Published February 9, 2025
| 1 Comment | Leave A ReplyIt was about three decades ago that Elisa Scalise Powell, a Certified Genealogist of some note from the Pittsburgh area, passed the good word on to me at what a great annual conference the Ohio Genealogical Society put on.
She also enthused about how many folks who came to the conference had Pennsylvania ancestors.
Since my Pennsylvania ancestors barely (if ever) set foot in western Pennsylvania, let alone Ohio, it too me a few years to get on that bandwagon, but since I was first selected as a speaker in 2010, I think I’ve only missed one conference—and this year’s event from April 30 through May 3 at the Kalahari Resort and Conference Center in Sandusky, Ohio, will be no exception.
This steady regional conference has come to have a standard formula:
- Wednesday (April 30) has a variety of workshops, some of which are included in the conference registration and other available for a $20 add on cost. This year’s workshops include one on artificial intelligence from Drew Smith and another on research in the old Austria-Hungary from Justin Houser and Michelle Chubenko.
- There’s a keynote from Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, and mealtime presentations from such notables as Sunny Jane Morton, Sandra Rumble, and the Rev. David McDonald.
- Thursday through Saturday (May 1–3) offer seven simultaneous presentation tracks spanning 15 time slots with topics ranging from DNA to military to ethnicities. Truly the whole gamut of genealogy today is being covered.
- The OGS exhibit hall has dozens of exhibitors, including many of the county chapters of OGS that often have specialized knowledge and publications about that particular area.
As for your “Roots & Branches” columnist, well, I’ll be pretty busy at the conference. On Friday (May 2), I’ll be presenting “Pennsylvania Taxes: Commonwealth’s Best Residential Records” and “The Colonial Hiester Family: Illegal Emigration, Bricks, Slaves.” The latter lecture is a case study of my mother’s surname family, which was locally prominent but with of number of interesting wrinkles to it.
And on Saturday (May 3), I’ll be debuting a new presentation “German Genealogy on the Web: Databases and Guides Big and Small.”
This lecture is a distillation of just some of new things I’ve learned as I’ve been writing the second edition of Trace Your German Roots Online, which will be available for preorder in the exhibit hall at my James M. Beidler Research vendor table with June delivery anticipated.
The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania will be vending at OGS, too, offering for sale copies of The Pennsylvania Genealogical Almanac, which was published in the year since the 2024 OGS conference.
The OGS early bird discount period ends March 7. To register online, visit www.OGSConference.org.
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For Sale
The Best of "Roots & Branches", Fifth Edition published July 2017, edited by Terri J. Bridgwater.
It contains a selection of columns from Beidler’s award-winning newspaper column (currently published in the Altoona Mirror), which is the only syndicated newspaper column on genealogy in Pennsylvania.
The book can be ordered online, or purchased directly from Jim when he speaks at a conference.
Sharee Solow
2 weeks ago
What a great list. I almost never get to hear Hungarian talks which quite difficult and my entire maternal side. My paternal side has many lines to Ohio and Iowa. OF course, there’s the two Palatinate lines. Tempting to go.