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.

Motivation Monday - Q1 Goal Update

Back in January I outlined my three big genealogical goals for the year.  In short they were:

• Continue my genealogical education.
• Attend a genealogy event.
• Write more.

 With the first quarter of 2013 behind me, I thought I'd take a look at my goal progress.

Goal 1: Continue my genealogical eduction.

This one hasn't gone so well.  After a couple of tries, I received a passing grade on Lesson 5 of the NGS Home Study Course.  I still need to finish writing up the Lesson 6 assignments and get those turned in.  I did attend one online seminar about DNA testing, which I found interesting.  It took some of the mystery out of using DNA for genealogical research.  I'm still not sold on having a test done myself, but it was neat to learn about.

Goal 2: Attend a genealogy event.

This goal will be completed two weeks from now.  I registered for the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium conference in Manchester, New Hampshire.  I'll be spending three days among fellow genealogists at my first convention.  If I'm not too tired at the end of each day, expect blog updates about my experience.  It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.  I'm really looking forward to it.

Goal 3: Write more.

Done.  While I haven't been able to write every couple of days like I had hoped, I'm still writing more than I have in the past few years.  Sticking with short targeted posts has helped.  In addition, the blog has put me in touch with a couple of contacts, and led me to read other blogs, which are helping me stay motivated.

Overall, I'm attaining my 2013 goals.  The one area that I need to focus more on is education.  The NERGC conference will help with that, but I really need to buckle down and work more on the NGS course.

Tuesday Teachings – NGS-HSC Lesson 2

Sitting Bull (Library of Congress photo)

A couple of weeks ago I covered Lesson 1 of the NationalGenealogical Society’s Home Study Course.  While Lesson 1 was pretty basic, Lesson 2 added in a bit of fun.  At least, I thought the lesson was fun.

The lesson’s focus was family traditions, in particular, those genealogical stories that get passed down from generation to generation.  The first written assignment for the lesson was to recount a family legend, then write a research plan for either proving or disproving the legend.

In my case, the family story has always been that we were descendants of the great Sioux Chief Sitting Bull.  My cousins and I had all heard the story from our grandmother, though I don’t recall there being any details of exactly how we were related.  Growing up, I never had any reason not to believe the story.  At that time, my father’s line had already been traced back to Barnabas Davis of Charlestown, MA, so the link, I had always assumed, was on my grandmother’s side.

It’s sort of fun to think that you might be related to someone famous, but, as I started to become more serious about genealogy, I had my doubts about the story.  After all, every line that I traced in my family tree always led back to early settlers in Massachusetts.  Occasionally I would make a half-hearted attempt to prove or disprove the story, but mostly I stayed away from it.  It was a fun family tradition, and I didn’t want to be the one to end it.  That’s not to say that I stayed away from that line of my family tree, I just never definitely said yes or no to the question of Sitting Bull being an ancestor.

Lesson 2 of the HSC was a good excuse to finally state a conclusion.  Though it might be a disappointment to the living family, Item 1 of the Code of Ethics for the Association of Professional Genealogists, of which I’m a member, states “Promote a coherent, truthful approach to genealogy, family history and local history.”[1]

In other words, don’t state something as fact if you don’t have evidence to back up that fact.

Coming up with an argument for or against Sitting Bull being an ancestor was fairly easy.  A quick Internet search turns up that Sitting Bull has only one known living male descendant, Ernie La Pointe.[2]  This is strike one against the story being true.  The Internet being what it is, more evidence is needed though.

The most definitive way to prove or disprove the story is to trace all ancestral lines back to before Sitting Bull’s birth.  Sitting Bull lived between the years of 1831 and 1890.[3]  Some of my ancestral lines have been traced back that far already.  The first written assignment for Lesson 2 called for a research plan.  For this lesson, I included pedigree charts with the proper citations for my evidence sources, showing what information I had already gathered toward proving or disproving the story.  I then outlined my plan to trace the unknown lines back to before Sitting Bull’s birth.  My conclusion, based on evidence available so far, is that it is highly unlikely that I am descended from Chief Sitting Bull.  The grader for this lesson agreed with my research plan, and also agreed that it is unlikely that Sitting Bull is an ancestor of mine.

For the record, I still haven’t traced all the unknown lines back, so there is always a small chance something interesting might turn up.  I have one ancestor that one document claims was born out west, though other evidence points to him being born in New England like the rest of his family.  No other evidence has turned up to give me any reason to believe that the legend is true.

