"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Jesse Tyler Ferguson

The second episode of this season of Who Do You Think You Are? focused on the family history of actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson.  Not only was this another person I had never heard of, it looks like TLC is working hard on marketing to the gay demographic by having the first two episodes feature celebrities in same-sex marriages.  I don't know if this is a political statement by the network, but it caught my eye.  (And everyone who knows me knows that I don't have a bigoted bone in my body, so don't bother sending hate messages.)

Right from the beginning we know we're on the trail of a con man.  The teaser says that Ferguson will be following his father's family history and an ancestor who was in trouble.

The introduction to Jesse Tyler Ferguson tells us he is an actor on stage and screen but is primarily known for his work on Modern Family (another show I've never watched), which has earned him four Emmy nominations.  He lives with his husband, Justin (Mikita), in the Hollywood hills.

Ferguson's parents are Robert (Bob) Ferguson and Ann Doyle.   They divorced when Ferguson was 18 years old.  Ferguson grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and both of his parents still live there.  He considers his family to be stable, mundane, boring, and with no drama whatsoever.  His parents are strong-willed, which he thinks they passed along to him, and he's a little stubborn.  He was very close to his paternal grandmother Jessie, for whom he was named, and he says she was a great lady and hilarious.  She died six years ago.  He is excited to be researching his father's side of the family.

Ferguson starts his research by visiting his father, who still lives in Albuquerque.  He tells Bob that he wants to find information on his side of the family and about Grandma Jessie.  They talk about how far back he might go.

Bob has some photos that the two of them look over.  There's a photo of Jesse as a baby with his parents, and one of Grandma Jessie looking very classy.  Then there's a photo of Jesse Wheat Uppercu, Grandma Jessie's father.  He's dressed in a nice suit, and Bob says he was a lawyer.  Ferguson says he looks like Bob.  Bob says his mother told him Uppercu was born in Maryland.  The next photograph of Uppercu looks like a studio seating and is dated Christmas 1923; a handwritten note on the back is addressed to Uppercu's wife Elizabeth, Bob's grandmother.  Uppercu wrote that the photo was a "token of affection" for his wife; it sounds very understated.  Bob says that's where his knowledge ends.

New York Times,
August 28, 1872, page 2

They wonder if they can find anything online and decide to use Google.  Ferguson starts by searching for <Jesse Uppercu law Maryland> but doesn't find anything.  Bob suggests he refine the search and mentions that the name was sometimes spelled Uppercue.  They find a New York Times article about a murder in Baltimore on August 27, 1872.  (What?  Ancestry allowed someone else's Web site on the program?  Heaven forfend!)  Mrs. Amelia Wheat was the victim.  Her nephew, Jesse Uppercue, was accused of the murder.  Ferguson asked his father, "Did you know about this?", and Bob says, "No,  I didn't," but Bob, not being an actor, had more trouble maintaining a straight face.  Uppercu was 22 years old.  Uppercu said his aunt called him because she was upset and he went to her room, then fell asleep.  He woke up to the sound of a pistol and a man ran out of the room.  Apparently the police didn't believe him.  Ferguson wonders whether Uppercu ended up in prison or not, and his father suggests he needs to talk to a historian and that he should go to Maryland to find out.

In the interlude Ferguson says if all of this had happened to a more distant relative it would be easier to deal with.  Since this was his beloved grandmother's father, it makes it more palpable and real.  The details about the murder aren't lining up for him.

Ferguson travels to the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis.  He says he's hoping to find some clarity about the "situation" (the only word he wants to use to describe it) with Uppercu.  Criminal justice historian David Wolcott meets him at the archives.  Wolcott says that he has asked the archivists to pull documents related to Uppercu.  (This sort of intro persists throughout the episode.  Ferguson says he has asked the researchers to find information, and/or the researchers tell Ferguson they've had documents prepared.  There's no question the information is being fed to Ferguson.)   Ferguson asks why Uppercu was arrested, and Wolcott tells him the police didn't believe him.  Uppercu had the means and opportunity to murder his aunt, so the focus of the investigation was on him.  Ferguson of course wants to know what happened, and Wolcott suggests they look in more newspapers.  They search through bound printed copies of the Baltimore Sun (so much for using someone else's online resources; the Sun is available through ProQuest, but I guess Ancestry and ProQuest couldn't work out an agreement?).

Since the first article was dated August 27, Wolcott suggests starting with August 28 for more coverage.  The August 31 issue has an article titled "Lombard Street Homicide" with a lot of very interesting information.  Apparently Mrs. Wheat had executed two wills on July 26, a mere month before the murder.  Uppercu had summoned Mrs. Wheat's lawyer on that day to draw up a will for her.  The original version of the will had left the bulk of her estate ($22,000, equivalent to approximately $400,000 in today's money) to Uppercu, with a few bequests of small amounts and some donations.  Uppercue had insisted on reading the will and didn't like the donations, so induced his aunt to rewrite the will, abandoning the small bequests and leaving everything to him.  Gee, I wonder why the police suspected him of the murder?  Along with the means and opportunity we already knew about, he now had a very strong motive.

Ferguson asks whether there are court documents, and Wolcott says they can look at the Baltimore court records the archivists have retrieved.  They start with the book for the September 1872 term, and Ferguson looks in the index; Uppercue appears on page 74.  In the case of State of Maryland v. Jesse W. Uppercue, dated October 4, 1872, Uppercu had pled "non culp", i.e., not guilty.  The book includes the lists of witnesses for both the prosecution and the defense, about an equal number for each side.  We were not shown the rest of the documentation, but Wolcott explains that though it was largely a circumstantial case, Uppercu did have means, opportunity, and motive.  He also mentions that Uppercu's character would be a deciding factor.  On December 16, it was noted that the jury could not agree and the case was discharged, essentially the equivalent of a hung jury.  But the prosecution decided to retry Uppercu!  The second case followed very quickly, in the January 1873 term.  Ferguson asks why they would bother to have a second trial.  Wolcott says that the prosecutors must have thought they had a good enough case.  The archivists bring out the next book, and on page 9 we learn that on March 6, 1873, the jury rendered a verdict of not guilty, and the judge acquitted Uppercu.  After that the matter was finished, and Uppercu could not be retried (though not stated, this was due to the principle of double jeopardy).  Ferguson wonders whether his great-grandfather ever received the inheritance, and Wolcott says he has not been able to find any documentation of it.  (That sounded odd to me.  Did Baltimore City have a burned courthouse after 1873?  Wouldn't the estate have gone through probate, especially after the trial?  Are books missing?)

