By: Tina Marie
Over the past month, I have been
very excited about attending the National Institute on Genealogical Research (NIGR). Although I have been working on
my family history for many years, I have never attended a formal institute. Most of my learning has come through reading,
local study groups, library research, webinars and mentoring from more seasoned
genealogists. This year, I enrolled and was accepted to the NIGR that will be held July 14 through 18, 2014, in Washington, DC.
The NIGR was founded in 1950 and
incorporated as a nonprofit in 1989. It is
well known in the United States as being one of the premier leaders in genealogical
education. It offers an annual week long
institute in Washington, DC. The course
focuses on federal records held at the National Archives with optional lectures
in the evening at the Library of Congress and the Daughters of the American Revolution Library.
The institute is an intensive program
and is not an introductory genealogy course for newcomers. For the most part, the lectures run from 10 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday with time for personal research before and after the daily course work.
Although most of the day-time lectures are held at the National Archives
in Washington, DC, one day of lectures is held at the National Archives II in
College Park, Maryland.
To prepare for the program there is a
number of assignments given from registering online for a visitor’s card
to reading material on each library.
The topics of the lectures include military, land, immigration, naturalization
and American Indian records (just to name a few). On Friday, the last day of of the course, there is
an evening Alumni-sponsored Banquet in Arlington, Virginia to welcome the new alumni
group.
Although I am excited about the institute, I am
more excited about the military records section of the course. As a veteran and an employee of the Veteran’s
Administration, I have a great love for military history and have planned my
own research itinerary. I hope to view
the Revolutionary War and Civil War records of three of my direct ancestors at
the DAR Library and the National Archives respectively.
I have complied my dad’s World War II records to hand deliver to the
Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. I have two family graves to visit at Arlington National Cemetery, and my trip just would not be the same without
visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. It will
be a jam-packed trip and I will surely be exhausted by the end, but I am really looking forward to it.
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| National Archives, Washington DC |
