SCGS Jamboree Plus 10

Ten days ago I attended my second Jamboree in Burbank.  For four days (because I attended the writing seminar on Thursday) I listened to amazing speakers and learned so much.  It’s going to take me weeks to process all of the new ideas and techniques.  There are many new techniques and suggestions to help break down those “brick walls”.  I also bought some DVDs and recordings of some sessions that I was unable to attend (a conflict with another great session), so hearing and watching those are going to take at least 15 hours of time.

I appreciate the time the speakers put in before they arrived in Burbank, with all of the effort getting their presentations ready.  The speakers were also available before and after presentations to answer questions.  However, this event would never have occurred if it wasn’t for Leo Myers and Paula Hinkel for cochairing this event and the army of great volunteers who worked for hundreds of hours to make Jamboree possible.  So, Thank you.    

I was so busy attending sessions that I only spent a few hours in the Vendor Hall.  But, oh, what hours!!! There was SOOO… much energy in there.  There was a huge variety, I believe over 70, different exhibitors.  And there were more genealogy books, new and used, than I could probably read in the next 10 years.  It was great.

Jamboree is usually held in June.  I hope to see you at the 2012 Jamboree.  Of course, hopefully we’ll have met through the blogs and we’ll just be seeing each other for the first time.

Again, thank you SCGS members and friends for all of your efforts in providing this great opportunity for the genealogy community.

Welcome to my first blog post

Welcome to Karen's Genealogy Oasis blog.  I have been thinking about blogs since I attended the Blog Panel at the 2010 SCGS Jamboree in Burbank.  It’s taken me a year to get up the courage to start.  I would really like to thank Amy Coffin of WeTree blog for her encouragement and guidance during the 2011 Jamboree.

I have always loved mysteries and my family history is really a mystery. Unfortunately the solution will not be revealed by page 423 or even page 1051.  I have a gggrandfather who was supposedly bushwacked.  I have ggrandfather who didn't seem to marry, even though he had two wives.  And he didn't seem to die (at least no death records have been found) but I do have lengthy obituaries that were published in 1915 in two different states. 

I have numerous goals for this blog.  (Of course, these may change as I continue my detective work.)

1)   I want to share family information including photographs and other documents.  I have small books and booklets which have biographies and photographs of residents of some Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas towns.  Very few of these entries are my ancestors.  Perhaps they will help others.

2)   I hope this blog will help cousins in their detective work as well as encourage them to contact me and share their discoveries. Two, three, or many, heads have to be better than one.

3)   I would like to share techniques, web sites, books, and any other thing that I find that may help other researchers.  I appreciate learning techniques that other genealogists/family historians have used to discover ancestors.  And I have a lot of discovery to do. In fact my “brick walls” begin at generation 3.  Yes, that soon! 

4)   I plan to use this blog as a tool to organize my thoughts and plan for further searches.  This will essentially be talking to myself.  I just wish that when I ask questions I could be guaranteed good answers.

5)   I hope that writing this blog will help me become more organized and guide me with the other writing that I know must be started.   After all, my descendants deserve more than miscellaneous folders, notebooks and stacks of papers.

6)   And lastly, I will try to keep readers updated on conferences, seminars and other activities, particularly in Arizona, that may help them with their research and encourage them to meet with other genealogists.

So, I hope you will join me in the Genealogy Oasis and that you will visit often.  Together we can work on finding clues that may lead us to solving at least some of these amazing mysteries.