A Family History Seminar sponsored by the San Diego Genealogical Society

Karen Clifford—President, Genealogy Research Associates

Geoff Rasmussen--Legacy Family Tree Program Developer

Presentations

Digital Imaging Essentials

Timelines and Chronologies

Slow Down and Pick up Speed (Genealogists’ research cycle—pathway to success)

Digging Deeper: Using Essential Pre-1850 Records

Our 21 September 2013 seminar will be held at Marina Village, where we held our January 2013 seminar with David Rencher. However, because we encountered space problems during the buffet lunch; we will be serving our lunch in a separate room just to the North of The Captain’s Room, where the seminar is held.

The morning coffee, tea, and Danish were very popular at our January seminar and will again be included in the price of the seminar. Our pricing of $40 for members and $45 for non-members remains the same and includes the seminar, the welcoming coffee/tea/Danish, a buffet lunch and the opportunity drawing prizes. An added bonus of the Marina Village is the convenient FREE PARKING.

We will be having two speakers, each giving two presentations. Karen Clifford and Geoff Rasmussen will each be speaking to our group here in San Diego for the first time. Many of you have probably heard Geoff before, as he is a regular at Jamboree; but this will be the first time for most of you to hear Karen. She develops and teaches multiple online genealogy courses at colleges in California and Utah. She is an Accredited Genealogist Professional and Fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association. She has been President/CEO of Genealogy Research Associates, incorporated since 1997.

In her presentation Digging Deeper: Using Essential Pre-1850 Records, Karen will be discussing Pre-1850 U.S. research methodology that she detailed in her recently released book by the same name.   “With good humor, stories, and true experiences, Karen will take you on an adventure. This adventure will explore your family’s past through the original records kept by your relatives as they arrived, set up a home on a piece of land, paid taxes to protect it, went to court to defend it, and often died to preserve it for their loved ones.”

The following is a summary of Karen’s second presentation, The Research Cycle.

“Certain principles of success operate in the field of family history research. These principles involve customs, geography, and governmental jurisdictions, to name but a few. One of these principles is the process which will be used over and over in your research: we call it the Research Cycle. It naturally produces success again and again. Successful genealogists use this cycle because it stresses:  The critical step of reorganization of data in light of new findings; and
Evaluation of the new information in context with all of the information you have available.
Successful genealogists use this cycle, and you will find similar models in other books. However, the advantage of this formulation of the process is that it makes explicit the critical step of the reorganization of data in light of new findings and the evaluation of the new information in context with all the information you have available. . . . . . “.