ROOTS & BRANCHES

It’s not often as a genealogical speaker that you get to meet someone who you’ve admired from afar never met in person.

The 2024 Palatines to America National Conference (June 6–9 in Albany, New York), however, is affording me that opportunity because the event’s keynote speaker is Philip Otterness, Ph.D., and emeritus professor of history for Warren Wilson College.

Otterness is best known best for Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York, which used the extensive genealogical work of the legendary Henry Z “Hank” Jones Jr. as a jumping off point for an academic yet humanizing look at the first large-scale migration of German-speaking people to America.

He will be speaking on the New Bern, North Carolina, Palatines, their interactions with local Tuscarora Indians, and a comparative study of that tribe’s interactions with Palatines in New York’s Mohawk Valley after they sought refuge there.

He will also lecture about his adventures in various archives around the world in search of the Palatines’ story. Conference attendees will also have an extended opportunity to ask Otterness any questions they may have regarding the Palatine migration.

Other speakers include

• Jon Marie Pearson, The Simple Living Genealogist
• Daniel Horowitz, Genealogy Expert, My Heritage
• William P. Tatum III, Dutchess County Historian
• Your “Roots & Branches” columnist.

The conference kicks off on June 6 with a research day at the nearby New York State Library and a midafternoon presentation “Ancestral Narratives in Motion: Creating Reels and TikToks for Genealogy and Cultivating Your Genealogy World: Growing a Personal Community on Social Media” from by Pearson.

On June 7, Horowitz will offer two topics, “Finding New German Records in MyHeritage Search Engine” and “Using Advanced DNA Tools to Understand Your Germanic DNA,” while Taum will present  “Wurtemberg settlement in Rhinebeck, NY.”

Otterness’s lecture on June 7 will be “Adventures in the Archives” and I will present “Palatine Resources in Pennsylvania Repositories.”

The Saturday of the conference (June 8) will have my talk on “Getting Best Use of Ancestry.com’s Hank Jones Database,” as well as the following talks from the other speakers:

• “Finding the Places Your Relatives Arrived” and “Creating Beautiful Charts of Your Family Tree on MyHeritage” from Horowitz.
• Otterness’s “Conversational Q and A led by NY PalAm President Tom Shannon” and “Gone to Carolina: the New Bern Palatines.”

The conference concludes on June 9 with a research day at the Henry Z Jones Jr. Palatine Research Center, Germantown, NY, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

In addition to the lectures, there will be some vendors offering books, including your “Roots & Branches” columnist, who expects to have a collection of his German Life magazine articles available for sale.

To register (which includes, lectures, all meals and repository overviews), go to the URL, https://palam.org/event-5505015