Research Your Scottish Ancestry

RObert WilbanksUpcoming Genealogy Events for 2019

by Robert M. Wilbanks IV, B.A.
Chief Genealogist & Historian, C.S.A.
genealogy@arizonascots.com

I have often talked about the importance of “Networking and Ongoing Learning”. As you progress in your genealogy, discovering new and interesting facets of your family history, you will find that there is always something more to learn about the research process and resources available.

Finding others with common research interests, but with more practical experience, is an important, and fun, aspect to genealogy.

Whether it is finding a distant cousin who has made more progress in the researching of your common family tree, or learning from a record type expert, or research locality expert, networking with others to learn more is just one aspect of becoming a more skilled researcher. The other key aspect is just straightforward genealogy education. Getting out there and learning more. Self-learning and continuing education is very low cost and readily available in a variety of formats and locations.

Even though you may not have Arizona ancestry, local genealogy societies across the state are a great place to network, learning from others, and attend meetings, and learn from great presenters on a variety of topics. With the beginning of a new year, I thought I would let you know of a variety of highly significant genealogy conferences and seminars coming up in the next few months hosted by various Arizona genealogy societies. Don’t hesitate to take the time to go out and learn more. Here are just a few events coming in January through March.

The Pinal County Genealogists  (www.pinalctyazgen.com), will be hosting their annual conference, 2019 Genealogy Workshop, on Saturday, January 26th in Casa Grande. Registration ($20 before January 12th; includes a lunch) is now open and the syllabus of speakers, topics and handouts, is now available on their site as downloadable PDF files.

The Tucson Family History Center  (www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Tucson_Arizona_Family_History_Center) will be hosting its annual Free Event, the 2019 Family History Fair on Saturday, February 2nd, 8am to 4pm, with 35 classes. Visit the website for more details.

The West Valley Genealogical Society (azwvgs.org) is the largest genealogy society in Arizona and operates its own genealogy library with over 4000 square feet of books and more, plus access to a wide variety of subscription-based genealogy databases. In addition to monthly meetings, the Library provides a number of “How-to” genealogy classes on a variety of topics. Their Facebook Events page (www.facebook.com/pg/WVGS12222/events) has a long list of special classes from software to DNA to researching a variety of other countries. Their annual seminar on February 16, 2019 will feature Judy Russell, “The Legal Genealogist” (www.legalgenealogist.com.

The annual seminar of the Green Valley Genealogical Society, south of Tucson, (azgvgs.org) will be on February 23, 2019 featuring Cyndi Ingalls of Cyndi’s List fame (www.cyndislist.com): A website that sorts and organizes all known genealogy websites on the internet, currently with over 336 thousand web links in 220 categories.

The Pima County Genealogy Society, in Tucson  (azpimagensoc.org),  is one of the larger genealogy societies in the Tucson area. In addition to their monthly meeting programs, they have an extensive variety of classes at various locations around Tucson. Visit the website for details and registration information.

The Family History Society of Arizona (fhsa.org) has seven chapters around the valley that each meet a different day of the month. You could theoretically attend all seven meetings monthly. Its 2019 annual meeting will be on March 9th and will feature D. Joshua Taylor, a nationally recognized speaker and author, who will be presenting five different topics.

There are many other Arizona genealogy groups, historical and heritage societies that you can find through the Arizona Genealogical Advisory Board (AzGAB) (azgab.com), promoting genealogy and history by addressing the educational needs and interests of Arizona’s genealogical community through cooperation by the various groups and individuals. They have an impressive calendar of genealogy events around Arizona.

This is another of a series of articles in which I show you the basics of searching for your family history, discussing the use of family records, public records, and online resources nationally and internationally, etc. The previous articles are now available on the Genealogy Section of this website.   See “Genealogy” in the menu options at the top of the web page.