2017 Genealogy Day at the San Diego History Center

Each audience member was given a packet with their name and schedule for the day (you choose your sessions in advance).

Mom and I attended the 2017 Genealogy Day at the San Diego History Center (SDHC) in Balboa Park today, an event presented by both the SDHC and the San Diego Genealogical Society***.

The keynote speaker was “Breathe Life into Your Ancestors: Turn Your Pedigree Chart into Fascinating Family Stories” by writer Dawn Parrett Thurston (I now own two of her books, The Parrett Migration and Breathe Into Your Life Story, thank you Mom!).  I was really inspired by her particular use of charts to show what was happening where during a particular ancestor's lifetime, similar to the technique historians use in historical atlases I've seen, including location, geography/geology, weather, technology innovation, and larger historical events.  Unfortunately she didn't have the example in a handout for me to show (although maybe I just neglected to find the handout when I was there?).

Next we went downstairs to the Research Library, where family historian and past President of the San Diego Genealogical Society Peter Steelquist gave a lecture on "Researching Local Libraries: Your Guide to Success.  This was a fantastic overview of how to where and how to access local and research research material for genealogy.  I will use the handout from the lecture to update my San Diego Genealogy Sources tab on my blog.

Last we attended Del Ritchart's review of the GenSmarts, a program that interacts with your main genealogy software and helps fill in holes in your research by recommending sources.  I had not even heard of GenSmarts before, but I might consider purchasing it if I find the research suggestions Legacy 9 has already as insufficient--GenSmarts is specifically designed to help generate ready-to-go source lists, complete with call numbers, and you can query the program to recommend research directions, like the descendants or ancestors of a particular person on your tree, which I am not sure Legacy can do in such a brief amount of steps.

We saw Genea-Musings blogger Randy Seaver again and met some new people, including J. Paul Hawthorne (GeneaSpy).  Overall a great way to spend a morning!


***I'm sorry to submit this post so late, being brain-dead-tired and distracted by "So You Think You Can Dance" makes for a slow-going post write-up.


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