About Debra

Debra S. Fleming is the principal of The Ancestry Detective, LLC, a genealogical research firm. She is a graduate of Florida State University, where she majored in creative writing and minored in her passion, religion.

She is an alumni of the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR), a member of the Genealogical Speakers Guild (GSG), the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), and the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE). She has been teaching genealogy courses for the University of South Florida OSHER Lifelong Learning Center since 2007. Learn more about Debra at The Ancestry Detective.

Topics

My Grandpa’s Three Wives: Untangling the Multiple Marriages in Your Family Tree.
Multiple marriage is not just a modern phenomenon. Divorce and death of spouses has always been part of the American way of life. But, how does one untangle the many spouses of their ancestors? What do you do when he appears to marry a sister or cousin of an earlier spouse? We will explore marriage in its many forms and its various endings and techniques to track the multiple or tricky spouses of your ancestors.

Heritage Quest™: An Underutilized Resource
This is a how-to speech discussing the best and the worst aspects of Heritage Quest™.com (available to most library patrons) so that you, the Internet-savvy researcher can get the most out of it. Heritage Quest™ is frequently underutilized because of competition from other genealogical pay sites, and because its indexing and searching preferences are confusing. Once you see how to search Heritage Quest™, you can use it to surf the census, find Revolutionary War pension files, or search PERSI for any journal or magazine articles that may already exist about your ancestors, Freedman's Bank records, and the U.S. Serial Set. Heritage Quest™ can be used to verify searching methods for those ancestors you haven't found on other pay sites. It's a source every genealogist should be using all the time!

Family Traditions - Researching the Story
It's like Myth-busters for Genealogists: breaking down the family lore. We all have it—that story your grandmother or great uncle tells over and over, againµit is simply assumed true by sheer repetition. Well, there are ways to test that story and research your family lore. We just need to break the story down into pieces that can be researched. Using several personal examples of stories she has proven, busted, or deemed plausible, but unconfirmed; Fleming demonstrates a method you can use to research your own family lore. Some of the stories we will explore are: Did Aunt Margaret destroy another woman's marriage when she was 80? Were the Evans anti-slavery because they were staunch Methodists? Did John Shea get a medal from a famous Boston politician for jumping into a river in winter to save a drowning man? Did John Shea die of a gunshot while impersonating an FBI agent shaking down tramps at the rail yards?

Genealogy Bank^SM: Finding Your Ancestors in the News!
Newspapers can be one of our best sources for genealogical finds. Genealogy Bank^SM is one of the top resources for finding your ancestors in the news, but a good search requires an understanding of how the Web site works and of techniques to get the most from your searches. Using standard search techniques proven to work on most "NEXT 2" genealogy search engines, we will have a live practice session exploring and using tools available through the Genealogy Bank^SM Web site to scour these digitized pages for our ancestors. Genealogy Bank^SM contains not only historical newspapers, but also historical books, historical documents, and a Social Security Death Index (SSDI) that is updated every two weeks.

Ancestry Detective
Coming to Panama City!




Where were your forbearers, and what were they up to?
Find out at the

Genealogy Seminar

Saturday, 26 March 2011
9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Gibson Lecture Hall
Gulf Coast Community College
5230 West Highway 98
Panama City, Florida 32401
map
Presented by the
Bay County Genealogical Society

The public is invited, and everyone is welcome. Lunch included. Free juice, water, coffee, pastries, handouts, and valuable door prizes will be provided.

We invite you to join us for a great learning experience and an opportunity to meet and chat with other local area genealogists and family historians who share your interests—and perhaps—even some of your ancestors....

For questions, please contact
Suzanney at or 850-215-1579
Diana or 850-236-6240