Pre-RootsTech Update

My Salt Lake City hotel room view.

Hello from Salt Lake City! I'm here for the pre-RootsTech festivities, research and events. Not only is there a genealogy conference in town. The NCAA basketball tournament is here as well. The Harvard basketball team, cheerleaders and others is staying at my hotel. It is not hard to figure out who the genealogists are and who the Harvard students and faculty are.

I got in to the city yesterday afternoon. I did a brief stint at the Family History Library where I found a cemetery record for a client.

In the evening, I had dinner with Kathryn Doyle and Kim Cotton, two friends and fellow California Genealogical Society members. After dinner, I ran into several other friends at the bar including Jill Ball, Lisa Alzo, Thomas MacEntee, Sheri Fenley and Randy Seaver.

This morning I had my annual hotel waffle and headed back to the Family History Library. I found more interesting things for my client. 

After several hours reading 1800's tax records page by page, I took a lunch break. I had expected to eat alone, but I ran into a fellow ProGen 3 alum on the corner and she joined me. That's just how things happen here.

In the afternoon, I attended a class taught by Audrey Collins. She taught a full house about lesser known British Isles records.

When the class ended, I went to look up some British records for another client. I read pages and pages of cemetery records, but was not successful. 

As the afternoon progressed, I developed a case of "fried brain," which is common when one spends a day at the Family History Library.

Tonight I'm going to a dinner for the RootsTech Official Bloggers. FamilySearch puts out a nice spread and gives us their latest family history updates in indexing, wikis, digitization and all other aspects of the organization. Should be fun. I'll keep you posted.