ROOTS & BRANCHES

I finally expect to being going to the Sharonville Convention Center north of Cincinnati, Ohio.

I say “finally” because I was originally planning to be at this venue for the 2021 International German Genealogy Partnership conference.

But many of you likely remember what happened to that conference … COVID-19 caused it to be morphed into a highly successful virtual conference that pioneered a lot of things, including using the WHOVA event-management app in the genealogy world.

Well, some five years later, the Ohio Genealogical Society is bringing its annual conference to Sharonville from April 29 to May 2, and I’m looking forward to being there as a speaker, vendor, and just plain registrant to sample other presenters’ lectures as well as other activities.

This year’s theme is “Shiver Me Timbers! Finding Genealogy Gems” and I’ll be on the hunt to unbury any family history treasures that I can find.

The conference will be following a familiar “recipe” of sorts—it starts with optional workshops and social events on Wednesday (April 29) followed by three days of lectures, luncheons, and vendors in an exhibit hall.

Another Wednesday add-on event will be a “field trip” to the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library Genealogy Department. This is a significant collection of materials, many of which were put together by the Hamilton County OGS Chapter. Kenny Burck from the chapter will provide insight on the way to the library from the conference site.

Of course, there will be multiple presentations on genealogy’s hottest topics—DNA and AI—but I especially like perusing the conference program booklet for lecture topics that tickle my mind and get me thinking about other research to do, such as:

• Kris Rzepcynski’s “Michigan Online: Tools for Genealogists.” Rzepcynski and I tag-teamed the Montana state genealogy conference some years ago and as Michigan’s archivist, I want to see how what his state has online compared to Pennsylvania.
• “Genealogical Gems in Mexican War Records,” presented by Brian Rhinehart, the go-to man for researching military records at the National Archives. Some years ago I helped an author with a book about a solider in the Mexican War and realized how much I didn’t know what I didn’t know about this conflict.
• Cindy Lindsay will lecture on “Camp Sherman: Ohio’s World War I Training Camp.,” and that got me thinking about my great-great-uncle William Machmer, who was killed in World War I. Where did this farm boy from Pennsylvania get his training before going to France?

As a speaker, I’ll be presenting “Registers, Inventories, Abstracts: Using All Iterations of German Church Records” and “Deitsch, Deutsch, Dutch: Key Sources for Germans in Pennsylvania.”

As a vendor, this OGS will mark the debut at a genealogy conference of the second edition of my Family Tree Historical Atlas of Germany.

For more information or to register online, visit www.OGSConference.org. The OGS early bird discount period ends March 7.