Let me start by saying thank you to Jennifer Jones, Bill Moore, Bill Butcher, Cathy Horvath, Paul Zuros, director of the museum at Historic Fort Steuben, and so many more of you who attended today’s program. This was a very special program made possible by a suggestion from one community member and introductions from another. It’s precisely the kind of thing that, as family historians, we’re always looking for.

Support from our Projectkin.org/patrons allows us to keep all of these programs free. Recordings and posts are also sent to all subscribers for free. Join us!

If you enjoyed this recording, you’d do us a favor by leaving us a little ❤️, adding your thoughts in the comments, and sharing the post with friends.

Overview

Like a trio of superfriends, Crystal Lorimor, Jason Garczyk, and Anthony Atkins were civil servants working to serve the people of their county in Belmont, Ohio, when they landed on the idea of connecting historic documents to GIS data. And, as Anthony put it:

If you offer a GIS person data, they’re going to say “yes!”

Belmont County, Ohio, sits within the Seven Ranges, a region of the historic Northwest Territories. This region was the first effort by the young nation to create a means to raise funds and settle debts with the Revolutionary War veterans who helped win American independence from Britain.

The urgent business of selling the land created pressure to survey great swaths of land as quickly as possible. The result was this Seven Ranges strategy of square plots of land. As embedded into the resulting tool, the 1787 ordinance authorized the Seven Ranges land survey.

While watching Anthony’s detailed demonstration of the tool, you can follow along with your own instance of the web application. You’ll find it at:

Explore the web application: gis.belcogis.com/Northwest_Territory. As of this writing, access is completely free, and no login or registration is required.

Resources

Several resources useful to genealogists, family historians, and history buffs were mentioned, among them:

* Historic Fort Steuben, referenced by the director of the museum, Paul Zuros, who attended today’s program.

* The Bureau of Land Management site, where patent documents can be found, and more details can be explored.

* If you have suggestions, additions, comments, or corrections to the GIS webmap, please direct them to Anthony using this tool at the Belmont GIS page.

* Anthony referenced documentation for James Evans on FamilySearch.org.

* Dohrman Tract example, Anthony demonstrated links to both

* Original land patent document, Township VIII, Range VII

* Wikipedia page describing the history behind the tract.

* As an example of the beautiful, handwritten detail of these patent documents, Anthony shared:

* Township VI, Second Range

Today’s program shows you what can be done and the extraordinary potential when a few curious and talented people get together. You’re welcome to share this recording to introduce this idea to others in your community, GIS team, or local authorities. You can find team members either here on Substack or through their websites:

* Crystal Lorimor, Belmont County Community Improvement Corp.

* Jason Garczyk, Belmont County Recorders’ Office

* Anthony Atkins, Belmont County GIS Office

As a follow-up to today’s presentation, Crystal Lorimor will join me on Sunday, November 2nd (see the event calendar for your local time).

I expect this will be an ongoing conversation, and I look forward to your feedback, suggestions, and ideas. Thank you again for your encouragement of this project. Have an idea about a local project in your area? Reach out and let me know!

Many thanks to Lisa Maguire for her fascinating program today and for all of you in attendance, including Ann G. Forcier, Anne Young, Daniel Nilan, Diane the FH Bowerbird, Jane Chapman, Jill Swenson, Linda Teather, Mark Hochstetler, Wendi Funchess, Lisa E Oakley, Lori Olson White, Cynthia Boatright Raleigh, and so many in our community for joining the talk live today.

Have you just discovered Projectkin? Learn more at Projectkin.org/about, then join us 👇

Today’s very special event came together through the magic we’re brewing here in a shared community of family historians, genealogists, and others. Lisa Maguire’s insight as a professional historian led her to pay attention to the nature and scope of some of the stories shared in the community. The result was her observation that many of us had started to explore microhistory.

Lisa designed today’s program as an introduction to the field. As you’ll see in the recording, the result inspired ordinary family historians and made us appreciate the importance of our work.

In anticipation of today’s program, Lisa published a post last week that might be helpful as background:

She’s also provided the slides below you can use to dive deeper into the six approaches she mentioned:

Finally, the presentation wouldn’t be complete without the opportunity to use it to curate a series of recent posts here in the Substack genealogy community. These are by no means a compendium of all microhistory-relevant pieces. Instead, these provide an easy way to find the links she mentions in the talk.

First, is Dr. Mary M. Marshall, whom Lisa reminds us is an academic and has taken to the careful work of microhistory quite naturally. This is the post Lisa referenced.

