Upcoming Family History Presentations

I love teaching about genealogy.  I've had a pretty restricted schedule for the past few months, though, and haven't been able to schedule many family history talks (my last one was February 26).  But things have finally settled down a bit, and I now have several presentations planned through the end of the year, and even into next year!

I'll be teaching "Jewish Genealogy for Beginners" on Sunday, August 5, at this year's J-West.  I'll also be teaching a semester-long Jewish genealogy class for Midrasha, the East Bay Jewish community high school in Berkeley.  That class runs from September to December.

On September 15 I'll make a presentation to the San Mateo County Genealogical Society about the incredible details you can learn about a family if you follow them through newspapers for more than a hundred years.  That's a brand-new talk.  And sometime in September (I hope they tell me the date soon!) I'll talk about vital records (a new talk for me) for the California Genealogical Society and Oakland Family Search Library (formerly the Family History Center).

October is Family History Month, and I'm going to be busy.  Another new talk is the one I will be giving to the Mt. Diablo DAR chapter on October 9.  My ancestor was an American patriot during the Revolutionary War, but his brother ... not so much.  On October 14 I'll be at the Davis Genealogy Club, talking about how even when you start with very little information, you can still build on what you have step by step and find out more about your family.  Then on October 18 I'll teach how many ways newspapers can help in genealogical research to the Napa Valley Genealogical Society.  And on October 20 I'll be repeating the two latter talks for the Concord Family Search Library's annual Digging for Your Roots one-day conference.  Five talks may not sound like much for one month, but that's on top of my regular work!

November 14 will see me at the East Bay Genealogical Society with another new presentation, this one on techniques to find maiden names of the women in your family.  When a woman changed her surname to that of her husband, it can be very difficult to find that original name.  Without it, you can't find her parents.

And I just heard today that one of my submissions was accepted for the 2013 Ohio Genealogical Society conference!  The conference runs April 25-27 in Cincinnati.  I'll be talking about online historical black newspapers.

If you attend any of my talks, please say hi and let me know you read my blog!