SCGS Genealogy Jamboree Musings - Post 6

Here are more pictures from the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank held this weekend.

First up are Janet and Kim Hovorka who have the Generation Maps charting company. Janet also blogs as The Chart Chick, and posted a nice summary of the Blogger Summit here.




Two of my favorite people are Megan Smolenyak and Marcy Brown (we're "Friends" on Facebook) from Roots Television. Jane Lindsey from CGS was kind enough to take our picture this morning. Megan and Marcy interviewed several people during the Jamboree, but I escaped their inquisition.

One of my favorite people is Colleen Fitzpatrick from the Forensic Genealogy web site and author of several books, including her new one called "Dead Horse Investigation."

Tom Underhill, and his daughter Amanda, posed in front of their display for Creative Continuum. Tom has several books for sale, and creates beautiful family history and photography books. He is coming to CVGS to speak in September.

David Lifferth is President of FamilyLink.com, which includes www.WorldVitalRecords.com. We had several good discussions about genealogy research and WVR. He is with his wife Mary in the photo below.

I have a few more photos to show in the next post.

SCGS Jamboree Musings - Post 5

I am really bad at taking notes at these conferences. I really appreciate handouts that are more than summaries or outlines, because then I can use them to refresh my memory of what is said.

This afternoon, I attended Jana Sloan Broglin's talk on "Hookers, Crooks and Kooks" which I anticipated was going to be about Census-Whacking, but it wasn't. It was about hookers, crooks and kooks ... Jana's Aunt Merle for example, who was a madam in Brooklyn for many years. She used family photographs and diaries, Civil War pension records, and census records to piece together the facts about Aunt Merle, who didn't run a boarding house. Then she described finding records for two other people in her research - including probate records, jail registers, liquor sales records and gaming device records, penitentiary records and liquor blacklists. Jana wore her flapper-style black lacy dress for this presentation. It was fun.

I tried to get into Geoff Resmussen's talk on Legacy 7 in the next session, but the room was very full so I went to hear David Lifferth talking about www.WorldVitalRecords.com in his talk "Innovative Family Tools to Connect Families." David summarized the current holdings of WVR (over 9,500 databases, over 1 billion names and records, adding more than 20 new databases a day). He described the partner relationships and the assets each partner brings to WVR. Then he showed how to search the databases, either collectively or individually. David mentioned that the are hosting some of the USGenWeb content and the WorldGenWeb content on their servers for free, which I didn't know, and appreciate. He didn't have time to get into detail on the FamilyLink social networking site, We're Related and My Family groups on Facebook.

WorldVitalRecords is offering a show special of two years US subscription for $39.95 (regular price is $49.95 for two years currently).

On the software front, Legacy Family Tree 7 Deluxe Edition (in the box) is being offered by Millenia for $19.95 as a show special (regular price is $39.95 for the boxed version, $29.95 for the download only).

I didn't go to Megan Smolenyak's dinner talk on "Right Annie, Wrong Annie - Annie Moore of Ellis Island" last night, nor to Dick Eastman's talk tonight on "Putting the Genes in Genealogy." I took my wife out to dinner both nights and we shared our day highlights. Linda likes to go to the pool and talk to everybody there, and encourage children to swim (she's a former swim teacher, too).

Jamboree Musings - Post 4

Here are some photos from my day at the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree on Saturday.

One of my favorite booths was the California Genealogical Society table - this is Jane Lindsey, Kathryn Doyle and Carolyn Steinberg. Wonderful, friendly young ladies, and their Hershey mini-bars were excellent (see the blue basket on the table?)!




I caught Leland Meitzler in a happy moment (he's happy every time I talk to him!) without distractions, and took this picture of him and his booth. This would be a great picture without the flash back. I signed up for the $10 EGH digital subscription.

I stopped by the New England Historical and Genealogical Society booth and talked to Tom Champoux, Chris Childs and G. Brenton Simons. This is a candid picture because they were real busy all day, it seemed. That's Tom on the left, Brenton bending over and Gary Boyd Roberts seated on the right.

