It’s Day 2 of Jamboree 2011!

I can’t believe it is already Saturday and the 2nd day of Jamboree. To recap what I’ve been doing:

The Family History Writers’ Conference on Thursday was outstanding. I attended all four sessions presented by John Colletta, Ph.D. His talks included information on how to assemble the documents and write a narrative family history, how to build historical context, principles of good writing and storytelling, and challenges and pitfalls to writing good narrative family histories. I learned a lot about the process and, although it is still a daunting task, I feel much more comfortable with tackling a writing project of this magnitude.

After my “field trip” yesterday with friend Corey Oiesen to Forest Lawn Memorial Park, I attended Gena Philibert Ortega’s talk on “The Secret Lives of Women: Examining Domestic Artifacts.” She focused on signature quilts, journals and diaries, and community cookbooks. Lots of great resources to explore, including The Quilt Index! One of her examples was a cookbook from Marysville, Ohio – I have to get the link for it because I have ancestors who were in that area!

Then it was on to the Land Platting workshop with Anne Miller, Ph.D., and David Armstrong, M.A. Learning how to plat parcels of land using the metes and bounds descriptions is not really as hard as it appears. Let’s see if I still feel that way in a week or so when I try it on my own at home!

First thing this morning I attended a session by Janis Martin on Unclaimed Persons, the volunteer organization that assists coroners and medical examiners around the country to find next-of-kin of unclaimed persons. Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak founded the organization in 2008. The subtitle of Janis’s talk was “Every life is worth remembering.” This is truly a project worthy of a genealogist’s time.

So many interesting topics by knowledgeable presenters, so little time!


© 2011 Denise Spurlock, Ancestral Trees Research