Super Conference 2009: A Journey of Discovery – Review Part 2

Hello,

Here is the wrap-up of my day, last week Friday, at the Super Conference 2009: A Journey of Discovery.

The third session that I attended was called “Immigration agents at work” by Ceil Wendt Jensen. During this session, Ceil provided details about the project she led to find information about the immigration agents that brought Polish immigrants to Calumet, Michigan. This project blew me away because of the breadth and depth of the research. Ceil and her project group were able to locate the immigration agents and all of the materials and information used to help attract Polish and German settlers to Michigan. Another interesting fact is that each state created guide books and brochures that were distributed throughout Europe. I would have never thought to have looked for this type of research. Ceil presented the marketing packages that were used, the plans for recruiting the immigrants, the transportation plans that were designed, and much, much more.

Please visit Ceil Wendt Jensen‘s blog and website called The Polish Pioneers of Calumet, Michigan. This is the site that provides an overview of all information that was acquired for this project.

Some of the websites that Ceil suggested for finding information on immigration agents were:

Google Books
Jstor
World Cat
University Libraries
State Historical Societies

A couple of suggested books for immigration were:

The American settler’s guide a popular exposition of the public land system of the United States of America, written by Henry N. Copp.
Ethnic Americans, written by Leonard Dinnerstein, David M. Reimers

The last session that I attended was called “Identifying and using records in addition to parish and vital records” by Larry Jensen. This session was rather overwhelming. Larry Jensen’s knowledge of the German records that were filmed by the LDS is mind-boggling. He pointed out that church records are only a small piece of the information that can be obtained for genealogical research.

Larry demonstrated the use and effectiveness of using civil records for expanding a family tree. Some of the German civil records that he showed us were: population, orphanage, citizenship, military, immigration/emigration, land, court, poor, marriage contracts, funeral, medical, occupational, school, tax, and voting. Again…..overwhelming.

The main takeaway from Larry’s session was that a researcher should not overlook civil records, the information that is within these records can be very valuable and should be used to further your research.

More information about the Super Conference 2009: A Journey of Discovery’s speakers and programs can be found at FEEFHS website.

The Super Conference 2009: A Journey of Discovery was a great experience that I had learned a lot from. I will definitely attend again in the future (next time I’ll attend both days).

Best Regards,
Al