BIGWILL is sponsoring an all-day seminar with Michael John Neill two weeks from today. We need to charge a small fee ($10 for BIGWILL members) for attending this seminar; we are also offering a noon meal for $10. Because the leaders organizing this seminar need to know how many to plan for--especially for the meal, a registration deadline of Thursday 10 May has been set. Walk-ins will be accepted, but no lunches can be ordered after 10 May. The seminar is being held in the Richmond-Burton Community High School, located just south of Richmond.
The theme of the seminar will be Courting Your English Ancestors. It will provide a mix of general genealogical guidance and discussion of ways to research the history of immigrants from the British Isles to the United States. The four lectures, listed here with brief descriptions of the material to be discusses, will be:
Thomas and Elizabeth Frame – 19th Century English Immigrants to Chicago.
Coming to Chicago about 1867, the Frames settled in the Pullman area. We’ll look at how they were traced back to England using US records and how we’ve started working on their English roots using UK census, civil, and church records. Thomas was from a poor working-class English family and Elizabeth was from a family of merchants and landowners.
Court Records Besides Probate
Court records are more than probates and wills. This presentation will provide a quick, broad overview to court records in the United States and discuss search strategies for locating those records most likely to contain genealogical clues. See how to get more out of one of the most underutilized records in the United States.
The American Naturalization Process Before 1920
Naturalization procedures were “loose” in the United States before the early 20th century making locating those records somewhat difficult. The occasionally ambiguous process created confusion for some of our ancestors and occasionally more so for researchers. We will look at the naturalization process, what records were created, what those records likely contain, and how to access them.
Problem-Solving Approaches and Techniques.
Organizing your information is just as important as obtaining it. This presentation looks at ways to organize data that you have found in hopes of noticing patterns, trends, and overlooked opportunities for research. This lecture is not about organizing the piles/files you’ve stacked but instead focuses on the pieces of information you’ve got buried in those piles.
Visit the society's website for more information
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wiilbig/