Ferguson is a little uneasy about his great-grandfather (who can blame him?).  He next asks what happened to Uppercu after the court case.  Wolcott says to find out where he shows up they should find him in the next census, which is 1880.  And of course he says they should look on Ancestry.com, but this is one instance where I agree.  It really is the best place to search the U.S. census.  They find Uppercu in Evanston, Illinois, aged 30, and married to L. I. Uppercue with three children in the household.  Uppercu was free at 23 and the oldest child is 6 years old, so he must have married very soon after the trial.  Ferguson is surprised to learn his great-grandfather had a family before his great-grandmother and wants to know how he can learn about this other life.  Wolcott tells him he'll need to go to Evanston.

Ferguson says it was terrifying to read the articles about his great-grandfather and that he has mixed emotions about the man.  He's afraid to find out what happened next and admits it's hard not to judge Uppercu.  He says things are gray and he's looking for clarity.  (Personally, they didn't seem very gray to me.  I am not the type to rush to judgment, but I have to admit I am leaning heavily toward thinking Uppercu probably was guilty.)

In Evanston, Illinois (the home of Northwestern University), Ferguson says he will be speaking to cultural historian Scott Sandage of Carnegie-Mellon University, whom he has asked to research Uppercu's life after his acquittal.  He meets Sandage at the Evanston Public Library.  Sandage says he has prepared a timeline of Uppercu's life based on information from city directoreis, censuses, and newspapers.  The first item we see is information reiterated from the 1880 census, where we learn that Uppercu's wife's name was Laura, no longer simply the initial "L."  The next item is dated February 20, 1884, when Uppercu is mentioned in the St. Paul Globe newspaper as being on trial in Fargo, North Dakota Territory, for embezzling the sum of $,1800, worth about $50,000–60,000 today, from the First National Bank.  (Hmm, going for money again ....)  Lots of money was around in this period, but good procedures to track it were lacking.

The narrator pops in and talks about the Gilded Age, the last decades of the 1800's.  The United States experienced huge economic growth accompanied by political corruption and worker exploitation.  While magnates such as John Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and Leland Stanford amassed empires, ambitious men such as Jesse Uppercu tried to make their own fortunes.

So Uppercu said he had dropped the money and lost it.  Somehow he was acquitted again.  Apparently the public's sympathy lay with Uppercu, who presented himself well.  Ferguson and Sandage banter back and forth about how "dropping" the money was a good enough excuse and that it was possible he had actually lost it, but you could tell neither one of them was buying it.  (I didn't either.)

Our next timeline highlight is May through August 1886, when Uppercu was in St. Louis.  While there, he sued Laura for divorce and said that she "complains too much" about the dirty streets and water in St. Louis.  Nothing else was said about the divorce, kind of leaving me to wonder whether he had decided she was dead weight for some reason.

Still in St. Louis, Uppercu was arrested on September 29, 1886.  Ferguson is upset and says, "I need a moment!", then asks if there is more information.  (Of course.)  The Missouri Republican newspaper reported on the arrest of lawyer Uppercu on another charge of embezzlement.  He had been working as a "collecting attorney" (not a term with which I am familiar).  He "lost" another $200, but the charges were dropped when he came up with the money and reimbursed the firm.  They weren't able to prove intent, so there was no prosecution.

Apparently deciding St. Louis was just not working out for him, Uppercu was in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1893, where he married Sadie Canta, wife #2.  Obviously, this was another marriage Ferguson's family had not known about.  In 1897 Uppercu appears in a Philadelphia city directory listed as a lawyer, residing at 1009 Mt. Vernon.

Bridgeton Evening News,
February 17, 1898, page 2

Ferguson comments on how much Uppercu had moved around.  Sandage adds that exclamation points seemed to follow him everywere he went:  Murder!  Embezzlement!  Ferguson (justifiably) has to admit that he has drawn the conclusion that his great-grandfather was "a bit" of a con man.  He asks what happened after 1897 and whether Uppercu had stayed in Philadelphia.  Sandage says that's as far as they have taken the research (yeah, right) and "suggests" that Ferguson try looking on Newspapers.com (owned by Ancestry) for the period 1897–1900 to see what Uppercu might have been doing.  Ferguson searches for <J. W. Uppercu> and finds an 1898 article, "Gold-Seekers Begin the Journey" in the Bridgeton (New Jersey) Evening News.  The article said that lawyer J. W. Uppercu of 504 Walnut Street was leading a group headed to the Alaskan gold rush.

Ferguson asks how in the world Uppercu would know to go to Alaska in the first place.  Sandage tells him he'll have to go there to find out (cue our next location!).  Where in Alaska?  Wrangell, which Ferguson says he has never heard of.  Sandage says while Ferguson is gone he will continue to research and if he finds anything he'll send it to him in Wrangell (yes, that was another cue you heard).

Ferguson says he wants to fill in the details about his great-grandfather.  Between the murder and the two embezzlements (I wonder if there were more the research team missed?) he has little faith in Uppercu and that he really wants him to have some roots.  Alaska just doesn't seem to be the way to do that.  He also comments that he himself is more of an "indoor" kid; he sounds a little suspicious about all that open country.

Driving through Wrangell, Ferguson is amazed at the gorgeous scenery and glassy, clear water.  He says he's allergic to how clean the air is (no snarky comments about Los Angeles, please!).  He arrives at the Irene Ingle Public Library and meets Terrence Cole, a history professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.  We get an overview of Wrangell as the entrance to the Klondike and a short synopsis of the 1896–1898 gold rush.  Cole explains that Uppercu was the "organizational genius" who put together the entire trip.  He was also the fundraiser and financial manager, who tracked money and resources for the group.  Ferguson latched onto that and wondered if history had repeated itself.  Cole goes on to say that Uppercu would have held onto the money, put it to good use, and even chosen the route.  The enterprise rested on the trust and faith the group had in him.

Ferguson starts to go beyond the money question and comments on the physical labor that would have been required.  Uppercu was about 48 years old at the time, and it would have been very wearing for him.  Ferguson then asks whether there's more about the journey that Cole can share.  Cole says that the secretary of the party had written a series of letters to his hometown newspaper, which apparently had been published as articles.  Several of the letters were collected and bound as a book, which Cole hands to Ferguson.

The first letter we are shown, written by B. (Benjamin) F. Parker to the Bridgeton (New Jersey) Evening News, was dated March 9, 1898 in the paper.  (Only the early part of 1998 is online at Newspapers.com, which I'm sure is why they did this part in print; all the referenced articles are available at GenealogyBank, but I guess they didn't work out an agreement for this episode.  I don't understand why they showed the articles as plain text, though.)  The party had just started out with its equipment and machinery.  Cole talked about how Uppercu's expedition was unique in its size and complexity.  There were more than 60 people, a huge amount of machinery, a portable sawmill, a gold-digging machine which they hoped would be able to produce 100 tons per day, and more.  It was a very large-scale operation, far beyond what anyone else had tried.  Cole suddenly says they should follow the trail that Uppercu had gone on.

