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Sherlock's Genealogical Adventures

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Sherlock at FGS/RootsTech 2015

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Tim Firkowski

Thursday, 19 February 2015

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Well, after a number of delays flying to Salt Lake City, Utah from Manchester NH, I finally arrived in Salt Lake City for the FGS/RootsTech conference on February 10th.

It was my hope to be able to make Blog posts while the events were happening, but along with many others who were unable to do so, I failed in that area. Many others choose to wait until after FGS/RootsTech to make their own posts for a very good reason, which will become apparent after reading this post.

The area for the conference at the Salt Palace Conference Center is HUGE, MASSIVE, VERY LARGE and any other similar word you can dig out of a Thesaurus. I had originally stated that there would be over 10,000 people attending, but during the opening session for RootsTech on Thursday the estimate is now put at over 30,000 people. There were many times that there was hardly any room to move in the Exhibit Hall, especially on Saturday when a large contingent of young people visited with their families.
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I spent my first full day in Salt Lake City at the Family History Library in the hope of solving a brick wall for a client. This was an interesting and frustrating case, which I was eventually able to solve while in Salt Lake City. This is such an interesting case that I will be making a future Blog post to explain how I solved this mystery, in hopes that it may help others go through the thinking process to help solve their Brick Walls. If you have not made the pilgrimage to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I encourage you to do so at least once. The Library is HUGE and holds floor to ceiling cabinets of microfilm and books on 5 floors covering 142,000 square feet.

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Photo: J. Paul Hawthorne

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Photo: Leslie Brinkley Lawson Most of my time was spent wandering around the Exhibit Hall dressed in my Sherlock Holmes outfit or my Kujawy (Polish folk dress from the region in Poland where my ancestors are from). I enjoy doing this at genealogy conferences for a number of reasons. First and foremost I like to attract attention to myself in order to talk to people about what I do. I am able to explain to them that I am a professional genealogist who specializes in Polish and French-Canadian family history research. Being dressed in costume is a wonderful ice-breaker. Another reason I do it is to provide something different, interesting and fun for the particular conference I am at. I also dress in costume to help encourage others to dress in period costume of their ancestors. I hope someday to see lots of people dressed in period costume of their ancestors. I found some people dressed in period costume in the Exhibit Hall for the FGS/RootsTech conference. Some people wore kilts, others like those at the History Lines booth were all wearing period costume. On Saturday there were a number of RootsTech people who wandered around in period costume. This was wonderful to see and I hope it encourages more people to do this. Take a look at some of my photos, which are posted at the end of this Blog.

The opening sessions had a number of big names. On Thursday we were honored to meet the hosts of Genealogy Roadshow, On Friday, former first lady Laura Bush and her daughter Jenna talked about life in the White House and what it was like as a family. Donny Osmond talked about his life growing up on Saturday.

When you are at a big conference you are able to meet many of the big players in the genealogy community and they are not unapproachable. They all welcome the opportunity to chat with those that are learning from them or their books, Blogs or FaceBook posts. You have the opportunity to make new friends as well as meet up with those you already know. I find that going to a genealogy conference is a moral booster which has regenerative abilities feeding motivation for further genealogical research. I was able to meet and make a new friend at RootsTech, I was looking forward to meeting Sonia Meza from Spain and was video interviewed along with Dear Myrtle, by Sonia in Spanish. My Spanish has become rusty in the last 30 years, but I was able to answer some questions in Spanish without the aid of her translator. It was quite interesting and I was happy to see more people from around the world.

Attending such a large conference gives you the opportunity to attend many classes and also learn proper behavior in the genealogy community such as how to abide by copyright rules as described by Judy Russell (The Legal Genealogist) explains in her Blog Post. or learning why not to copy work in others family trees.

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Dear Myrtle's RootsTech After-Party

Due to the storm in the Northeast, my flight out on February 14th was delayed by one day, but that gave me the opportunity to attend Dear Myrtle's RootsTech After-Party. I was able to meet many of my old friends and make some new ones. If I am correct there were people from Australia and the UK at this gathering.

So back to my original statement in this post, there were SO many people and SO much happening at this conference that there was no time available for many to write a Blog post and all anyone wanted to do after it had ended for the day, was rest their feet and sleep.

There is so much more that could be written about the happenings at the FGS/RootsTech conference, but I thought this was a good summary based on my experiences.

Please enjoy some of my photos from the FGS/RootsTech conference.

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About the author

Tim Firkowski

I have been doing genealogy research since 2002 & have worked full time as a Professional Genealogist since 2008. I specialize in Polish and American-Canadian Genealogy. As a member of APG, I was the 2010/2011 President of the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (NEAPG). I have Certificates of Completion for studies in "Foundations of Forensic Genealogy" and "Advanced Forensic Genealogy Techniques". I have been a volunteer librarian at the local Family History Center, and a genealogy research consultant at “Ask the Expert” Ancestry Road Shows. I have traveled to Poland numerous times & researched in churches and archives. At conferences and special events, you may find me dressed up in my Sherlock Holmes outfit, or my Kujawy (the folk costume from the region in Poland where my ancestors came from).