Lori Olson White’s Culinary History publication is a delightful example with an examination of community cookbooks or her Ration Book post.

Here is a piece on the anti-slavery society. Lisa described it as an outstanding bit of microhistory that ticks all the boxes!

Jill Swenson has many pieces about the Ojibway community on Lake of the Woods. Lisa mentioned her series about the various "legal" ways the land was taken from them.

Here’s the piece that Neil Sagebiel used to introduce his 1937 Flood Journal.

From Ann G. Forcier of Acadiann who comes to this work from the perspective of ancestral memory. Lisa describes it as a community identity that comes from memory of the event. She also references Diane Burley’s recent program on Memory for Projectkin for a discussion of semantic memory.

Lex Knowlton’s work on her publication, Lex Knowlton | Knext Gen Genealogy, in the story about Jo Couche caught Lisa’s eye because it retold the same history of the Irish Civil War that her family told her but from the Protestant minority perspective.

Bryan Demchinsky kicks off with a story of Dominion Day.

We hold various events for family historians, storytellers, and genealogists several times monthly. I hope to see you at more of these kinds of events. Explore our Projectkin publication and join us. Our calendar is available at Projectkin.org/events. Thanks to the support of our patrons and speakers, these events are free, and everyone is welcome.

To learn more about Lisa Maguire’s work at Ancestory, please visit:

Many thanks to so many of you for joining the talk live today and actively engaging in the conversation. We hold various events for family historians, storytellers, and genealogists several times monthly. Thanks to the support of our patrons and speakers, these events are free, and everyone is welcome.

Learn more at Projectkin.org/about and get these and all recordings sent directly to your inbox.

Family historians and genealogists are familiar with navigating memory's unstable nature. In a lively conversation, Diane discussed the differences between episodic and semantic memory and how our memory is not a true recorder of the events we experience.

* Episodic memories capture the feelings of a moment.

* Semantic memories capture specific, sometimes documented facts.

The truth about what happened in the past may lie somewhere in between.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou.

Diane takes this idea further to explore factors that affect semantic memory, particularly as captured in documentation. Categorizations, for example, that drive data collectors to generalize occupations can blur any insight you might glean about how someone spent their days. Terms like “spouse” or “homemaker,” that might have been acceptable or even the default in the 19th century, seem meaningless today. Diane’s post about her grandmother captures this insight:

Though episodic memory might seem to get closer to the truth, you have to be careful with storytellers as reporters. It’s tempting for storytellers to respond to an audience, but soon they become “bloviators,” responding to an audience with what they want to hear, enjoy, or laugh at.

Diane also offers that an empathetic lens can be helpful as a tool for understanding the facts given in the context of the time or circumstances. Though it may not provide answers, it can create a guide to help you ask additional questions. Sometimes, it can even reveal that the conversation was the point. Diane’s essay about Frank and Jack shares exactly that sort of story:

When asked about the correct answer, she suggested a braid that weaves different aspects into a larger narrative.

I hope to see you at more of these kinds of events. Explore our Projectkin publication and join us for another live event. Our calendar is available at Projectkin.org/events

.

Many thanks to Linda Teather, Kathy Stone, Marci Keats Rudolph 🇨🇦, Bill Moore, Jennifer Jones and so many of you for joining us today. It’s always good to see you, and I especially appreciated your comments and questions as carried the discussion across national borders.

As family storytellers, we are often tempted to focus on celebratory or heroic narratives while overlooking the difficult and painful episodes. These harrowing experiences can be the most important ones to remember and share. Our speaker today, Jennifer Holik of Soul Traveler, has felt called to this work. In today’s program, she shared her stories as well as her strategies.

After years of writing books and researching for clients, Jennifer has developed a specialized insight into inherited trauma, war trauma, and personal and ancestral healing. We were riveted by the stories she shared about her journey and the insights she learned along the way.

During her talk, Jennifer referenced several powerful stories you’ll find on the WWII Research & Writing Center (wwiirwc.com):

* Joseph Kilian - A Family’s Grief & the Cost of WWII Repatriation

* Frank Knaus - A Family’s Mental Health

* Vittohl Seder - She Powerfully Spoke Her Truth

* Bernard Tom - Should I Repatriate the Remains of My Son Bernie Tom?

