Calling all genealogists with German ancestors to the MAGS Spring Meeting
Warren Bittner CG
A lot of German genealogy presentations tend to be pretty basic. Beginning German genealogy. Find your German ancestor’s home town. Learn to read Fraktur.1 Been there, done that. I have nothing against just-getting-started-in-German-genealogy presentations, mind you. When I was just getting started, I needed them, and I’m most grateful for them.
But so often, at so many conferences, particularly at the local or regional level, there’s not a whole lot other than just-getting-started stuff. Okay, but now that I’ve gotten over being terrified by German records, now that I’ve found my German ancestor’s home town, and now that I can read Fraktur, now what? What I’ve wanted, so often, since my just-getting-started days, was a presentation that would take me by the hand and guide me on the next steps.
At last year’s National Genealogical Society conference in Charleston, I got the answer to “now what” in spades. That’s when I heard Warren Bittner, CG, speak on how the little principalities and dukedoms and other political divisions in the past really affect what records you might be able to find in Germany and, more importantly, where you might find them.
I was blown away.
I already knew Warren was a smart guy. He was a classmate of mine in Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Advanced Methodology and Evidence Analysis course at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at Samford University in 2010. I found, in listening to him, that not only is Warren a great speaker, knowing how to blend good stories into some wonderfully useful facts and speaking in plain clear terms that even someone who is just starting out can follow, but everything he was telling that audience was new material on taking those next steps. I couldn’t take notes fast enough.
And, on Saturday, March 31, anybody who attends the Spring Meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Germanic Society at Laurel, Maryland, gets not only Warren’s terrific presentation German Historical Maps and Territories — You Can’t Do Research without Them, but two new ones (new to me at least!): “Beat the Children with a Fresh Bird Stick” — Reading to Put Your Family in Historical Context and the one that it really pains me to be missing, On Site Research in German Archives.
Registration is open now and you can download the flyer here. Space is limited, so I sure wouldn’t wait. The all-day conference also includes a NARA presentation on the 1940 census, and the cost is only $40 for MAGS members and $45 for non-members who register before March 17th. (The cost goes up $5 if you wait.)
Now I know I’ll get to hear Warren again at the NGS Conference in Cincinnati in May, speaking on German Marriage Laws and Customs, but I am soooooo ready to try some on site research in German archives — particularly the one in Magdeburg that should have the court records on my 2nd great grandmother Friedrike’s marriage some years after the birth of my great grandfather Hermann.2 (I still have my fingers crossed that there’s some reference to who the kid’s old man was in those records.)
And I will envy you if you have the chance to hear Warren talk about that kind of research before I do.
SOURCES
- Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com), “Fraktur,” rev. 2 Mar 2012. ↩
- See “Friedrike, how COULD you?,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 7 Jan 2012. ↩
Sorry you are going to miss it out there. Come out to SLIG in 2013; Warren is doing a full week on Advanced German Research. Keep up the wonderful posts on your blog. I never miss a post!
Droooool… when does registration open????
It opens June 2, 2012 at 9:00 am (mountain time).
Sorry! Clearly I need practice at “replying” on blogs.
Not to worry! Folks understand!
Marking June 2 at 9 am MDT, 11 am EDT on my calendar…
Would this presentation be worthwhile for me? My German ancestor went from a tiny farming village in Germany in the late 1700s to Amsterdam, where he married, had children, and died. A long line of Dutch ancestors descend from him up to and including the ancestor who immigrated to the US in 1911. My research is focusing on Netherlands (Amsterdam) records, but would love to learn more about this family before they migrated from Germany to The Netherlands.
ABSOLUTELY it would be worthwhile. — and the presentation on German Historical Maps and Territories — You Can’t Do Research without Them would be wonderful for somebody in your situation.
Thank you very much – I think I will sign up – Laurel, MD isn’t far from where I live at all. I appreciate your input and always enjoy your posts.
Thanks for the kind words, Pam. I’ll try not to be too jealous thinking of you at the MAGS Spring Meeting!
Warren is fantastic. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing him speak the past two years at SLIG. If I were closer, I’d plan to attend.
I just wish I didn’t have the baby shower. Well, I mean, I love THIS baby shower (my sister’s first grandbaby!!). But I wouldn’t have minded it being on a different day…
I’ve heard Warren several times before and look forward to hearing him in Cincinnati. But you really have be focusing on SLIG next January. Thanks so much for the preview of coming attractions.
Charlene Sokal
It’s on my schedule for registration — and for anybody wondering: SLIG is the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and you can find out more about it here.