Even though a little earlier Ferguson had said he was an indoor kid and allergic to the fresh air, now he is excited to be going on the boat.  He starts to wonder whether his great-grandfather had had the skills needed to make the trip and says Uppercu must have been pompous (not exactly the word I would have used) to think he had the ability to lead the expedition.

Cole describes the route that the party had planned to take:  Departing from Fort Wrangell, they would have gone up the Stikine River to Telegraph Creek, then taken all the equipment overland to Lake Teslin.  From there they would have gone downstream to the Yukon River and followed it to the boom town of Dawson, Yukon Territory.  It would have taken several months to complete the 700-mile trek.

Bridgeton Evening News,
October 1, 1898, page 1

The two men head out to the harbor and board the boat (Breakaway Adventures' Ocean Pro; the cameramen worked hard at not showing the complete company name, so it must not have paid for placement).  We get some beautiful eye-candy shots of the boat traveling up the Stikine.  I wasn't sure if they actually went all the way to Telegraph Creek, which is supposed to be about 140 miles up the Stikine, but they stopped at a shore and offboarded.  Then Ferguson read more of Parker's letters from the book, starting with, "And now our troubles began."  Published on September 13, 1898, Parker's letter (written August 23) talked about men catching colds and one man dying.  The party had a lot of trouble making progress up the river.  The second letter Ferguson read from, published October 1, 1898, and written by Parker on September 12, talked about the party being "blocked out" because they were not able to use their sleds to travel.  It also mentioned the decision to give all men who wanted to leave permission to do so, and how the expedition required a strong leader but did not have one.  According to Parker's letter, Uppercu left August 6, resigning as manager before he did so.  (The letter published in October went on to say that Parker himself had also left the expedition.)

Ferguson's first reaction is to say that his great-grandfather must have have been upset to have had to leave the party and that his pride must have been wounded.  Cole tells him that those who stayed behind didn't end up finding any gold.  Uppercu might have left just to cut his lossess, as the expedition seemed to have bad luck.  On the other hand, Cole points out that only 30,000–40,000 of the hundreds of thousands who tried actually made it to the Klondike.  Of those, he says that only a few hundred made any money.  Uppercu's group making it as far as it did was still an accomplishment.

In the interlude before returning to his room, Ferguson says it must have been devastating for his great-grandfather to have failed and also spoke of the barriers that had existed for the attempt.  He admitted, however, that he wasn't surprised that Uppercu had quit, because the man generally had looked for easy, fast money, which the Alaska expedition decidedly was not.  Ferguson then repeated what he had said about his family at the beginning of the episode — that they were stable, secure, boring — and yet here was this history that was full of drama.  Definitely not what he had been expecting!  He's been told a package from Sandage is waiting for him at the hotel, and he hopes it has more information.  He's particularly curious when Uppercu married his great-grandmother Elizabeth.

In his room, Ferguson opens the envelope from Sandage and reads a letter on Carnegie-Mellon letterhead.  The research team had indeed found more information about Uppercu.  He had returned from Alaska in 1898.  In the 1900 census he was in New York with his wife, Sadie, and a daughter, Muriel.  Uppercu and Sadie divorced in September 1907.  As an aside, Ferguson remarks that makes two ex-wives and four children so far for Uppercu.  Also in 1900, Uppercu was a respected speaker for the Republican Party in New York City and was scheduled to speak at a parade to welcome Teddy Roosevelt.  Sandage wrote that Uppercu was a good speaker and charismatic, the best things they had discovered about him.

Finally, Elizabeth enters the picture.  She and Uppercu married in July 1914 in Suffern, Rockland County, New York.  Uppercu was 60 years old; Elizabeth Quigg was 26 and a widow.  (That could mean that Quigg was her married name, but the program didn't address that point.)  Uppercu adopted Elizabeth's children, Grace and Dorothy, from her first marriage, and Ferguson's great-grandmother Jessie was born after that.  But Uppercu and Elizabeth divorced in November 1925.  (Boy, does this man have a track record!)  Surprisingly, in the 1930 census Uppercu was found in Rockland County with all the children — Grace, 21; Dorothy, 18; Jessie, 14; and Elizabeth, 11.  No wife was present in the household.  Ferguson wonders where Elizabeth was but is happy that the girls were with their father.  It looks like the first time he stepped up to his responsibilities, and Ferguson is proud of him.  (Three interesting notes about the census:  First, Jesse is listed as widowed, not divorced.  The program did not discuss Elizabeth after the divorce, but two family trees on Ancestry say Elizabeth died in 1973; it's likely that Jesse simply didn't want to admit he was divorced, as it wasn't really socially acceptable at the time.  Second, Ferguson listed four daughters, but there are five in the household.  Why he didn't mention Irene, who was six years old, is mysterious to me.  And third, I noticed that the original transcription of the name was Uppecca [gotta love that Ancestry quality] and that Uppercu has been added an an "alternative" reading; I wonder how much trouble that mistranscription caused the researchers when they were looking for Jesse ....)

Uppercu family, 1930 census, Rockland County, New York

In the wrap-up, Ferguson says there are still unanswered questions about Uppercu.  He feels that Uppercu got away with a lot (I don't think there's much question about that!).  He talks about getting a blueprint of where you came from and how learning about his great-grandfather has filled in information for him.  He feels his drive, creativity, and strong will came from this side of his family, and maybe even his ability as an actor can be attributed to Uppercu.  Whether or not he was guilty, Uppercu became an honorable man at the end and apparently made roots for his family.

Ferguson then reminisces about his grandmother, one of the greatest people he has ever known.  He's glad that Uppercu raised her but wishes he had known this information while Jessie was alive.  He feels he knows her better now but wishes he could have shared the discoveries with her.

I got a bonus after this episode aired.  TLC purchased the rights to air ten of the NBC episodes of Who Do You Think You Are?, and they've been showing them before and after the new season episodes.  After Ferguson came the Rob Lowe episode from NBC season 3, one I missed due to my erratic schedule that year.  I really enjoyed the episode and was impressed by several of the intelligent questions Lowe asked.  I have to admit I guessed the big surprise ending almost immediately, though.

Something I noticed while watching the intro to both the Cynthia Nixon and Jesse Tyler Ferguson episodes was that only five celebrities are being shown:  Nixon, Ferguson, the McAdams sisters, Kelsey Grammer, and Valerie Bertinelli.  I knew I remembered the original publicity mentioned six episodes, so I hunted around and found this post on the Ancestry.com blog, dated July 5.  What happened to Lauren Graham?

Wordless Wednesday

IAJGS Conference Wrap-up: Days 5 and 6 (only a little delayed)

As always, I had the best of intentions.  I was going to work on this post while I was waiting in the airport to return to California on Friday, and it would be all finished by the time I got back, so all I would need to do is upload it.  But apparently I looked suspicious when I was going through security at the airport, and I got the full-blown, take-you-to-the-side-room inspection.  They kept me so long I was in danger of being late for boarding my plane.  And when I did arrive, I was sucked back into my regular schedule immediately.  But there were some pretty good sessions (and no duds!) the last two days of the IAJGS conference, and I wanted to share the information.

