The conference’s exhibit hall, featuring products and services of interest to family historians, is free and open to the public.
Leona Arthen, of the Worthington Library is one of over 800 family historians who gathered in Springfield for a genealogical conference Friday. She is seen here looking over books on display at the Sheraton Monarch Place hotel which, along with the Marriot, was where the event was held. SPRINGFIELD – When John C. Woods of Springfield was 8 years old he promised his mother he would one day find her lost family.
And he has, all the way back to Scipio Burt, a black slave and veteran of the American Revolution who lived in Bristol, R.I., from about 1760 to 1821.
“It’s been joyful, but painful to do all this research,” Woods said. “Many of the records I’ve found were from purchases and sales. My ancestors were branded by their owners.”
Woods was one of the more than 800 genealogists who are attending the Eleventh New England Regional Genealogical Conference held Thursday through today at the Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place and the Marriott Springfield. It was the most-attended conference in the group’s history, said Marian Pierre-Louis, a professional house historian and spokeswoman for the convention.
The conference’s exhibit hall, featuring products and services of interest to family historians, is free to the public and open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
Television programs like NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” and Public Broadcasting’s “Faces of America” which focus on the family trees of celebrities are sparking interest in the hobby, said D. Brenton Simons, president and CEO of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston.
“Everyone can do it,” he said. “People just need to get the idea to start and then they just run with it.”
D. Joshua Taylor is director of education and programs at the Society and has appeared on the NBC show twice including Friday night’s episode with Ashley Judd. He lectured Friday on how one discern the political leanings of their ancestors.
Hint: If they named their sons Lincoln and Grant, they were probably Republicans.
Taylor also said people can go to the society’s website www.americanancestors.org, to get started on their own search.
Of course, he’s already traced his family tree back to the year A.D. 6 through a line of Frankish kings.
Another woman at the conference swore she’s related to Kate Middleton, the soon-to-be wife of Britain’s Prince William.
David Allen runs a side business called Old Maps from his surveying business , Roberge Associates Land Survey in Greenfield. For Old Maps, he’s transferred 1850s-era county maps from around New England onto CD-ROMs. He sells the discs for $30 each. He said he sold about 50 them on the first two days of the conference. That’s compared with selling about two discs a week on his website.
“The old maps have names of who were the homeowners, who lived on the farms,” Allen said. “Genealogists love names.”
But Simons said not everyone needs a lot of resources. The best way to get started finding your family tree is to just start interviewing older relatives.
“You would be amazed at how many people try and do it alone,” he said. “But you’ve got to meet your cousins.”
Simons said he met a new relative at the conference Friday. When a woman walked up to him looking for information on John Webster, governor of Connecticut from 1656 to 1657, Simons said he too is a descendant of Webster.
“We are probably 12th cousins,” he said.