Midwest Family History Expo 2013

For the second year the Family History Expo is returning to Kearney, Nebraska.  This event will be held on September 6th and 7th at the Holiday Inn Convention Center, 110 South Second Avenue in Kearney, NE; phone 308-237-5971.

The Expo is a great place to learn, share and create memories.   This is the 10th Anniversary of the Family History Expo and owner, Holly Hansen, is giving complimentary booths to all Nebraska societies that would like to display fliers and handouts or sell their books.

Keynote speaker James L. Tanner will get everybody excited about locating records and putting their minds to work about genealogy.  He wrote the book The Guide to FamilySearch Online and will also be doing a number of lectures.

James L. Tanner
Keynote Speaker

For those who are anxious to know about Swedish, Scandinavian and German research, professional speakers will guide them through the process.  Some of us will be speaking on United States records.  I will be presenting three lectures per day on military records, doing good research, land records, territorial and state census, Czech ancestry and maps.

As usual, there will be an Ask The Pro area.  It's free ... just bring your questions.  Between classes, you will want to visit the vendors and visit with others about genealogy.

I am looking forward to seeing you at the Family History Expo in Kearney!

Family History Expo Day One

Here I am in Colorado Springs blogging about the Family History Expo.  I will go to the vending area before too long to see if I can help with anything and chat with genealogy friends.  I don't make a presentation until this afternoon.  The topic is Genealogy on a Shoe String Budget.  Now who doesn't like something free!   Everything I talk about in the lecture is FREE or almost free.

Iowa newspaper from
Chronicling America

One of my favorite web pages (free) is Chronicling America at the Library of Congress web site.  Yesterday they added over 600,000 newspaper pages.  First timers are from the states of Iowa, Michigan and West Virginia.  They have made additions to those of Hawaii, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.  Can I skip the Expo and just "play" with the newspapers?  Don't think I had better do that.

At 2 a.m. this morning I was unable to sleep.  That's when I start checking for Dick Eastman's newsletter in my e-mail box.  I think this is becoming a 2 a.m. habit.  If you subscribe, check it out.  One of his posts is about Elephinbd.com and yes, it's free.  If you love looking for ancestors and relatives in the press, check it out.  They have 1,205,603 individual newspapers and 1,141 titles.  I checked it out at 2:15 a.m. and discovered some interesting news about ancestors.

Maybe between lectures today I could sneak in a quick nap and a quick search of the newspapers.