The most interesting session for me from the final two days was the presentation on Newspapers.com (but then again, I am the newspaper queen).  I have had some real frustration working on this site, so I was hoping there would be good information.  The speaker, Peter Drinkwater (who mentioned that he used to work for Footnote.com before it was bought by Ancestry), did a thorough job of going through the entire site, showing ways to search, options that are available, and generally explaining things very clearly.  Newspapers that are on Ancestry were brought over to Newspapers.com, but they will also stay on Ancestry.  Newspapers.com has added many more papers and has some larger newspapers, such as Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and San Francisco Chronicle, albeit only for the years 1922 and earlier (the public domain years), but that makes the site a more approachable option then the ProQuest databases, which are institutional subscriptions only.  While most of the newspapers are from the United States, a smattering of papers are from Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Panama.  The newspapers on the site are scanned with OCR; Drinkwater did a good job of explaining how that works and the fact that the search database is just a big bunch of words.  One nice thing about the site is that you can register directly for a free account, with no need to give them a credit card number for a trial and then cancel.  Registering gives you better search results than if you search without signing in.  Another feature is that if you do have a subscription and later cancel/don't renew it, any clippings you have saved to your profile are still accessible.  Drinkwater invited attendees to submit suggestions of newspapers that the site could add and mentioned that they prefer to work with microfilm rather than printed newspapers, the latter being much more expensive to image digitally.  One think Drinkwater couldn't explain, however, was the decision to use so much space on the site to show the top half of a random issue of each newspaper in the list of newspapers available.  (As a side note, one of the attendees was someone who also does presentations on newspapers, though less focused on teaching others how to use them effectively; she mostly talks about her own family stories.  She made snide remarks throughout the presentation.  Near the end she commented about getting too many "false positives" when she did her searches, but amazingly enough Drinkwater was not able to replicate those results when he used her search term.)

We had a two-fer on Thursday and Friday.  Oleksiy and Nadia Lipes, a husband-and-wife research team from Ukraine, gave presentations on the types of Jewish genealogical records available in Ukrainian archives and on how documentation of Ukrainian pogroms that occurred between 1917–1921 can be used in genealogical research.  Some of the document types they showed examples of in the first session were metrical and rabbinical records, business reports, Soviet registration documents, census/revision lists, householder lists, tax books, refugee letters, passports, and notarial documents, and several types of documents related to pogroms in the second session.  So the good news is that lots of documents of many different types are available.  The bad news is that most of these are not indexed, so any research can take a long time.  But there is a wealth of information in the archives.

Other speakers I heard were Joel Spector, who showed the growth of the Jewish population in Russia by analyzing data through the 1897 census; Rony Golan, who talked about how to communicate better with Israeli researchers and relatives (in great measure to help promote next year's IAJGS meeting in Jerusalem); and Mike Karsen, who volunteered to help a friend tie up a loose end in his family research and ended up spending several few months tracking a woman acquitted in a Chicago murder trial across the country and through several marriages.

Oh, yeah, and my talk on searching for maiden names was on Friday morning. :)  I was pleasantly surprised that I had about 40 people attend my presentation.  I figured between my talk being in the last time slot on the last day of the conference, and the scheduled tour of Ancestry.com happening at the same time, I was going to have half a dozen people show up.  But everything went well, attendees asked some good questions, and someone suggested an excellent resource I'll add to the presentation the next time I give it.  So it was a great finale for the conference.

I don't think I'll be able to go to next year's conference, unfortunately; it's probably a little more than I can afford.  I hope everyone who attends has a great time, though.  I'm thinking ahead to 2016, when the conference will be in Seattle.  That's just up the West Coast from me!

Earlier commentaries on the conference:
Days 1 and 2
Days 3 and 4

Randy Seaver's Genea-musings Saturday Genealogy Poll

Today Randy Seaver posted a genealogy poll on his Genea-Musings blog.  I don't often answer online polls like this, but I found his questions interesting.  The Mission Impossible music isn't playing in the background here, but these are my answers:

a)  Which genealogy software programs for your computer do you use (e.g., Family Tree Maker, Reunion, GRAMPS, etc.)?
The program I use regularly is Family Tree Maker, PC version 16.  I also have installed and use to varying degrees PAF 5.0, Legacy Family Tree, Reunion, and Mac Family Tree (yes, I'm "computer bilingual").  I even used to use the old Mac version of Family Tree Maker!

b)  Which online family trees have information submitted by you - in either a separate online tree (e.g., Ancestry Member Tree) or a universal (collaborative) online tree (e.g., WikiTree)?
I have no family trees posted online anywhere, and I advise others to do the same.  I don't want my family tree information appropriated, inappropriately linked, and/or mangled by people who don't do good research.  (A good genealogy friend of mine had her entire tree copied with no attribution by a Ph.D. student, of all people!)  I do, however, have a family research page on my own Web site with the names and locations I am researching, and family members have found me that way, which shows you don't need to put a tree online to collaborate with family.

c)  For which subscription genealogy record providers (e.g., Ancestry) do you have a subscription?
The only site for which I have a paid subscription is FindMyPast.com, because the paid version shows the newspaper images, which the FHL Portal version does not.

d)  Which FREE genealogy record providers (e.g., FamilySearch) do you use regularly?
At home I use FamilySearch extensively, along with FindAGrave, Google, JewishGen.org, Library and Archives Canada, RootsWeb, USGenWeb, many newspaper and genealogical society sites, and any site that includes information I am looking for.  I also regularly visit my local LDS FamilySearch Center (which in my case happens to be the Oakland FamilySearch Library) and use the databases available through the FHL Portal, which include 19th Century British Newspapers (a Gale database), Ancestry.com World Edition, Fold3, Godfrey Library, Newspaper Archive, and more, and which are free to use in the library.  The Oakland FSL also has individual subscriptions to GenealogyBank, VitalSearch, and Newspapers.com, each available on only one computer.  I also use Steve Morse's One-Step Webpages, but it isn't actually a records site, just a better way to search on other sites that do have records.

e)  How much time do you spend each week doing actual genealogy research online?  [Note:  not reading, or social networking, but actual searching in a record provider].  Estimate an average number of hours per week.
I probably do a minimum of about 20–30 hours of online research every week.

f)  How much time do you spend each week doing actual genealogy research in a repository (e.g., library, archive, courthouse, etc.)?  Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period. 
The amount of time I spend doing on-site research varies from week to week, but it probably averages out to about 5–10 hours per week.

g) How much time do you spend each week adding information to your genealogy software program (either on your computer or online)?  Estimate an average number of hours per week over, say, a one month period.
I have no online trees so spend no time adding information to them.  (That's one way to save time!)
 
h) How much time do you spend each month at a genealogical society meeting, program or event (not a seminar or conference)?  Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period.
I attend several meetings and programs from different organizations.  It's probably about 9 hours per month, assuming about six programs per month at one and a half hours each.

i) How much time do you spend each month on genealogy education (e.g., reading books and periodicals, attending seminars, conferences, workshops, webinars, etc.)?   Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period.
This is another hard one, because of the number of hours spent at conferences.  Maybe about 20 hours per month on average.

j)  How much time do you spend each week reading, writing and commenting on genealogy blogs, websites, and social media?   Estimate an average number of hours per week over, say, a one-month period.
This is probably about 13 hours per week.  A good chunk of that is writing for my own blog, of course!

