ROOTS & BRANCHES

Even the most fervent readers of “Roots & Branches” might be tired of hearing about Pennsylvania’s Genealogy Event or PaGE, the all-virtual event that concluded (sort of—see later in the column!) on Aug. 12.

Well, there’s still more to tell so I hope you’ll bear with me as I report a bit on how PaGE may help change genealogy conferences going forward.

To review: PaGE was sponsored by the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania and drew about 300 people online to eight days’ worth of presentations and networking. Not a few registrants said it was the best such event in which they had participated.

What provoked such a response?

Well, the program consisted of top-notch speakers, but that was just the starting point.

I’d point to these items as the “special sauce” that made this virtual event so appealing, even to people yearning for a return to in-person events:

• Most of the prerecorded program was released in batches for people to watch at their leisure.
• Every speaker who prerecorded made themselves available for the live Q&A session, moderated expertly by Lois Mackin of Minnesota.
• Sponsors and Exhibitors who gave offers at their booths and hosted “Meet-ups” on the virtual event platform during the event did well at connecting with the registrants, which has been rare-and-seldom-seen at virtual genealogy events.
• Registrants were instructed on how to add “Interests” to their profiles, which the event platform then used to “recommend” attendees to one another (In my case, among the “Interests” I added was my home base of “Berks County,” and then hosted a vibrant “Meet-up” for people who also had it in their profiles).
• Sessions called “Gatherings” encouraged people to come together virtually around topics ranging from food to Pennsylvania geographic areas to religious denominations—which many registrants found helped fill in the camaraderie that’s often missing from online events.

While the virtual live activities for PaGE are over, those who didn’t previously attend still can become part of the event by registering to see the recordings of presentations, Q&As, and other facets of PaGE through mid-November at a bargain price of just $149.  Register through the GSP website at the URL, genpa.org

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And now for the category of “things aren’t always what they seem.”

Reader-on-the-ground in Blair County Steve Kleiner knows of my interest in enslavement in Pennsylvania, and so I was excited when he said he had found a Georgetown University doctoral candidate’s thesis titled “For Life or Otherwise: Abolition and Slavery in South Central Pennsylvania, 1780–1847.”

I haven’t had a chance to digest its 343 pages, but I’m intrigued by the second sentence of the author’s abstract: “In the broadest terms, it argues that there is a history of chattel slavery in Pennsylvania that begins rather than ends with gradual abolition.”

The thesis can be found at the URL, https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/1062658