Attendance at Pennsylvania Family History Day

Yesterday, I got to attend the Pennsylvania Family History Day, sponsored by the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania and Ancestry.com. What a great event. Vendors and Speakers offered an amazing amount of information, all in one area at the Wyndham in Exton, PA.

Curt Witcher, from Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne Indiana, was worth the price of admission. His focus was on the changing face of genealogy and talked about the thing important to me - telling the stories. He even went so far to say that the activity we are all involved in now is going to end up being called family history since it opens the doors more for everyone's involvement. I left the keynote, realizing that I have much work to do to ensure that our family history is preserved properly for the generations to come.

At lunch, DearMRYTLE, shared her story "Let Them Eat Jam." Her impassioned sharing of her family story based on memories, was inspiring to many, and made us all realize that each one of us, and our family handles family memories differently: photography, cooking, talking, writing; to name a few. All of these work - what becomes important are the memories and the traditions.

I received additional clues on research from Lou Szucs from Ancestry.com and John T. Humphrey on Pennsylvania Land Records. What was exciting is that Kim McGowan who teaches a class in genealogy with me at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Widener University was present, as were a table full of our students! Learning was a happening activity yesterday!