I noticed that one question Randy didn't ask is how much time we spend just talking to other people about genealogy!

More IAJGS Conference: Days 3 and 4

I'm still here at the IAJGS conference, and I am happy to report that I had much better luck starting on Tuesday with the sessions I attended.  There were still a couple of duds, but nothing like the disasters of the beginning of the conference.

Some of the presentations have been particularly good.  The standout for me on Tuesday was Jane Neff Rollins, who spoke about finding and using labor union documents for genealogy research.  My great-grandfather was in unions and supported them, plus my aunt's uncle (I do research for family members also) was prominent in his union.  Rollins gave an excellent overview of several types of records that possibly could be found, but it will depend on the specific union and what records it saved.  I would be thrilled to find my great-grandfather in union membership lists, meeting minutes, photographs, or a conference agenda, which are just some of the items that were suggested.  Of course, one of the difficult things is finding where these records might be held, but the University of Connecticut has a page with links to several labor archives around the country.  Those are not the only places union documents might be, but they're good places to start.

Another interesting talk on Tuesday was the story of a Jewish man in Russian Latvia who helped fight for Latvian independence but ended up dying in a Latvian prison during World War II.  Not only did the speaker, Eric Benjaminson, explain several of the more unusual documents that he obtained regarding his cousin's history, he also tried to present a plausible perspective of the Latvians who helped this process along its way.  While that part of his talk was obviously conjecture, I have not seen that included in a presentation before.  He was trying to give a broader view of the history.  His ability to look at the other side's perspective might be related to his thirty years of experience as a diplomat.

I also heard a great talk from Vivian Kahn about 2,000 years of Jewish history in Hungary.  The only disappointment on Tuesday was a lecture by someone whose point seemed to be less to transmit information than to share his anger.  I decided I didn't want to be angry all day also and left early.

Wednesday was not quite at the same level as Tuesday but still informative.  The most useful presentation was about researching Canadian family from outside Canada.  Marion Werle talked a little about the history of Jewish immigration into Canada and then covered a broad range of records that exist, including all the normal ones plus some others, such as colonization records and 1940 national registrations.  Not all of them are actually available to people outside Canada (unless they are Canadian citizens), but she even suggested some ways to deal with that restriction.  She also listed sites on which many records can be found.

It wasn't a presentation, but I led a very productive meeting of Jewish genealogical society newsletter editors.  One of my volunteer positions is IAJGS communications chairman, and the main responsibility is working with the newsletter editors.  This past year I unfortunately was not able to keep up with that as well as I would have liked, but I was really inspired by some of the ideas suggested at the meeting.  One idea I hope to implement is making sure that all newsletters and journals have an index of articles published over the publication's history, possibly hosted on the IAJGS Web site.  Too many genealogy articles don't get enough publicity and disappear too soon, and an article index would help prevent that wealth of information from being forgotten.

I spent a few hours in the resource room on Wednesday searching in ProQuest historical and newspaper databases.  On one day of the conference ProQuest allows access to the databases, most of which are not available as personal subscriptions.  The resource room is usually packed on ProQuest day, with a line waiting at the door.  I don't know what happened, but I never saw a line and the room was never full.  On the other hand, I found very few articles, so maybe I'm not the only who has mined those databases pretty thoroughly already.  But it's still great that we have access for a day.

The other presentation I heard on Wednesday was by Rose Feldman of the Israel Genealogy Research Association.  She spoke about the Jewish Legion and other Jews in Eretz Israel (Palestine) during World War I and a little later.  IGRA researchers have been trying to locate as many documents as possible that document the participation of Jews in Palestine during the war.  They are still discovering documents in unexpected archives but hope to find even more,

Looking forward to two more days of conference, and then some research at the Family History Library before I head back to California!

Earlier commentary on the conference:
Days 1 and 2

Wordless Wednesday

"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Cynthia Nixon

This past Wednesday the new season of Who Do You Think You Are? began.  I had been planning on posting my predictions before the first episode, but I ran into a couple of problems.  First of all, I hadn’t even heard of four of the celebrities!  Three of them I seem to be a little too old for, and I’ve never watched Sex and the City so had no idea who Cynthia Nixon was.  The other problem is that younger celebrities tend to have less information available online on which to base educated guesses.  The only prediction I could come up with was that most of the travel would probably be in the United States, because TLC doesn’t have the budget NBC does.  I say “most” because Kelsey Grammer wasn’t born in the U.S., so I suspect his episode will take us overseas somewhere.  Other than that, I’m at a loss.  We no longer appear to have our basic formula of one Jewish and one black celebrity — everyone this year seems to be white and WASPy.  But who knows what revelations await us?

So the first episode was about Cynthia Nixon, who is best known for her work as Miranda Hobbs in Sex and the City in its different incarnations.  She is an Emmy and Tony award winner, so some good stage work must be in there also.  She tends to play strong female characters and supports various causes, with GLAAD and marriage equality being specifically mentioned.  She lives with her wife Christine Marinoni and their children in New York City.

Nixon’s parents, Ann Elizabeth Knoll and Walter E. Nixon, Jr., separated when she was 6.  She knows quite a bit about her mother’s side of the family but little about her father’s side, as she saw him rarely when she was growing up.  She knows his father’s name was Walter Elmer Nixon (Sr.?), and that the elder Walter’s father was Samuel F. Nixon.  (Maybe she'll find out she's related to Richard Nixon??)

Nixon’s first step is to visit the New York Historical Society (logical, since she lives in New York City), where she meets with professional genealogist Joseph Shumway.  (We’ve seen him before assisting Christina Applegate, Steve Buscemi, and Blair Underwood.  Ancestry.com acquired him and his services when it bought ProGenealogists.com, now its in-house research team.)  Shumway starts their meeting by unrolling an already-prepared calligraphed scroll with Nixon’s ancestors listed (shades of D. Joshua Taylor again).  Nixon learns that her grandmother was Margaret J. Eaton and that Samuel Nixon was married to Mary M. (with no maiden name).  She wonders if she’ll be able to learn Mary’s maiden name and maybe her parents’ names, and Shumway assures her that this was just the initial information and that he had continued to look for more.  He then shows her Mary’s death certificate, which states she was born in Missouri:  father unknown, mother Martha Curnutt.  What?  Why didn’t they know her father’s name?

