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Museum offers genealogy course

The Golden community will have the chance this month to learn the basics of the fastest growing hobby in North America. Colleen Palumbo, curator of the Golden and District Museum and resident historian, is offering a four-part genealogy course that will give students the skills they need to effectively trace their family’s lineage.

Palumbo believes the increased popularity of genealogy is partly due to the generation of baby boomers who now have more free time and money to look back at where they came from. She explained that for a lot of people, once they get started digging into their family’s past, it becomes hard to stop.

“All of a sudden you get this sudden sense of family,” said Palumbo. “You realize that these are your people. This is where you came from.”

The course is both very intensive and very basic. Palumbo will teach everything from how to record dates and names properly to how to write letters of inquiry. When recording a date, for example, it is improper to write either July 12, 1902 or 07/12/02. The correct method is 12 July 1902.

“For names,” explained Palumbo, “the surname is always in capitals and the given name in lowercase.”

Students will also learn the difference between primary and secondary documents, which has to do with if the parents were there to sign the document. Palumbo did admit, though, that genealogy is often an expensive hobby. In BC, it’s $27 just to obtain a copy of a birth certificate.

“It can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. You can share documents with your family. There’s also a lot more free information out there now, and the internet is definitely helping with that.”

One thing Palumbo found interesting was the different approach men and woman take with genealogy. Women, Palumbo explained, often get caught in the “fuzzy” parts, like finding similarities in eye colour or even noticing something as small as the way a family member folded a page. Men, on the other hand, seem to be all about “dates, times and places.”

Canada is known for having kept good track of personal histories. But, once you start looking for personal history in Europe, it can get a bit more tricky and there’s often the language barrier.

“Most records I look for were destroyed in the Second World War,” said Palumbo, whose family is from Italy and Germany. Sometimes you have to look for the state for records, other times you need to go directly to the church.

“Ideally, you can travel to the country yourself,” she said, explaining that it’s a lot easier to say no to somebody in a letter than face-to-face.

Palumbo believes that genealogy is also a personal journey.

“It can be very emotional. Just finding the tiniest piece of information can be incredibly exciting.”

The course will take place on Saturdays on February 19th, 26th and March 6th at 1:30 pm. The cost is $40 per person. For more information please call the Golden and District Museum at 250-344-5169.