ROOTS & BRANCHES

Much like just about everything else in the world, the universe of genealogy conferences has been affected by COVID-19.

This past spring and now in the summer, many scheduled in-person events were cancelled entirely.

But the team at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society—called “the G&B” by those in the know—was not caught flatfooted when it came to their biennial New York State Family History Conference, which had been scheduled for Albany, New York, on Sept. 10–12.

A little conflict of interest disclosure: I have been a vendor of this always classy conference for several cycles and this year am also a speaker.

But I believe that I’m completely objective in saying that that the G&B team led by President D. Joshua Taylor and Susan R. Miller, the director of programs and publications, has made all the moves as they’ve adjusted the conference, first by advertising a virtual option for registrants called NYSFHC@Home, and then just last week cancelling the in-person events while retaining the programming as a mix of prerecorded “on-demand” webinars and live-streamed presentations during the same September time period planned for the in-person event.

 Those folks who had already registered for the in-person conference, they are automatically being converted to getting access to the entire conference through NYSFHC@Home—offering some 45 presentations.

G&B has also created a registration called “NYSFHC@Home Starter” pass that offers a selection of 16 lectures, half from the presentations to be live-streamed and half from the prerecorded ones. Those purchasing the starter pass will have the opportunity upgrade to the full pass during the conference if they desire. In either case, registrants will access to the on-demand presentations through the end of September.

For more information, go to the G&B website at https://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org/

I’m especially excited that the conference has been converted because I’m doing an on-demand session I call “New York’s ‘Palatines’: Diverse Origins, Mid-Atlantic Dispersal” that is a homage of sorts to Henry Z “Hank” Jones, who researched the families of the first mass migration of German-speaking people to America in the early 1700s.

I’ve benefited greatly from Jones’s work since quite a number of my Pennsylvania Germans were these so-called “Hank Jones Palatines” who first came to upstate New York before dozens of them left to become the founders of the Tulpehocken region of western Berks and eastern Lebanon counties.

This will mark my lecture’s debut; when I first began family history some 35 years ago, Jones’s first two volumes were just setting the genealogy world on fire. Since then, he’s published many more.

Finally, the G&B is also wasting no time in planning for the next biennial conference: They’ve announced that it will be held in Albany on Sept. 8-10, 2022.