Judy G. Russell

Judy G. Russell, The Legal Genealogist®, is a genealogist with a law degree who provides expert guidance through the murky territory where law and family history intersect. An internationally-known lecturer and award-winning writer, she holds credentials as a Certified Genealogist® and Certified Genealogical Lecturer® from the Board for Certification of Genealogists® and is a Fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association. Her blog is at https://www.legalgenealogist.com.

AGENDA

10:30 AM — 10:50 AM Registration (in person)

10:50 AM — 11:00 AM Welcome and announcements

11:00 AM — 12:00 PM Session 1: Linking the Generations with Court and Land Records
It’s the single biggest issue genealogists face: how do we connect one generation to the next with evidence we can rely on? Vital records are excellent documentation, but they often don’t exist for the time and place we’re researching. That’s when we have to find workarounds to make sure we’re not simply putting people into family lines because they share the same names. Using court and land records, we can often find the evidence we need to link the generations accurately

12:00 PM — 1:00 PM Lunch Break

1:00 PM — 2:00 PM Session 2: Which Johann Christoph is Mine? Researching in a native country is hard. Researching in Germany? Even harder. When every family in town shares a surname and all the sons are Johann Christoph or Gerhard, and all the daughters are Maria or Margarethe, how do we distinguish among them? What are the tools we can use to figure out which Johann Christoph is mine?

2:00 PM — 2:15 PM Break

2:15 PM — 3:15 PM Session 3: No Vitals? No Problem! – Building a Family through Circumstantial Evidence. When there’s no birth, marriage, or death record, what’s a genealogist to do? Learn how to use circumstantial evidence to build a family.

3:15 PM – 3:30 PM Break

3:30 PM - ???? Indiana Chapter PalAm Annual Meeting and 50th Celebration