Conference Keeper, Grip Genealogy Institute, and me!

Paula Stuart-Warren  GRIP, GRIP Genealogy Institute  , , , ,  Leave a comment

Do you know about https://conferencekeeper.org/? A great website to learn about genealogy events, both in-person and online. Tami does an excellent job with the website and with the weekly email update. Sign up for that at the URL at the top of this post. I was scrolling down today’s email and suddenly stopped when I recognized the person in this ad. Yes that’s me and the title of the GRIP Genealogy Institute course I coordinate and teach along with several fantastic instructors. Please join us in June for a week of virtual learning, interaction, a bit of fun, and delving into more records and more records. An extensive syllabus/workbook is being put together for our students and will be shared a week before the week of June 22d. Learn more about the course in general and about each session during the week at https://grip.ngsgenealogy.org/courses/digging-deeper-records-tools-and-skills/ If you sign up soon, you will be eligible to send me a U.S. research problem of your own and have it discussed during the week with amazing suggestions provided.

Minnesota Historical Society new accessions list and more online finding aids

Paula Stuart-Warren  Minnesota Historical Society  , , , ,  Leave a comment

Have Minnesota historical and genealogical connections? Take a look at the recent records accessions plus a long list of newly online finding aids (inventories and other information) for other collections held at the Minnesota History Center in downtown Saint Paul. Before visiting be sure to check the open hours for the Gale Library as it has more limited research hours than the rest of the history center.

No known Minnesota connections? If you take a look at these, I bet some of you will be wishing all county, state, and provincial archives and historical societies matched the Minnesota Historical Society’s continued production and accessions. (Of course, there are some other repositories that do similar excellent projects.)

 

https://www.mnhs.org/

 

GRIP Genealogy Institute Interviews on YouTube!

Paula Stuart-Warren  GRIP, GRIP Genealogy Institute  , , , , ,  Leave a comment

This is a great opportunity to learn more about the 2026 courses offered by GRIP. My interview about Digging Deeper: Records, Tools, and Skills for the June virtual week is on the National Genealogical Society’s YouTube channel. Jeanette Shilega does a fantastic job of asking coordinators some questions and understanding what we are saying! Check my interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBhv7gMOlSw&list=PLPuFl1BJIibMf9MdGOfo8rt0iKNKNb8jv&index=6. Be sure to hit subscribe for the NGS channel so you won’t miss anything about GRIP and other educational things from NGS.

RootsTech in Salt Lake City is this weekend March 5-7, 2026

Paula Stuart-Warren  Conferences  ,  Leave a comment

Don’t forget to check out the many deals being offered by vendors at RootsTech this weekend. https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/expohall/promotions. DNA kit sales, society membership discounts, genealogy software deals, and more.

If  you are not at RootsTech, do you know that many of the presentations are also online. For FREE. https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/registration/online/

Some vendors are posting sales on social media or on their own websites. One example:

AncestryDNA Family & Friends Sale. $34. https://www.ancestry.com/dna/  *Offer ends 18 Mar 2026 at 10am ET. Excludes shipping.

 

 

Cyndi’s List turns 30 today! A genealogy must have.

Paula Stuart-Warren  Cyndi's List  , , , ,  1 Comment

It was March 4, 1996 when Cyndi’s List was born. It began as a list of websites for members of the Tacoma-Pierce County Genealogical Society from their own member, Cyndi Ingle. Thirty years later, it’s grown into a worldwide extravaganza of genealogy and history links. Thousands and thousands of links to help our genealogy research.

I suggest some anniversary gifts to help keep the list going and expanding. First of all, utilize the Submit a New Link tab and let her know about something she hasn’t yet discovered. Second, send a report if you find a broken link. No one can keep up with all the changes! Third, USE the list and help yourself by doing some general browsing under the extensive Categories tab. Fourth, let others know about this milestone. Fifth, look at the yellow Donate button and send a little gift to help the list get to 40 years! https://www.cyndislist.com/

May be a doodle of text

 

 

Swedish parish records added to MyHeritage

Paula Stuart-Warren  MyHeritage  , ,  Leave a comment

“If you have Swedish heritage, some of the most important records for tracing your family are now fully available on MyHeritage. We’ve completed the publication of the Sweden Births, Marriages, and Deaths collections, spanning 1850 to 1945 (1920 for births). Together, these collections include more than 33 million historical records drawn from Sweden’s Lutheran Church books — the core sources used by researchers to document families across generations.” The MyHeritage blog also added this explanation, “All 3 collections were indexed by MyHeritage from scanned images of the original documents, and the images are available to view alongside each record.”

Sweden Birth, Marriage, and Death Collections Now Complete on MyHeritage

 

 

Pullman Porters records, history, and struggles

Paula Stuart-Warren  Railroads  , , , ,  Leave a comment

It’s already the end of February and Black History Month. It’s been an extra busy month for me with some big decisions, working on genealogy presentations, family things, client consultations, and a whole lotta other stuff. One of the presentations I did this month was for the Western New York Genealogical Society on railroad records. Each time I do one of my railroad records talks, the handout and PowerPoint slides are updated and expanded to include some specifics for the area of the organization that has hired me to participate in a webinar or seminar.

