Last Minute Lilly Gets in the British Institute

I am happy to post this announcement at the request of the British Institute organizers:

Don’t Miss Your Opportunity to Study With The Experts! 

If you’re a last-minute Lilly (or Louie), there is still time to register for the few remaining open spots to attend the British Institute in Salt Lake City, 7-11 October 2013.

The International Society for British Genealogy and Family History will accept registrations until Monday, 30 September, for a week of lectures and mentoring by well-known British genealogists Graham Walter, Maggie Loughran and Paul Blake.

The registration fee is $495, and covers five days of instruction with morning lectures and afternoon research opportunities in the Family History Library, including one-on-one mentoring with your instructor.

All courses will be in the Radisson Hotel Downtown, a short walk to the Family History Library. Hotel rooms are still available at the Crystal Inn at $79.00 per night, including breakfast and shuttle bus service to and from the airport, and to the Radisson each day.

Full details and registration at

Using the Cloud for British Family History Research

Graham Walter

Graham Walter combines his IT background with his expansive knowledge of British genealogy resources. This course will provide a guide as to what “The Cloud” is and how we can use it to our advantage in our research.

There are a number of Internet sites that provide some unique datasets for researching British ancestors. We will examine some of these sites and look at the varied search techniques that can be used to find those elusive ancestors hiding in the nooks and crannies of their databases.

The Cloud also provides us with a wealth of tools to enhance the way we collect, share and present our data. We will look at how these services allow us to choose a variety and combination of computing devices that best suits the collecting of our family history on any research trip. The Cloud will allow us to move that data to our other devices seamlessly and without complexity, as well as share it with our families and other researchers. Students in this course must provide their own WiFi-capable laptop computer.

Course Outline:

Monday

·         Introduction/Overview

·         What do we mean when we say "The Cloud?"

·         Notepads/Journals(Evernote/SpringPad/NoteSync/SimpleNote)

·         Website of the Day - findmypast.co.uk

·         Research Journalling with Evernote

Tuesday

·         Cloud File Storage(DropBox/SkyDrive/Google Drive/Amazon Cloud Drive)

·         Cloud Backup (Carbonite/Mozy)

·         Website of the Day - thegenealogist.co.uk

·         Research Data Storage and Family History Programs

Wednesday

·         Office applications in the Cloud(Google Docs/MS Office Web Apps/Zoho Suite)

·         Website of the Day - Ancestry.co.uk

·         Data extraction and manipulation with web

Thursday

·         Task Management (Remember the Milk/Astrid/Toodledo)

·         Websites of the Day - Online Newspapers britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk,

·                     Welsh Newspapers Online

·         Using Mobile devices in Research

Friday

·         Collaboration in the Cloud

·         Photo Storage and Sharing(Flickr/1000 Memories/Picasa)

·         Cloud Mapping the Ancestors(Google Maps/Bing Maps)

Sources For Tracing Pre-mid-nineteenth

Century English Ancestors

Maggie Loughran and Paul Blake

This course will concentrate on tracing pre-mid-nineteenth century English ancestors and will be of special interest to those whose ancestors emigrated to North America prior to the

commencement of English civil registration in 1837, or those who have already tracked their ancestors back to the early 1800s.

Paul and Maggie will focus on the actual records themselves, giving you an in-depth understanding of them. For each record category we will be looking at examples of the original documents and guide you through how to interpret, locate and, lastly, how to access them using the Internet and any other available resources.

Record Categories

Locating, interpreting, and accessing pre-1858 English probate records

From the 13th century until the civil probate system was introduced in 1858, probate (the ratification of a will) was controlled by the church. Wills were recorded in the

ecclesiastical archives as were most matters to do with death, with over 300 church courts functioning at one time or another. These jurisdictions frequently overlapped each other and

boundaries may have changed from time to time making the use of early wills and other probate records challenging to say the least. This session will take you through the process of

discovering if your ancestor left a will and where to find it plus any other associated probate records including administrations, inventories and accounts.

plus much more…see the website for complete details

www.isbgfh.org

Review of “Advanced Methodology for Irish Research”

As part of my continuing series where guest authors share reviews of courses at genealogy institutes, here Ann G. Lawthers writes about one of the courses at the British Institute  which is sponsored by the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History.

Review of “Advanced Methodology for Irish Research”

by Ann G. Lawthers

Do you have an Irish brick wall? Or do you merely have ancestors from Ireland you wish to know more about?  David Rencher’s course “Advanced Methodology for Irish Research” at the week-long British Institute helps you scale the walls and follow the trail of breadcrumbs left by your ancestors. The course principally builds research skills, but also introduces the student to the rich array of Irish resources available at the Salt Lake Family History Library. Many of the FHL resources can be ordered and sent to your local Family History Center. Since Irish records suffered a devastating blow with the demolition of the Public Records Office in 1922, the tools, skills, and strategies learned researching one’s Irish ancestors also apply to researching an ancestor from a burned county in the US.

Students begin by learning to thoroughly mine what they know about ancestors on this side of the pond for clues about the people left behind in Ireland. Next, transferring the focus to Ireland, students learn to evaluate and use pre-20^th century lists of names, such as Griffiths Valuation, for clues about ancestors. And location, location, location. A wealth of resources about Irish places and institutions awaits you at the Family History Library: the Parliamentary Gazetteer, Ordnance Survey maps, county histories and more. For those with ancestors from Northern Ireland, the course spends a day introducing the student to the special problems of Scots-Irish research.

