Announcement: National Genealogical Society Banquet Speaker will be Patrick McCawley

We regret to inform you that Stephen B. Bacon, Maj. USAF (Ret), will be unable to deliver the National Genealogical Society Banquet talk Friday, 13 May 2011, due to circumstances beyond his control.  We have been fortunate on such short notice to find Patrick McCawley, who is also an expert on many aspects of the Civil War in South Carolina.

Patrick McCawley, Archival Processing Supervisor at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, will talk about “The Destruction of Records in South Carolina during the Civil War.” His talk will provide an overview of recordkeeping in South Carolina on the eve of the war, a review of military operations during the war, and the effect those operations had on the survival of local and state records. In particular he will discuss the march of General Sherman’s army through the state and the courthouses and records destroyed as a result.

McCawley began his career with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History in 1986 as Reference Archivist. His interest in military history led him to become familiar with the department’s military records and, in his twenty-five years with the Archives, has become an expert on its Civil War holdings. His current duties include assessing and accessioning all incoming records from the state or local governments, preparing the records for research use, and maintaining the electronic guide to the archival collection, all within a restricted budget in a recessionary environment. 


McCawley’s interest in history began at an early age, fostered by the Time-Life books his father collected and family trips to Manassas and Antietam battlefields. He graduated from the University of Maryland, where he received a BA in American History in 1984. His focus during his college years was World War II military history with an emphasis on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  McCawley also attended the Applied History graduate program at the University of South Carolina. More recently he has attended the annual Southeastern Archives and Records Conference and has participated in panels for the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators.

In 1991, McCawley wrote a small pamphlet on Confederate records which led to a more complete Guide to Civil War Records: A Guide to Records at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History published in 1994.  In 1997, the department published the Selected Civil War Bibliography, a 44-page list of South Carolina related Civil War books and articles.  In 1999, McCawley co-edited, with Alexia J. Helsley, The Many Faces of Slavery, a reader of selected slave related documents from the department’s collection geared towards use in the classroom. McCawley has also written several  articles for historical journals and several Civil War related entries for the Encyclopedia of South Carolina.  He has also had two “guest appearances” on PBS’s The History Detectives.

Patrick McCawley resides with his family in Chapin, South Carolina.

Announcement: National Genealogical Society Banquet Speaker will be Patrick McCawley

Speaker Spotlight: Patricia Walls Stamm, CG, CGL

An article in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported on a fire at the Military Personal Records Center in July 1973. On prophetic line said that the fire “created an administrative nightmare which may torment the U.S. Military establishment for years to come.”

Beginning in 2005, the Archival Division of the Military Personal Records Center, St. Louis began opening the military files to the public. Now they receive approximately 5,000 requests per day.

For years, rumors were circulated about the fire, records found, and files destroyed. What records are in St. Louis? Ever wondered what records were burned? How they preserve the remaining files? What you might find in a file? What determines if the file was archival or a regular restricted file?  

On Saturday at 4:00 p.m., the genealogical community will hear about the fire, the resulting aftermath, and the records one can obtain in a lecture by Patricia Walls Stamm, CG, CGL, a local St. Louis researcher, who uses the St. Louis NARA Military Personal Records Center.

Speaker Spotlight: Patricia Walls Stamm, CG, CGL

Speaker Spotlight: Don Rightmyer

Don Rightmyer, editor, Kentucky Ancestors (quarterly genealogical publication of the Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Kentucky), writer, and lecturer.  Following a 24-year U.S. Air Force career, Don worked as a reference librarian for eight years before taking over Kentucky Ancestors.  He has spoken on a variety of genealogical, Civil War, and Kentucky historical topics at national, regional, and local levels.    

Migration Routes into Kentucky

Traveling to the trans-Appalachian region of colonial Virginia in the late 1700s?  Over 200,000 people made that trip in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.  The two primary routes were down the Ohio River or through the Cumberland Gap by way of the Wilderness Trail.  Don Rightmyer will describe what the experience was like for ancestors who made that trip and began a new life “on the western waters.” 

 

Speaker Spotlight: Don Rightmyer

Speaker Spotlight - Claire Bettag, CG, CGL

Claire Bettag, CG, CGL, lecturer, writer, and editor, has served as trustee for BCG, APG, and NGS; director of NIGR; and co-editor of the NGSQ.

