GenealogyClassBlog

Click here to go to the National Archives census training video on YouTube.

I have my calendar marked for April 2, 2012. Do you?

I plan to be ready by that day to search the 1940 census online for free at the National Archives website, www.archives.gov. Since the U.S. Federal Census cannot be seen by the public until it is released 72 years after the 1940 enumeration date, no one will be able to begin indexing the entries until April 2, 2012. Visit the 1940 Census Records page of the National Archives site for ideas about how to do some sleuthing in advance to narrow down a search to only the pages covering your ancestor’s (or your) neighborhood. While there, you will also find just about everything you ever wanted to know and everything you will ever need to know about the 1940 census.

Constance Potter, of the National Archives gave a detailed introduction to the 1940 census at the Federation of Genealogical Societies National Conference in September 2011, and it was very interesting to hear the about what questions were asked back in 1940. Kathy Huber, the Tulsa City-County Library’s genealogy librarian introduced it last July in Tulsa as well (download her handout from the TCCL Genealogy website).

While in each of the censuses 1880-1930, the census taker asked for not only the place of birth of each person on the census, he (or she) also asked for the place of birth of the parents. That information won’t appear on the 1940 census except for one person out of every 20. The U. S. Census Bureau was more interested in 1940 to study the workforce, so the census taker asked questions about what kind of work, how many weeks unemployed, etc. One question that intrigues me is where each person was living on 1 April 1935. The answer could be “Same House,” “Same Place” (if the same town but a different house), or the town, county, and state or country where the person lived.

To get an idea of the nature of the instructions to the enumerators, or just to get a glimpse back to 72 years ago, watch the training film now on YouTube or at the National Archives website. The mock interview of a housewife by a census taker will help to put the census taker’s job perspective, and you can hear about some of the more tricky census questions in anticipation of your look at the census when it is released.

Thanks to Dick Eastman for blogging about this today.

On Wednesday I introduced the class to the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, which is a free resource offered online by the Newberry Library in Chicago. In trying to research your ancestor’s experience with the local court, especially the county court, you will need to determine which county would have recorded your ancestor’s business. Even if your ancestor was living in one place for several decades, if the time period was during the formation of the state’s county boundaries, it is possible that he or she lived in different counties. Add that to the possibility that your ancestor may have done business in the closest courthouse rather than his or her county seat, and things may not be as simple as you’d expect. The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries shows the county boundaries as of any date you select in the Interactive Map. The URL for this resource is http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/index.html. Enjoy exploring!

On Wednesday I mentioned a class which will be offered by the Tulsa City County Library on 15 October. The teacher will be Kathy Huber, the Genealogy Librarian and the class will meet at the Harmon Foundation Meeting Room at the Genealogy Center, 2901 S. Harvard, from 10:30 am to 1:00 pm. You can download a PDF version of TCCL’s October Event Guide here and read more about the class on page 4. You will need to have Adobe Reader installed on your computer (and you can access Adobe Reader for free here). You can return later to check on future classes by visiting the Events page of the TCCL website, http://www.tulsalibrary.org/eventguide/.

I also mentioned that the Tulsa Genealogical Society will be meeting on 17 October for their regular meeting held the third Monday of each month (September – May). You’ll want to attend the free beginners class at 6:00 before the meeting and the program by Janice Meredith – “Get Prepared for the 1940 U.S. Census.” Visitors are welcome to attend their meetings, but you may want to consider becoming a member. Learn more about the society, their library, and additional events at their website, www.tulsagenealogy.org.

I think that we are going to have a great class this year. I enjoyed getting to know you during class, and then reading your student profiles after class. It was interesting to see what your interests are. I will be using the information to help develop the direction of the rest of the course.

I have located the details about the webinar scheduled for this Monday at 6:00 CDT. The Friends of the National Archives-Southeast Region is making this available for free. They describe webinars as “a Web-based seminar, lecture, or presentation delivered via the Internet. Audience my register and attend (using their computer) from the comfort of their home.”

