Genealogy Conference - The Berkshires - September - (What's Not To Like???)

It’s September. Listen. Those aren't crickets.

The clock’s ticking.

If you haven’t already done so, it’s still not too late to register for the seventh annual all-day genealogy conference called “Life in the Past Lane”, hosted by The Friends of the National Archives–Pittsfield, Silvio O. Conte National Records Center on Saturday, September 18th. As in recent years, the event will be held at the Williams Inn on the Green in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

This year, the Friends have lined up three great presenters: Leslie Albrecht Huber, Jean Nudd and Gregory Pomicter. Topics to be covered include “Get Organized! Get Control of Your Research Projects”, “Electronic Scrapbooking”, “Writing A Family History Your Family Will Want To Read” and “Using Footnote.com”.

Plus, the ever-popular “Ask the Experts” Roundtable will close out the day, with the panel fielding audience questions.

We’ll be there (as Jonathan Sheppard Books) with our tables laden with books, both new and out of print, along with lots of other businesses and societies that provide those things that genealogists just absolutely have to have.

Here’s the link for more info and a registration form for Life In The Past Lane VII.

If the speakers, topics and exhibitors weren’t enough to fully motivate you to action, here’s another big plus. It’ll be in mid-September and it will be (as I may have already said…) in WILLIAMSTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS. IN THE BERKSHIRES.

Those of us who live in these parts can attest to it being one of the best times of year to be in western Massachusetts, just down the road from Vermont and just over the line from “Upstate New Yawk”. Weather’s usually perfect, views are always great, natives are friendly and lots of the summer folk have gone home to the Big City.

When you come by for the conference, be sure to save a minute or two to check out the memorial stone on the green in front of the Williams Inn. It was erected in 1916 by the members of the Kappa Alpha Society from Williams College and is dedicated to the memory of the original settlers of the area and specifically to Sergeant William Chidester, his son James and Captain Elisha Chapin, who were ambushed and massacred at the West Hoosac blockhouse during the French and Indian War.

And, just in case you didn’t know, the Kappa Alpha Society is the oldest college social fraternity in North America, founded at Union College in Schenectady, New York in the fall of 1825.

See you there?

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" - (2 Henry VI - Act IV, Scene II)

Over at Medievalists.net, you can read about the two-year research project of Prof. Anthony Musson from the University of Exeter (England) in which he examined the private lives of lawyers in England during the medieval and early modern periods (1258-1558). 

Funded by an £80,640 grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Prof. Musson used many of the same tools that genealogists use - taxation information, inquests, wills, property deeds and private correspondence – to research his forthcoming book called “Lawyers Laid Bare: The Private Lives of Medieval and Early Tudor Lawyers”.  [Ed. Note: not many £80,640 grants out there for genealogists/family historians, more’s the pity…]

Turns out that the lawyers (many of whom married young heiresses or wealthy widows to improve their social standing) weren’t nearly as crass or greedy as their critics portrayed them in literature, and some were even downright philanthropic.  Who knew?  Apparently not Shakespeare's Dick the Butcher, whose quote above reveals his less than kind opinion of the profession.

If you’ve got a lawyer-ancestor from that period, you may want to take a look.  Even if you don’t, it’s worth poking around the site; there’s lots of neat stuff, including a whole section on the Domesday Book.

Saving Your Family Stuff

Photographs, old letters, grandma's wedding dress, Great-aunt Hattie's teaching certificate, shoeboxes of old family postcards – as family historians, we end up collecting lots of family stuff. Much of it is old paper and nearly all of it is one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable.

These days, it's not unusual to hear genealogists talk about digitization as a “document preservation” technique. That's like calling catsup a serving of vegetables. (And just because the U.S. Department of Agriculture did that several administrations ago didn't make it so!)

While properly done scanning can provide an effective, cost-efficient way to disseminate copies of valuable paper documents to relatives and other researchers (thereby reducing the chance of damage to the originals through improper handling), it's important to remember that the digitization of old documents is not the same thing as document preservation. In fact, when archivists and records managers talk shop about “digital preservation”, they're usually referring to “born digital” documents, such as emails and computer-generated documents, not those scanned copies of Uncle Fred's 1906 death certificate or Cousin Bill's diploma.

Think of it this way: scanning an early 19^th century family letter doesn’t actually “preserve” the original letter any more than photographing an early 19^th century tombstone “preserves” the stone.

Since you'll still have the original paper document to deal with after you scan it, where do you turn to learn about the current “best practices” for its long-term care and preservation? It just makes sense to hear what some of the “big guns” in the preservation field have to say. Ginger Yowell of the Smithsonian Institution Archives has just tackled the information problem by directing researchers to some great advice from the country's experts in her current post titled “What Shall I Do With All This Stuff?!?” on the Smithsonian's “The Bigger Picture” blog.

Got stuff? Ms. Yowell's post, with its links to expert advice from the Northeast Document Conservation Center, the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, will help you take the proper steps to keep your family treasures intact for future generations.

So...Who's Mnemosyne??

In the complicated theology (or mythology, if you prefer) of ancient Greece, Mnemosyne was the Titan goddess with whom Zeus the Cloud-gatherer slept for nine nights in a row.  A year later, the greatly pregnant Mnemosyne gave birth to the nine Muses.  Thus, one of Mnemosyne’s daughters was Clio, the Muse of History who inspires all those who look back upon the past and write about it.

Aside from her role as the “mother of the muses”, Mnemosyne was also charged with the responsibility of watching over the sacred Pool of Memory, which occupies a prime piece of real estate in Hades.   Those who drank deeply from her pool were able to remember the people and events of their past, unlike those who drank from the river Lethe, where all things were forgotten.  She was therefore the goddess of Memory.