BOUNTY-LAND RECORDS AT NARA

Looking for an ancestor who might have had bounty land? You might learn something in this presentation, as bounty-land research can be puzzling, sometimes involving multiple search paths to various records. Researchers working in the bounty-land records of the National Archives (NARA)—whether on site or online—frequently fail to consult all available records. At least two NARA record groups are involved: Record Group 15 for the bounty-land applications, and Record Group 49 for the surrendered bounty-land warrants. In general, the applications are more valuable for genealogical purposes, but researchers should always consult both, as some surrendered warrant files can provide a great deal of information. Various indexes to both applications and surrendered warrants are available. Some indexes, however, are incomplete. Especially for applications, unproductive index searches must be complemented by searches in unindexed record series at the National Archives. This discussion will guide researchers to all available records, and will look at many examples along the way.

RESEARCH REPORTS
If you’re like most researchers, you love the excitement of the chase, the search, the quest. You are not so excited by the prospect of writing a report about that quest. While this discussion can promise no “easy way out” and no way to avoid writing reports, it will present the essential elements for written reports—whether written for clients, for friends and relatives, or for your own files. There may be no way to make writing a research report fun for everyone, but perhaps developing a template and reporting habits can make the task less onerous.

Speaker Spotlight - Claire Bettag, CG, CGL

Speaker Spotlight: Julie Miller, CG

Julie is a Kentucky native and has lived in Mississippi, South Dakota, Indiana, Arizona, Texas and has resided in Colorado for the past 19 years. She has been involved in genealogy since she started researching her own family in 1976.

Julie has been active in genealogy society management for over 11 years in various local and national societies. She is NGS Vice President, NGS 2010 and 2012 conference chair, and has been a volunteer at the National Archives, Rocky Mountain Region for 15 years.

Lectures that Julie will be presenting:

W146, Wednesday, 2:30–3:30 p.m.
"Search for Ancestors in Passenger Arrival Records"
This lecture starts with a short review of the passenger arrival records that are available and what information is found in those records. The majority of the lecture covers difficult problems that may be encountered when reaching passenger lists and the importance of dissecting the records and analyzing the information in order to reveal all of their potential worth. This session is for you if you have some experience in passenger arrival list research.
 
T223, Thursday, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
"When Grandpa Comes Marching Home Again"
Civil War pension files are filled with genealogical information but are often large and intimidating. This lecture begins with a review of the documents usually included in a Civil War pension file. It then discusses how to make sense of the file by organizing, extracting and analyzing the documents and information. This lecture is for you if you have acquired a pension file (or any large file of documents) and want some ideas about how to find the hidden treasures contained within these files.

F326, Friday, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
"Catholic Church Research in the Southeast"
Catholic Church records can provide information about our ancestors for periods when civil vital records do not exist. These records are well-known for their reliability and value to genealogical researchers. This lecture discusses the different types of Catholic Church records available, what you can expect to find in the records, and how to locate the records with a special emphasis on the locating records in the Southeast United States. No prior knowledge of Catholic Church records is needed to attend this session.

S404. Saturday, 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Kids' Kamp
This program is for children between the ages of eight and sixteen. The Kamp features a variety of age-appropriate activities that help children gain an appreciation of and a connection to their ancestry. Included in the Kamp are activities focusing on the requirements for the Boy Scout Genealogy Merit Badge and the Girl Scout My Heritage Badge. This  is a fun and unique opportunity to get your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and scout troops interested in their family history.

Speaker Spotlight: Julie Miller, CG

Speaker Spotlight: Tom Magnuson

W164 - Ground Transportation and Routes in Early Colonial Carolina on Wednesday, 11 May 2011 at 7:00 p.m.

The Trading Path Association (TPA) has studied muscle powered transportation physics to understand what was possible in land transportation when our ancestors moved about the interior of the continent quite out of sight of government.  Those studies culminated in current projects for the mapping of our common past by mapping our roads, trails and paths.  In fact TPA research uncovered the fact that there are numerous visible traces of Native American foot paths, early colonial horse trails, and 17th and 18th century wagon roads.  The TPA also learned that, until the middle of the 19th century, very few people lived more than a few feet from their main source of information, their road.  With these discoveries the TPA set out on a project to map and protect the landscapes of our common past because those remnants point to the archaeological evidence that will tell us who was where, when, and what they were doing. 

This talk will describe basic pre-modern transportation physics and some of the growing number of internet tools available for coming to grips with how our forbearers got from hither to yon.

Thomas R. Magnuson is Trading Path Association founder and co-founder of the Historic Mapping Congress, which studies muscle-powered transportation and labors for the protection of
colonial landscapes.

Speaker Spotlight: Tom Magnuson

Speaker Spotlight: Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG, CGL

T209 8:00-9:00 a.m. Thursday ebooks for Genealogists
Learn about free and paid every-word searchable eBooks that can be used online or downloaded to a Kindle, smartphone, or iPad.

T248 2:30-3:30 p.m. Thursday Investigating Your Ancestors
Learn how genealogists can use criminal investigation techniques to identify ancestors, record evidence, analyze and draw accurate conclusions, and write comprehensive but concise reports.

