What first drew you/how did you get involved in family history and preservation work?
My grandmother Hattie Reed LaMack was the chair of the DAR Genealogical Records Committee in the 1960s when I was growing up. She fostered my natural love of family history, answering my countless questions about the generations in Wisconsin and New York that she personally knew and about the generations (on both my mom’s and dad’s side) on which she had done research. When I was old enough to do some research myself, she ordered books from the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s lending library for me, in addition to the books for herself in her frequent orders.
My earliest memory of genealogy is knowing I was a descendant of the Mayflower’s John Alden and Priscilla Mullins on my dad’s side. For the first few years of school at every Thanksgiving my mom typed on an index card that my 9x great grandparents were John and Priscilla for me to give to my teacher. She did this until I was too embarrassed to take the card to school.
What does a typical day of work or research look like for you?
Most of my research day as a professional genealogist now is client work with my business, Forget-Me-Not Ancestry, in Albany, rather than my own personal research. I work mostly with pre-Civil War New York families, with my favorite period being the American Revolutionary War. Much of my client time is spent using digitized records and books or analyzing other researchers’ work online from my home office. I also go into the field to research at the New York State Archives and Library in Albany or at local and college libraries, historical societies, county courthouses, town halls, and other places to use published books, films, manuscripts, and governmental records that are still found only in brick-and-mortar repositories.
In addition, I give presentations both remotely and in person for genealogical institutes, national and regional conferences, and regional, state, and local societies, which entails creating and/or updating talks. For the past few years, until recently, I was also researching and writing the NYG&B’s book New York State Archives—A Guide: For Family Historians, Biographers, and Historical Research.
What particular skills or perspectives do you bring to your work and research?
My lifelong interest in history in general and my own family history in particular has instilled a great love for family history of all sorts. Each person or family has a unique role and story in their time and place, which I call placing the ancestors in the context of their times. I learned early on that history and genealogy necessarily go hand-in-hand.
I also have an undergraduate degree in history and English literature, a master’s degree in journalism, and an elementary education teacher’s certification. These all laid a solid foundation for my work in genealogy today—analyzing historical documents; interviewing family members to obtain certain data; writing client reports, articles, and books; and teaching via presentations.
What are you most proud about your work in this field?
I am proud of a number of my accomplishments, with a short list here:
- My work on the groundbreaking New York State Archives book [forthcoming: New York State Archives—A Guide For Family Historians, Biographers, and Historical Research]. No other state archives has a book like this, as far as I know. It discusses why the records were created and then presents hundreds of record series useful to genealogists. Many record series contain hundreds of people who interacted with the colonial and state governments in some way, but a few of them are little-used gems with only a handful of names. They all place an individual in a certain location on a certain date and may name associates—a key strategy for genealogical research.
- My podcast, The Forget-Me-Not Hour, for six+ years. Not only was I able to interview guests about a diverse range of topics and share their expertise with my audience, but I learned so much about the topic myself. (Most of the episodes are no longer available on BlogTalkRadio and other podcast platforms, but I plan to republish them elsewhere in the future.)
As a teacher, I love to share research tips and strategies and other information that will help others with their own research.
What have been some challenges and how did you navigate them?
For my client work, research in New York prior to 1900 is particularly challenging due to a few factors, including a late start to governmental vital record keeping; losses from the 1911 State Capitol fire and local fires and floods; missing governmental records; the colonial and early state land holding systems (manors and land companies); and migration through and settlement for a few years in multiple counties within the state on the way west.
To navigate these and other limiting factors, we need to accept that we might not find direct evidence to prove a relationship between individuals. We might have to rely on several pieces of indirect evidence to put the puzzle together in a proof argument which draws a conclusion.
Cluster research for New York brick walls is also key. We need to research all family members, friends, associates, and neighbors (the FAN club, as coined by Elizabeth Shown Mills). They may directly or indirectly give us the answer to our research question.
Finally, when stuck, think outside the box and try on other relationship scenarios between individuals for size. This may lead us to see another possible way or two in which they might be related and then to think of other research avenues that we haven’t explored yet.
Can you share with us or give us a glimpse of what's next on the horizon for you?
Client research will be my top priority for at least a few more years. I also will continue teaching with presentations. (Once a teacher, always a teacher.) On the near horizon, I will publish my long-awaited research on my New England Puritan ancestors William Wilcockson and Margaret (probably) Harvie as profiles on FamilySearch. In addition, I have so many article topics roiling around in my head (some are mostly researched from my client work, others I have started collecting data, and some are just seeds) that article-writing will be in the mix too, as time allows. Finally, I hope to get to my own neglected family research sooner rather than later—telling the known ancestors’ stories and hopefully breaking through some of the brick walls that my grandmother left.
What advice would you give to someone thinking about undertaking family history and preservation work, particularly other women?
Learn as much as you can from professionals in the field. For researchers, partake of all that the NYG&B and other societies have to offer, attend conferences and institutes or watch presentations on topics that pertain to your particular places and times of research interest (and some that don’t pertain to your places and times of interest—I listen and learn from those too), and read books (by academics and genealogists) and the peer-reviewed genealogical journals such as the NYG&B Record (I read the bibliographies and footnotes first to get a sense for what records the authors used) and magazines like the NYG&B’s New York Researcher.
Most importantly just dive in and do it—whatever “it” is. I shudder at the mistakes I made when I was first learning genealogy from my grandmother, when I started to do more serious work on my own family (e.g., not getting complete source citations when I was many weeks on the road researching 13 generations of my Wilcox/Wilcockson family in one-of-a-kind records at local repositories—we probably all have been there on that one), and then starting out as a professional. I learned from my mistakes and corrected myself.
I am continually learning from others.