In Praise of Study Groups

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Study Group, courtesy of OpenClipart

 

Desperation drove me to my first study group at university. A fellow student invited me, and the group swapped ideas about how to remember the masses of information we were given in an early-morning class. It really helped all of us, I think, and I was grateful. 

South King County Genealogical Society incorporated as "educational in character and devoted exclusively to furthering genealogical research and interest in family and local history." We offer lots of choices, and discuss other educational opportunities here in the blog. See Barbara Mattoon's series on "Your Genealogy Education Plan, Parts One and Two," along with many other discussions of podcasts, seminars, videos, books, conferences. 


Copyright 2016 Blaine T. Bettinger
Debbie Parker Wayne

When some of us found Blaine Bettinger and Debbie Parker Wayne's book Genetic Genealogy in Practice and began discussing it in our Genetic Genealogy/DNA group, the idea arose of beginning a study group around that book. So we all purchased or re-read the book, and began to complete the "exercises" at the end of each chapter, and discuss our answers. In order to keep the discussions from flooding the GG/DNA group, we created a Study-Group early in 2021. We had never had a study group before, and it worked for us!


Copyright 2013 by Thomas W. Jones
This first study was successful if difficult, so later in 2021 we chose a second book, Mastering Genealogical Proof by Thomas W. Jones. There are other GenProof study groups going on around the county, I'm happy to say. Again, exploring each part of the Genealogical Proof Standard and finishing the exercises was challenging for all of us. I think I speak for the group, however, in saying that we are all happy that we tackled these concepts and practiced, and are all more proficient and better genealogists than when we started. 




Copyright 2007 Elizabeth Shown Mills
Writing citations, however, was still difficult for many of us. I began to see the advice to read and study the first two chapters of Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained so I proposed this as our next study group. The first two were SKCGS Members-only, but we decided to open these two summer 2022 sessions to one and all. There are no questions at the end of each chapter, we make up our own and discussed how to apply the concepts to our own work. We had lots of visitors to these sessions and may do it the same way again.




Copyright 2018 Diana Elder & FamilyLocketGenealogists LLC

I am so thankful for those who proposed and advocated for Diana Elder AG with Nicole Dyer's Research Like A Pro. This book has forever changed the way I approach genealogical research, and deepened my friendships with those who researched, celebrated and commiserated through this six-month study. I know so much more about my second-great-grandfather William McBee now than I ever dreamed possible, although I still do not know when and where he died. Someday I will find the evidence! Many of us ended up feeling the same way - not entirely successful, but having made huge progress. 


Copyright 2021 FamilyLocket

Now, we are in the midst of studying and working through Diana Elder, Nicole E. Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin's Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist's Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence. Adding in DNA evidence makes the research more complicated, of course. And we're all learning how best to contact and work with our matches, evaluate the DNA evidence along with the documents and stories we've found, and more practice keeping track of the research and citing those new sources. 


Study Groups Are Treasure Maps

This has been a thrilling ride when I step back and look over all of it. All of us who participated have learned new techniques, new vocabulary, and how to use tools we would have never dared use before. More importantly, we have all strengthened our practice as genealogy researchers, and have found joy in collaborating with our fellow family historians.

If you have a chance to start or participate in a study group, take my advice and Do It! And if you have an idea of what our SKCGS group should study next, tell us.

You can see records of all the SKCGS study groups on our wiki page: https://skcgs.groups.io/g/Study-Group/wiki



Valorie Zimmerman


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