Assignment two of the lesson is to dig out some of those items in your collection that have been passed down through the family and document them.  In my case, this meant a few books, some hand-written notes, and bundles of pedigree charts.  Documentation of these items included writing a proper source citation for each item, and writing a brief description of how you came by the item.  This assignment is a good time to practice those citations.  Inaccurate citations seem to be the number one reason that lessons are returned for resubmission throughout the course.

To see more about the NGS Home Study Course, see my other posts:

• Tuesday Teachings - NGS Home Study Course

• Tuesday Teachings - NGS-HSC Lesson 1

[1] "Code of Ethics." Association of Professional Genealogists. http://www.apgen.org/ethics/index.html: accessed 2/12/2013

[2] "Sitting Bull Family." Sitting Bull Family Foundation, Inc. http://www.sittingbullfamilyfoundation.org/tatanka_iyotake_tiospaye.html: accessed 2/12/2013

[3] "Sitting Bull." Sitting Bull Family Foundation, Inc. http://www.sittingbullfamilyfoundation.org/tatanka_iyotake.html: accessed 2/12/2013

Marriage Record Monday – How Not to Find What You’re Looking For

Proprietor's Records, Volume 1

One of the assignments for the National Genealogical Society’s Home Study Course is to do a survey of local marriage records.  The idea is to become familiar with what records are available, and to do some on-site research.  Part of the assignment is to find the earliest marriage record at the repository, and compare it to other marriage records from later years.  Simple, right?

Yes, unless you’re an easily distracted history geek.

Early this afternoon, during my lunch break, I visited our local town clerk’s office.  This was actually my second attempt at working on this lesson, as when I visited the town hall last week, no one appeared to be in the office.

The clerk was extremely friendly, asking what she could do for me.  “I was hoping to take a look at the town’s marriage records,” I said.

“What era?” She asked.

“Erm, all of them?” I mumbled.  I then explained that I was working on a research class, and was trying to find the earliest marriage record that I could.

“Ah,” she said, leading me into the vault, “Grab that foot-stool over there.”  She took me to the corner of the vault and pointed to the top shelf.  “There’s volume one.  It could be in there.”

As she left me to my work, I started looking around.  Ledger books filled the walls.  Most of them, it appeared, were land records.  This wasn’t my first time in a records vault, but it had been some time, and I quickly got that “so much information, so little time” feeling.  I dragged the short foot-ladder over to the corner, stepped up, and lifted down Volume 1 of the town’s Proprietor’s Records.  As I started carefully leafing through it, I realized that I was holding original records in my hand, written by a clerk over 250 years ago.

My inner history geek kicked in.

Forget the earliest marriage record.  What about the earliest overall record?  Was that here?  Was it lost?  What else was in this book?  I took the book from the shelf and headed for the research table in the main room.  On my way out of the vault, I spotted another volume.  “Church Records” read the printed spine.  “Right,” I said to myself, “Looking for early marriages, better grab that one too.”  I sat down and started reading, fascinated that I was looking at the first record of the town.  The town charter, written 11 August, 1761, was sitting in front of me in gorgeous English phrases.

“Province of New Hampshire

George the Third, By the Grace of Great Britain France and Ireland King Defender of the Faith…”

I was hooked already.  I looked through the entire book, picking out phrases about land grants, trades, and life in general in the mid-18^th-century.  At some point I remembered to look for marriages.  I opened up the book of church records and copied down the first marriage that I found.  21 Oct, 1882. Being a sucker for anything from the 1700’s, I quickly went back to the first book, keeping in mind that I was looking for recorded marriages, but still mostly seeing land records and town dealings.

At some point I looked up and realized that the town clerk was gone.  She had gone to walk her dog.  Smiling at life in small-town Vermont, and realizing why no one was around last week when I visisted, it was probably at this point that I remembered that I was on my lunch break, and had to go back to my real job in a few minutes.

Grudgingly, I closed the books and put them back in the vault.  As I put my coat on, the town clerk returned.  I thanked her for her time, and told her that I’d likely be back tomorrow.

Hopefully I’ll be able to stay focused.

Tuesday Teachings – NGS-HSC Lesson 1

A couple of weeks ago I gave a quick overview of the National Genealogical Society’s Home Study Course, which I’ve been working on for the last year or so.  As I mentioned in that post, there are both good and bad points to the course.  Lesson 1 is an example.

