I am still in institute mode after last week’s exceptionally great week of the virtual GRIP Genealogy Insititute. I’ll post more on that later. For now, here’s some news on free access to Canadian records on MyHeritage! Read more details on the MyHeritage Blog.
Sure you can click on the tab above the says SPEAKING to learn about the upcoming presentations I am doing. I appreciate all of you that attend both the free and fee-based events and gratefully applaud the organizations that invited me. Looking for another topic or speaker? Check out Conference Keeper. The free website has a wide variety of events and more that are submitted by organizations. A genealogical or historical event can be submitted at NO charge. https://conferencekeeper.org/. It might be a one-hour webinar, a full day seminar, or an institute. It even has a link to see only virtual events as you can see below under the Calendar tab. Click on the Submissions tab to submit you events. Tami Osmer Mize does a great job with Conference Keeper!
The updates to digitized newspapers for Minnesota keeps adding to my research task list! I already found one new item about my late father-in-law.
MN Digital Newspaper Hub – May 2024 content update
A content update to the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub today added 10,025 new issues and 158,877 new newspaper pages. New publicly available titles & date spans:
We all debate about things in life. Then we might miss a deadline. A BIG DEADLINE is approaching. ONLY 1 week till registration ends for the June 23-28 week of virtual classes with GRIP Genealogy Institute. The last day to register for that week is 14 June. I’d love to share the great education, instructors, and students already in the “Digging Deeper: Records, Tools, and Skills” course with you.
Questions about it? Email me PaulaStuartWarren at gmail.com or read details at https://grip.ngsgenealogy.org/courses/digging-deeper-records-tools-and-skills/
You may have heard one of my genealogy presentations on the value of railroad records, what may exist for your family, and how to find the collections that still exist today. Railroads are one of my favorite topics and some of the details in recoreds are amazing. That’s why this recent article in the Cowboy Sate Daily caught my eye.
The records of railroad employee unions and brotherhoods are great resources. The story covers Wyoming’s Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen Division 103, which is the oldest and still active union in the state! I have seen trains along my driving route from Minnesota to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City.
“The local Cheyenne union chapter is part of the oldest union in the United States. Its roots go back to Detroit, Michigan, in 1863 and the Cheyenne chapter formed 21 years before Wyoming was a state. Originally, Division 103 represented just engineers who worked for the Union Pacific as the frontier was in the process of being tamed.” Read the online article for more details and a great train picture.
June 2, 2007. The day I began my own blog. Before that, I had been blogging about publicity for some Federation of Genealogical Societies conferences. Today starts the 18th year of my own blogging.
My own blog has had its productive times and then some down times when I am extra busy with my research clients and working on upcoming presentations. Work is good and pays the rent and groceries. At this time, I am extra busy working on my PowerPoint slides for the 14 sessions I am teaching in 3 weeks for the 2024 Virtual GRIP Genealogy Institute. Ihttps://grip.ngsgenealogy.org/#1#schedule. I Coordinate the Digging Deeper course and teach in that, and the Farming and Midwest courses. I love the preparation, but it does take time and sometimes the blog suffers.
On this blog, I try to share information on websites, sales, upcoming events, new indexes, databases, and some cool things I find online and in repositories. Occasionally I’ll cover a bit of my own family history.
That’s where I am today. Adding some photos and records from my own family to those presentations. I don’t have too much of my family in those presentations, but I found an old picture of me at 10 years old using the old water pump on a family member’s farm. I have some family records interwoven in other sessions I will be doing. We never stop learning and sharing.
As I do each year, I have heard from prospective students for the GRIP Genealogy Institute course “Digging Deeper: Records, Tools, and Skills. No, it’s not a basic level course. Yes, even novice genealogists can learn a lot, but if you have a bit more experience, you will become a better researcher and have a boatload of knowledge, skills, and records to investigate. We have so much to share!
While the other instructors and I work on new and updated syllabus materials and the presentation slides, we share with each other about what we see in and for the course.
Debbie said, “they will learn more than they already know.” I agree and I already learned about a couple new to me newspaper sites just from her syllabus section on that. Not only in that session, but throughout the week I always hear the “I didn’t know that” during discussions with the students.
We are a unique team of instructors and don’t provide the usual approaches to our varied sessions that really do flow together.
Debbie’s session on “Legal Savvy for the Genealogist” provides some hands-on activities that reinforce the process. That makes it stick in student’s brains along with the syllabus section reminders. She only teaches this topic for Digging Deeper.
Amy is happy that Cari is presenting about PERSI and shares that it’s an under-utilized resource where genealogists can find incredible information. Amy told me she recently did some research at a state archive. “I found some cool documents that I will share as never-seen-before examples of what genealogists can find in state archives and state historical societies.” Oh, I am looking forward to learning what she found for us and how she found them.
Cari will also explore probate records with the class, which are more than just wills and estates. “We will look at guardianships, apprenticeships, and other probate records.”
Every time I am investigating a website, I do some deep searching but maybe not deep enough? Cyndi’s session on “The Hidden Web: Digging Deeper” is tempting me with one part of the description “We will also talk about the importance of indexes that deep-link into websites online.” I’m ready! We do continue to learn.
For me, I love my Monday sessions about analyzing records and more, drafting a research plan, and what I call “Collaborative Genealogy.” The outcome of these two sessions and related work during the week highlight some additional help that might be close than you realize.
We do have some student spaces not yet reserved. Check the GRIP Genealogy Institute page for the course to learn more about the sessions and to find out who Amy, Cari, Cyndi, and Debbie really are under the Faculty tab.
Big news for Minnesota and Saint Paul researchers. Finally, some additional years of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press and Saint Paul Dispatch online. In a future post I will add more on the changing titles of Saint Paul newspapers but for now here’s this recent update from GenealogyBank. Update: check under Minnesota and then Saint Paul and St. Paul for all titles.
This is the Minnesota section of the listing of new and additional pages for newspapers state by state.
Read more about the new and updated newspapers on the GenealogyBank blog at https://blog.genealogybank.com/huge-may-addition-genealogybank-just-added-new-content-from-346-titles.html
Join me the evening of May 28, 2024 as a guest on Genealogy Quick Start TV. Free on YouTube and Facebook.
“Welcome to our community. We look forward to interacting live at 8:00 PM ET, every other Tuesday, as we multicast to Facebook and YouTube. Producer and host Shamele Jordon has the pleasure to be joined by internationally known genealogists/authors James M. Beidler and Michael John Neill, aka “Double Trouble”. GENEALOGY QUICK START is a 60-minute TV program providing the steps needed to begin researching your ancestry. We will explore hot topics with professional and everyday people researching family history. We will focus on the fun and creativity involved in uncovering our past. Topics include online research, records, DNA, and much more.
I’ve known Shamele, Jim, and Michael for many years and all because we have been volunteers working on genealogy conferences. Jim and I also served together on the Board of Directors of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. We all love education, giving back to our organizations, and believe in fun, too! Genealogy research is serious, exciting, and brings tears and laughter, sometimes within the same few minutes!
Syllabus sections all turned in and from what I have seen, there are a lot of reminders, tips, images, charts, websites, and published material. My PowerPoint presentations are in the fine tuning stage.
Still time to join us June 23-28, 2024 for some amazing education, sharing, networking, and some laughter, too. Weeklong Virtual Courses. GRIP Genealogy Institute. I will be participating in the three courses listed below. Some “seats” are still open for Digging Deeper and Migrations. Farmers is full. More course details session by sessionis online at https://grip.ngsgenealogy.org/. You can join us from your desk, couch, or kitchen table.