Today was another intense learning day at Jamboree.
Session 1 (8:30-9:30) – Civil War Medical Records
I began the day listening to an excellent presentation by another new-to-me speaker, Craig Scott. He began with a quick review of military medicine up to the time of the Civil War. The presentation continued with tips for locating military medical records for both Union and Confederate soldiers at the National Archives. The remainder of the class covered examples of the very varied types of documents and details found within individual personnel records. I loved this presentation!
Session 2 (10:00-11:00) – How to Get More from Your DNA with GEDmatch.com
This session was an approach-avoidance conflict for me. I wanted to learn more about working with my DNA results on GEDmatch, but was worried about how quickly the information would fly over my head. However, I decided to jump in. The first part of the class reviewed the basics of using the GEDmatch website, which I liked and was pleased to find out that I have a decent grasp of the options available. Many more advanced tools were identified and discussed. Now I need to go home and play with them.
Session 3 (11:30-12:30) – Digging Pennsylvania Roots from Your Desk Top
James Beidler specializes in German research and, although I’ve met and spoken to him at previous conferences, I have never attended one of his classes. Pennsylvania is a natural ancillary specialty given that so many Germans settled in Pennsylvania. My husband has a number of German lines, several of whom at least passed through Pennsylvania. I have done a small amount of standard resource searching in this state, but I need to learn much more. After a quick overview of early Pennsylvania settlers and d their histories, the speaker discussed available records and repositories accessible to researchers.
Session 4 (2:00-3:00) -Get Started Blogging Your Family History
Yes, I know. I’m already a blogger, so why was I at a talk about starting up a blog? Well, Elizabeth and I are long time friends and I was there to cheer her on, although she needed no cheering from me! All the basics and then some were covered in how to become a blogger. The room was full and quite a few people asked questions at the end.
An added bonus is that while I was on the way to the session room, I finally ran into Jacqi Stevens, a fellow blogger who I knew was at Jamboree but who I’ve never met in person. We had a fun few minutes chatting before the class began.
There were two more sessions this afternoon, but unfortunately, I had to be three hours away in the desert for the night as I headed back to Tucson and didn’t want to be driving alone at night. So, I was unable to finish out the Saturday afternoon sessions.
One day next week, I will write about the Exhibit Hall and several new vendors that I met. The hall is no where near the size of RootsTech, but in spite of that, there were several new products and websites that I learned about. Stay tuned for that post!