Update from GRIP

I'm behind with posting but with good reason. Yesterday's classes were Intense. Yes, with a capital "I" and they were also Interesting, Informative and Mentally Exhausting.

I was up late last night (as were most other classmates in the Advanced Research Methods with Tom Jones). In addition to a full day of classes yesterday (please go read Chris Staats' post about yesterday's classes and wish him a belated happy Anniversary while you're there) we had a homework assignment. We had no idea how hard it was going to be, but that look of glee on Dr. Jones' face when he gave us the 8-page handout should have been a clue!

I do enjoy a challenge but this was something else. There were abstracts of 16 tax lists, 3 census records, 12 deeds, 4 wills, 2 guardian records, 2 marriage records, and a Revolutionary War Pension affidavit that we had to review, analyze, and try to determine the father of a man from 5 other men with the same surname!

But before tackling the homework I decided to attend the presentation by Rick Sayre on Pennsylvania Research, which was good but he quite a bit of time on Pittsburgh records. I would have liked to have heard more about statewide records.

After returning from the presentation, I spent 4 hours working on the homework assignment. At that point, I still hadn't reached a conclusion but my head was hurting and my eyes were burning so I turned in for the night. Less than half an hour later an idea popped into my dull brain and I "had" to get up and work on the problem before I lost my train of thought. Yes, the answer had come to me. A short time later I was back in bed sound asleep. I didn't even hear the storm that came through that many were talking about today.

I worked on the problem for another hour (consolidating my thoughts and trying to come up with some idea of how to "defend" my conclusion) before heading off to class. Dr. Jones went through the list of possible fathers, one at a time, asking those who thought it was a particular man to raise their hand. When he got to "William" the hands of about 2/3 of the class shot up. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach since he wasn't my choice! When the name of the one I had chosen came up only 3 of us raised our hands.

A minute or so later, Dr. Jones announced that there were 3 "A" students in the class! I had gotten it right! To say that I was ecstatic is an understatement... So, I'm giving myself a little pat on the back and tooting my own horn a bit too. I must say, it felt awesome.

It's been another full exhausting and enlightening day, and we're almost caught up with the syllabus. Tomorrow is the last day with only half a day of classes. It's been an amazing experience and I am so glad that I was able to come.

I'm sure that Chris will be blogging about today's classes as will classmates Shelley Bishop at A Sense of Family and Christy Webb at the Geeky Texan. Also Denise Levenick, the Family Curator, has also been blogging about the Intermediate class she is taking.

This will likely be the last post from GRIP... I've got to get busy on the homework for tomorrow...

GRIP :: Day 2 of Classes

Tuesday - July 24th - This was our "variety" day.

First up was Tom Jones with Transcribing and Abstracting documents. I've done more than a little transcribing of wills and deeds but now realize that I haven't always been doing it quite right. The main thing is to take your time and refer to helpful references for unfamiliar terminology.

One of the recommended references was the 4th edition of Black's Law Dictionary. Why the 4th edition? Well, after that edition was published in 1967 the next and subsequent editions had to purge some of the old terminology to make room for the new! A paper copy of one of the earlier editions may be hard to come by and rather expensive. If you Google "black's law dictionary 1st edition" you'll find several online versions. This site has links to the individual pages that have been scanned, but also has a full download of the scanned version - but be aware that it is a very, very, very large download.

Abstracting documents has always been rather tough for me. It's hard to decide what to leave out, especially when the document has rather colorful spelling. But it really comes down to eliminating the non-essential terminology to get to the basic information it provides. Dr. Jones said "If in doubt, leave it in." It isn't an exact science although there are some "rules" to follow.

After a short break, Claire Bettag, talked about Archival Research highlighting the differences between an Archive and a Library and the types of collections they have. She also discussed the how you find materials in each - Libraries have Catalogs and Archives have Research Guides that define the various record groups and what they contain. Of course, there was far more to it than just that!

The first session after lunch gave us Rick Sayre on Military and Pension Records. Then Clair came back to discuss various types of Government Documents (aka "Gov Docs") and where to find them. And we got our first homework assignment... thankfully it wasn't difficult.

As if a full day of classes wasn't enough, I went to the "Google Earth" presentation by Rick and Pamela Boyer Sayre. It is pretty incredible what all can be done with it. If you have a chance to see their presentation, I highly recommend it.

And, it all begins again... another full day awaits.