I have to say that I really enjoy the group I’m with every Monday night. Several have indicated an interest in continuing into more detailed methods and strategies of genealogical research. No problem!! I can arrange it! Everyone seems to be learning new things every week. I can tell because I see people frantically scratching out notes…and I never have to say, “You need to write this down”…

Tonight, we were joined by an old friend of mine whose son brought her to the class. He’s been researching their lines for about a year. And, he’s a history teacher! He told me after the class that he agreed to bring his Mom tonight and next week for the final session and figured he’d just sit through the class and take her home when it was over. I was pretty happy to hear him say that he learned a lot tonight…and I saw him filling out a few pages of notes!

Tonight was “Double Dates” where dates between 1582 and 1752 from January 1st through March 24th had to be written with 2 years. Example: February 10, 1688/89 or March 3 1744/45. It’s too long to explain here in the blog but you can contact me separately if you’d like an explanation!

We also went through an explanation of relationships such as “3rd cousin twice removed” and others. I gave everyone a relationship chart that is easy to use on straightforward relationship calculators. The one I passed out is one of the easiest I’ve ever seen.

We had a long a dry explanation of the evolution of naturalization laws and then I spent some time on internet security, backing up your computer and e-mail scams to watch out for.

Next week we’ll go a little deeper into becoming a detective using census and vital records, discuss various web sites and then wrap it up with certificates, my “special gift” to all the participants and an evaluation survey to help me improve the program.