No matter how much progress I have made in my family research I continue to enjoy attending the annual Lansing History Center’s annual Family History Seminar. I find it useful for the variety of presentations and presenters—in fact I have knowingly repeated a couple of courses because I figure either I or the presenters are in a different place in our research and I’ll get something new out of it. I also find it interesting as a presenter to see what works for other instructors. And I always, always come away with new sites to play with, new ideas, and a refreshed outlook for my research.

This year’s seminar was no exception. On Saturday I attended presentations on Scottish research, Ontario border crossings, Irish research pre-1860, and one on ways to interest children in genealogy. The Scottish class gave me a long list of new sites to play with which I want to use to track down Harry Alison’s line. The border crossings class is one I’m pretty sure I’ve taken before but now I have more information about my Ontario family and I have a better feel for who I should be looking for in the records. The Irish research class was packed full of information and ideas that I still need to work through, but I think it will help me add some depth to our Massy and Byrne lines.

And finally the class on ideas for interesting younger generations in family history was reassuring in that it covered a lot of the ideas we’d played with at work when discussing youth genealogy programming. Also, it reinforced my ideas for “corrupting” my nephews and niece.

Add to all that, I had a lovely lunch at a table with a number of presenters and took an hour to do some research in the Family History Center where I took advantage of some of their premium databases—I’ve got to get down there to research more often.

It was a great experience and I would highly recommend it almost regardless of your research level. Hope to see you next year!

Happy hunting,

Jess