Thinking about becoming a Certified Genealogist? This presentation walks through the 2025 BCG Application Guide, focusing on the required portfolio elements, the rubrics used for evaluation, and common questions from applicants. Attendees will gain a realistic understanding of the process, timeline, and expectations involved in submitting an initial portfolio for BCG certification.

The laws our ancestors lived by can tell us much about life in earlier times. Finding those laws, and the stories they tell, can be a daunting task, but—from colonial statutes to today, from the halls of Congress to the statehouses of 50 states—the choices legislators made about what laws were needed give a rich and deep context to family history.

When Yvette found a line to Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204), Queen of France and England, in online trees, she quickly realized the existing research did not meet standards. She set about verifying the line one generation at a time, to meet the Genealogical Proof Standard. In this presentation, she will take you on her journey, sharing the skills, methods, and documents she used to verify her royal line back to the 1100s.

In 1906, Nellie Langevin married Frank Henry Hill in Penacook, New Hampshire. Frank vanished three years later, leaving Nellie to fend for herself. Despite her efforts to divorce him, Nellie died in 1914, still officially married. Who was Nellie’s elusive husband and what happened to him? This case study resolves conflicting direct, indirect, and negative evidence to uncover Frank’s identity and highlights the importance of including the FAN Club in reasonably exhaustive research.

What happens when all evidence cannot possibly be correct? The process of assembling evidence may reveal inconsistencies and the Genealogical Proof Standard emphasizes that resolving conflict is essential for credible conclusions. Through case examples, this lecture will help genealogists recognize conflicts and provide strategies to resolve them in order to build family stories that are authentic and accurate.

When records are scarce—or names are all too common—cluster research can be the key to unlocking your genealogical puzzles. By examining the people who surrounded your ancestor—the friends, associates, and neighbors—you can separate individuals with the same name, untangle multiple families in one place, and uncover biographical details you might otherwise miss. Join us to explore practical strategies and real-world examples that show how powerful the FAN principle can be.

Research on formerly enslaved people is difficult by its very nature because enslaved people were classed as property prior to the Civil War and faced the challenges of marginalization in the segregated society that developed after the War. Crucial to uncovering information on enslaved people prior to emancipation is studying their lives as freedpeople after for clues as to who their families were and who their former owners might have been. As with any family, clues regarding identity, relationships, and ownership during slavery, are often uncovered as the result of applying the FAN principle and piecing together potential family groups.

Karen will illustrate the genetic confirmation of a Mexican ancestral line that goes back four generations to a small town in Guanajuato, Mexico. Integration of evidence from DNA tests and original records meets the Genealogical Proof Standard. Lecture in English using Mexican records.

One James C. Ward was born in the 1820s and his life is documented in Massachusetts and New York. One James C. Ward served in the Mexican War and left sketches and a diary detailing his adventures in California in the 1840s. Could they be the same man? A case of identity solved through correlation.