Susan Yockey, the National Genealogical Society Course Administrator, recently completed the NGS Home Study Course. Over several posts, Susan will share with us her perspective on taking the course – her joys and frustrations – her trials and tribulations – her successes and what she learned about her ancestors and herself along the way.
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Part 1
I enrolled in NGS ’ Home Study Course in August 2009. I’d always been interested in genealogy since I was a child. However, it wasn’t until I had moved to the DC metro area in 1991 that I actually began my genealogical research. The main focus of my research was my paternal grandmother, Virginia WOMBLE BLICKENSDERFER and her line. She had always been a bit of a mysterious figure to me while I was growing up, because she had died when I was very young. Shortly after her death, my grandfather remarried. Out of respect to my grandfather’s new wife, my parents didn’t want me to talk about my grandmother in front of my step-grandmother.
By the time that I began taking the course, I had accumulated a significant amount of documents and information on my grandmother’s family. I had hit all of the genealogical facilities in the DC area and even gone on a couple of research trips where I visited courthouses, churches, cemeteries, and state archives.
What I noticed about the course is the gradual progression of difficulty in the lesson assignments. The student can complete most of the early lessons without leaving their home. By lesson 4, you are then required to leave your comfort zone and venture out into the world in order to complete the other lesson assignments. For me, this is the purpose of genealogical research. It’s impossible to perform an accurate and through research without visiting and researching an unfamiliar locale or time period.
I was able to breeze through Lesson 1’s first assignment, which requires you to fill out a pedigree chart. When working on the second assignment’s family group sheet, I chose Virginia’s, father’s family because it was the one that I had done the most research on. Also, the assignment asks that you include a source(s) for every item of information. I could easily meet this requirement thanks to the amount of documents that I had accumulated over the years.
The assignments for lesson 2 were easy for me because I had already researched an oral tradition and because I had communicated my interest in the history of my paternal grandmother, my uncle gave me a number of memorabilia and papers of hers and her family’s.
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| Joseph Womble |
The oral tradition I wrote about was the story of my great uncle Joseph WOMBLE’s untimely death in 1927 when he was in his mid-twenties. At the time of researching the events leading up to his death, my father had told me that I wouldn’t find anything. I proved him wrong by locating Joseph’s death certificate, a front-page newspaper article, which described the accident, and the coroner’s inquest.
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| Newspaper Article about Joseph Womble's Death |
Lesson 3’s assignments were again fairly easy for me to complete. I wrote up interview questions where I interviewed one of my uncles. I had, of course, already written letters to some of Virginia
Here is where I’m forced out of my comfort zone. I will confess here as to be someone who, unless the instant benefit of performing some task can be readily visualized by me, I have zero interest in doing it. Coupled with the fact that I’ve spent half my life living up north, I find living in the DC metro area can be a little trying at times as I attempt to rationalize the history of the area. Lesson 4’s assignment involves visiting a library nearby and finding out what historical and genealogical resources are available there. It is mentioned in the instructions that your first choice should be a public library.
I chose to visit the Central Library where I live in Arlington , VA. Virginia Room Virginia Room Virginia Room Arlington
While I was working on my assignment, I happened to see a familiar book title. I was shocked to find it in a library collection that purported to only focus on Virginia Arlington County North Carolina Virginia South Carolina
After completing my survey of the library I felt that I’d gotten my feet wet by stepping out into the world of genealogical research and was able to look forward to tackling Lesson 5’s subject—Census Records.
Editor’s Note: You can learn more about the Home Study Course via the course syllabus or watch the video.
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