* Charles Walby - Women’s History Month: A Military Mother

Among them are also guides that might help you in your work:

* Exploring the Mentally Destructive Side of War – Downey VA Hospital

* Mental Health of WWII Veterans & Families

* Protecting the Emotional Health of an 82nd Airborne MP’s Parents

* The Intensity Was Too Much For Some

* WWII Civilians, Veterans & Descendant Mental Health

Jennifer also shared a Military Service Questionnaire that can help you prepare and organize research before launching into formal requests for your ancestor’s military records.

You can also find Jennifer’s work at her Ancestral Souls Wisdom School (ancestralsoulswisdomschool.com)

In the discussion, we also explored the repatriation of war dead and the differing policies in the UK and the United States. The reasons why individual families may choose not to repatriate remains, even when they have the opportunity, were sometimes heartbreaking. Jennifer shared these two resources to learn more:

* Commonwealth War Graves Commission (www.cwgc.org)

* The American Battle Monuments Commission (www.abmc.gov)

Finally, Jennifer underscored the significance and impact of grief and compassion fatigue. This is the TEDx talk she referenced.

You are welcome to share this post with friends and family. Jennifer has generously allowed us to share this recording and resources with our Projectkin community at no cost.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this program. Learn more at Projectkin.org/about and subscribe to get these programs sent directly to your inbox.

Today’s workshop took us deeper into the practice of one-place studies. This presentation builds on the high-level view Janet Barrie shared in part one you can view here:

This second part focused on the idea of “Taking it Further.” In this program, Janet draws examples from her study at Springhill, Higher Cloughfold, Lancashire, to show how you walk through the last of the ten steps to One-Place Studies articulated by Janet Few:

* Analyzing your data

* Synthesizing your data

* Contextualizing your findings

* Spreading the word

* Enthusing others

Janet showed us how this process can lead to fascinating connections across people and communities using examples such as the life of a servant, the number of people who had servants, and the relative prosperity of those who did.

Several Projectkin members are already involved in one-place studies, among them are:

* Jane Chapman (who joined me live to discuss it earlier this week with Bill Moore who is currently evaluating such a study).

* Explore her study at Kyeburn Diggings One-Place Study

* Jennifer Jones of Tracking Down The Family

* Explore her study at Haverfordwest

* See her interview with the Society of One-Place Studies.

Society of One-Place Studies

* Global view of registered one-place studies viewable on a global map with contacts referenced for current studies in progress.

* With resources available about specific regions to family researchers, the society is kind enough to list contacts by areas of interest.

* Books, programs, and other resources

* Membership is a modest £10 per year.

Projectkin is a free community of family historians hooked on stories. Learn more at Projectkin.org/about.

In September 2024, Projectkin was honored by the opportunity to be a co-sponsor of the collaborative program “All About That Place” featuring the Society for One-Place Studies, the Society of Genealogists, the British Association for Local History, and Genealogy Stories and sponsored by dozens of other companies and organizations.

Our focus for the program was to help spread the idea of One-Place Studies to regions outside of Britain and specifically across the Americas and the Pacific, so we called ours the Pacific Edition. An interest in the series and the approach led me to invite Janet Barrie, the current chair of the Society for One-Place Studies, to lead today’s workshop. Denise, one of our participants today, put it succinctly:

“A place is where the brick walls are.”

Many of us in family history have developed a curiosity about one-place studies as an offshoot of work in family research. In introducing the topic, Janet shared some background on how she “fell” into one-place studies by digging into a home that housed five generations of her family. That led to her research of the Springhill area of Rossendale. (See her study at Springhillhistory.org.uk).

Whether you participated in the live workshop or viewed the recording, we’d love to have you join the conversation. Feel free to comment below or share with your friends and encourage them to do the same.

References & Resources

Books:

* Janet Few:

* “Ten Steps to a One-Place Study” (Available in paperback or Kindle.)

* “Putting your Ancestors in their Place: A Guide to One Place Studies” (Available in paperback)

Websites mentioned

* Geograph.org.uk

* Register of One-Place Studies (OnePlaceStudies.org)

* (Though not mentioned) Explore both #OnePlaceStudies and #OnePlaceWednesday as useful ways to tap into global research projects as they’re underway. Hosted on Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and X — all day each Wednesday. Learn more.

Society of One-Place Studies

* Global view of registered one-place studies

* With resources available about specific regions to family researchers, the society is kind enough to list contacts by areas of interest.

* Books, programs, and other resources for their annual £10 membership.

Part two of our program, “Taking it Further,” also free and featuring Janet Barrie, is scheduled for April 3rd in our Atlantic time window.

Projectkin is a free community of family historians hooked on stories. Join us to receive more events like these in your inbox.

