ROOTS & BRANCHES

While we’re waiting to see if March lives up to its “go out like a lamb” reputation weather-wise, there’s also one other distinction that the end of the month will have.
That’s the finale of a special discount for the International German Genealogy Partnership conference near Columbus, Ohio, to be held June 12–15.
If you are registering by the end of the day on Monday, March 31, use the discount code ROOTSTECH to save $30 from the full registration price, which includes a Thursday night welcome reception and lunch on Friday and Saturday—in addition to the presentations, Connections sessions, and entry into the exhibit hall.
This year’s edition of the event is under the auspices of the IGGP Partner group Palatines to America (Pal Am, for short), with the conference theme if “Celebrating Your German-Speaking Ancestors,” and will be held at the Nationwide Hotel and Conference Center, north of Columbus in Lewis Center, OH.
The “Connections” sessions, which are designed to allow people with interests in a particular German region, migration group, or any aspect of culture to gather informally at set times during the conference, are a real highlight of such an in-person event, but IGGP also put together a diverse team of presenters and topics for Columbus drawn from America and Europe.
There will be total of 40 presentations during the conference and here are just a few of the intriguing titles:
• “Leaving Their Mark: Finding Post-emigration Records in the Homeland” from Daniel R. Jones of the FamilySearch Library
• “Hidden Gems About Your Families in German Archives” from Germany-based Timo Kracke
• Expert translator Katherine Schober’s “AI and the Old German Handwriting: Will it Work?”
• “Locating and Decoding Swiss Censuses from the 1600s-1900s” by Charlotte Noelle Champenois
• “Artificial Intelligence in Action: Unveiling the Potential and Pitfalls for German Genealogy” from Gail Blankenau
• Andrea Bentschneider of Germany’s “From Citizenship to Serfdom: Understanding German Social Classes Before 1871”
• “It’s All Hebrew to Me: Reading Jewish Gravemarkers” from Sabine Akabayov
• Michael Lacopo’s “The Early Religious Experience of Germans in Colonial America: The Theology Behind the Records”
Your “Roots & Branches” columnist will be presenting two new lectures, “Matching Villages with Church Records: A Methodical Approach” and “The Peculiarity of Pennsylvania Germans.”
I’ll also debut the all-new second edition of my book Trace Your German Roots Online in the conference’s exhibit hall at a booth in collaboration with the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania.
“Add-ons” for registrants include anniversary celebrations (Friday night’s Pal-Am 50th anniversary event is a banquet and IGGP’s 10th on Saturday night will be casual food and activities).

For up-to-date information about the conference program and registration, please see https://iggp.org/2025-iggp-conference/