I would highly recommend any of David Rencher’s Irish courses. He is an engaging presenter and thoroughly knowledgeable about the subject. You will learn research techniques that help you not only with your Irish research but can be used for other family lines as well. You will find yourself regularly referring to the excellently organized syllabus when you return home to remind yourself of specific strategies. To top it off, being in Salt Lake for the course and having the resources of the Family History Library at your fingertips, makes for a priceless experience.

**********************

Ann G. Lawthers researches her Irish, German, French-Canadian and English ancestors from her home in Massachusetts. She has completed the BU Certificate course, the BU writing course, as well as the 2012 British Institute course, “Advanced Methodology for Irish Research.” Ann juggles a full-time job, various volunteer posts, participation in ProGen 15, as well as the siren call of her family’s history, but hopes to achieve Certified Genealogist status one day.

From Simple to Complex: Applying Genealogy’s Standard of Proof to Your Work

As part of my continuing series where guest authors share reviews of courses at genealogy institutes, here Robert Raymond highlights one of the courses at the British Institute  which is sponsored by the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History.

 

From Simple to Complex: Applying Genealogy’s Standard of Proof to Your Work

Taught by Thomas W. Jones, Ph.D., CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS

Tom Jones is one of the great genealogists of our time. His course at the 2012 British Institute was one of the best I’ve ever attended. The course was adapted from his new book, Mastering Genealogical Proof. ** The book is in text book format with learning exercises. This was a great opportunity to learn the lessons as taught personally by the author. Tom stepped us through each interdependent element of the genealogical proof standard. I thought he had the right mix between lecture and exercises. I would recommend this course to anyone.

Be sure to bring your Eskimo coat. The classrooms downstairs are icy cold and hotel staff say it is impossible to balance the temperatures with the remainder of the hotel.

Robert Raymond, of FamilySearch

Note: This class will be offered at the 2013 British Institute with a title change: From Simple to Complex: Applying Genealogy’s Standard of Acceptability to British Research – Thomas W. Jones, Ph.D., CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS

Course description: Through hands-on activities, lectures, and discussions, participants will learn how to use widely accepted standards to measure their genealogical work’s accuracy and to assess others’ genealogical conclusions. In the process they also will learn about genealogical research planning, its implementation, genealogical reasoning, and the preparation of credible genealogical products. 

The 2013 British Institute will be held 7 – 11 October 2013 at the Radisson Hotel Downtown in Salt Lake City, Utah. Details on the four courses to be offered will be posted in the coming weeks.

** This new book is going to be published by the National Genealogical Society and will be released this coming April or May.

British Institute: Advanced Methodology for Irish Research

This post is part of my continuing series of guest authors sharing their perspective on different courses at genealogy institutes. This one features Laurel Baty, CG writing about a course at the British Institute held each October in Salt Lake City, Utah.

A Unique Course: Advanced Methodology for Irish Research Taught by David E. Rencher

My first experience with Genealogy Institutes was in October 2007 when I attended David Rencher’s class, Irish Research: Sources and Methods for Research in Ireland, at the annual British Institute in Salt Lake City. I was a novice to Irish genealogy and learned so much during that first class and had a wonderful experience. I have attended the British Institute annually since 2007 and enjoyed every class I have taken. The British Institute, sponsored by the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History [ISBGFH], offers a unique format: lectures in the morning with instructor consultations and guided research in the afternoon at the Family History Library. Where else can you learn about records in the morning and have hands on research in the same records in the afternoon? The instructor consultations are a wonderful addition to the classes.

At the British Institute in 2011 I attended Advanced Methodology for Irish Research taught by David E. Rencher which will also be offered in October of 2012. I highly recommend this unique class. The other Irish classes I have taken from David Rencher were about the records of Ireland and how to locate them [Governmental Records of Ireland in 2009 and Making the Transition from Irish Church Records to Irish Land Records in 2010]. The Advanced Methodology class taught us what to do with the records once we found them and how to utilize Irish records to solve genealogical problems.

Each day was organized around a broad topic, with multiple lectures each day:

·         Monday: Strategies for a Sound Beginning

·         Tuesday: Strategy and Methods to Sharpen Your Skills

·         Wednesday: Research Methodologies for Catholic Research

·         Thursday: Strategies for Scots-Irish Research

·         Friday: Strategies for Church of Ireland Research

After a morning packed with lectures we headed off to the Family History Library in the afternoon to test our new found knowledge and consult individually with David Rencher, a world renowned expert in Irish genealogy who also happens to be the Chief Genealogical Officer of Family Search! The consultation is worth the cost of the class! Make sure to bring your Irish research problem—you may topple a few brick walls.

David’s classes at the British Institute inspired me to take three research trips to Northern Ireland and plunge into Irish research. His classes also started me on the road to certification by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. David will offer the class in 2012 with some changes. Visit the ISBGFH webpage to read the course description: http://www.isbgfh.org/cpage.php?pt=7

 

I will be attending Tom Jones’ class, From Simple to Complex: Applying Genealogy’s Standard of Proof to Your Work, offered for the first time at the British Institute in 2012:. There is currently space available in both classes as well as the two other classes being taught this year:

·         British Military, Its Regiments and Records taught by John Kitzmiller, II

·         Records and Strategies for Beginning English Research taught by Judy Jones.

Laurel Baty, CG^SM

laurelbaty@comcast.net