ROOTS & BRANCHES

When I was first cutting my teeth in the genealogy world some four decades ago, there were some conferences with one-off lectures and just a few weeklong institutes for intensive study.

Those latter opportunities have greatly expanded in the last decade or so, and one of them—the Genealogy Institute of Pittsburgh or GRIP—is now in its first year under the auspices of the National Genealogical Society after NGS acquired the institute from its founders Elissa Powell and Deborah Deal.

All the institutes went virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic, and GRIP came back last year with a week of virtual and a second week of in-person instruction on the campus of LaRoche College north of Pittsburgh.

I’ve been a student in two previous sessions of GRIP and was invited to be part of the faculty for a course for the first time this year.

The course is “Using U.S. Church Records for Family History” and is coordinated by my friend Sunny Jane Morton, who literally wrote the definitive book on using religious records in genealogy, Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records (co-authored with Harold Henderson and published by Genealogical Publishing Co.).

She’s lined up an all-star team of additional instructors who include Deborah Abbott, Kelli Jo Bergheimer, Tammy Hepps, Judy G. Russell, Renate Yarborough Sanders, and Jeanette Sheliga.

Morton didn’t have to twist my arm to sign on since especially in my bailiwick of German genealogy, there’s no way to avoid—or want to avoid!—using church registers.

But Morton has put together a curriculum that covers all the bases of a varied topic from which every genealogist will gain information to help with either hobbyist or professional work.

“Anyone who had relatives in the United States at least 100 years ago or so—and the more branches of your family who were in the U.S., and the longer they’d been here, the more useful this course can be,” Morton said. “Church participation was a huge part of many people’s lives in the past, and even if they didn’t attend regularly, or didn’t believe everything that was preached, their names and genealogical details may still appear in the church’s records.”

Beyond the use of church records, students also can improve other genealogical skills. According to the course description: “You’ll practice reading old handwriting (and even try writing with a fountain pen). You’ll go on a record scavenger hunt that teaches you finding skills. You’ll increase your appreciation of laws, historical context and local sources such as newspapers. A special session on working in archival manuscript collections will be followed by a field trip to a local church archive.”

Morton also worked to make the curriculum as non-denominational as possible. “It’s important to me to teach things that anyone can apply to their U.S. research,” Morton said. “Most of the principles, case studies and finding techniques will apply to just about any Christian denomination, from the tiniest independent Baptist church to the largest denominations. One of the case studies is for a Jewish community, but the concepts apply widely.”

Registration for GRIP is available at the URL, https://grip.ngsgenealogy.org/