The lesson itself is pretty straight-forward.  The goal is to introduce the field of genealogy, including standards for recording and communicating information.  The assignments are fairly simple.  First, fill out and document a pedigree chart.  Second, fill out and document a family group sheet.  Easy right?

It would seem easy, but this lesson, which unfortunately is an introduction to the course, causes a lot of confusion for many people.  The confusion is not so much within the lesson, or the goals of the lesson, but more in what, exactly, a student should send in when they submit their completed assignments.

The confusion, I think, lies in this statement in the instructions for the assignment:

“Be sure to include the source or sources for every item of information, using correct citation form as described, with examples, in Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills or as described in The Chicago Manual of Style.”[1]

Reading through my copy of Evidence! Citation & analysis for the Family Historian, also by Elizabeth Shown Mills, it was clear to me that a source was a physical thing that I was obtaining evidence from.  Books, manuscripts, microfilms, people, etc., are sources.  A citation was a recorded note describing what source I had used.

This is where I, and other students apparently, became confused.  The lesson assignment clearly states “…include the source or sources for every item of information…”  When I submitted my assignment, I also included cited copies of the documents that I used as sources.  When the lesson was returned, the grader noted that it was not necessary to send copies of the documents, only citations of the documents were required.

When the question of what to include came up on the course mailing list, one subscriber responded with something along the lines of “just follow the instructions!”  My response to that was, “I did.”

It was at this point that I realized that I, and others, had read the assignment too literally.  We included sources, when the assignment had really meant source citations.

This is one example of where the course could be improved with a couple of wording changes.  If the instructions clearly said citations, the number of questions to the course’s mailing list would drop, and the number of people doing more work than necessary would decrease.  As I mentioned in the other post, the course’s mailing list is not archived, so the answer to the question “Should I include copies of all of my sources when I submit my assignment?” keeps being asked, and answered, over and over again.

On a positive note, I did receive good feedback from the grader about my citations, and I passed the assignment with a single resubmit.

To see more about the NGS Home Study Course, see my other posts:

• Tuesday Teachings - NGS Home Study Course

• Tuesday Teachings - NGS-HSC Lesson 2

[1] Lesson 1, Written Assignments, American Genealogy: Home Study Course, National Genealogical Society, CD-ROM (Arlington, Virginia: National Genealogical Society, 2009)

Tuesday Teachings – NGS Home Study Course

Last year, in an effort to more formally educate myself in the field of genealogy, I signed up for the National Genealogical Society’s (NGS) Home Study Course (HSC).  After taking their free (to members) basic online courses (more like basic readiness tests), I felt confident that I was ready to start moving onto to the HSC.

I had read a lot about the Home Study Course on various mailing lists and websites.  Before I signed up for the course, I searched blogs, forums and websites for more information.  Almost everything that I read was positive, and almost everyone recommended it as a good beginner course.

In a series of “Tuesday Teachings” posts, I’ll share with you my experience with taking the course.  In this first post, I’ll give a quick overview.

What’s included: 

• CD: The course is broken down into fourteen lessons, spread out over three CDs.  I ordered the “Graded” version of the first CD.  The graded version of the course means that real, live, actual people will be looking at your work and giving you feedback.  While feedback is sometimes difficult to receive, I think this is the best benefit of the course.  Without feedback, there’s no real way to learn what you’re doing well, and not so well.

• Paperwork:  There were a few sheets of paper included with the CD.  The most important one included my student number.  The student number is used on all correspondence with the NGS folks who handle the course; so that they know which student they are working with.  There was also an update to one of the lessons, which, unfortunately, I had forgotten by the time I worked on that lesson.

• Mailing List: Involvement in the course also gives students access to an online mailing list that other students and some of the course graders subscribe to.  In all honesty, I haven’t found the list that useful.  There are no archives of past messages, so you can’t search for the answer to a question before you ask it.  This leads to the same questions being asked over and over again, which leads to members who have been on the list getting frustrated and answering the questions with posts like “This was covered a month ago on this list.”  That makes it difficult for students who haven’t been following the list.  Despite that, there are people on the list who are very open and helpful.

