What happened at the Seminar in SLC? Any word yet?

Arlene Rich
BR1595@...

The SLC seminar has come and gone(?) and it sounds as if no one was there.
Or are they so engrossed in what they learned there, that they have not
found time to tell us how great, or whatever, it was.
Burt Schreiber
FT Myers, FL

I didn't go this year. But if it was anything like last year's, they're
now trying to catch up on their jobs, families, and Lives after neglecting
them for weeks, organizing their research lists and family group sheets
before the trip < g >.

Hilary Henkin

See you all in London!

Speaking for myself, it was a great conference. There were many
outstanding lectures. Like many, I spent lot's of time at the Morman Family
History Library scanning numerous microfilms for passenger lists, census
information, and naturalization papers. I got copies of my paternal
grandfather's naturalization papers and was surprised to see that an uncle
was one of his witnesses. He got his citizenship as a student, only a few
weeks before his father. I also found out my mother's birthplace and other
information about my maternal grandfather >from the 1920 census. All in all,
it was a very rewarding experience to learn so much about genealogy in
general as well as the above information about my families.

I also gathered lot's of information for friends about their families and
their interests.

I thought the lecture by Dr. Hammer about Jewish DNA was the most
interesting. He will have a website to report on his continuing studies of
the DNA testing he did on the attendees at the conference. I recommend that
you watch for this. He said he would post in either this newsgroup,
JewsishGen, or the Conference website with updates.


Burton Schreiber <schreibb@...> wrote :

Burt,

My opinion of the SLC convention is that it was _great_. The 'breakfast
with the experts' and the 'small group tutorials' gave people access to
many of the genealogy experts. In my case, 10 minutes with Randy Daitch
resolved a search for my gf's shtetl that has been ongoing for 10 years.
Randy pulled out a 1921 Polish census that he had, and using the clues I
had accumulated, located the appropriate Galician district and sub-
district.

The various lectures were good... Some were the same (or very similar) as
last year, but many were new.

This years conference had time for lunch and dinner (as opposed to last
year conference where lectures ran >from 8am to 10pm). These lunch and
dinner breaks were great opportunities to meet with the people behind the
email addresses.

As with any conference, maybe the most learning went on in the lobby.
There one could talk genealogy 24 hours a day.

Finally, no recap of the conference can be complete without mentioning the
Family History Library. This was my first visit there, and it was
fantastic. In a few days, I looked at close to 60 microfilms. These
microfilms helped me to track down a gggf's death certificate (and now I
know the names of his parents (my ggggf and ggggm)). It also allowed me to
find several 'lost' family branches. To do this much research at my local
FHL would have taken years!

Edward Rosenbaum
Bergenfield, NJ
Webmaster, Belarus SIG (http://www.jewishgen.org/belarus)
President, JGS of Bergen County, New Jersey
(http://home.att.net/~erosenbaum/jgsbc.htm)
email: erosenbaum@...