F301 8:00-9:00 a.m. Friday Reporting the Facts: Record as You Go
Learn to record your research as you work to ensure accuracy, best analysis and use of facts, and adequate time to write the results well.

F329 11:00-12:00 noon Friday Digitizing Your Way to Organization
See how a scanner with an automatic document feeder and Adobe Acrobat software can organize those mountains of paper on your kitchen table.

I’m speaking on several of my favorite topics at the upcoming NGS conference in Charleston, South Carolina. My Scots-Irish genes often win out over my obsessive German genes to the extent that I’m always looking for an easier or faster way to do something. But then the German genes kick in and demand that my schemes have order and clear processes. It’s really a pretty balanced match, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be the first Scots-Irish person who married the German in my family, or vice versa. What a match! At any rate, my ancestral combos lead me to think in ordered ways about how to do something faster and better, and that’s how I came up with all four of the sessions I’m presenting in Charleston. I hope that some of you will attend and learn from my mistakes, since I always tell my audiences that I have learned things the hard way so they don’t have to.

In my previous other life years ago as a commissioned police officer and detective, I attended the police academy and advanced courses to learn about criminal investigative techniques. One day I came up with the idea of a genealogy lecture while pondering how many of the skills I had learned as a police investigator apply equally to researching family history: identifying the right individual by his or her modus operandi (MO)—characteristics, habits, and associates; carefully analyzing clues and drawing accurate conclusions; writing the results of our work in clear, concise reports; and putting together a case that a jury of our peers (other genealogists) would find reasonable and correct. Investigating Your Ancestors demonstrates the similarities in criminal investigation techniques and good genealogical research methodologies. My law enforcement experience also helped me understand the criminal court records where I find most of my ancestors, but that’s a different class.

In eBooks for Genealogists I’ll be discussing and demonstrating myriad sources of electronic books—both old and new—available online for free or inexpensive download to your home computer, iPad, Kindle, Smartphone, or similar device. You’ll also see how to download, store, organize, and use these books. While you might not find it comfortable to read an entire 500-page county history on a small cell phone screen, you should be thrilled to have such reference books in versions that are every-word searchable at your disposal wherever you travel. You may find yourself sitting back in the woods at an old cemetery wishing you could remember the name of that one ancestor that you found in the history of the adjoining church. With the eBook version stored on your phone or portable device, you could simply whip that device out, search for what you do remember, and have the information at hand in seconds—while you’re still onsite at the cemetery where you need it.

We genealogists are enthusiastic about the hunt; we think nothing of going on as many research trips as we can afford in a single month. However, we’re often not as eager to carefully sift through, analyze, and write up the results of that research. Isn’t it easier to just make photocopies of everything and pile it on the dining room table to deal with later? In Reporting the Facts: Record As You Go, I’ll be providing an alternative by suggesting that we learn to write our research reports as we actually do the work. For our personal research, this means we always have a current report that acts as a road map to inform us where we last stopped and what we still need to do when we pick up a project again. In our work for others, it ensures that we don’t use all the allotted time researching and then lack adequate time to write a comprehensive and clear report. This BCG-sponsored lecture just might help you begin to think about your gathering and stashing habits in a different way.

And speaking of all those piles of paper on the dining room table or spare bed in the guest room, Digitizing Your Way to Organization offers a solution to overwhelming stacks and the inability to find what you need without an hours-long physical search. See how a scanner or digital camera can help you skip the paper and create most of your research files electronically or process the piles of paper you already have into electronic files. Then, using free or inexpensive software, you’ll be able to organize and label the electronic files so that you can search for and find a particular item in seconds rather than having to dig through five boxes of paper. If you stay on top of the paper you bring home (or brought home long ago), and digitize whenever possible, you should begin to see a real difference in your ability to find what you need—from relevant articles in magazines to actual images of ancestral documents.

I’m looking forward to seeing Charleston’s colorful houses and historic areas, even though I had no ancestors that I know of in that area. I have learned to say that I know of because as sure as anything, the week after I’ve traveled to a wonderful conference where I’ve learned all kinds of new things but didn’t do local research because I didn’t have any ancestors there, the very next week I’ll find a document that reveals a new ancestor who lived just across the river from the conference site. And even if I don’t, going to any conference is worthwhile because everything we learn helps us in our own research. I can go to a New England conference where they talk about Pilgrims and witches, and I stubbornly say to myself, “Harumph! What do they know about hill people in East Tennessee or the Ozarks?” But I learn methods and techniques from every single lecture at any conference, and that knowledge applies equally to my ancestors.

I hope to see y’all at the NGS conference in Charleston, South Carolina.

Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG, CGL

Speaker Spotlight: Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG, CGL