Shumway suggests they look on Ancestry.com (one of the earliest appearances in an episode, I believe) for a marriage for Martha.  Nixon enters Martha Curnutt (why don’t they teach the celebrities that capitalization isn’t necessary?), and she finds a marriage to Noah Casto on August 15, 1839.  Shumway then has Nixon search for Martha Casto in the 1850 census (why not look for Noah in 1840 instead of jumping ahead more than 10 years?), but she doesn’t find anyone.  He then “suggests” she look for Martha Curnutt, and amazingly enough, we find Martha in Cole, Missouri.  The household includes John Curnutt, who is of an age to be appropriate as Martha’s father, and three Curnutt children (Mary, 10; Noah, 7; and Sarah, 6), who could be Martha’s.  Nixon assumes the children are Casto's and wants to know why they don’t have Casto as a last name and where Noah the husband is.  Shumway says that divorce was not common in that period but did happen, and that some records still exist that could be checked.

Something that should have been explicitly discussed while they were looking at this census is that family relationships are not stated (they don’t appear in the federal census until 1880).  The children need not have been Martha’s.  They could have been children of a brother, foundlings whom the family had taken in, or even John’s children.  It’s perfectly fine to make the hypothesis that they’re Martha’s children and that John is Martha’s father, but make it clear that it’s a working hypothesis!  Then look for records to see if the hypothesis is correct.

Then Shumway comes up with something that’s totally out of left field, at least based on my logic.  He tells Nixon that he always looks for information related to the Civil War.  But why does he bring it up now?  We’ve only looked at a marriage in 1839 and the 1850 census.  We haven’t even found the family in 1860, just prior to the beginning of the Civil War.  Ok, we know why — because the Ancestry research team found a record.  But this was an incredibly heavy-handed way to introduce the information.  I felt like I was riding in a car that had just veered off the highway.

That said, Shumway starts talking about pensions and how they can help prove family history.  My first thought was that Noah Sr. had served and maybe Martha had filed for pension benefits based on his service.  But no, Shumway talks about Noah Jr. and how Nixon might want to check to see if he had served, as he would have been 18 years old when the war began in 1861, and there probably would be a lot of detail about the family.  (In a court case, this would probably be classified as a leading question.)

Nixon asks if she should try it now.  Shumway tells her to go to Ancestry under military and look for Noah Curnutt.  She finds an image of an index card for a pension application under Martha's name, filed on July 22, 1881.  Shumway explains that the fact it’s a mother’s pension suggests Noah had been the financial support of the family and that he had died.  He tells Nixon that the pension file is available at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and that should be her next stop.

In the interlude segment, Nixon says she is intrigued by what she has learned so far.  Martha using her maiden name and the children also using it make her wonder what happened to Noah Casto.

Nixon's first trip is indeed to Washington.  Nixon meets with historical researcher Vonnie Zullo in the main building of the National Archives.  (We've seen Zullo previously also; she worked with Kelly Clarkson.)  Zullo has the pension application file for Martha Curnutt, filed July 22, 1881.  Martha was 61 years old and living in Calhoun, Missouri.  She had stated she was the mother of Noah S. Curnutt, who had died while serving in the Civil War.  The file also contains the information that Noah Casto had died in 1842.  This made me immediately think again about the ages of those children in the 1850 census and how accurate they might have been.  Whether Nixon had thought of this herself we will never know, but at least on air she commented that Noah had been born about 1843 and Sarah about 1844.  While it is possible that Martha could have been pregnant with Noah the younger when Noah the elder died, the numbers just don’t add up for Sarah, who doesn’t seem to have been Noah Casto’s daughter.  Zullo tells Nixon that she can find local records about individuals at the Missouri state archives.

As she leaves the National Archives building, Nixon says how awful it must have been for Martha with her husband dying early and then her son dying.  She wonders what happened to Casto and just who Sarah is. (Wondering about Sarah's identity is a very legitimate question at this point, given what we've seen.)

Nixon now travels to the Missouri State Archives in Jefferson City, Missouri.  Waiting to see her there is Donna Schuele (credited as a historian, not a professor, at the University of California at Irvine, because even though she has a Ph.D. she is a lecturer, not a regular faculty member).  She has documents ready for Nixon to view.  They are court documents for the case of the State of Missouri versus Martha Casto/Curnutt with a charge of murder in July 1843.  The court found the defendant guilty of manslaughter in the 1st degree.  The court documents, however, do not give specifics of the killing itself.

A history of Barry County, Missouri, does discuss the “Castoe” murder (remember, spelling is inconsistent until well into the 20th century).  Apparently Martha used an axe to kill her husband in 1843 while he was sleeping.  Schuele and Nixon agree that sounds like murder, not manslaughter.  Schuele offers that reducing the charge to manslaughter could have been a way of avoiding a sentence of execution, which would have been extremely rare for a woman in that period, and which a jury would probably have been reluctant to give.

The conversation turns back to Sarah for a moment.  Since it appeared that Noah Casto had actually died in 1843, not 1842, Sarah could have been his daughter, depending on the timing.  The article in the Barry County book also mentions that Martha was only the second female inmate in the state penitentiary (not a great way to make a name for yourself in history).

Nixon wonders why Martha would have killed her husband and asks if the story might have been in the newspaper.  (Duh!  If it bleeds, it leads!  The story about Noah Casto's murder was actually carried as far away as the Bridgeport, Connecticut Republican Farmer of August 1, 1843.)  Schuele tells her that newspapers and personal records might be available at the state historical society and suggests she go there next.  Before Nixon leaves, the two women return to the subject of Sarah.  If Noah Casto was murdered in 1843, did Martha give birth to Sarah while she was in the penitentiary?  Did she kill Casto while she was pregnant?

Nixon seems a little disconcerted by this round of information.  She talks about how it’s hard to reconcile the idea of killing someone close to you.  (I guess she doesn’t know that the vast majority of people are killed by someone close to them?)

Our next location is the State Historical Society of Missouri, in Columbia.  Wendy Gamber, a professor of history at Indiana University (isn't there anyone in Missouri who specializes in Missouri history?), has found an index card that mentions Martha’s name as appearing in the Jefferson Inquirer in July 1843.  She helps Nixon maneuver microfilm of the newspaper (which does not appear to be available online, or at least not on Newspaper Archive, GenealogyBank, Chronicling America, Newspapers.com, or any link from the Wikipedia newspaper archives page).  The murder occurred on July 10, so Nixon scrolls forward from there a couple of issues (it was the weekly paper) and in the July 20 issue finds a story with a lead-in of "Horrible!" right before they cut to a commercial.  When we return to the episode, Nixon begins reading the article.  Particularly pertinent are the information that Casto was in the “habit of treating his wife in a manner too brutal and too shocking to think of” and a description of him as an “unnatural husband.”  Gamber says that these descriptions might be somewhat coded ways to say that Casto could have been a sexual deviant or tortured his wife, as these types of things were not openly discussed in the mid-19th century.  (On the other hand, they might not be coded; we'll probably never know.)  Whatever he was doing, Casto does not seem to have been a very nice guy.  After she had killed Casto, Martha told a neighbor what she had done and said that he had threatened to kill her, which she was certain he would have.  The article also mentions that Martha had two children.

