If you’re just beginning to research your family history, start with what you know. Record yourself, your parents and siblings, grandparents and their children, as far back as you can go. Then before you start your research to confirm what you have written down, and search farther back in time for more ancestors, learn the genealogical conventions that will help you keep track of what you have learned in a way that will keep you from repeating searching some time later. Learning where to find the records you need is key, and what records are out there to help further your research. If you’re just beginning, come and get many ideas of how to start and how to proceed.

Presentation:

Celebrity memoirs are often in the news, but you can master the techniques that make their (often ghost-written) stories come to life. The key is to incorporate a few tips from creative non-fiction, when to use them, and when not to, to make your story engaging enough to keep the reader interested from beginning to end. The roots of good storytelling will help you go from rambling to readable. A few quick and simple tips will get you churning out memories your relatives will read.

Speaker:

Dina Carson has been involved in genealogy for more than three decades, and is currently the coordinator of the Boulder Pioneers Project, a comprehensive look at the original source documents for Boulder County during the Territorial period (1859-1876). She is the author of more than ninety annotated indexes of Boulder County source materials. She lectures frequently to genealogical societies throughout the state and is working with the Colorado State Archives on state-wide indexing projects. Dina is the author of 10 books about publishing and genealogy including, Publish Your Family History: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Stories of Your Ancestors, and two recent books, Map Your US Research: A Workbook for Genealogists and Colorado’s Historical Assets: A Research Guide for Genealogists, Local Historians and History Buffs … . Dina brings her experience with all phases of book publishing to help first-time self-publishers create quality family or local histories that are both believable and achievable. When she’s not at a computer working on a publishing project, you can find her photographing the pioneer cemeteries of Colorado or deep in the bowels of an archive researching something.

Registration:

This is an in-person meeting, but we are going to try and make it available as a hybrid. If you are unable to make it in person, please register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZItceyppz4oHN2h8iYjhrQ4P9MAAaF_7Gvr

Ancestry.com is a subscription-based website that has billions of records of genealogical interest. One option to use the site without charge is to visit a place that offers it free to people searching while onsite (Boulder Public Library, NARA Colorado, etc.). Ancestry is also a place where you can record your genealogical information in a family tree so that the information is preserved. Currently, Ancestry will not remove a tree if the person who built it drops their subscription. The tree stays online and available to other researchers. Ancestry also offers DNA testing, ethnicity results and matching. Once you see what the possibilities are for your research using Ancestry, it’s hard to imagine not finding it essential.