Tuesday Teachings – NGS-HSC Lesson 3

It’s been a while since I’ve written about my experience with taking the National Genealogical Society’s Home Study Course.  In past posts I gave an Overview of the Course, and then wrote about Lesson 1 and Lesson 2.  Here I’ll cover Lesson 3.

Lesson 3 is about communication.  In particular, the lesson’s focus is on the querying side of communication.  That is, asking questions to receive information as opposed to reporting information back to someone.

As genealogists, we are often looking for information that others may have.  As such, it’s important that we are able to clearly and concisely ask for the information that we are seeking.

The first assignment of the lesson is to create an interview plan.  The plan states who the person so be interviewed is, why they should be interviewed, what questions may be asked, and how the interview is to be recorded.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not comfortable interviewing people.  Keep in mind that the goal of this lesson is to create an interview plan.  Actually carrying out the interview, or not, is really up to the student.

In my case, I focused my interview plan around my wife’s aunt.  I chose her as I know that she has an interest in family history, grew up in the area that I was researching, and has done some genealogy work herself.  She also lives near the cemetery where many of her family are buried, so I planned my interview as if I’d be talking to her both in her home, and while taking a walking tour through the cemetery.  I came up with a list of nine interview questions, starting with her memories of childhood, moving onto her memories or stories of her grandparents, then moving outward to other or older branches of the family.  In my interview plan I noted that I would plan on recording the conversation using a digital voice recorder, written notes, and drawings of the cemetery, all to be compiled and put into a digital format after the interview.

The second assignment of the lesson was similar to the first, except that the form of communication was a written letter instead of an oral interview.  Like the first assignment, the goal is to write the letter.  Sending the letter is then up to the student.

For assignment two, I wrote a short formal letter to a family historical society, asking if they might have, somewhere in their archives, information regarding why an ancestor of mine may have moved from Vermont to Ohio.  I provided birth, marriage and death information that I had.  My goal for the letter was to ask a single question that an archivist could answer without needed to do unnecessary research.

My final letter ended up being only a couple of short paragraphs long.  The grader for the assignment commented that my letter was clear and should elicit a positive response from the recipient.

The third and final assignment for this lesson was to write a short genealogical query that could be used in a publication.  The idea behind this assignment was to ask a concise question using very few words.  Most publications have a standard that they use for these sorts of queries.  For my assignment, I chose to use a limitation of 50 characters as specified by the guidelines of the Vermont Genealogical Society.  The query (which I’m actually still looking for an answer to) was as follows:

JENKINS: Seek birth place of Charles Wesley JENKINS, b. circa 1840, Indiana. Married Laura A. DERBY (b. circa 1842, Grafton, VT). Children include Ida JENKINS (b. circa 1867, VT) and Minnie Laura JENKINS (b. 27 Sept 1872, Peru, VT). Elroy Davis, P.O. Box 184, Manchester, VT 05254, e-mail: eveningmaple@gmail.com

I found Lesson 3 very useful.  Though I haven’t interviewed my wife’s aunt (yet), or sent my letter, I did find that the process of creating the questions helped me focus on exactly what information I was looking for.

Thankful Thursday - Ancestors

Yesterday was my 40^th birthday and, if you believe the Mayan Doomsday folks, tomorrow will be the end of the world as we know it.

Today seems like as good a time as any to start a genealogy blog.

My introduction to genealogy came at an early age.  My grandmother had been married twice, and her second husband, my grandfather, had been married multiple times.  The children resulting from the various marriages therefore made an interesting mix of half-siblings, related to each other through one parent or the other.  My mother, in fact, had thirteen half-brothers and half-sisters.  Some of these she knew, others she knew about, but hadn’t met.

When I was a kid, my mother began documenting her family.  I still have some of her handwritten notes.  I don’t ever recall hearing the term “genealogy” used, but what my mother was doing definitely fell under the labels of genealogy and family history.  In today’s terms I suppose she would be considered a name-gatherer.  Most of her notes were based on memory, family stories, and a published genealogy from the 1800s.  Very little was fully documented, but the framework for research was there.  I remember helping her fill out pedigree charts and family group sheets, and even writing to distant relatives for information when I was about 10 years old.

Through the process of learning about my mother’s family with her, I also began to learn bits of local history.  The Batchelder family had been in the same area for several generations. My great-uncle, who raised my mother along with my grandmother, died at the age of 92 at his home, which was built on a portion of land that once belonged to the farm where he was born.  His father (my great-grandfather) had been born in town, as well as his grandfather.  My great-uncle’s memories went far back in time.  Where visitors to town saw a recreational park with a pond, he remembered what used to be a village with a sawmill.  As a teenager working in the woods with him, I would hear recollections of his time in the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.  Through his stories, old cellar holes became families, and main roads reverted to horse and wagon paths.

As an adult, my experiences with genealogy and history are some of my fondest memories of growing up.  While I’ve always been a name-collector, in the past few years I’ve become more serious about my genealogical research, documenting sources, verifying my mother’s notes, researching my father’s family, and fleshing out the stories of my ancestor’s lives.  Through my research, my ancestors have become as real to me as my living family.  I enjoy spending time with them and learning about the world as they saw it.

And so, today, Thankful Thursday, I use my first blog post to thank my ancestors.  They are a part of me spiritually as much as they are genetically, and I enjoy learning about each and every one.