Speaker Profile-Rick Sayre, CG

I am presenting two topics that should be of special interest to researchers that have ancestors that settled in the Western states.  My first presentation on Thursday morning, “ The Civil War in the American West, “ will help researchers understand the often-neglected military actions West of the Mississippi. Many soldiers were recruited from local populations and many from Eastern states remained and settled in the West. Researchers will discover the rich genealogical information in the records created about these soldiers and will learn how to find this information, much of which is now online.    

In the afternoon I will discuss “Homesteads—Settling the American West.” Attendees will discover the genealogical riches in the application files and successful techniques to locate these records. There are literally millions of records relating to homesteads and they can be found in all 30 public land states. Many new online resources make much of the search possible from your computer.

On Friday, those with an interest in maps that attend “Genealogical Applications of Historical Geographical Information Systems (GIS)” will discover unique and powerful digital tools to research localities and find ancestors. More and more GIS applications are appearing every day that are useful to genealogists. In this BCG Skillbuilding lecture, we will look at GIS applications covering the world (Google Earth), countries (Northern Ireland, England, and Germany) to specific cities such as Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

Speaker Profile-Rick Sayre, CG