Preparing for SLIG

Now that the holidays are over, I realize that time is short to prepare for SLIG (Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy). I have been looking forward to Dr. Tom Jones’ course “Advanced Genealogical Methods” for a long time even though I know it will be a challenge.

The class lists for each track can be found on the Utah Genealogical Society website. In addition to Tom Jones, Claire Bettag and Rick Sayre will conduct some of the classes. It will be great to meet Claire, who was the mentor for my ProGen Group. We  all appreciated her contributions to our group.


We’ll have four classes a day, each 75 minutes long, beginning at 8:30 am. In addition to the regular classes there are three optional homework assignments. They add one hour of classes to each day and one to three hours of additional work. There are also evening classes available for those who have the time and energy.  I don’t consider the homework optional, I want to take full advantage of the expertise of the instructors so my days will be long. I also want to fit in as much research time at the Family History Library as possible.

In preparation for the course we received three case studies.We were advised to read the studies and footnotes and perhaps chart the relationships. That’s sixty-seven pages, but who’s counting.

I also have to prepare a research plan for my personal research on my Eastham family. It was stories about this family that led to my love of genealogy. My introduction was driving throughout eastern Kentucky, visiting old cemeteries where our ancestors were buried with my Uncle Harold.The Eastham cemetery in Boyd County, Kentucky (see the 21 September 2011 post) was the first one I visited with him, and it is regular stop for me each summer when I visit. Harold has all sorts of stories about the family that I love to hear. He has done his research the old fashioned way, letters, phone calls and knocking on doors. He knows every Eastham in West Virginia and Kentucky, I think, and their relationship to us. All in his head, mostly.




I try to fill the gaps in his information with my own research. In the process I learned, the hard way, about proper research techniques and standards. I wish I had learned them earlier, of course, but I’m trying to make up for it now.

The pre-1760 Eastham family is difficult to sort out. The combination of Virginia’s burned counties and a family who used the same names for all the sons in every branch and generation makes matching parents and children a challenge. So I will be using the  FAN principle (family, associates, and neighbors)  or Cluster method to get through this brick wall, especially the Thweatt and Farmer families, starting in Halifax and Lunenburg Counties. Elizabeth Shown Mills has examples of cluster research studies on her Historic Pathways site.

It’s going to be a busy week.