Lectures – Drew Smith & George Morgan

In the course of our genealogical research, we often become engrossed in the collection of information snippets, failing to put them into a logical perspective. We lose sight of the fact that the people we’re tracing participated in the life of their historical times, led complex lives, and interacted with one another.

Organizing the information we collect into a biographical profile can help you begin to recognize character traits and decision patterns. And the profile also provides an invaluable, portable research tool that avoids your taking voluminous amounts of notes with you on research trips.

This seminar presents a methodology and a structured model for taking the details you collect about your ancestor and creating a biographical profile. We will discuss:

• Establishing your ancestor’s every location,
• Learning about other people in your ancestor’s life,
• Studying local, state and national history to determine what events may have influenced or motivated your ancestor,
• Studying personal events that may have influenced or motivated your ancestor, and
• Effectively organizing materials into a profile that can be used for additional research and for writing.

 This approach will not only help you organize your research, it can become the basis for writing detailed biographical sketches or novels about the people whose lives you have been researching.

George G. Morgan is president of Aha! Seminars, Inc.  George is an avid genealogist. His interest began at age nine when his paternal grandmother and aunt divulged family historical facts extending back before the American Revolution and shared a wealth of original documents. Since that time, George’s genealogical research has expanded to include all the branches of his family tree and he has investigated leads in materials in all sorts of places. Libraries, archives, courthouse, and cemeteries are among his favorite haunts, but he will leave no stone unturned, even to the point of tracking down the original 1914 newspapers containing his great-grandparents’ obituaries in a records retention facility owned by a county board of education. He is a master in working with and understanding all types of genealogical record types in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. With the advent of electronic research materials, he has become a recognized expert in using software programs, databases, Internet resources, online databases, Internet genealogical mailing lists and message boards, search engines, directories, subscription databases, social media, and all the major online genealogical services around the world. He is also an active genetic genealogical researcher.