Attendees at the 2012 annual Salt Lake Christmas Tour, sponsored by Leland and Patty Meitzler of Family Roots Publishing, brought challenging questions and time periods with them to this year’s tour. Some are seasoned genealogists with several year’s research experience. Some are newbies to the Tour, although with advanced research skills.
Each year we try to anticipate what kinds of instruction will best serve the group. This year we prepared classes on advance British Isles land records and how to use them. We also had 5 persons nearing the water’s edge, as it were, ready to cross the ocean with ancestors born in the early 1600’s.
One problem dealt with adoption in mid-20th century. One searching casualty lists of the Korean War. One looking for late nineteenth-century city directories. And one seeking ancestors who moved almost every year.
A big find: 141 pages of probate packet with the handwritten chancery case judgement revealing 7 children (4 were originally thought to be the family. The father was very wealthy and left parts of his estate in trust for different daughters, in case their husbands were “desolute” and might end up wasting the property. And since the county where they all lived was a burned county, we looked in the county where some of the land lay–Bingo! The will was filed there too and made up for the previous loss of records.
How does all this relate to your genealogy?
Well, I have discovered records in the Family History Library collection that I can share with you–reprints of old and out-of-print stuff. New abstracts of records never before indexed. Hard to read volumes that are now scanned and digitized for easier access. Publishing projects that have expanded into areas we have been waiting for. And on and on and on. Stay tuned! Your favorite genealogist, Arlene Eakle http://arleneeakle.com
PS And you could plan to attend in 2013 and let all 15 consultants help you trace your hard-to-find ancestors. Just Google Salt Lake Christmas Tour and sign up.
PPS One of my first sharings will be Virginia marriages hidden away in out of the way places–tune into my Virginia Blog for those.