Today’s program was new for us with a conversational format and topic focused on platforms.

Conversation Among Members

Today, we’re including two Projectkin members talking about their experiences using multiple platforms to share their stories:

* Jennifer Jones of Victoria, Australia. Jennifer moved her long-time blog, Tracking Down the Family from WordPress to Substack and is now considering bringing her One Place Study to the WeAre.xyz One-Place Study (OPS) platform and combining it with Substack.

* Jane Chapman of Wellington, New Zealand. Jane has two family history archives and a one-place study on the WeAre.xyz Platform and has been considering how best to combine these with Substack. She recently started writing on Substack, as Substack.com/@bjnlsgenealogy, drawing on her BJNL's Family History Archive for references. She hasn't yet decided how she will use Substack with her One-Place Study about the Kyeburn Diggings.

Platforms:

This is also a new topic area for us that I expect to expand on, perhaps making it an ongoing series focused on the platforms we use for our family history.

Family history is a team sport. Since the dawn of the web, families have used website-building and blogging tools to share their research. These tools create a web property that researchers can access and create a community of fellow travelers interested in the same family lines.

Web tools, however, are constantly changing. New platforms are launched daily, and old ones lose funding.

Incidental innovations developed in other markets can be a boon to family historians who are looking for each other and shared resources. Hashtags, blogging, and hosted videos are key functions that began as innovations on top of existing platforms. Substack fits into this category and is starting to impact the way we capture and share our stories.

Today’s program focused primarily on the features and functionalities our speakers sought in adding Substack to an existing blogging practice. As you’ll see in the recording and transcript, we covered a range of related topics including:

* Engagement: Why it matters and how to encourage it

* Best practices for combining an existing WordPress site with the engagement of Substack (some mention was made of Paul Chiddicks’ clever blend of his stack with his site at Chiddicksfamilytree.com.)

* How to blend in social platforms to reach the people you’re targeting

* How to manage that outreach so it doesn’t feel self-promoting or “icky”

* Finding best practices for blending platforms for archival and outreach

* Finding ways to archive your posts with third parties such as Trove Web Archive or the WayBack Machine at the Internet Archive.

* Best practices for finding and documenting beneficiaries to your genealogical work in online as well as offline forms.

This leads me to conclude that this is a rich topic for our members to explore in these kinds of programs. If you have some feedback for me or are interested in participating in a future conversation, please email or message me or leave a comment below.

Projectkin is a community of family historians who are hooked on stories. We explore genealogical records, local history, and family stories. By sharing and innovating with new projects, we inspire each other, make discoveries, and celebrate our connection to history.

If you know others who might be interested in joining us, please share this and any of our posts. Our programs and membership are free. Learn more about Projectkin here. 

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With just over a year of exploring ideas as Projectkin.org, it seemed time to circle back and share the larger picture about the storytelling hook that has motivated the endeavor. As the Projectkin Community Forum, we’re on a campaign to get families to share their stories.

Big or small, family stories are important to capture and preserve for future generations, adding our stories to those we’ve inherited from generations before us. Your stories may only be contained in artifacts with little context or identifications, or they might be published in a written narrative arc. As you work to share your own stories today, you uniquely have an opportunity to share your stories in ways our ancestors never dreamed of.

Today, your stories might be biographies of family members dating back generations — but they might also be modern, interactive, digital projects. This talk attempts to reframe how we look at family history storytelling to encourage everyone to dive in and explore how they might contribute to the storytelling arc of their own family.

Given the nature of this talk, many others outside of the Projectkin community may find it helpful. Please feel free to share it with others:

References & Resources

During the talk, I referred to several tools and terms used in modern platform product design, including:

* Hooked by Nir Eyal: “How to build habit-forming products.” This fascinating book has been hugely influential in platform design today. The behavior-based approach can be helpful in thinking about how your project might engage and recruit family members into your shared family history.

* Projectkin post about “StoryMagic”

* More about the types of programs Projectkin hosts

* Kathy’s Corner with Kathy Stone

* Emma Explores with Emma - Journeys into Genealogy

* Project Recipes with members presenting completed projects

* Forget-Me-Not with Jane Hutcheon

* All About That Place in conjunction with the UK-based Society of Genealogists.

Learn more about Projectkin Events, including some fun new programs planned for 2025.

