Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) National Conference (Virtual Event)

GenWebinars instructors David M. McCorkle and Diane L. Richard will be giving a total of 4 lectures online followed by live Q&A at the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) National Conference.  The 3 day conference theme is “Fighting Erasure: Staying Visible by Keeping African American Genealogy and History in Focus.”  For more information and to register, see https://aahgs.org/conference-2024.

Diane’s Lectures

– The Story of Rachel — 20 Years to Be Freed; Manumission Was Often a Complex Process

Learn about manumission — the laws and challenges and the involvement of Quakers and abolitionists in a southern state like North Carolina.  Then, we’ll talk about Rachel & her family guide us in exploring their manumission story via the documents created, which were found in multiple jurisdictions. We also discover a previously unidentified son of Rachel. One would think that if someone “freed” a slave via their will, their dying declaration, it would happen. If you assume this, you might be quite mistaken.  We’ll explore the odyssey of Rachel, who was seemingly freed by her owner’s will in 1782, and yet, it wasn’t until about 1796 that she and her children were freed and assumed a new surname. We’ll trace the efforts to free Rachel as they played out

– Freedmen’s Savings Bank — Though Short-lived, Rich Records Survive

The Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company (abbreviated as Freedman’s Savings Bank) documents those who were previously enslaved and are now free. As always, others are also recorded. The post-Civil War impoverishment of the southern states makes these invaluable when researching ALL southern ancestors. These are one-of-a-kind records for documenting ancestors in the period before the 1870 census.  Diane will discuss a short history of the bank, what types of records survive, what information they will convey, and where you can access them for FREE.

– Sign of the Times – The Organizational Power of Timelines

Hit a brick wall? Wondering why your ancestors did what they did? Learn about timelines and how they might just help you solve your puzzles! Visual representations of data can make gaps, conflicts, and paths to future discoveries easy to spot. Connections sometimes jump out at you if you use color-coding or other distinguishing methods to highlight locale or surname overlaps. These are NOT the timelines you learned to make in school! NO special software is needed. You can use word processing or spreadsheet programs to create it.  They are “living” summaries of your knowledge. As you acquire new data, add it in!

David’s Lecture

– Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools To Find Your Hidden Ancestors

Finding evidence of people you are researching in unindexed or handwritten documents is an overwhelming task, even when so much is available online. Artificial Intelligence tools are now widely available and can greatly assist in this process.  These free or inexpensive and widely available tools can pick out personal names from long, complicated documents, determine if a word such as “Creek” is referring to a person’s surname or a body of water, find names that often occur together, and more. This is especially helpful when researching enslaved ancestors where you typically only have a first name and possibly the enslaver’s name. Large organizations such as FamilySearch have started applying these techniques to their collections, but any researcher can easily do the same with materials or copies of materials that they have.