Another crazy week for me last week, as I attended yet another institute (and I have one next week too!). Anyway, I attended the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) for the entire week (virtually) and my brain is swimming in ideas.

I felt like I needed to beef up my skills around this subject, so I took Judy Russell’s course Women and Children First! As with all of Judy’s courses, I was not disappointed.

There were a few goals that I had in mind that I was hoping this course would give me some ideas to work through:

  • Better understand the laws and situations around women and naturalization in the early 1900s.
  • Get familiar with women and children in the workplace (I have many immigrant women who were working upon arrival and even after marriage).
  • Learn more about how a child could come to be bound out, apprenticed, and even adopted in the late 1800s.
  • Learn about poor relief as it related to women and children in general.

The lectures related to these topics were wonderful and insightful, and that’s why my brain is swimming in ideas!

Judy’s lecture on women and children in the criminal justice system was fascinating. And I really enjoyed Blaine Bettinger’s lecture on DNA. I didn’t learn anything new, but it did inspire me to test my mtDNA “for the future,” which is now on my to-do list.

Overall, this was a wonderful course and I recommend it to anyone who wants to strengthen their skills in researching the women in children in their tree.

A special thanks to the other instructors in the course: Blaine Bettinger, Catherine Desmarais, Michael Ramage, Marian Smith, and Ari Wilkins. And of course, a big shout out to the GRIP team (Deb Deal, Elissa Scalise Powell, and Cyndi Ingle) for all their hard work behind the scene to make this a great experience.

P.S. GRIP has announced their plans for 2023. The June sessions will be held virtually, while the July sessions will be held in person (with any luck). You can read more here, and see the list of course for each week.

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© Julie Tarr. This article was first published at Julie’s Genealogy & History Hub; appearance of this article elsewhere, without my permission, violates copyright.