Legacy Family Tree sponsors some wonderful webinars, usually four or five a month. They range from beginner, to intermediate, to advanced.
Today’s topic was, “Complex Evidence: What is It? How Does It Work? And Why Does It Matter?” The speaker was Warren Bittner, CGSM.
Complex evidence was a term I hadn’t encountered before in my brief genealogy life! I believe I heard him explain during the webinar that it’s a phrase he coined himself. His way of explaining it was to take us through a fascinating case study.
Before he started the case study, he went over the goal of genealogy, the genealogical proof standard, evidence evaluation standard, and exactly what he would cover during the case study. Summing up complex evidence came after the case study, along with something he called false research imperative.
If these things make you squeamish, or you’re only vaguely familiar with them, that’s how I felt! I just about had a headache half-way through the webinar, and by the end, I felt like I’d run a marathon. Trying to explain all he took us through isn’t possible for this beginner genealogist. In fact, after hearing all of the webinar, not even sure I can call myself a budding genealogist!
But I can highly recommended viewing his seminar at Family Tree Webinars. It’s ranked at an “Intermediate to Advanced” level, and that it surely is. But there’s much to learn that will help in your every day research. It’s especially valuable if you’ve ever came across two people with the same name, from the same place, with similar birth dates.
He goes through the proof standard, and the evidence evaluation standard with all the documents in the case study. Said he had around 200 documents total, but was only able to cover about 30 within the webinar time frame.
If you want to learn how to be a better genealogist and add some very useful tools to your genealogy tool box, definitely make some time in the next week to catch this recording. It’s free to view through November 2, 2015. After that you have to be a member of Family Tree Webinars, but it’s quite reasonably priced.
Currently there are nearly 300 webinars to view and over a thousand pages of instructor handouts, with more added every week . Yes, some of the webinars are free without the one week time restriction for viewing. And all live webinars are free, but you must register ahead of time for them. It’s a great place to learn about any aspect of genealogy, or to research if you’re stumped in a particular area.
– Remember –
Mark Your Calendar! Well, mark ’em if you’re interested in learning more about YDNA and mtDNA.