I wasn’t able to make it to the first day of the Congress because I was setting up my art exhibition.  Here are some of my notes and impressions of Day Two.

 

Day Two

I didn’t write any notes about Jenny Higgins’ keynote talk other than to say that she was a bit hard to hear and understand.

These posters were being given out by the South Australian State Records in the exhibition hall.

Ref No. GRG 32/16/9

I wonder if my Grandfather saw these posters before he joined up.

 

Scottish Research Online – Barbara Baker

For anyone who wasn’t familiar with the websites Barbara was talking about they could’ve come out of this session rather confused as she switched back and forth between slides of Ancestry, Family Search and Scotland’s People.  There wasn’t always time to read the slides either.  It would’ve been good to see everything about Ancestry and then move on to the next site.

I did pick up some tips and new places to search for my Scottish ancestors- http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/, look at Wills and the Coat of Arms Register on http://scotlandspeople.gov.uk/, http://www.electricscotland.com/, http://british-history.ac.uk/, http://www.happyhaggis.co.uk/ and to look at  http://scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/ for the Farm Horse Tax records.

 Family Search Indexing – Stephen Young

The room for Stephen’s talk didn’t have much light on the speaker so it was difficult to lip read him.  I enjoyed Stephen’s talk about all the records Family Search indexes and about how to help with the indexing.  One tip that I noted was this:

“A farm labourer worked with animals and lived on the farm.  He usually stayed there a long time.  An agricultural labourer however worked in the fields, didn’t live on the farm and moved around from farm to farm or went to work fairs to gain employment.”  I have a number of ancestors listed as ‘agricultural labourers’ or ‘ag labs’ as they’re known but haven’t come across any farm labourers in any censuses yet.

Fascinating Facts & Figures From Five Countries – David Holman (keynote)

I thoroughly enjoyed David’s talk as I’m sure many people did going by the audience’s laughter.  David shared figures of the most common surnames and forenames in different countries.   He also spoke about uncommon and funny names and combinations of fore and surnames.  I didn’t write anything down because I was so interested and entertained by what David was saying.

I had to leave early for work so I didn’t get to hear any more talks but did spend some more time and money in the exhibition hall.  I’ll write a separate post about what I bought.