This afternoon kicked off the opening of the Exhibit Hall and conference sessions for the 2018 New York State Family History Conference in Tarrytown.

The photo above is from the table of the Genealogy Federation of Long Island. The groups meet in either Nassau or Suffolk counties and include a DNA group, different ethnic specific groups as well as three public library groups.

There were two program time slots this afternoon. In the first time slot I attended a very interesting program presented by Judy G. Russell known as The Legal Genealogist. Her talk about was Advanced U.S. Census Research. She went decade by decade through the U.S. federal census records and explained the unique information that could be found in each census. She also discussed the specialized federal census schedules such as the agricultural schedule, mortality schedule and manufacturing schedule. A very detailed handout of the talk was included in the syllabus.

The second presentation I attended was an interview with Jackie Graziano of the Westchester Archives. It was a very informative session and very helpful to anyone wanting to pursue research in Westchester County. Jackie discussed the types of collections held at the archives and pointed out that the Westchester County Historical Society is also located in the same building. She talked about some of the highlights of the collections, some items which go back to the 1600s. The archives website was discussed and she mentioned indexes that are available online as well as the digital collections available through the website. A brochure detailing collections at the archive was handed out before the program.

Friday will be a full day with conference sessions running from 9:45 a.m. to 6 p.m.