Genealogy Conference 2025 Day Two

This morning the conference started an hour earlier taking into account the participants staying at the conference center and attending an early breakfast with a guest speaker.  

I tried my best to win some door prizes (spoiler alert, I did not) and remembered that I do not care for Starbucks coffee -too bitter 

My focus today was on my Mennonite great-great grandmother. This speaker was fantastic and I rearranged my afternoon schedule to attend another one of her sessions. 

I thought I was very smart to print little cheat sheets of each branch for easy reference to dates.  Well, I printed one for my husband's mom, one for my mom and TWO for his dad. Which meant I did not have a cheat sheet for my Mennonite grandmother. 

Due to the tremendous persecution of the Mennonites in Switzerland and Germany, they did not keep church records. And when they immigrated to the United States, they did not keep church records either. But they did pay taxes! And this session told where to find tax records and other civil filings. 

Another fabulous session. Every session was as good as the next. The presenters were all fabulous.  I have learned so much my brain hurts! And I am very grateful I bought the syllabus so I can refer back to the slides. 

No lunch today. I sat at my chapter table, visited with old friends and ate a delicious adult lunchable from Aldi. 

Okay, this was a for fun session. The presenter is a DNA specialist who focuses on endogamy. The session focused on an extended family member's origins and incorporated a history of family feuds in Kentucky at the turn of the 20th century and how she solved the motive of a murder with DNA. 

Back with my morning speaker who shared how to find all those civil records housed in Pennsylvania courthouses on different websites and the ones only available in person. 

Over 100 participants attended this session on a new feature on Family Search.  The room was completely full and people were dragging in chairs from other classrooms. 

I'm not sure how many people are attending.  There is a block of 5 rooms that hold about 50 people (the 6th room in the block is our marketplace). Then there is an adjoining hallway with two rooms that hold "93" and one at the end that is about that size, too.  Not all the rooms are full all the time. Thursday had less participants, many arrived this morning to attend Friday and Saturday. And there are always more that attend just on Saturday so they don't miss work. 

The convention center is huge and it has been nice that it is just our conference. But that was changing as I left at the end of the day. There is a giant cheerleading competition (the kinds with little girls and lots of lipstick) on Saturday and Sunday and the families were all checking in. They have set up barricades to keep the groups separate and I hope it works smoothly. The girls are very cute but the noise (mostly the parents in the hallway) can get very distracting.