Colleen has written three excellent books and there was a crowd around the Gould Genealogy stand buying her books and taking advantage of having the author present to do a signing. I already had her Forensic genealogy book but did purchase her two other books (and got them autographed!)
I am very much looking forward to her other presentations at Congress.
Then off to morning tea and a perusal of the exhibitors. Trove was showing some of the proposed changes to their website and gaining customer feedback. The changes look very good.
After lunch, Daniel Horowitz from My Heritage was the next presenter on “How we Share and Preserve Memories in a Digital Age”. This presentation was quite interesting and well done in the first half and then became more of an infomercial for My Heritage which while interesting would have been better as the last small section of the presentation.
I stayed in the main lecture hall for Dr Chris Watts talk on “Researching a British Merchant Seaman” Chris knows his topic well and has written a detailed book on this subject. He concentrated on the pre-1858 records. Life has become a lot easier int his time period for researchers as FindMyPast has added quite a number of Merchant Seaman records on their website. Post this time period crew list records are held in a variety of places including UK county records offices, UK Maritime Museum as well as Newfoundland. This was because the UK Archives did not have the space to accept all the thousands and thousands of boxes of crew lists.
Then afternoon tea followed by a presentation by David Holman on “Using British Medals to Help Fill Out Your Tree”. Again an interesting presentation by someone who was very familiar with his topic. David gave a good description of the various medals and when they were issued and the changes that occurred. He also gave information on where we could find further information about the reasons why a medal was awarded.
I love reading about Congress. Thanks so much for sharing. One day, I'll get there…
Congress 2015 is in Canberra. Let's try and get there together and have a strong Queensland contingent
Thanks for a great summary Helen.. when we meet up in June I might pick your brain about the Chris Watss talk. t would have been #1 for my family history.
It was good to meet your Helen. I'm disappointed I didn't get to hear Colleen Fitzpatrick on day 1 but I bought her book Forensic Genealogy and went to her 3 other talks. Kylie