National Genealogy Conference

Yesterday we attended the opening day of the National Genealogical Society's 2020 virtual conference. Our classes began at 8 AM and continued throughout the day. There was no problem with the audio and video. Each presentation was followed by a question and answer session. Besides the four main topics, we heard a bit about "What's New at Ancestry," "What's New at FamilySearch," and a presentation about the women's suffrage events leading to the passing of the 19th amendment.

"Validating Unsourced Online Information" by Thomas Jones was the opening session. Jones explained how he took an unsourced family tree from Ancestry and located records to prove the information. He speculates that the original tree (since deleted) came from a family source and had been copied multiple times.

Judy Russell presented "Breaker Boys and Spinner Girls: Child Labor Laws and Their Records." The photographs she included as part of the presentation came from the Lewis Hine collection at the Library of Congress. It was alarming to learn that laws setting minimum ages for children to work were not passed until 1938.

"Turning Witnesses Into Evidence" by Elizabeth Shown Mills demonstrated how the witnesses who signed various records had family or neighborhood connections and could help to provide an answer to where a death and burial took place when there were no actual records.

Blaine Bettinger's presentation was called "What If? Learning about DNA Through Case Studies."


During the next couple of weeks we will select 45 additional sessions that will be available for viewing between July 2020 and May 2021. NGS provided the syllabus in PDF form.