Setting goals, Planning, Doing your Homework at Home, and Establishing Contacts will help you have a successful trip where you can meet cousins, see where your ancestors lived, worked, or just spent time.
You can learn more about your ancestors and maybe yourself. Examples include Colorado, Slovenia and France.
Outline
Short review of my article "Genealogy Vacation," in Heritage Quest May-June 2002 that humorously shows how not to plan a research trip.
Includes tips on:
Setting Goals and planning your trip
Doing you homework at home
Using the internet to locate resources & Establishing Contacts
Dealing with county, research, cemetery, and funeral home workers
Visiting Cemeteries
Finding some unusual sources
Immigrants - Review of finding their hometown in US records
The importance of Making Contacts and the tales of two trips
o Visiting cousins in Slovenia
o Visiting locations in France that my grandfather wrote about in WWI letters.
Past Presentations
8 May 2013 Fountaindale Public Library, Bolingbrook, IL
4 Feb. 2013 Lakewood Ranch Genealogy Club, Lakewood Ranch, FL
26 April 2012 Kane County Genealogical Society - Meeting, Geneva, IL
18 April 2012 DuPage County Genealogy Society - Meeting, Wheaton, IL