Just finished watching a free webinar presented by Ancestry.com, “Making a Breakthrough in Your African American Research”. The presentation was by Marjorie Sholes, a professional genealogist since 1984. I don’t have time to fully review this presentation at the moment but I did take notes throughout, and will post a full review within the next few days. I will also let you all know when the webinar becomes available online.
Overall, I will say that the presentation was useful. Unfortunately, as I have found with many lectures on African-American research, the case study presented dealt solely with a family that kept its owner’s surname — even though Ms. Sholes made note of the fact that 85% of the former slaves did not take the surname of their last owner. This is a shortcoming in many of the lectures that I have personally seen, though my own research supports the statistic that Ms. Sholes herself admits.
More will be forthcoming on the presentation…