After the presentation, I decided to do some other expanding of the handout and slides and focused on Black History Month, especially on Pullman Porters.  If you have a Pullman Porter in your own ancestry or in a collateral family, I hope these websites and books will guide toward  learning more about them, records that exist, and to honor their struggle to be recognized, treated well, and long-hours on the job. Just learning more about the history is beneficial to anyone. Many of the porters had been enslaved or were descendants of those enslaved.

Their story also includes the route to forming a union in 1925, most-often called a Brotherhood by railroad employees. One of the key men strongly involved in the unionization was Asa Philip Randolph. Several books and articles detail his life, strong beliefs, and the fight for the Brotherhood. Other Brotherhoods in the railroad industry from the late 19th century forward greatly ignored the black workers both men and women. The Brotherhood didn’t include Canada until the 1940s.

This is not a comprehensive list of resources and many of these should lead to other books and websites. Many journals of county, state, and regional levels carried articles about the porters. Other articles and books about the Pullman Palace Car Company included sections about the porters.

Articles and Books  (JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/ )

Chateauvert, Melinda. “Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.” NWSA Journal 2, no. 4 (1990): 687–89. JSTOR.

Foster, Cecil. They Call Me George: The Untold Story of The Black Train Porters. Windsor, Ontario: Biblioasis, 2019.

Hansen, Peter A. “The Sons of Pullman Porters.” Railroad History, no. 201 (2009): 3–3. JSTOR.

Hughes, Lyn. An Anthology of Respect: The Pullman Porters National Historic Registry of African American Railroad Employees. Chicago, Illinois: Hughes Peterson Pub., 2007.

McKissack, Pat. And Fredrick McKissack. A Long Hard Journey: the Story of the Pullman Porter. New York, New York: Walker, 1989.

McWatt, Arthur C. “‘A Greater Victory’: The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in St. Paul.” Minnesota History 55, no. 5 (1997): 202–16. JSTOR and Minnesota Historical Society.

Santino, Jack. Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle: Stories of Black Pullman Porters. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1991. (also a documentary film)

Tye, Larry. Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. United States: Henry Holt and Company, 2005.

Websites

ArchiveGrid. A search for Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters showed 325 results. The descriptions will lead you to archives, historical societies, libraries, and other repositories that hold collections related to this brotherhood. It may be a diary or personal papers of an individual, records of a local division, photos, oral histories, anniversary booklets, correspondence, membership applications, labor issues, and other types of records. https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/?q=Brotherhood+of+Sleeping+Car+Porters

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_porter

Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen Records, 1883-1973. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, Cornell University Library,  https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05149.html

National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum with an ever-expanding National Historic Registry of Pullman Porters. https://aprpullmanportermuseum.org/  Direct to the registry http://www.cfblr.com/national-registry/ (not always working)

Pullman Porter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_porter A good overview.

Pullman Porters. https://www.nps.gov/pull/learn/historyculture/pullman-porters.htm

Sleeping Car Porters in Canada. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sleeping-car-porters-in-canada

As I was posting this on the blog, I remembered that Janice Lovelace did a webinar for Legacy Family Tree Webinars on the Pullman Porters and Maids. I did not rewatch it tonight but it may be something else you need to do and to view her syllabus. It will require a subscription and I would be grateful if you would use my affiliate link https://legacyfamilytree.com/product/membership/?ref=566036

 

 

My genealogy speaking calendar has been updated

Paula Stuart-Warren  Genealogy, Presentations, Webinars  , , , , ,  Leave a comment

Sunday is for updating my speaking calendar that can be viewed by clicking on the Speaking tab at the top of the blog. A few dates are waiting for the organization to fully execute our contract and to make their own announcement. If your organization needs a speaker in April, July, and months beyond, I do have room to add more virtual events from anywhere or in-person if relatively close to the Saint Paul, Minnesota area.

GRIP Genealogy Institute is still taking registrations for the June virtual week. Fees, course details, instructors, and more are on the website https://grip.ngsgenealogy.org/. The syllabus for the Digging Deeper and Not Just Farmers courses are greatly expanded. 

A special event in Minnesota is a May in-person afternoon presentation about basic genealogy and it includes an extensive handout with reminders, book suggestions, and many helpful website connections. I hope to see you in St. Michael, Minnesota, just off I-94. https://stma.ce.eleyo.com/course/7687/winter-spring-2026%E2%80%941/family-history-research-with-paula-stuart-warren

 

Beltrami County, Minnesota, History Center has added more library and archive space

Paula Stuart-Warren  Minnesota  , , ,  Leave a comment

“Emily Thabes, executive director of the Beltrami County Historical Society, said the addition is a great opportunity to repurpose museum space more effectively while expanding its collections.” The new wing in Bemidji honors longtime supporters and volunteers in its name, the Louis and Mary Lou Marchand Library. Read the full article from Minnesota Public Radio https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/02/21/beltrami-county-history-center-opens-new-library-and-archive-with-unique-local-collections.