Mapping Apps for Genealogists" given by Richard Sayer, CG, CGL, FUGA. He discussed standalone apps for smartphones and web-based apps for computers. A lot of the mapping apps or websites he discussed, I was familiar with but he did have some that I didn't know about and want to explore. He covered platting programs (which I really need to take a look at) and cemetery apps (which I knew about) and some genealogy related mapping websites that look interesting.

My 9:30 seminar was on "Private Land Claims" by Pamela Boyer Sayer, CG, CGL, FUGA. This covered land claims in the public domain which were in the early territories before they were states. She discussed researching in the Bureau of Land Management's website, the National Archives and where to find local records. I've researched the BLM GLO site and have found ancestors' records there and this was a good refresher course for me.

My next seminar was at 11:00 "Justices of the Peace: Miscellany, Mischief, Marriages, and More!" by Diane Florence Gravel, CG. I took this course because a few of our ancestors were Justices of the Peace and I wanted to learn more about their function. Diane covered their responsibilities and the types of records the justices would have produced and where to find those records - I got a LOT of information in this class.

During the lunch break (12:00 to 2:30), I walked around the Exhibit Hall and decided to attend Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems 30 minute seminar "3 Cool Tools for Newspapers" from 12:45 to 1:15. The first "Tool" is
Stanford Newspaper Data Visualization that shows a U.S. map of newspapers from 1690-2011 drawn from the Chronicling America collection from the Library of Congress. The second "Tool" is Newspaper Map and select "hist." to see a map of historical newspapers. The third "Tool" is Worldcat.org where you can find books from FamilySearch listed and search for e-newspapers and you can create a list of items you find after you've created a free account. All of these are pretty interesting and I look forward to using them. I've used Worldcat.org frequently, but I haven't created any lists there - definitely something I intend to do.

I decided to get a hamburger and water for lunch (about $11) and sat at a table for two and looked through my handouts for the afternoon seminars. Then I walked around the Exhibit Hall and visited some of the vendors' booths of organizations or websites that I am a member to get ribbons to add to my name badge - Ancestry, Fold3, Newspapers.com, AmericanAncestors.org NEGHS, Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems. I did get a Florida Pioneer Descendant ribbon from the Florida State Genealogical Society - they didn't have a ribbon for a researcher.

My 2:30 seminar was given my Annette Burke Lyttle titled "A Path of Next Research Steps: Using Timelines to Organize, Evaluate, and Analyze Evidence". I've used timelines before, but I must admit not as much as I should when doing my research. Besides doing a timeline for an ancestor, timelines can be created for a specific locale (county, state) showing boundary changes and important events, for multiple families in a county to locate the actual family that you're researching and a migration timeline for tracking families and ancestors.

My last seminar today was "How to Follow and Envision Your Ancestor's Footprints Through Time with Google Earth" by Lisa Louise Cooke. Lisa showed us how to create a Family History Tour using Google Earth. She said to pick an ancestor or family and choose their life events and create a map showing the places where those events took place. She showed how to add historical maps, photos, census records, vital records and even historical photos to the events on the map and how to save your "Tour" and how to share it. Looks like it would be fun to do and I might try that out.

Mike picked me up at the conference center and we met Fletcher and his friend Frankie at Five Guys for dinner. Mike and I ordered our regular Little Bacon Cheeseburger, Fletcher ordered the same and Frankie ordered a Bacon Cheese Hot Dog and we shared 2 orders of fries.

We've been watching movies on TV tonight and I've looked through my notes from today's seminars and have gotten the syllabus' for tomorrow's seminars ready to take with me.