I mentioned the CVGS Tech Zone yesterday - here is a candid shot of some of the computers set up to permit Jamboreeists to access web sites and databases for free. The set up came in real handy for SCGS late yesterday after they found that the Syllabus put on the CDs had left out the pages for several presentations. The SCGS folks commandeered the Tech Zone and created replacement CDs for those attendees that had them.

The Roots Television booth was a popular spot all day. That is Marcy Brown in the red suit on the left, and Megan Smolenyak on the right in this candid shot. Megan had three talks this afternoon back-to-back-to-back after doing the Blogger Summit this morning.

I will try to get more posed shots tomorrow to replace some of these. I'm not a fan of seeing the backs of people, or people not expecting to have their picture taken.

Jamboree Musings - Post 3

Today was the Genealogy blogger Summit at the SCGS Jamboree - which I really looked forward to attending and participating in. I figured it was sort of a "coming-out party" for me, since I met only one genea-blogger before this conference. Oh boy! I did talk to Craig Manson, Dick Eastman, Megan Smolenyak, Kathryn Doyle, Elizabeth O'Neal and Sharon Elliott yesterday and this morning.

I was fortunate to meet George G. Morgan and Steve Danko before the summit just outside the conference room door, and we were joined by a healing Bill Dollarhide to talk about everything for about 15 minutes. Then the seven blogging summiteers went into the room, sat down and talked amongst ourselves while setup continued. Leland Meitzler had problems getting the computer to work, so Dick Eastman brought up his super-duper wireless satellite router system and got the computer up and going so we could show our blog "faces" to the audience.

While we were waiting to start the summit, we spied the medieval re-enactor folks out in the lobby with their sharp, pointy weapons...we wondered if they were the "Genea-Blogger Elimination Squad."

At 10 a.m., Paula Hinkel from SCGS introduced each of us. Here is a picture of Paula (on the right) doing the honors for (from the left):

* Leland Meitzler from Everton Publisher's Genealogy Blog
* Dick Eastman from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
* Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak from Megan's Roots World
* George G. Morgan from the Genealogy Guys Podcast
* Stephen Danko from Steve's Genealogy Blog
* Schelly Talalay Dardashti from Tracing the Tribe
* Randy Seaver from Genea-Musings.


Leland was the moderator and kept the conversation going for over 90 minutes, and then we took questions from the audience. There is a summary of what was said on Dean Richardson's GenLighten blog - excellent summaries. Thanks, Dean!

There were several other genea-bloggers in attendance, and Elizabeth O'Neal of the Little Bytes of Life blog took a photo with her cell phone and posted it at 10:28 to her blog during the panel discussion. Dick got it up on the screen about 90 minutes into the discussion. Here is a screen shot of her blog post, but please go see it here. Elizabeth deserves a blogalanche!

Alas, it went all too fast, and the audience of about 50 had good questions and enjoyed (I think!) the panel discussion.

What T-shirt did I wear? Well, the one I got for Father's Day - you can see it below along with Linda in her matching T-shirt.

Before everyone left for lunch, we got a group of genea-bloggers together and took a group photo. Below are from left to right:

Sitting: Kathryn Doyle (California Genealogical Society blog), Dick Eastman, George G. Morgan, Stephen Danko

Standing: Leland Meitzler, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Randy Seaver, Craig Manson (Geneablogie blog), Elizabeth O'Neal (Little Bytes of Life blog)

Unfortunately, Megan Smolenyak and several other genea-bloggers in the audience got away before we could get everybody together for the group photo.

I'll have more news and photos later today from the Jamboree. hopefully, I can attend two more presentations.

By the way, check out Craig's Geneablogie posts at http://geneablogie.blogspot.com/ for his take on everything Jamboree. I note that he already has the screen shot from Elizabeth's blog on his blog. Great job, Craig.

My hope had been to actually blog during the summit, but after yesterday's wireless shutout I didn't take my laptop down because I thought there would be no wireless internet available. Schelly had her laptop and it struggled to get online. If I had my laptop there, I could have done it once Dick Eastman set up his wireless network setup. Oh well...the best laid plans!

Jamboree Musings - Post 2

Still no pictures from me -- somebody left the camera in the suitcase in the car in the parking lot across the street (it was me!). Maybe tomorrow!

