I owe a debt of gratitude to our many live participants today as we sorted through a logistical snafu. I have a new best practices tip for everyone, but more on that later. 😉 Special thanks to , , , , , and many others. It was so nice to see you join our program today. I’ve snipped that getting started bit out of the recording so we can focus on my guest, Karen de Bruyne of and her stories, All About That Place.
Today’s program was the first in our series of programs celebrating stories about that place through October 3rd. This is all part of our participation in the celebration of one-place studies organized by the Society of Genealogists in collaboration with the Society for One-Place Studies, the British Association for Local History (BALH), and Genealogy Stories. It’s an honor to be part of this program again.
When launching this program in 2024, we had to offer the ten featured talks in pairs for a total of five programs. You’ll find the recording and notes for Karen’s 2024 talk, combined with another talk about research and records from
from the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Indiana.You can review the recording, transcript, Karen’s slides, and notes here:
All About That Place, Pacific Edition » Talks by Allison DePrey Singleton and Karen de Bruyne
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Like the overall “All About That Place” series, in this Pacific Edition, I’m sometimes not sure what the theme will be until the program begins. Today’s program sprouted from a desire to share knowledge and blossomed into a remarkable discussion of the potential of research libraries.
In our conversation today, we focused on the incredible story of Karen’s great-uncle Bill and great-aunt Vera. Because of a conincidence of family, Karen has inherited a treasure trove of records, documents and photographs of their extraordinary life together through the last years of the British colonies.
Karen’s work with these artifacts has given her an expertise in sorting through documents from time and insight into the best sources for data. We covered a range of strategies for finding ancestors in the former British colonies of East India. Three of the sources she recommended included:
The Families in British India Society, or FIBIS for short (fibis.org), where Karen now serves as a trustee. FIBIS is the leading family history organization that assists genealogists in researching ancestors who lived in India.
Find My Past, the commercial genealogical research service with the largest online collection of British and Irish records.
Many records she noted are also available on:
FamilySearch, or through local FamilySearch Centers around the world.
I hope you found this a fun exploration of the talk Karen gave last year and sources for research materials. Please do join us tomorrow for our talk with Allison.
Note: These programs are using Substack for livestreaming, here is the link. You won’t need to register, but you will need to be logged in with a Substack account. As a follower or subscriber you’ll be notified when the live program begins.
As always, feel free to share this recording with anyone interested. These programs are offered free and the recordings will also be posted to YouTube.
