First of the FHC 2020 Digital Recordings Now Online!

St. Louis Genealogical Society is delighted to announce that digital recordings of the four Judy Russell lectures are now available online! During the upcoming week, recordings of three additional lectures from the 2020 StLGS Virtual Family History Conference lectures will be ready to post as well! We all know what a curator does in a museum. Do you know what he/she does in a legal document? Have you thought of using mind maps to help you solve genealogical puzzles? Those who had the opportunity to watch Judy Russell live on Saturday, 18 April and Sunday, 19 April, have those answers and many more. With Judy's recordings available online, you now have a chance to watch at your leisure, either for the first time or to review the large amount of detailed information this noted genealogist shared with her audience.

Next up for recording will be Dennis Northcott, associate archivist at the Missouri History Museum's Library and Research Center. Dennis is an expert on the collections in the Missouri History Museum's archives and will share firsthand accounts of the Civil War taken from letters, diaries, and other unique materials in his talk called "Civil War Eyewitnesses."

Also coming soon will be a lecture from John Dougan, Missouri State Archivist, who will speak on "Life and Death at Missouri Statehood: Gleaning Genealogical Details from Frontier Inventories." John will give us insights into what life was like on the Missouri frontier prior to statehood and how you can learn more about early ancestors from their inventories and other estate papers.

Cathy Amen's talk on "Using Technology in Genealogy Research" will also be posted soon. She will discuss software, scanners, photo-editing apps and organizational tools that will help make you more productive.

The remaining three conference lectures will be added as soon as the speakers have access to their workspaces and equipment. Registrants will be notified as soon as those recordings are ready for viewing.

All digital recordings will be online for ninety days, beginning with the day they are posted. You may watch as many times as you like within that time frame.

Registration Process

 

1. Registration for all ten of the digital recordings will continue to stay open until at least the beginning of July. The cost is the same as it was for the in-person conference: $55 for StLGS members and $65 for non-members. All of the information you need to register is on our website.

2. Once you have registered, you will receive an email with a link to a page on the StLGS website that contains the complete syllabus, in two large files, including all of the handouts. These are downloadable PDFs, which you can print and/or just save to your computer. Links to all the digital recordings will be added to that page as soon as each recording becomes available.

Questions? Send an email to programs@stlgs.org and the vice-president for programs will get back to you. No one is currently in our office, so please do not call.

Interview with Judy Russell & Final Instructions for Registration for the FHC

Last week, we announced our first-ever virtual Family History Conference (FHC), featuring nationally known genealogist and legal expert, Judy Russell, "The Legal Genealogist," and the excitement is mounting as we approach the dates for live-streaming her lectures. On Saturday, 18 April, and Sunday, 19 April, we will present Judy's four talks live, including time for questions and answers at the end. Have you registered yet? If you would like to participate in the live-streaming, time is of the essence. We need time to contact you prior to the broadcast, so registration for the live-stream presentations will end on Wednesday, 15 April at 10:00 p.m. (Central Daylight Time).

If you register but cannot attend the live session, you will still be able to watch all of Judy's lectures on the Zoom website afterwards. Recordings will remain active for ninety days, so you may watch them at leisure.

The remaining conference lectures, six digital recordings, will be added as soon as possible and registrants will be notified as soon as those recordings are posted. These will also remain available for viewing for ninety days from the date they are posted.

Registration Process

1. Registration for the live Judy Russell webinars AND all ten of the digital recordings is now open. The cost is the same as it was for the in-person conference: $55 for StLGS members and $65 for non-members. All of the information you need to register is on our website.

2. FOR ALL REGISTRANTS: You will receive an email with instructions a few days after you register. On Thursday, 16 April, you will receive an invitation, sent to the email address you provided at registration, to each of the four lectures. Please check your email inbox and/or your spam/junk mailbox to retrieve the messages.

3. LINKS TO SYLLABUS AND PRESENTATIONS: The email with instructions will also include a link to a page on the StLGS website that contains the complete syllabus, in two large files, including all of the handouts. These will be available as downloadable PDFs. You will need both files for all four of Judy's lectures: the morning file for Saturday and the afternoon file for Sunday.

4.  It is your choice as to whether you watch the lectures live or view the recordings. If you choose to watch live, remember that only the first 100 who sign into the Zoom website will be admitted. Use the link and password provided in the invitations to attend the webinars. If you choose to watch later, use the link on the instruction email to access the recordings.

Questions? Send an email to programs@stlgs.org and the vice-president for programs will get back to you. No one is currently in our office, so please do not call.

Q &A with Judy Russell

(Thanks to Laura Mackinson, our social media chairperson, for interviewing our featured speaker, Judy Russell in preparation for the FHC.)

Laura: When did you first realize you wanted to explore your family history?

Judy: When my oldest cousin's husband died, and I realized that not only had I lost my grandparents and my parents, but even my own generation was starting to fade. I'd been playing at genealogy before then, but at that point it became really important to me to do what I could to see that the stories weren't lost.

Laura: What's the best "Aha-moment" story you most love to tell?

Judy: Oh, there are so many . . . Choosing just one is hard! I guess if I had to pick one, it'd be the moment I realized that there weren't two men by the same name in 19th century Texas—my perfectly law-abiding, tax-paying, child-rearing second great grandfather and a thorough-going rascal by the same name. Nope, same guy. He's my favorite ancestor—and a total scoundrel.

Laura: When did you first see the important connection between understanding the intersection of historical laws and family history research?

Judy: From the first moment I looked at a court minute book from Burke County, North Carolina, and realized that even with my law degree I had no idea what the clerk was recording with certain abbreviations. There is almost no record we can think of that doesn't exist because of the law, or contain information required by the law, or that makes no sense at all unless we know the law. That intersection is critical all the way across the board.

Laura: What's the most frequent question (or topic) that people ask on your "Ask The Legal Genealogist" website?

Judy: It's pretty much a tie between copyright issues and DNA ethics. And that makes sense to me because they really stem from the same basic notion of doing what's right with respect to things (work products on one hand, DNA results on the other) that belong to other people.

Laura: What are you looking forward to at the StLGS Family History Conference?

Judy: This will sound corny but . . . getting to visit with old friends and meet new ones is the biggest reason why I do genealogical speaking. It makes it all fun.