20180602_151241So, in the realm of way overdue… I’m jumping back into the blog and I want to start out by saying a HUGE thank you to everyone who made my first national conference presentation a success last month at NGS. That includes fellow speakers, WMGS family and friends, Michigan Genealogical Council friends, and NGS staff.  Another big thanks to everyone who made it to my session on Cluster Research at the end of Saturday after a long week of events. I basically told them to slow down and put more work into their research. It can be an overwhelming but so very fruitful. And finally, I’d like to extend a special shout out to my friends at the Archives of Michigan and The Genealogy Center at ACPL…. You all are fabulous!

Also, as a follow up to the Cluster Research program. I am in the same boat as everyone. Unless you’re lucky, you don’t start out doing it all correctly—properly analyzing every part of a document, properly sourcing your information, following out all the possible leads, etc. I’ve still got my share of things to clean up, follow out, and just do more work on. Writing and prepping for presentations helps me figure out what I’ve missed and work on what might otherwise feel like an overwhelming backlog of clean up.

Happy hunting (and research clean up when necessary),

Jess