The best laid plans of men and genealogists sometimes need to be changed ... I posted this morning about wanting to see Carl Boyer's talk at 3 p.m., but I got to talking to folks and by 2:55 all of the seats in that room, and in several other rooms, were taken. Ooops - it's an early crowd - now I understand why people leave a session early and rush in while everybody else is coming out. So I wrote Post 1 in this series in the SCGS Tech Zone.

After I finished my blog post, I went wandering around the exhibit hall. I found Megan Smolenyak in a quiet moment and disturbed her concentration - we must have talked for ten minutes without breathing. She introduced me to Marcy Brown, who works with Megan in Roots Television, and we talked for awhile too - Marcy spent some time in San Diego years ago and was interested in my San Diego family history. Oops - time to go to the next talk...

I hadn't planned on going to a 4:30 talk, but after checking the schedule I decided to go to Shelly Talalay Dardashti's talk on, what else, Genealogy Blogging! She did a great job of telling about the how, when, where, why and who of blogging - naming names and URLs. There were a number of genea-bloggers there nodding at the right times - Kathryn Doyle, Elizabeth O'Neal and Craig Manson besides myself.

I figured I'd better call Linda to see what the plans for dinner were. We went to the Outback in the nearby Empire Center, since we didn't want to eat in the hotel grill and didn't have banquet tickets to hear Megan's talk on Annie Moore.

It turns out the hotel doesn't have free wireless Internet access - they have a phone cable connection for $9.95 a day. I'm glad we're staying only two days!

This has been an interesting experience so far - I "know" many of the people I meet from our online connection - either a blog, web site or email, but I've not met any of them in person before (except for Tom Underhill). We kind of glance at each other's nametag and then say hello and shake hands. Or they call my name before I see their nametag and I have to quickly glance down to catch a name. I've met a whole bunch of great genealogists and it's like we're already old friends. They know my stories and I know theirs...

I think I'll settle down onto my king-size bed and read the syllabus - at least the talks I've missed so far.

Unfortunately, my hopes to "live blog" specific talks won't happen. There is no room for a laptop in the cramped conference rooms. So you are stuck with these "after-action" reports.

Tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. is the Blogger Summit - what should I wear? Maybe I'll show you in a post tomorrow.

Jamboree Musings - Post 1

We left at 9:30 a.m. and were in the parking lot at 12:15, but it wasn't an easy ride into Los Angeles. Reminds me again of why I don't want to live here...

I got Linda into the room so she could go to the pool, and I went and registered in the Conference Hall and immediately ran into my CVGS colleagues who came up on the train from San Diego. Craig Manson saw me and we shook hands and spoke briefly. I got a hot dog for lunch and then wandered into the Exhibit Hall. I'll try to post pictures tonight of some of the exhibits.

At 1:20, I went into the Arlene Eakle talk on American Church Records. She spoke from her extensive research experience, without many overhead slides, using the syllabus as a guideline.

After Arlene's talk, I went out into the Exhibit Hall again and talked to some of the exhibitors, and signed up for some freebies. At 2:50, I figured I'd better find a seat at the Carl Boyer talk - nope, full house. It's a full house everywhere - early birds get the seats. So I got a drink, found the empty computer station at the SCGS exhibit, and decided to write this blog post.

The SCGS Computer Tech Zone provides links to ProQuest (Ancestry Library Edition, HeritageQuestOnline, ProQuest Obituaries, and ProQuest Historical Newspapers), NEHGS (www.NewEnglandAncestors.org), Footnote (www.footnote.com), Godfrey Memorial Library (www.godfrey.org), Find My Past (www.FindMyPast.com), Geni (www.geni.com), Roots Television (www.RootsTelevision.com), Genline Family Finder (www.genline.c om), WorldVitalRecords (www.worldvitalrecords.com) and FamilyLink (www.FamilyLink.com). This is a great opportunity to test web sites!

I'll check in again later!

We're off to the Jamboree

Linda and I are leaving today driving up to Burbank for the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree. I hope to meet many of my readers there - please introduce yourself to me if you see me! I look forward to meeting many people whose blogs and comments I read online and connecting a personality to the faces and words.

Let's see - do I have everything? Laptop and charger, digital camera and USB connection, cell phone and charger, extra batteries, flash drive, genealogy T-shirts, sense of humor, and all that other stuff... check! Note to self - check the critical attitude at the door - be humble, friendly, funny...