The speaker will be Meg Hacker, Archival Operations Director at the Southwest Region in Fort Worth. There is a link to register on this website:  http://friendsnas.org/webinarSch.htm. Her topic will be “Researching Records Relating to the Five Tribes of Oklahoma… made a little bit easier.” A large portion of the federal records for the Cherokee, Muscogee/Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes may be found in the National Archives – Southwest in Fort Worth, Texas, and trying to use them can be confusing. Some have been microfilmed and are available at various libraries and archives; some have been digitized and are available online; others have not been filmed, digitized, or indexed and can only be used in person.

Meg is a fun and engaging speaker and is an expert on this topic. I encourage you to register and check out the technical details at the site, where I found the following system requirements:

PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Attendees will be able to ask questions, but will need to have a microphone (and they recommend a headset) to do so. It has been my experience with other webinars that you will not need to have a voice in their forum – you can simply listen. There are more webinars scheduled for the months ahead. If you aren’t interested in this topic, you might make a note of their later webinars.

I have updated the Genealogy Bibliography – the one that I told you to bring back each week – and you can download the updated file here – Bibliography11, and then print yourself a new one (but the one you picked up on Wednesday will be fine). I added Marsha Hoffman Rising’s book, The Family Tree Problem Solver, which is one of the books I mentioned in class available at the Tulsa City County Library.

I also added links to the Association of Professional Genealogists (www.apgen.org) and the Board for Certification of Genealogists (www.bcgcertification.org). And I replaced the URL for this blog with the new one – www.genealogyclassblog.com.

Remember to subscribe to the blog posts using the box at the left, and then you will be sent an email by Feed My Inbox – probably the next day. Or, if you have a blog reader (and you know how to use it), you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

See you next Wednesday!

I am putting the final touches on today’s talk. I hear that we have 18 registered and that we will be in room J228.

After today’s class, and some time before next week’s class, be sure to comment on this post. Give your classmates an idea about what interests you by posting your first research objective.

“Genealogy: Beyond the Basics” is the title of the upcoming class at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church’s School of Continuing Education this time. Over the years that I been teaching genealogy classes at Boston Avenue (since 1994) I have changed up the format maybe five times. This time I would like to help the students explore, with an “experienced guide,” what they might find, “beyond the basics.” Here is the course description:

“After a quick review of how to begin the search for your family history, we will earn together how to build your skills and how to locate some of the newest and best resources. We will also explore genealogy software, online resources, and DNA testing; all while communicating outside of class on the Genealogy Class Blog. Basic understanding of your computer and the Internet is a must.”

The school will begin on Wednesday, 5 October and last five weeks through 3 November. See more information about other classes offered in a downloadable booklet at Boston Avenue’s website. The $15 fee covers a whole day of interesting classes, but the Genealogy: Beyond the Basics class itself will be from 2:30 to 3:30 pm every Wednesday. To register, call 918-583-5181.

At the Cherokee Ancestry Conference on Saturday I described the critical part of family history research — the evidence — and I identified some resources for understanding how to cite sources. The title of the talk was, “How Do You Know? understanding Evidence and Source Citations,” because we really do need to know what we can believe about ancestors.

I told the attendees that I would be posting some additional information here on the GenealogyClassBlog. I hope that it will be helpful to all genealogy students, whether in attendance at the seminar or not.

Realizing that there are mistakes in online family trees, and even in published genealogies, we discussed the importance of making sure that our work is correct before we share it with others. Standards for Sound Genealogical Research, from the National Genealogical Society, may be found here. Note that the document is in PDF format and requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or Apple’s Preview to read it. At this same site, there is a link to download another related document developed by the National Genealogical Society, “Guidelines for Genealogical Self-Improvement and Growth.”

The Genealogical Proof Standard is described at the web site of the Board For Certification of Genealogists. The Genealogical Proof Standard is the current standard genealogists should use in determining whether the evidence supports a conclusion, especially when there is no direct evidence. This page also provides the process you would use to determine how to reach a conclusion based upon the Genealogical Proof Standard.

I would also recommend reading a Skillbuilding article, called “Guidelines for Evaluating Genealogical Resources,” by Linda Woodward Geiger for an explanation of how sources provide the information that becomes our evidence.

I will be presenting this same program for the Tulsa City County Library on Saturday, July 23, but expanded to an hour and a half, beginning at 1:00 pm. Following that lecture, I will be introducing a new program I am calling “Genealogy Using DNA: First Steps” from 2:45 to 4:15.