The narrator then gave us a short piece about couverture.  Married women in the United States were essentially stripped of their rights and became extensions of their husbands.  Anything a woman owned when she married became her husband's; he had the legal right to punish his wife physically.

Nixon now wants to know if there are prison records that could tell her more about Martha and Sarah.  Gamber tells her she should visit the Missouri State Penitentiary, which closed in 2004, and that somebody there might be able to help her.

As she departs the historical society, Nixon talks about how awful it was for Martha to endure everything that happened to her and that this story did not have a happy ending.  Martha must have felt that it was better to kill Casto and that his behavior was unforgivable.  Personally, I think they indicted Casto a little too quickly based on the information they shared with the viewing audience, but as I always say, I have to hope that all the research that wasn’t “sexy” enough to make it on air justified the way they described him.

Back in Jefferson City, Nixon now goes to the Missouri State Penitentiary.  It definitely looks closed and disused.  Unlike Alcatraz, which is open as a national park for visitors, the penitentiary looks like no one goes there, but it apparently does offer regular tours.  On site to speak with Nixon is Patricia Cohen, a 19th-century women’s history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  Nixon asks first what daily life would have been like for Martha as the only woman in the penitentiary and how she would have been dealt with.  Cohen tells her Martha would have been in the same cell block as the men but would have been segregated and spent most of her time alone in her cell.  She also mentions that the penitentiary was a contract prison and was run as a business.

Nixon (oh so disingenuously) asks if there is any way to learn more about Martha’s time in the penitentiary.  (Of course there is; haven't they found answers for all of her previous inquiries?  Otherwise that question wouldn’t have been scripted, now, would it?)  Gamber tells her about a book called Prison Life and Reflections:  Or, a Narrative of the Arrest, Trial, Conviction, Imprisonment, Treatment, Observations, Reflections, and Deliverance of Work, Burr, and Thompson, by George Thompson, published in 1848.  (What Gamber didn’t mention was the rest of the title:  Who Suffered an Unjust and Cruel Imprisonment in Missouri Penitentiary, for Attempting to Aid Some Slaves to Liberty, which actually makes the book sound much more interesting.  She also didn't mention the book is available for free on Google Books.  But the program did find a hard copy, which is very cool.)  Thompson mentioned Martha, though not by name, in a short passage in the book:

“M., a woman, killed her husband with an axe—was sent here for five years—staid about half of it and was pardoned by Governor Edwards.” (page 347)

Nixon also reads that Martha became the mother of a daughter born in the fall of 1844 (page 287).  Since Noah Casto died in July 1843, it was impossible for Sarah to have been his child.  The primary candidates for Sarah’s father would have been the wardens, overseer, and guards.  (This looks like a great situation to try DNA testing, but nothing was discussed about any descendants Sarah had.)  Mrs. Brown, the wife of Judge Brown, wouldn’t allow anyone to help Martha with the baby (which to me suggests she might have thought her husband was the father).  Martha was not allowed to have a fire in her cell to keep her warm; it certainly seems the idea was to make it difficult for the baby to survive.  But Martha and Sarah were very strong, and they made it.  Martha was pardoned almost two years after her arrival.  Gamber suggests that if Nixon can find the pardon, things might become clearer.  (Might?  Get real.  We all know that you guys have already found the pardon.)

In this interlude, Nixon talks about how Martha must have felt that nothing could be worse than life with her husband.  Maybe her baby daughter gave her something to fight for while she was in prison.  She wonders if Martha was raped in prison or how she became pregnant.

And back Nixon goes to the Missouri State Archives.  This time she meets with Gary R. Kremer, a historian and the executive director of the State Historical Society of Missouri.  Nixon is “hoping” the pardon will shed more light on what happened to Martha.  Kremer has Nixon take out a folder with a yellowed parchment.  It is a petition dated November 28, 1844, when Martha was about 32 years old.   She apparently was pardoned primarily due to this petition, which was signed by many people, including some prominent political figures (e.g., W. P. Hall, a U.S. Congressman and later Missouri governor, and Lilburn W. Boggs, a former Missouri governor).  The petition mentions her suffering, that she had a child, and the chance of her freezing in the cold winter months.  So the word had gotten out about Martha’s daughter, and there was definitely possible embarrassment for the authorities if the child died.  Governor John Edwards signed Martha’s pardon on December 17,  1844.

Kremer says that Martha's time in prison became a turning point in penal practice and was the beginning of a change for the better.  Women could no longer be incarcerated with men.  He did not give any specific references to later government actions or even articles that referenced Martha’s case as being a reason for new procedures being established, though.

Nixon then asks Kremer if he knows when Martha died.  Kremer directs her to FindAGrave.com (conveniently owned by Ancestry.com) and has her search for Martha Curnutt.  Martha is listed (are you surprised?).  She died in 1877 and is buried in Avery Cemetery.  (Martha's entry has much more information now than it did when the episode was filmed.)

Before she visits the cemetery, Nixon talks about how glad she is that someone came to Martha’s rescue.  Martha “endured so much” and went through all that “tumult” and “horror.”

The last segment is Nixon’s visit to Martha’s grave.  It is in a remote cemetery that looks to be in somewhat poor condition.  It is fenced in, and scattered tombstones are in small groups.  Nixon wonders whether any other relatives might be buried there also (of course there are).  There don’t appear to be any marked rows or plots, yet Nixon unerringly goes straight to Martha’s grave:  Martha Curnutt, no birth date, died April 4, 1877.  Buried near her are Mary M. Nixon and Samuel J. Nixon, Cynthia Nixon’s great-great-grandparents.  Nixon lays flowers at Martha’s grave.  She looks around at the “pretty, pretty setting” and tells Martha, “I’m glad I found you.”

In the outro, Nixon talks about how Martha encountered a lot of tragedy, death, and violence in her life and that she must have wanted to give up many times, but that she didn’t accept things and that sometimes people can defy the odds.  This seems a little (just a little) melodramatic to me, but Martha definitely was not the “average” woman for the time.  Nixon thinks of herself as a strong person, but I’m not sure she thinks she could have done what Martha did.  She says that Martha made history, but something good came out of it, because she started a change regarding laws about incarcerating women with men.  She also figures that her family members will think it interesting that they have an axe murderer in the family, so I guess that’s kind of putting a good spin on things.

