John Colletta

I spent a wonderful day in Lincoln yesterday attending the Lincoln-Lancaster County Genealogical Society program featuring John Colletta, one of the top genealogists in the country. He wrote "Only a Few Bones" which I wrote about here. It was so inspiring to hear him talk about "How to Write a Narrative Family History", with examples of different ways to do it. This part was broken down in to 1: Creating a Reliable Record and 2: Writing a Readable Story. In the afternoon he told us about and showed examples of research in the Library of Congress and also talked about Understanding Archives. Wow. What a wealth of information. He told us he was condensing his week-long class he gives in Utah once a year into a one morning format. Genealogy conferences of any kind are hard to come by in Nebraska so I'm very thankful to the Society for putting this on.

As he talked, I made a new notes about the stories I want to tell. I'm anxious to get started but I'm still putting the house and everything in order from the passing of Jim in May and mom last November. Tons of photos to scan before Thanksgiving, too. Lots to do! But getting away for this wonderful day of family history talk was energizing!