Today was a real full day,
up at 6 a.m. and to bed about 10 p.m.
The breakfast program started at 7 a.m. with a presentation by the L.A.
Times writer, Joe Mozingo. Joe had become fascinated
by his seemingly unusual name and decided to trace his origins. Along the way he came upon some evidence that
all Mozingos in the U.S. were descendants of Edward and Spencer Mozingo, black
slaves. Since Joe was white, he found
the story very intriguing and first published it as a series of articles in the
Times. He then continued the pursuit,
which carried him back to Africa to find out where Edward came from. He then expanded his writing into a book “The
Fiddler on Pantico Run”. I was
particularly interested, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, because my great-great grandmother was a Mozingo from the same line as Joe! I was a little disappointed when I approached
Joe prior to his talk and showed him a pedigree chart tracing my family line
from Spencer Mozingo, meaning we were related.
Perhaps he was nervous about his upcoming talk; but he did not show much
interest in our being related.
Although he seemed
somewhat nervous, his talk was very good, in good part because he read a couple
passages from the book. His writing
being of much higher quality than his speaking, this strengthened his
presentation considerably.
Thomas MacEntee, one of
the top genealogy bloggers, was the speaker at the first session I
attended. Although he had spoken at
Jamboree several times in the past, this was the first time I heard him
speak. He is an excellent speaker and
did a great job of managing the audience with Q&A strategically interspaced throughout
his presentation. He also was the
moderator for the final session of the morning “Blogger Summit” and, again, did
an excellent job. His panel consisted of
Denise Levenick, CeCe Moore, Judy Russell and Paula Stuart-Warren--an all-star group. I really learned a lot about blogging and
hope it is reflected in an improved product in the future. As you would expect, most of the audience
were also bloggers or aspiring bloggers.
The second session I
attended was entitled “Was My Ancestor Naturalized?” by Rhonda McClure. She did an excellent job of tracing the
history of the naturalization process in America. I would like to have
gotten a little more information on sources and how to search for the records.
One of the many vendors in the exhibit hall |
In the afternoon I started
with a presentation by Leland Metzler. I
had heard Leland several times my first few Jamborees; but hadn’t heard him in
several years. Since he was speaking on
German research, I decided to attend. It
was well worth my time as he did a great job and there are a number of internet
sites he discussed that I can’t wait to investigate.
Mike Provard, who works
for Family Search, did a very good job with an overview of the new Family
Search Family Tree. I had uploaded my
Gedcom and used the web site just a couple weeks back, which helped me better
understand the information he was discussing.
My last session of the day
prior to the Banquet was a presentation by Dr. James Ryan, from Ireland, about
“Irish Rentals as a Family History Resource”.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries there were
many very large estates in Ireland. Many
parcels of land within these estates were rented out to tenant farmers. Tracking the rental payments of all these
tenants created lots of records that were kept in ledgers or Rental Books. Several of these books have survived; but
many are still privately held. However,
the National Library of Ireland, The National Archives of Ireland and some
local libraries, both in Ireland and England, still hold many of these books
and other associated papers. Thus, this
is another source to be considered in doing Irish research.
Following about an hour’s
break, during which my roommate, Warrie, and I had a short “Happy Hour” it was
off to hear Josh Taylor speak at the Banquet.
We joined in a table with three ladies whom are fellow San Diego
Genealogy Members. One, Pam Journey,
moved up to the Orange County area a couple years back; but she is still
considered part of the San Diego family of genealogists. We were joined by a nice group of other
conference attendees and the table never lacked for conversation throughout the
night.
D. Joshua Taylor is the
Business Development Manager—North America—for Brightsolid Online Publishing, a
British company and creator of FindMyPast.com.
I think he is one of the young, very bright, rising stars in the
worldwide Genealogical Community.
Josh talked about the
future of Family History, with an emphasis on how we need to adjust how we do
our research and present our material in order to make it fun and attract the
younger generation of genealogists. We need to focus more on the stories that our history reveals rather than all the facts. Despite the fact most of the attendees were of the “grey haired”
generation, Josh’s theme was well received and enthusiastically endorsed. I thought he was “spot on” in his analysis
and predictions. It was a very
refreshing and brilliantly delivered speech.
A great ending to a long, but fun day!
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