CHIMACUM — The Jefferson County Genealogical Society’s annual seminar will feature Mary Slawson, a noted genealogist, author and speaker, on Saturday.
The seminar will run from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Tri-Area Community Center, 10 West Valley Road.
Registration is $35. Doors will open at 9 a.m. for registration and shopping at the Heritage Quest Book Store. The program will start at 9:30 a.m.
Attendees are advised to bring a lunch; coffee and tea will be provided.
Three sessions are planned in the daylong seminar. They are:
■ “Conducting an Effective Oral History Interview” — Slawson will provide tips for preparing for interviews and how to elicit stories and memories from family members.
■ “Putting Meat on the Bones” — Slawson will discuss how to make ancestors come alive by adding social customs and social practices to dates and places, using Ireland as a background.
■ “Going Where You’ve Never Gone Before” — Whether a researcher is venturing to a new repository or starting to research a new state, doing homework ahead of time will save time and help get the best results.
Author, lecturer
Slawson, a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists and the Association of Personal Historians, is an author and lecturer.
She is a co-host of the radio show “Relatively Speaking” and the author of Getting It Right: The Definitive Guide to Recording Family History Accurately.
She serves as the Irish Medieval specialist for the Salt Lake City Family History Library and chairwoman of the Human Family Project, in which Irish clans from 200-1600 A.D. are reconstructed.
Slawson also is a co-founder and the chairwoman for the Irish Genealogical and Historical Society.
She has been involved in genealogical research and teaching for more than 35 years, specializing in Irish, early American, African-American and family history for medical research.
Registration forms are available at the genealogical society website at www.wajcgs.org/annual-seminar or the Historical Research Center at 13692 Airport Cutoff Road, Port Townsend.