Excited about Fall 2017 - teaching a course on Genealogy

This fall I'll be back in the classroom teaching and am excited that I'll be part of a Learning Community for Queens University of Charlotte.  A learning community has 4 connected courses, and students enroll in any two of the courses, based on their requirements.  The 4 courses in our community are Spiritual Storytelling; Who Are You Born to Be? (a class on DNA); Jazz, America's Musical Identity; and my course, Your Family History Identity: Discovering Who You Are.

So suddenly I'm going from learning about the genealogical proof standard in intensive courses at IGHR and SLIG, to teaching sophomore students about genealogy. I did teach at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute connected to Widener University for several years, but there I was teaching senior citizens how to use the web to do searches.  So this course is different both in students and content.

This course is much more about how to do historical research on an ancestor.  Included in the course assignments are blogs (each students will be creating their own blog and blogging 5 times during the semester), as well as preparing a narrative summary on one of their ancestors that are in the 1930 census or earlier.

I've been prepping all summer, and have developed a slide show of pictures to start the first class. It was hard to cull them down, but I know by the end of the semester they will have learned a lot about both my husbands family and mine.  For now - a picture of my grandparent Yoder's farm outside of Minerva. A favorite place during the summer for us to visit and stay and work!  But that is what makes the memories. Now on to more class planning!

A Yoder connector is born

So it has been 18 months since I last posted, and the answer to your question is yes, I've been busy. Part of that includes the birth of my first grandchild, Charlotte Paige Richardson, the daughter of my youngest son, Zachary James Richardson and his wonderful wife, Bethany Paige Wright.  The photo above is very special.  Both Bethany's mother, Robin Wright and myself are descendants of Yoders. In fact if you trace both of our lines back we connect to the same person Nicholas Joder, Sr.

Bethany and Zachary are 8th cousins, and Charlotte brings the family back in a full circle. Take a look at the diagram below.

What makes this even more fun, and I only realized this when I was creating a pedigree chart for Charlotte, is that she has a third Yoder connection to Nicholas, Sr. Look below at just her mothers line, still moving upward to Conrad and then Nicholas Joder Sr.

Okay, she won't be able to deny this relationship at all. And someone in the future will wonder about how this happened! Well it takes a Pennsylvania boy meeting a girl with parents originally from    North Carolina at college, and then research that connects Conrad and Nicholas together. We are thrilled to have her as part of our family.

Note: I've chosen not to give birth dates for every individual listed because some are still living, so please excuse this decision.