The hotel web site says that they have free wireless Internet connections - I hope so, or else Genea-Musings, and the other blogs in my farflung but little-read blogpile, will be mute for the weekend. At the convention center, Dick Eastman may host a wireless Internet connection. My hope is that I can post a blog soon after each presentation I attend, and I hope to have pictures of people and exhibits 'almost live" from the Jamboree.

In addition to the Genealogy Blogger Summit that I'm participating in at 10 a.m. on Saturday, I hope to attend the following presentations:

* Friday, 1:30 p.m. - American Church Records by Arlene Eakle

* Friday, 3:00 p.m. - The Mistakes We Make by Carl Boyer III

* Saturday, 10 a.m. - Genealogy Blogger Summit

* Saturday, 1:30 p.m. - Automatic Research Assistants by Beau Sharbrough

* Saturday, 3:00 p.m. - Hookers, Crooks and Kooks by Jana Sloan Broglin

* Saturday, 4:30 p.m. - Beyond Y-DNA by Megan Smolenyak

* Sunday, 9:30 a.m. - But It's My Family! by Cath Trindle

* Sunday, 11 a.m. - You Will Never Look at Your Old Photographs the Same Way Again by Colleen Fitzpatrick

* Sunday, 1:30 p.m. - Genealogical Organization in the 21st Century by Leland Meitzler

I'm not sure I can last beyond about 3 p.m. on Sunday. Hopefully, the syllabus will provide sufficient outline information for the sessions I will miss.

We will drive to Victorville on Sunday afternoon to see the granddaughters and their parents, and will bring Lolo down to our house on Monday for the week.

Book Report: "Finding Oprah's Roots, Finding Your Own"

I mentioned in my post "I'm 1 in 1,000" that I received the book "Finding Oprah's Roots, Finding Your Own" by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as part of the Buick Heritage Sweepstakes contest. I finished the book the other night, and have been pondering what to write about it.
...
I really liked the book because Gates went into so much detail about the records found and family interviews that documented the real lives of Oprah, her parents, her grandparents and the other post Civil War generations, and then into what records could be found from the years of slavery in the USA. I knew and thought I understood most of this information, but now I have an even better understanding, especially about the pre-Civil War slave era records and research processes, and the post-Civil war "surname selection" issue.
...
The "family history" part of the book was, to me, both inspiring and terrible sad. I, like Oprah and Gates, was inspired by the struggle of some of Oprah's ancestors to overcome the injustices and hardships of first slavery and then in the post-Reconstruction South. Several of her slave ancestors owned land, thirsted for education, created and ran schools after the Civil War. The sadness is the darkness of slavery that robbed millions of people of their identity. Oprah has overcome poverty and hardship in her early life, and is a successful person who is admired the world over. Gates tells these stories well.
...
The second part of the book concerns DNA testing and trying to find where Oprah's maternal line (her mitochondrial line) came from in Africa. Gates describes the mtDNA and autosomal admixture testing processes and the results. Oprah had thought that she was from the Zulus in southern Africa, but her matrilineal line she is probably from the area around Liberia; she may be closely related to the Gullah people in South Carolina.
...
However, there is no mention in the book of Oprah's patrilineal DNA - the Winfrey line. Her father is still alive, and could have been tested for his Y-chromosome DNA, and there are other related male Winfreys. I wonder if they were tested, and they didn't want to publish the results? Or did they refuse to be tested? To me, this is an important part of the DNA/genetic sequence for any person, and a Y-DNA test of Oprah's patrilineal line might have been very revealing of their African origin. They wrote this book that highlighted DNA testing and hardly mentioned a major part of the DNA test equation (all I found was mention of Gates's own Y-DNA testing). Surely they didn't just "forget" about it.
...
The Appendix of the book is Gates's effort to help readers discover their own genealogy and family history, oriented to African-American readers. It's pretty well done and useful for any person to read and learn from - it's easy reading and only 11 pages. He provides a good list of books for general genealogy research and also for African-American research.
...
I enjoyed the book and learned quite a few new things about African-American research in the process. I'm still in a quandary about the Y-DNA issue, however.
...
There are other reviews of this book - see:
...
* George Geder's review is here.
...
* The http://www.amazon.com/ web site with comments about the book is here.
...
* The PBS description of the documentary Oprah's Roots that was shown in early 2007 is here.

