Yesterday, I was happy to meet GeneaBlogger #1 Thomas MacEntee at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) in Boston. He was the first person I saw when I entered the building. And, with him was Geoff Rasmussen of Legacy Family Tree. I thanked Geoff for all his wonderful webinars, and then the guys posed for a photo. They, along with 200 genealogists were on a Legacy Family Tree Genealogy Cruise and Tom arranged a day trip for 45 of them so they could spend time at the library. When I found out Tom was going to be in Boston, I immediately volunteered to help the group out, Heather Rojo also did. Two professional genealogists were also helping the group out, Sharon Sergeant (met her abt. 12 yrs. ago) and Mary Ellen Grogan (met a few months ago).
The attendees were a great group of people. I helped six, and asked maybe another seven if they needed help, but they were set. What did I do? Went to another floor and retrieved books for them, explained a few things, gave a number of suggestions. Nothing was difficult, except keeping my stamina up.
In the course of talking to people, I asked about the group as a whole and especially how many used computers. Because, I could see a lot of hand written charts, notes and such. Two people thought it was about half. I've been saying this for a long time, there are a lot of genealogists out there who do not use computers, and more importantly, don't want to use them. This is material for another blog.
I knew two facebook and geneabloggers friends were going to be there, so I tracked them down and was happy to meet Amanda Perrine (of Amanda's Athenaeum) her husband, Aaron, and Linda Robbins of Hollingsworth Robbins Family Tree.
Around noon, many left for lunch or to tour the city, and a soon after, Thomas treated Heather and I to lunch. Since we didn't know where to go, I suggested a cafe in the Boston Public Library, so we went and sat outside in the courtyard...was very nice. We all went back to the Library for another hour to tie up loose ends and to chat. Then, Heather drove us to our destinations, me part-way, and Tom to the ship. All in all, it was a great day, concluded by my walking past some Wall Street protesters and then to the Boston Gardens where the Bruins were getting ready to raise the banner flag (for winning the Stanley Cup earlier this year) and play their first game of the season. Lots of activity there, but the police had it under control. Okay, now for the photos.
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| Thomas MacEntee and Geoff Rasmussen |
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| Amanda and Aaron Perrine |
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| Carolyn and her mom, they were the first that I helped. |
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| Carolyn's mom, in red, Gary Boyd Roberts, wearing suit. |
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| Linda Robbins |
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| Heather Wilkinson Rojo |
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| Genealogist volunteer Sharon Sergeant giving consult to Carolyn. |
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| Walked past a Wall Street protester, Boston |
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| About to catch the train for home. |
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| Unique fall crocuses, taken when Cindy and I viewed them. |
11 comments:
What a fun post, love it all, great photos, sure wish I could have been there, wahhoooo!!
Thanks for sharing, Barbara. You have quite a full day and met some great people. Your pics are great too.
I'm more than a little jealous of those cruisers:)
Great write up and FANTASTIC photos. I didn't see the protesters, but I was busy paying attention to all the traffic around South Station. It was a nice day wasn't it, for meeting all those genealogy enthusiasts?
Sounds like a dream week! Loved reading about it, wished I could have shared a bit of it with you.
Nice summary of two wonderful days for you Barbara. If ever a group like this comes to NEHGS again, I will go for sure. I know I would have enjoyed being there.
You undoubtedly were a great asset to those you helped. You are so knowledgeable and so good at what you do. Kudos!
Lucie
To each of you, I thank you for reading my post and enjoying the photos. I really appreciate it.
It was great meeting you!
Thank you for sharing this great post. The pictures are a great addition. We need to capture more of our genealogy moments. Makes me want to go to more national conferences and meet more bloggers.
Now that sounds like a really fun day. Thank you for sharing.
So good to meet you at NEHGS!
Thank you, Barbara, for making the extra effort to come to NEHGS to help us "out of towners, out of staters" with our New England state ancestors' research. It was greatly appreciated and fun, too! I was lucky to "meet you" in the stacks.
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