Genealogy workshop draws crowd

Photo – Williscraft
Ev Page addresses the pack house at Livingston Activity Centre on Saturday morning.

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When Ev Page and Dorothy Turcotte first talked about a series of genealogy workshops sponsored by Grimsby Historical Archives, they thought that they might have 12-15 registrants.

The smallest rental room at Livingston Activity Centre was reserved for the event.

When the first workshop was Saturday January 30, about 70 people turned out.

Fortunately, by that time, interest in the workshop had prompted a switch to the largest room in the centre.

This basic workshop was dubbed Genealogy 101, and was planned for beginner genealogists, although researchers of all levels were welcome.

The free program consisted of an introduction on getting started on research, followed by a power point presentation describing resources available to researchers.

Questions were invited at all points. One of the questions was asked by a man of Italian descent who wanted to know how to research websites in a language he does not know. That was an easy one for the presenters, and resulted in an interesting story about the questioner’s family history.

This caused Turcotte to remind the audience that names and dates are genealogy.Stories about the people in the families are family history.

A second workshop in the series is set for Feb. 28 also at the activity centre.