ROOTS & BRANCHES

The recent conference of the National Genealogical Society, held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, just a block away from the Allen County Public Library’s Genealogy Center, the world’s second-largest genealogy library.

In the changed post-pandemic world of genealogy events, this NGS is what counts for a large gathering of more than a thousand people (There’s still the massive RootsTech conference annually in Salt Lake City, but that’s as much about entertainment as it is about genealogy).

The conference had great sessions, some live and others prerecorded, and most of the sessions are available to registrants through mid-July.

There was also an exhibit hall but truthfully that was a bit of a disappointment due to the amount of downsizing (in terms of exhibit hall presence) that major players such as Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org have done.

There was one particularly interesting booth, though, and that was Sammy Jo Saraceni’s Legacy Lore Podcast.

Saraceni lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, and focuses on genealogy storytelling in her podcast.

She calls Legacy Lore “a narrative history podcast rooted in genealogical and archival research … [and] draws from court records, family histories, and historical context to reconstruct the lives of real people whose stories have nearly been lost to time.”

It’s a real model for other family historians trying to add life to genealogies that too often focus only on names and dates. “From one family tree emerges a broader examination of accusation, resilience, and survival,” Saraceni says. The show “places individual lives within the legal, social, and cultural forces that shaped them, and asking what these histories still reveal today.”

Legacy Lore’s first season was titled “The Accused” and follows the story of Saraceni’s 11^th-great-grandmother, accused of witchcraft in 1671. Through court records and archival research, the season explores fear, power, and survival in early legal systems.

Saraceni previously worked in the legal field, and brings to her podcast a respect for sources that every genealogist should enjoy.

You can subscribe for free to Saraceni’s newsletter, “Lorekeeper’s Ledger.”

She also makes available a free pamphlet titled, Beyond the Names: A Beginner’s Guide to Narrative Genealogy. One of the principles she stresses here is that “records only tell us what happened. Stories help us understand why it mattered,” and she recommends focusing on one individual at a time rather than an entire tree.

Her second podcast season is “Sea Witches” and is just as intriguing, again taking the listener back to the 17^th century.

Two levels of membership ($5 a month and $8 a month) are available with various benefits for the subscriber.

All the information about Legacy Lore, including links to the podcast episodes, is at the website URL, https://www.legacylorepod.com/