The Arizona Daily Star’s Exploring Family History Expo will speak to Southern Arizonans yearning to explore their ancestry.
The expo will run from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 11, at the Arizona History Museum, and will feature DNA workshops, tips from genealogists on technology and techniques for family research, and insights from Arizona historians on the tools they use to dig into the past.
The Veterans Day event — marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I — will also feature an ambitious local project to document the life story of every man who died on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
General admission tickets to the Family History Expo are $50 and available at Tickets.Tucson.com. Arizona Daily Star subscribers can receive a $10 discount if they use promo code ADS10.
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The ticket price includes tours of the Arizona Historical Society Library archives and stacks, and access to the museum’s standing exhibits. Southern Arizona historical and genealogical organizations will also be represented at the expo.
Sessions include:
How to Navigate Newspapers.com
With an online newspaper archive of nearly 435 million digitized, word-searchable pages from more than 9,000 newspapers from around the world covering 300 years, Newspapers.com, a division of Ancestry.com, is the biggest archive of its kind in the world.
Elizabeth Bell and Carl Carter will show how to narrow family searches and find missing links to your past.
You’ll also learn how to use fold3.com, a premier collection of original military records dating back to the Revolutionary War. Many of the records come from the U.S. National Archives, The National Archives of the U.K. and other international records.
The USS Arizona project
Bobbie Jo Buel, retired editor of the Arizona Daily Star, is on a quest to profile each of the 1,177 sailors and Marines who died aboard the USS Arizona in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Her lecture will explore research resources she is using, the discoveries they’ve led to and the people she has met along the way.
Secrets of ‘Street Smarts’
Arizona Daily Star “Street Smarts” contributor and local historian David Leighton will share stories behind Tucson’s roadways, as well as the techniques he uses to uncover them.
He has been featured on PBS and the Travel Channel, as well as on numerous radio shows.
Delving into the lives of early pioneers
Author, historian and lecturer Jan Cleere has been researching and writing for the past 20 years about the people who first settled in the Southwest. Her “Western Women” feature appears monthly in the Arizona Daily Star. Cleere will discuss research methods that can be used for genealogy projects, a family history or to delve into the lives of early Arizona pioneers.
‘Mining’ history for data
William Ascarza, Arizona Daily Star “Mine Tales” contributor, entrepreneur, historian, researcher and travel guide, will discuss techniques used in his research of mining history. Learn how to “mine” history for data and let Ascarza take you on a tour through the museum’s mine.
Got your DNA results? Now what?
Sign up for a DNA workshop for an additional $20, brought to you by the Pima County Genealogy Society.
DNA Workshop 101: You have your results, now what do they really mean? Kathleen Carter was the first female certified sommelier in Arizona and has taught wine-appreciation classes for years. She also enjoys helping people discover their ancestors and reaffirm family stories. Carter is an instructor of the Genetic Genealogy in Practice Study Group for the Pima County Genealogy Society.
DNA Advanced Workshop
Joey L. Caccarozzo is a federal trial attorney by day and a speaker and researcher on nights and weekends, with a focus in DNA, Italian, Louisiana, Slovak and Ukrainian studies.
She is pursuing her Italian genealogy certificate through the National Institute of Genealogy Studies. Her workshop will give a brief overview of third-party tools you can use to understand, sort, organize and analyze your DNA results.
In this session, the most popular sites will be covered, including GEDMatch, DNAGedcom, Genome Mate, and the newest craze —DNA Painter. Learn how to combine autosomal DNA testing with traditional genealogy to make new discoveries in your family tree.
Ancestry DNA kits will sold at the expo for a special price of $59 at the Newspapers.com booth.