The Process:

 The general process of completing an assignment goes like this:

1. Read the lesson material on the CD 
2. Work on the lesson assignments
3. Submit your work to the NGS HSC administrator
4. Wait for your work to be reviewed
5. Receive your work back with either a “Pass” or “Resubmit” grade
6. Review the grader’s comments
7. If necessary, fix your work and resubmit it for the grader to look over again.

One nice thing is that you can submit your work in PDF form via email.  In theory it helps with the turn-around time between your submission and your returned grade.  I’ve found the average time of return to be a couple of weeks or more, depending on what’s going on in the genealogical world at the time (National conferences, for instance, will slow things down as graders are usually away).

At the time of this writing, I’m working on lesson six, the last lesson of the first CD.  Overall, I’ve found the course useful in helping me learn to be more disciplined in my research.  I’ve found that some of the lessons need to be updated, as they are not clear, or may be out of date, but the basics are there.  NGS is apparently working to revamp the course, though no details have been released that I know of.  It took me a while to adjust to the idea of doing an assignment without having an instructor available to ask questions of first (in theory that’s what the mailing list is for), but I have found the feedback I’ve received to be very good.  I’ve had a few “resubmit” grades, but mostly for minor issues such as citation format.  These are easily fixed and resubmitted, and that knowledge can be carried on to the next lesson.

For those who may be thinking about taking the course, I’d say go ahead and do it.  I’m glad that I did.  While it does have some flaws, I think the overall lessons are good, and some of the future lessons will take me out of my comfort zone of “Internet Genealogy” and into resources that I’m just beginning to become familiar with.  I look forward to finishing CD 1, purchasing CD 2, and seeing what the HSC folks at NGS come up with in the updated version of the course.

To see more about the NGS Home Study Course, see my other posts:

• Tuesday Teachings - NGS-HSC Lesson 1

• Tuesday Teachings - NGS-HSC Lesson 2

Three Goals Thursday – 2013 Goals

The start of a new year is always a good time to take a look back at what you’ve accomplished, and more importantly, what you’d like to accomplish going forward.

For me, 2012 was the year that I started researching the “professional” side of genealogy more.  I joined a few mailing lists, bought a few books, and became a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG).  While I don’t know if I’ll ever become a full-time genealogist, the idea does have some appeal to me.  If nothing else, what I’ve been learning through the mailing lists, books, and magazine articles I have been able to apply to my own family research.

For 2013, I’ve been thinking about what my upcoming goals are.  To keep it simple, and within reach of able to be completed within the year, I’ve decided on three major goals:

• Goal 1: Continue my genealogical education.  Early last year I signed up for the National Genealogical Society’s Home Study Course (NGS HSC).  I’ve completed assignments one through four, submitted five (which needs to be resubmitted after some minor tweaks), and done about half of the work needed for assignment six.  My goal for 2013 is to complete the second CD of the course, which starts with assignment seven.

• Goal 2: Attend a genealogy event.  Other than trading emails and letters with a few folks in the past, I’ve been a solo genealogist.  This year I’d like to break out of my shell a little and meet some other genealogists in person.  Last year I joined the Genealogical Society of Vermont (GSV), but I’ve yet to attend a meeting, so that may be one possibility.  Another possibility may be The New England Regional Genealogical Consortium (NERGC) conference, which will be held in Manchester, New Hampshire in April.  There are some sessions at that event that look interesting, in particular regarding old photographs and early New England research.

• Goal 3: Write more.  I’ve enjoyed writing since I could put a sentence down on a piece of paper.  I still have “books” that I wrote in first and second grade.  When I graduated from Junior High, my English teacher gave me a thesaurus that occasionally finds use, even in this age of the Internet.  Most of my heroes are writers of some sort, whether they are novelist, poets, or song-writers.  Even with all that, though, it’s safe to say that I don’t write nearly as often as I used to.  I’m hoping to use this blog to remedy that.  My goal is to write a focused post every two or three days.  If I’m lucky, maybe the act of writing about genealogy will creep into the rest of my life, and I’ll start writing fiction again for fun.

Goal 2, I think, will be my toughest.  I tend to be an introvert, so going to large gatherings of strangers takes some effort.  The NERGC sessions on old photographs really pique my interest though, as I enjoy both photography and digital restoration as hobbies.  Thanks to one of my other hobbies, the NERGC conference would also be my second large convention-type event of the year (oddly enough, at the same hotel), so finances may also play a part in that one.  I still have a few months to mull it over though.