Google Map Street Views

It seems like I'm always late in finding the really nifty online "tools" that can help me find information about my families and their localities.

I just used the Street View tool on Google Maps for the first time. I wanted to get directions from my house to the Burbank airport Marriott Hotel, so I input my address and the hotel address into Google Maps. I got directions, and much more. Here's the screen shot with the directions on the left and the map on the right.



I noticed that there was a lot of blue on the map in urban areas... what is that? I zoomed in and saw that many streets are outlined in blue - this means that there is a Street View available for those streets. The screen shot below shows my Chula Vista neighborhood.

You can see the little marker I put at the end of my street - the place I live. If I click on it, a small picture of my house comes up - that's it in the screen shot below with the white garage door and the brown trim. That's my car on the curb - but you can't read the plate number.

I can make the Street View full screen, and see more of the neighborhood, as shown below.


I can zoom out, use the arrow in the street to go in certain directions, and use the cursor to turn one way or another to change the view.

This capability is fantastic, isn't it? While it's limited to only the streets that they have videographed, they have done many urban areas and scenic routes.

How can this help genealogists? Well, if you want to know what your destination looks like (say the Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel!), then you can see a view of the location before you go there. Now, I may be able to recognize the Hotel as I drive up North Hollywood Way looking for Thornton Street.

Think about your ancestral homes -- if you know where your families were at specific times (say, from the census or a city directory), you can obtain a Street View of the building as it looked when they did the videographing (assuming they have done it for that location).

Have you seen your ancestral homes lately?

"DNA 101 - Genetics for Beginners" Program Summary

Do you remember those excellent teachers and professors when you were going to school - how they could explain a complex subject so that you could understand it, and inject some humor and fun into the topic besides? That's what it felt like, to me, at the CVGS Program Meeting yesterday at the Library.

Dr. Stephen Baird (program summary and curriculum vitae here) presented "DNA 101 - Genetics for Beginners" at the meeting and it was like going to class again and enjoying it (I admit that I loved many of my science classes when I was in school!).

His handout was a glossary of terms used in his presentation for handy reference. His presentation was beautiful - a PowerPoint done the way I like them - large print, some understandable charts, no flash graphics, etc.

I can't go point-by-point in this summary - there is just too much to cover - suffice it to say that he touched on the basic history of genetics and DNA from Mendel to the present, and put it in terms that we could relate to. For instance, human beings have 23 pair of chromosomes, 30,000 genes and 3 billion base pairs, and are, at most, 0.1% different from each other. Humans and chimpanzees are about 2% different from each other in DNA terms.

After describing the chromosomes, the genes, and the DNA base pairs, Dr. Baird described the global phylogeny of all species (how and when certain species occurred and from what they were mutated), the different haplogroups of humans (those with the same genetic markers), and how they spread out of Africa into all of the continents with an approximate time frame.

He explained why the Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are important to human genetic testing for genealogy research - the Y-DNA being passed from father-to-son, and the mtDNA being passed from mother-to-child.

Many of the technical charts that he used were obtained from the http://www.familytreedna.com/ web site. Some of them were obtained from the tutorials at http://www.familytreedna.com/tutorial_A.html and http://www.familytreedna.com/tutorial_B.html. He used his own DNA test results to show charts similar to those in this downloadable tutorial for presentations, and how his results matched those of others with the same surname.

Dr. Baird also described the relative costs of, and the reasons for, doing 12, 25, 37 or 67 markers for Y-DNA testing and for doing the basic and more advanced mitochondrial DNA testing.

At the end of the hour-long presentation, which seemed to go very fast (for me, at least!!), Dr. Baird played his guitar and sang the "Ballad of Gregor Mendel" from one of his CDs (available for sale at http://www.scientificgospel.com/). It was a wonderful end to the talk. Then the questions began...and lasted a good 20 minutes!

We had 48 people in attendance, including 15 visitors from all over San Diego, and even one from Orange County. This was one of the very best presentations and meetings that we've had in my six years on the CVGS Board.