I found it intriguing that the teaser for the next episode, which will focus on Jesse Tyler Ferguson, also mentioned a murder.  Maybe that will be a unifying them for this season’s celebrities?

IAJGS Conference Days 1 and 2

Here I am in beautiful Salt Lake City!  I have been told it was 100+ degrees the past two days, but it really is a dry heat, so it's much more comfortable than when I used to live in Florida.  On the other hand, I do appreciate the air conditioning at the Hilton Hotel, which is where the IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy is being held this year.  We've already gone through two days of the conference, and this is the first chance I've had to write about it.

I was told several years ago by a former boss that if you go to a conference and learn one thing that you can take away and use in your work, that's a successful conference.  Going by that, I'm doing very well so far — I've had one session each day where I learned new techniques I could take away and use, plus I've had some great social get-togethers.

The biggest surprise for me so far has been the sessions I have found the most interesting.  On Sunday I went to a presentation by Crista Cowan of Ancestry.com on search tips for the site.  Now, anyone who knows me has probably heard me rant about Ancestry and how they present records on the site (along with a lot of other things).  The main reasons I decided to attend the session were that there wasn't really anything else in that time slot I was interested in, and I thought it would be amusing to see what Cowan had to say.  I figured it was going to be nothing but a sales pitch.

Cowan opened by emphasizing that the presentation was only about search and that she wouldn't answer questions about any other topic.  She then asked attendees what burning questions they had about searching on Ancestry.  My contribution was to ask why entering terms in fields on search pages returned results that didn't match those fields when I specified exact matches only.

After noting several questions, she told us, "You know that Ancestry ad where they say you don't have to know what you're looking for, you just have to start looking?  Well, they're wrong.  That's for those people who are just starting, so they can find something and then they'll buy subscriptions."  That was an indication that the class was going to be more worthwhile than I thought!  She was refreshingly honest about how Ancestry markets.  She said you absolutely need to think about what you're looking for, which I've been saying for years.  She also agreed with what I tell people, which is that you should never search from the home page.  Just like me, she always goes to the advanced search page.

I already use most of the hints she told us about, such as going to the database you need when you are looking for specific information, marking "exact only", restricting by location, searching without names, and more.  And she told us the reason the search pages are not set on exact search by default (which someone asked about) is for new researchers, because otherwise they probably wouldn't find anything and then wouldn't want to pay.

Some technical aspects she discussed were also informative.  If the database is index only and has no images, Ancestry didn't create it, so it is licensed from someone else; Ancestry usually does not make corrections to those databases.  Most of the databases with images have indices that Ancestry created.  The reason a search term must have a minimum of three letters is because otherwise it takes too much processing time on their servers (something I had learned previously from Steve Morse, who has improved search pages for many Ancestry databases on his One-Step Webpages site).  At the bottom of the advanced search page, if you change the collection priority to Jewish, the Soundex search will be based on Daitch-Mokotoff instead of American Soundex (which could turn out to be very helpful to me).

At the end of the presentation, when she was doing her wrap-up, she had not addressed my question about receiving irrelevant results when I requested exact matches on a search page, so I asked again.  The specific example I cited was searches in the California voter registers, where I can specify a register year of 1946 and receive results from other years but that have street addresses of 1946.  I had long suspected that the cause was that the database of search terms was not mapped to the fields on the search page.  She confirmed this in a roundabout way by telling us that typed documents, such as those voter registers, are not transcribed by people but are OCR scanned.  That means that the terms are not coded in search fields, so when you search for anything, it's just a word in the database.  As far as I'm concerned, that means the search page shouldn't have fields such as first name, last name, or year, because it's misleading.  There should just be a line for keywords.  I have the same problem with newspaper databases such as NewspaperArchive.com.

The other informative session I attended was on Monday, by Josh Taylor of FindMyPast/BrightSolid/DCThomson and the Federation of Genealogical Societies.  He spoke about ways to get members of the younger generations — "21sters" — interested in genealogy and active in genealogy societies.  This was essentially the same presentation of his I heard a couple of years ago, but he has updated it and refined some of his opinions.  I went to this primarily because I volunteered to introduce him and be the room monitor, but I hoped there might also be helpful information that could be applied in the societies I belong to.

His big message for attracting the younger generation is that you have to connect online and use technology.  You also have to abandon old-fashioned approaches such as pedigree charts and citations, because those don't appeal to this generation.  He did not say it directly, but the message was that people accustomed to instant gratification don't want to take the time to learn how to research, prove, and document information.  They just want to know the answers and then move on.  While I don't agree with trying to implement that part of what he said, he had some ideas about marketing and outreach that could be interesting to try.  One was reaching out and trying to build community partnerships, such as with schools and youth organizations, and maybe sponsoring a writing contest or scholarship.  Another was having some sort of table or event at a mall, where the younger generations hangs out.  He spoke about Reddit but admitted that answering a bunch of questions online for free didn't readily translate into someone becoming involved with a society.  Something that wouldn't necessarily apply to 21sters but could help attract more inquiries was to have your society listed at the local convention and visitors bureau.  There were a lot of ideas, which I'm going to have to type up and bring to my next couple of board meetings for discussion,.

The networking opportunities so far have been wonderful.  On Sunday several professional genealogists got together and talked about what kinds of research and other professional work we do and how we might be able to work together and help each other.  On Monday IAJGS President Marlis Humphrey held a media lunch for bloggers, writers, journalists, etc., apparently the first time this has been done at an IAJGS conference.  She discussed some of the marketing concepts IAJGS is considering and how outreach can be improved.  And Monday evening a bunch of us Jewish bloggers (and James Tanner, who is not Jewish) sat down for an informal bring-your-own-dinner meeting.  We talked about our blogs, why we started them, and what kinds of things we write about and generally schmoozed for a couple of hours.  It was really nice to meet a lot of people face to face and not just as e-mail addresses and URL's online.

There have been some significant disappointments at the conference, unfortunately.  One speaker just talked about personal anecdotes from his family; another mumbled and didn't project into the microphone; at three sessions the speakers read directly from their typed notes and didn't look at the audience.  (At one of those, I could see from the reverse side of the paper that text was formatted as from a journal, so I walked out and figured I'll search for the article and read it myself.)  Two talks gave no information about how to research the topic, just showed several examples of information with no context.  Another speaker started off by saying that there was a lot of material to cover so we had to get going, then spent the first ten minutes telling us what she wouldn't be discussing.  And the worst was an hour of excruciating, painfully executed English that was mostly not understandable, which ended with a shill to get money.  And to think the conference isn't giving us evaluation sheets for the talks!!

But tomorrow (Tuesday) is another day!  Which I really need to get some sleep for ....

Wordless Wednesday