Thursday, October 5, 2006

Having Fun with Forensic Genealogy

Our society had Colleen Fitzpatrick and Andrew Yeiser present their "Forensic Genealogy" talk back in April. It was well received, and the concept was intriguing. They have a book on the subject.

Colleen has a great web site at www.forensicgenealogy.info. She runs a weekly contest intended to sharpen the investigative skills of the contestants. The contest page is here.

The present quiz #79 (labelled September 23rd, but actually September 30th I think) has this picture of a group of soldiers in uniform:



The contest questions are:

* What war did these soldiers fight in?
* What specific branch of the service did they serve in? (eg infantry, cavalry, artillery, etc.)
* How can you tell?

After Googling a bit, I think I know the answer, and will submit my response through Colleen's web site.

Are you up to a weekly photo identification contest? The most recent contests are also on her web page - check some of them out, and see how much detail Colleen finds out about her subjects - every week. Enter the contests, and visit Colleen's site regularly.

This is a weekly exercise in the "fun" part of genealogy for me.

1 comment:

Lee said...

I knew the war but that's it. I think you've mentioned this quiz before, and I told myself then to keep up with it, but didn't. Shame on me because it does seem like fun!

~ Lee