It is so exciting to be with 900+ people that share your passion. And that is what we encountered upon arrival at the Radisson Hotel and Expo Center in Manchester, New Hampshire for the New England Regional Genealogical Conference, Woven in History - The Fabric of New England.
Because there are so many excellent speakers and interesting presentations at NERGC, I always study the program well before we arrive so I make the best choice for my research. Consequently my first session on Thursday afternoon was with Laura G. Prescott who spoke on Spinsters and Widows: Gender Loyalty within Families.
Laura showed examples of when the term "spinster" did not mean one who spins, or a woman who never married, but in deeds, the term spinster meant a woman who had legal rights, a woman who could act on her own behalf.
She shared a number of examples where wills and deeds of maiden aunts named all sorts of family members. In fact, sometimes there is so much information a spreadsheet is needed to keep track of relationships and who gets what item.
Laura mentioned that Library of Congress has a lot of information on Women's History. On Friday I attended another presentation by Laura on the Library of Congress website. That will be a blog for another day.
In the meantime we are comfortably ensconced in the Ash Street Inn, a bed and breakfast on...Ash Street in Manchester, about a mile away from the conference. This is the nicest B&B we have ever experienced, and we highly recommend it to anyone staying in this area.
We had the honor of dining this evening with our friend Jim Sanders, recently chosen as one of the top 40 genealogy bloggers of the year by Family Tree Magazine. Jim's blog is Hidden Genealogy Nuggets. If you haven't stopped by his blog, do check it out.
More reports to come. In fact, we spent two sessions today with Stephen Morse as he took us through a wide range of One-Step tools he has developed. We have used his site many times in the past, but had no idea of the breadth and depth of tools he has provided for genealogists. Another blog...
We did have one disappointment - because of flooding in the Chicago area, our Geneabloggers hero Thomas MacEntee could not make it to Manchester for his two Saturday sessions. Hopefully we will be able to meet him at another time.
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