Genealogy conference, “Treasure your Roots”

 

OKLAHOMA CITY — Barbara Kroll was happy to learn that a Native American genealogy class will be offered during the Feb. 10 “Treasure Your Roots” genealogy conference at St. John Missionary Baptist Church, 5700 N Kelley in Oklahoma City. Her life has been enriched, she said, by seeking out her Cherokee forebears.

“You learn the history of the Indian removal, but when you witness it firsthand through your ancestors, it becomes a lot more real,” she said.

Kroll, who lives in Tulsa, said her parents are descended from the same ancestor, eight generations back in Georgia and North Carolina. That was easy to learn, she said, because “the records are excellent. It’s a big boon for anyone researching an ancestor in the Five Civilized Tribes, because the U.S. government was in their business early on.”

The first census was taken in the late 1700s, she said, and many government headcounts followed.

For the Plains Indians, “family history research is a whole different story,” she said, because they were not removed from their homelands until the late 1800s and there’s much less documentation.

Kroll has spent 40 years helping Native Americans and others search for their kin, as a volunteer at Family History Centers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. People should learn about their ancestors, she said, “and what they went through to make America what it is today.”

More than 100 people have registered for the Treasure Your Roots conference. Registration will be available at the door, but early signup is encouraged for best class selection and guarantee of a boxed lunch.

Other lectures will include instruction on probate and wills, DNA testing, passenger lists, using Google for family history research, using the federal census, the African-American Freedmen’s Bureau Project, using newspapers for research and writing a family history. Participants can choose from 20 classes offered during the 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. conference.

Keynote speaker will be Thom Reed, global outreach manager for FamilySearch International. Reed said he will come to Oklahoma City with a tender heart, having lost his mother a few weeks ago.

Her death reminded him there is always an urgency “to capture the moments, and to document them,” Reed said.

People with Native American ancestry can get assistance at Family History Centers across Oklahoma and at the Cherokee Heritage Center Genealogical Department in Tahlequah, where Gene Norris is head genealogist, Kroll said. And records are increasingly available online, she said.

“Probably 12 to 15 people a year come to me for help,” with Native American research, she said. “It used to be many more. It’s gotten easier since everything is digitized.”

Registration for the conference is at www.treasureyourroots2018.com. The conference fee of $10 includes lunch.

For more information about the conference call Andre Head at (206) 948-8852 or Sherrie Furber at (405) 473-7374. For research assistance in eastern Oklahoma, call Kroll at (918) 519-2922 or Norris at (918) 456-6007.