My first lecture on Friday was Microsoft Excel: A Little Known Genealogy Research Tool with Jill N. Crandell, AG. It was a great lecture on how to use the tools in Excel to help you research your family history. She had some great suggestions about using Excel for trying to find your ancestor in a database. Now all I need is the time to go in and try this for myself.
The next lecture I attended was Would the Real Molly Brown Please Stand Up? with Julie Miller,CG. This was one lecture I was really looking forward to and it did not disappoint. It was facinating to follow the trail to find the siblings and family of Margaret Tobin Brown and JJ Brown. I am a fan of the movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown starring Debbie Reynolds and Julie interwove the movie with the real story. There weren’t many similarities.
I missed the last lecture because I wanted to get ready for the Banquet. There were awards presented and door prizes given away before the speakers took the podium. First up was Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak who talked about her Grant Program which is celebrating its thirteenth anniversary and she introduced a new program. Megan is going to give away thirteen grants to people who go into pawn stores to rescue family heirlooms and do the research to return them to the right family. When you have completed this you apply for a grant.
The highlight of the evening was Mark Hall-Paton of Clark County museums and the Pawn Stars TV show. His topic was “Do You Think Anyone’s Going To Watch This Show?” He had the hall laughing with his first sentence. His stories were very entertaining and it was great fun.
It was nice to end the day on such a nice note.
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