Please join us for the New River Historical Society’s annual Genealogy Workshop at the Wilderness Road Regional Museum.
Speakers Include:
Melinda Bollar Wagner, “Gathering Our Stories“
Everyone agrees that the STORIES are the most important part of our family histories. Some of us lament that we don’t remember the stories we heard our elders tell. How can we capture stories? This workshop will offer advice on how to go about oral history interviewing – whether with family, neighbors, friends, or strangers. Wagner is a professor of anthropology and Appalachian Studies at Radford University.
Tom McGohey, “Writing Your Family Story in History“
McGohey, a regular volunteer at the Wilderness Road Regional Museum and retired Writing Center Director at Wake Forest University, will speak about some of the possibilities of working with genealogical knowledge. McGohey will offer strategies and approaches for shaping research into a story.
Tal Stanley, “Newbern Project”
Since the summer of 2013, Stanley and his students at Emory and Henry College have been working with the Wilderness Road Regional Museum’s archives. Stanley has presented to the museum a Master Registry of Documents and Records as well a Master Index of Names, containing names of over 20,000 early residents of Southwest Virginia. This session will explore Stanley’s findings and show participants the range of primary documents soon to be available for research at the Wilderness Road Regional Museum.
A registration fee of $20 includes coffee and donuts beginning at 8:30 a.m., and a lunch of soup and sandwiches. Guests can register by calling the museum at (540) 674-4835 during its hours of operation (10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.) You can download event flyer here.