From RootsTech 2019, where there will soon be over 14,000 people taking hundreds of classes and networking, finding cousins and having fun!
My first workshop, You CAN Take It With You: Mobile Genealogy Tools for Genealogists, went SOOO well and there must have been over 600 people in the room. Great questions, energy – we even did “stand up, sit down” exercises. AND cousin meet-ups! How fun!
Today felt like a day of healing and reconciliation … certainly, there is much more to do, but a beginning and significant movement in the right direction. Friend and fellow GeneaBlogger Tribe member Cheri Hudson Passey offered a workshop “Discovering Slave Owners in the Family Tree” that was so impactful that people were crying, and not bad tears but those tears of recognized loss and finding common ground for healing. We also learned about the incredible donation of $2 Million to the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, announced at the Opening Session! Wow! There will be a family history center within the museum that will help anyone seeking information about their family, especially focusing on the African diaspora and records that will help in tracing those that were enslaved. An incredible opportunity for everyone to learn, share, grieve, and hopefully gain some healing, pride in the strength of ancestors.
Part of the magic of RootsTech is the networking, mingling, meeting cousins. Also having opportunities for growth from those synchronistic meetings or information that those of us long in the genealogy field know to expect. My research time at the Family History Library on Monday and Tuesday led to some really great information for my clients (one in French-Canadian and another in Native research) AND some perfectly wonderful experiences for myself.
As I have just begun the research on the Polish family on my dad’s side, I had recently found the name of the village that my great-grandparents immigrated from – Gorlice, Malopolska, Poland (it wasn’t always Poland, as it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire). The Niemczyk, Niemiec, Nimer, Nemshak family (yes, they changed the name a number of times) immigrated in about 1880 but no one in the family knew where they came from. The family worked hard to fit into their initial American community in Chicopee, Massachusetts and later in Detroit, Michigan but not many stories of “the old country” apparently were shared. Reaching out to cousins, there was much to go on. So, I went down to the International section of the Family History Library and, wonder of wonders, there is a specialist FROM POLAND who is a Missionary there. She was awesome! AND introduced me to two young men, themselves Polish and here doing research. AND …. Wait for it … they are from the Malopolska region!! Yes!! So they are going to take the information that I know about my family and see what they might find when they are in the Polish archives. :::::::::::::::crossing my fingers::::::::::::::::::::::::
Hopefully the pictures here will show you just how great RootsTech 2019 is and what a great experience it is. And it’s only the beginning of Day 2 as I write this. Stay tuned for more!
Lineage Journeys 