Tag: descendants

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RootsTech 2018 is coming!!!


Yes, that is ME – Speaker! I’m SOOOOOO excited! Offering two classes – Acadians & French-Canadians in North America and You CAN Take It With You! Mobile Technology for Genealogy. Can’t wait! I leave Tuesday and begin the incredible, the scary, the fun, exciting and learning opportunity that is being a speaker at the LARGEST genealogy conference in the world! Yes, you heard me .. the world!

Roots Tech 2018

RootsTech 2018 has over 300 classes, keynote speakers, an Innovation Showcase, networking, learning, meeting new people – I’m already hooking up with some likely cousins (all French-Canadians and Acadians are somehow related!) and a client from my Lineage Journeys work. And a helpful and kind participant in one of my workshops who is also an Acadian descendant….and friends from here in Michigan. And more … right? This is aligning to be so cool … can you tell that I’m excited! Watch for updates!

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A GREAT GENEALOGY CONFERENCE

VISITING WASHINGTON, D.C. & ATTENDING A GREAT GENEALOGY CONFERENCE!!!

DAR Entrance

Having JUST returned (it was just over a week ago) from the Association of Professional Genealogist’s (APG) Professional Management Conference (PMC) in Washington, D.C., there were SOOO many things learned to pass along!First – don’t go to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA for short), or the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR for short) Library and Headquarters or any of a number of locations when researching without preparing ahead! These are amazing research facilities but with millions of records, categories, topics and time periods, you will waste alot of time if you haven’t looked at the catalog online.

As I knew for months that I was going – that’s me (my company is Lineage Journeys) at the top sharing my Poster Session entitled What’s In A Name: Clues to Ethnicity & Name Changes – so I began early on to do my online research. Thanks to the APG for the helpful webinars on getting around D.C., the archives and more, I was prepared and ready. The focus of my one day of research (I SOOO wish I had more time and money to do this!) was my husband’s family’s descent from a number of Revolutionary War soldiers. Because others have become DAR members from descent from the same ancestors, I found those applications online at the DAR’s great website (https://www.dar.org) so I was prepared to walk into the library and obtain the documents that were used to prove their lineage.

Was I about to be amazed!!!! Would you look at this incredible room?? This is heaven to a genealogist, besides the spectacular architecture, right?! Not only did I easily obtain the documents that I wanted about my husband’s Revolutionary ancestors (really??! A birth record from 1750 and more!) but I was in this environment that was comfortable, helpful (the staff and volunteers of the library are gracious and warm) and I was given good advice, guidance and maximized my time so well that I was able to take a leisurely stroll back to the Metro for the ride back to the hotel.

So my big tip for today? PLAN AHEAD, RESEARCH AHEAD, and by all means, LEARN about where you are going AHEAD so that you use your time well.

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Your Ancestry May Not Be What You Think!

Source: Advice to White Supremacists: You Might Not Want to Test Your DNA

Thank you, Dick Eastman!

I was thinking, praying about these recent events and remembering some key times as a genealogist in California. I volunteered in a Family History Center as I could translate French and German and the Mormon volunteers had asked me to help out once per week.

As my contact with customers, through Lineage Journeys, evolved over the weeks and months of volunteering, we began to have a fairly steady flow of people from a particular area of town. Known to be descendants of those who migrated to California during the Dust Bowl era, they were descended from people primarily from Oklahoma, Missouri and a few from northern Texas. They came in, as one of them told me, “to document our superior family” …. hmmmm, “superior” equated to “white” and their conversation indicated that they were affiliated in some way with white/neo-nazi groups that I knewto be in the area.

It didn’t take long (perhaps three generations of ancestors) to find census records that indicated “mulatto” – the term used for mixed race individuals on the old census records. Explaining that to these research customers became my personal, silent joy as their visions of superiority were revealed for the arrogant falsehood that they were. Many of them stated variations of “the records were manipulated” or “the census taker lied” or any number of other ways to avoid the obvious.

The fact that “race” isn’t a scientific or biological fact anyway would have been lost on these families, and my personal and professional research experiences had long before shown me that our families migrated, lived in many communities, searched for jobs and good work, and married across religious and ethnic lines for centuries. No surprise here that some “white” people had relationships in the past that weren’t with those of European origin.