Got Ancestors?! 2023

Message from President Don Bryant

2012 marks our fifth consecutive GotAncestors?! annual seminar! This year’s program approaches genealogy from diverse perspectives that highlight ways you might not have thought of to uncover your family’s hidden information. Curt B. Witcher will demonstrate and explain approaches you can take to answer your research question marks – those people in your history who seem to appear out of nowhere only to disappear.

Several years ago, I studied the 1630s Great Migration to New England. Then at one of our previous seminars, I was reminded of another Great Migration – that of the African-American populations from the southern states to the north. Different ethnic groups, but exactly the same concepts are involved when studying migration patterns. Cluster research focuses on ethnic and family origins in order to research family history as a group and is one of the five topics at this year’s seminar.

Mr. Witcher offers his expertise on other subjects. Military records, which exist for practically every generation, provide a key perspective to understanding your ancestors in historical context. Federal population schedules, key components of any family history project, are not the only census records valuable to genealogists. One should not ignore other types of censuses that shed light on areas like agricultural, social, slavery, manufacturing, and mortality. Learn how and where to find new internet resources. Finally, because there are more answers “off-line” than online, learn methodologies and effective ways to use libraries – specifically ACPL. Who better to pose your questions to than the top librarian of one of the best genealogy libraries in the country?

I hope you will join us for the 2012 Got Ancestors?!  seminar. Come with your questions and leave with answers about how to fulfill your genealogy endeavors.

The Got Ancestors?! committee is hard at work planning this year’s Got Ancestors?! 2012 Seminar.

Our speaker this year is Curt B. Witcher, MLS, FUGA, IGSF. Curt is the Manager for The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is a former president of both FGS & NGS, and the founding president of the Indiana Genealogical Society. He is coeditor of the Periodical Source Index.

One of the hardest parts of getting this set up is choosing just 5 topics – 1 for Friday evening and 4 for Saturday – from Curt’s 7 page list of available topics. We’re expecting to have topics on Military Research, Census Research, and the Allen County Public Library. Details on this will be posted here in the next week or 2.

We’re using the popular Prince Conference Center at Calvin College again.

Remember the dates – Friday and Saturday 12 and 13 October 2012.

Saturday’s portion of Got Ancestors?! 2011 was “Genealogy in Black & White and Blue & Gray” and consisted of 4 fascinating sessions from a GREAT presenter.

Tony’s topics were:

1. The Nature of Genealogy
2. The Six Phases of African American Genealogy
3. Did Your Ancestor Serve in the Civil War
4. Creating Order Out of Chaos

A couple of highlights of the day – attendee Jeanne Jones celebrated her 91st birthday with us, the youngest attendee was a 2 month old, and Tony Burroughs got to catch up with a grade school friend of his from Chicago – Al Odom now lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Jeanne Jones celebrated her 91st birthday with us today - with long time friend Tony Burroughs.

Today’s the Day…

I’ve updated the Door Prizes page with the final list of prizes available

THANK YOU to all those who have provided prizes

Well there’s less than a week to go until this year’s event with Tony Burroughs.

The forecast is looking OK

Forecast from Saturday 29 Oct to Saturday 5 November

If you haven’t registered yet, it’s not too late to get your tickets to what will be a GREAT weekend.

A listing of the door prizes available to date is shown here http://GotAncestors.com/door-prizes/

Some of these alone are worth more than the cost of attending the Got Ancestors?! Seminar.

And remember – you can’t win if you’re not there!!!

It’s not too late to register yet – go to http://GotAncestors.com/registration/ to register online.

Below is the text of a Public Service Announcement that Community TV Channel 25 on Comcast in Grand Rapids will be showing twice a day (8:30am and 10:00pm) for the next 5 weeks.

I’m Roger Moffat with the Western Michigan Genealogical Society, and organiser of our annual Got Ancestors seminar.

WMGS has been based in Grand Rapids since 1954, and we have maintained a close relationship with the Grand Rapids Public Library during this time.

For the last 4 years we have held our annual Got Ancestors seminar at the Prince Conference Center at Calvin College, featuring nationally recognised speakers from the genealogy community across the United States.

This year our speaker is Tony Burroughs of Chicago. Tony is one of the nation’s leading researchers, speakers and authors on African American genealogy as well as topics of general genealogical interest.

For many years my wife’s family knew that her great great grandfather had lost a leg in the Civil War. But that was about all they knew – not even his first name was known.

But slowly through research we have learned that Frederick Heinrich Tonsing was an immigrant who enlisted for the Union side in the Civil War in Cleveland less than 5 years after arriving from Germany. He was shot in the leg at the Battle of Gettysburg and had that leg amputated right there, probably without anaesthetic.

Since then we’ve walked the Gettysburg battlefield, possibly within a few yards of where he was shot that day in 1863. We’ve been to the National Archives in Washington DC and seen his 100 page pension file – which showed he spent much of the remaining 40 years of his life arguing with the Government about his condition and treatment.

How exciting to have been able to visit the places he served in the Civil War, and to hold and read the letters he wrote to the Government more than 120 years ago!

2011 is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War and the topics we’ve chosen to have Tony present at this year’s seminar are particularly relevant to this.

The Seminar is in 2 parts. On Friday evening Tony will present “Voices of Freedom: African American Soldiers in the Civil War”. Many African American men fought during the Civil War, and we’ll hear what some of them discussed in the years after.

On Saturday, Tony will present 4 sessions, 2 of general genealogical interest, along with “The Six Phases of African American Genealogy” and “Did YOUR Ancestor Serve in the Civil War?”

These latter 2 topics, while specific in subject will contain many points that will be of interest and useful to all genealogists and family historians – no matter what direction their research leads them.

Tony once said “I love traveling to places where my ancestors were and walking in their shoes”, and through our researches and travels my wife and I have both had a chance to do this too.

This year we are offering Youth Scholarships to allow up to 20 people aged 15-25 to be able to attend both Friday and Saturday of Got Ancestors at no cost.

Please see our website at www.GotAncestors.com for more details on our upcoming seminar – Got Ancestors?! Genealogy in Black & White and Blue & Gray.

Yes – I forgot to mention the date, despite reading this a dozen or more times – remember it’s 4th and 5th November 2011