Today made the week!!

Hello readers!

I want to wish you all a great weekend!

My NGS Conference is quickly coming to a close. Tomorrow is the final day. I'm going to miss learning all those great things!!

During the session on National Archives databases, mentioned was made that WWII draft registration cards were listed. I remembered seeing them on Ancestry.com as well. So when I got back to the room tonight I decided to take a look and see what they contained. Ancestry doesn't have all states added yet, but they did have some of Indiana. My maternal grandmother's family settled in Terre Haute from Lithuania in the 1900's. I looked up my great-grandfather, John Taylor, and he was listed!! Listed as John Krawcomas Taylor. The original surname in Lithuanian is Kriauciunas, pronounced CROW-CHEW-NAS. So it was close. But the most amazing thing and that which has made this whole trip a success is the birthplace!! No one has known where he was born, except Lithuania. I have been looking for this since 1978...yes, 1978, when I first started a family tree. So the card lists his birthplace as Blodislawo Slavico Lithuania. Unfortunately, this is not Lithuanian! I did surmise that they were from the Suvalkija area of current Lithuania, which is in part of Poland as well. So in this birthplace, I imagine the Slavico is Suvalkija or Suwalki (in Polish). So what is Blodislawo?? There is nothing close to that on the map and Google has nothing. I figured I would write to the Lithuanian Genealogy Society at the Balzekas Museum in Chicago, but then I remembered that JewishGen was supposed to have a good Eastern European place finder. Since the borders changed so much, they tracked the changes. So I pulled up the site and popped it in...and there it came up!!! The name is Vladislovov in Suwalki. And it also gives the current name...Kudirkos Naumiestis. The name changed after WWI. It is on the Sesupe river north of Kybartai. The story I heard from one of mom's cousins was that when asked where they came from, the answer was that were they lived in Lithuania, they could look across the field and see the bridge over the river to Germany. So, a river and the border is with current Kaliningrad section of Russia, which was East Prussia (German) territory prior to WWI. So...I found the town!!!

White Sox just won their game tonight 2-0 over the Giants...watching it on WGN. Inter-league play.

The sessions were great today. The two certification workshops were only for one type of certification--the AG Accredited Genealogist. There are about 150 of them. I guess they were trying to compete with the CG--Certified Genealogist. The morning rounded out the Access to Archival databases. That was interesting and I need to get in there. There are so many different records with general access.

Went to lunch at Crown Center to the Chinese place and had an eggroll, lo mein, sesame chicken and broccoli beef. The weather was so nice I decided to sit in Washington Park and watched the birds and people. A little sparrow was eating his lunch as well. He was pulling the seeds out of a not-yet-opened seed head of a dandelion. He really had to pull on it. I made it back to the Hyatt and started the afternoon sessions.

I was going to nix the Library of Congress presentation, but decided to check it out and see if it was worth it. IT WAS! There are a lot of things online...books, interviews, music, movies, Americana at its best.

The last sessions was how to index. You know, like create an index to a book. It sounds easy but a lot of decisions have to be made. Microsoft WORD does have two ways to do it, but there is a lot of manual action either way.

I stayed at the hotel and ate dinner at the sports bar there. I had BBQ beef brisket. It was good, but not as good as the sirloin yesterday! I talked with a fellow attendee at the bar. She was from Frederick MD. She also said she and her husband had a summer home in Nashville at Percy Priest Lake. They were going there in June to spend the month. Her husband likes to fish and she says he spends most of the days on the lake.

I walked back to the Fairfield Inn and started these genealogical exercises on the WWII cards and now it's midnight already.

Tomorrow is:

8:00 am Getting the Most from Family Tree Maker (the software I have my information in)
9:30 am The Nuts and Bolts of Using DNA Testing
11:00 am DNA Testing for Genealogy: A Surname Project and Results
2:30 pm Genealogical Research in Kansas
4:00 pm Pushing Up Daisies: Cemetery Research.

So I got some good things as well tomorrow! I also get a car tomorrow!! I'll go to Topeka on Sunday. I'll put to use what I learn in the Kansas research class tomorrow.

OK...I'm yawning pretty regularly, so I need to get to bed. More tomorrow!

Mark