I will write again soon with links to genealogy blogger discussions about source citations in genealogy software programs and about additional genealogy programs. Here is a link to the downloadable flyer for Family History Month at the Tulsa City County Library. This form will also require Adobe Acrobat Reader or Preview for viewing.

Gene Norris, CG, the genealogist for the Cherokee National Historical Society, Inc. in Park Hill, Oklahoma, has organized a two-day seminar with seven interesting lecture topics – four on Friday, June 10 and three on Saturday, June 11. The location for this 10th Annual Conference will be the Osiyo Training Room, located eight miles south of downtown Tahlequah at the Restaurant of the Cherokee and Cherokee Nation Gift Shop.

2011 Cherokee Ancestry Conference

Download the 2011 June Genealogy Conference brochure pictured above (requires Adobe Reader or Preview to view).
Download the Cherokee Ancestry Conference Map (requires Adobe Reader or Preview to view).

Speakers will include Roy Hamilton (Cherokee Historian and President of the Cherokee Arts & Humanities Council), Featured Speaker Ryan Mackey (Language Curriculum Specialist, CN Immersion School), Elizabeth Walker (Genealogy Library Associate from the Tulsa City County Library’s Genealogy Center) and Gene Norris on Friday; and Gene Norris and myself on Saturday.

For specific lecture titles and times, download the 10TH Annual Cherokee Ancestry Conference itinerary (in Microsoft Word format).

On Saturday afternoon at 1:30pm I will be ending the conference with “How Do You Know? Understanding Evidence and Source Citations.”

You can see from the photos of the Osiyo Meeting Room on the conference brochure that it is a state-of-the-art facility. The speakers (and I have heard all except Ryan Mackey) are engaging and well informed. I recommend that you take this opportunity to learn about Cherokee ancestry research. I hope you can arrange to attend.

Desmond Walls Allen will be in Tulsa to present a workshop for the Tulsa City County Library on Saturday, 23 April, and I am very excited. I had a chance to meet Desmond at the FGS Conference in Little Rock in 2009, and I have always been a huge fan. She is a very witty and bright speaker and she has such a wonderful depth of knowledge about any of her topics that I always learn when I attend one of her lectures. Desmond is a professional genealogist from Arkansas, who has published numerous books for genealogists to use to find Arkansas ancestors. I found 42 in the library’s catalog, most of which can be found at the Genealogy Center. She is the author of First Steps in Genealogy: a Beginner’s Guide to Researching Your Family History, which is available for check-out to library cardholders at several of the branches.

by Desmond Walls Allen

The workshop will be at the Hardesty Library, in the Frossard Auditorium, from 9:30 to 4:30. I hear that she will be taking questions at the end about Arkansas research among other topics, but the focus for most of the day will be digital images, which we all need to understand better. Here is a description from the library’s Event Guide:

Discover how you can use your digital camera to document your family history research. Learn how to photograph records, cemeteries, heirlooms and old photographs, as well as touch up old photographs to make them a great addition to research notebooks and scrapbooks.

I haven’t heard whether she will have any of her books for sale, but you might want to bring some money along, just in case. I look forward to seeing you there.

National Archives Countdown

Comedian Bill Cosby did a wonderful show yesterday at the PAC in Tulsa and my husband and I were there. During his two-hour description (although likely exaggerated) of life as a grandfather and someone who is now one of the “old people,” he mentioned that he is now 73 years old. So, Mr. Cosby has almost lived long enough to find himself on the census.

If you have been hoping to use the census to learn more about someone who, like Bill Cosby, was born between April of 1930 and April 1 of 1940, you will have your chance, beginning 2 April 2012, of using the United States Federal Census, taken 1 April 2012. The additional one-day delay is because 1 April 2012 falls on a Sunday.

I will be writing more later about what you can expect — that the images will initially be released online instead of only on microfilm for instance — but for now you can visit the National Archives website for more information — even a countdown (the image I’ve pasted here was the countdown as of 4 April at 8:35 am).

Constance Potter, Archivist, has written about the release, here and in a Prologue Magazine article online.