* Project Recipes mentioned during the discussion:

* Activity Book for Kids featuring Sindi Terrien

* Scavenger Hunt for Ancestors featuring Anna Scheutz

* Playing for Ancestors featuring Simon Davies

* Private Podcast presented by Barbara Tien

* During the discussion, I mentioned another project I’m working on for myself and my family related to the bicentennial of the Marquis de Lafayette’s tour of the United States in 1824-25. Please let me know if you’re personally interested in this; I’d love to involve you as a collaborator.

I hope you enjoyed this program, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts. I’m particularly interested in the idea of “small projects” that came up during the discussion. Do you have examples to add?

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Today’s program was shivers-down-the-spine inspiring. Rhonda started with stories of unexplained coincidences and then journeyed into old stone buildings and archives. We were riveted by stories of photographs in hidden caches and trauma felt across generations.

In preparation for today’s talk, Rhonda shared several fabulous resources:

A Case Study: Building History of the Ephraim Relief Society Granary

* Inspired by a project she worked on in partnership with the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street project.

How can YOU tell the story of an ancestral home or place?

If you are working on the story of an ancestral home, community place, or other building, here is a detailed article on how to do the research.

* ​evalogue.life/researching-ancestral-homes

Tool kit for researching the history of buildings & places: 

* evalogue.life/buildings

Can the legacy of trauma be passed down the generations?

* bbc.com/future/article/20190326-what-is-epigenetics

Visiting an ancestral home at Witch Hollow near Salem

* evalogue.life/visiting-my-maternal-past-at-historic-witch-hollow-farm

Ancestral homes – How to research the story of a home or building

* evalogue.life/researching-ancestral-homes/

You are welcome to share this post with friends and family. Rhonda has generously allowed us to share this recording and resources with our Projectkin community for free.

About Rhonda Lauritzen

As a professional storyteller with multiple published books and a passion for teaching, Rhonda believes that when you tell your story, it changes the ending. She and her team at Evalogue.Life specializes in oral history and historical projects. Before founding the company, Rhonda served as a college VP and a corporate CEO.

Learn more about us here, or visit us at Projectkin.org to explore our events and programs. By subscribing, you’ll get our posts directly in your inbox.

Today’s event was extraordinary because it premiered a new event form for us here at Projectkin: the “Project Festival.” The simple idea is to share the process of turning stories into projects to inspire and encourage each other. Unlike Members’ Corner stories, these aren’t the stories but about the projects that will lead to the stories.

As family historians and genealogists, we continuously collect facts, artifacts, and recollections about our ancestors' experiences and lives. Putting these materials into structured archives allows us—and our descendants—to explore and retrieve the stories.

Today, our three speakers gave us an incredible opportunity to peek into the thinking and process of another family historian. It was a rare glimpse into stories, personal history, and world history, and it was also inspiring.

Our speakers

* Tamara Busch, a career technologist today living in central New Jersey, shared how her family turned to ad-hoc family history presentations to stay connected during those quiet months of COVID lockdown. The project side has her now exploring how to take these stories, which are already accessible in a shared database, and make them engaging for a new generation without the peculiar circumstances of COVID.

* Lynda Heines, an artist and genealogist living in Indiana, shared her explorations of new ways to share the stories hidden in her mother’s diary. Her father preserved this precious book and only passed it to Lynda after her father died. As she explores the stories today, she’s considering the forms she might use to tell the tales and their audience. Without her own children, she’s left to consider options among cousins, historical societies, and libraries.

* Simon Davies, an engineer and entrepreneur, founded WeAre.xyz, a family archiving platform often appearing in Projectkin discussions. He’s also a past contributor to Projectkin, sharing his recipe last fall, “Playing for Ancestors.” As a committee member for the Shropshire Family History Society, Simon is scheduled to give a talk in October about his effort to retrace the steps of his ancestor, a Shropshire native who moved to Australia as a Methodist minister. Simon shared his struggle with a wealth of material. He’d followed a record trail for a cousin from Australian archives and into WWI trenches in Belgium. In a poignant story, Simon shared what he’d learned about how his cousin lost his life.

Do you have friends and family who might benefit from our programming at Projectkin.org? We’d love to have you share our work in any way that feels comfortable for you (here’s a nifty button to make it easy👇):

This Project Festival series is ongoing. New events are scheduled as we muster three or more speakers for a given event. Learn more in “Announcing: Project Festivals” and join us for the next event.

To get Members’ Corner stories and recordings of all of our events in your mailbox, just subscribe as a free member 👇.

Projectkin events are free, and members are always welcome to participate in conversations about family history and the process of putting our stories together. Learn more about all of our upcoming events here and join us at a future event.