John Phillip Colletta of Washington, DC.

We are fortunate that John Philip Colletta, PhD, will be a mainstay of the Ontario Genealogical Society’s Conference 2010. Entertaining, knowledgeable and experienced, John is one of America’s most popular genealogical lecturers. People are still raving about his 2008 appearance in Toronto, where he spoke to the Ontario Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Conference organizers jumped at the opportunity to bring him back to Canada.

We will all get to hear John’s humour and wisdom during the closing plenary on Sunday afternoon. His topic promises to be quite a sensation: “Hacks and Hookers and Putting Up Pickles: Snares of Yesteryear’s English”.

But John’s contribution to Conference 2010 actually begins on Friday afternoon when he will present two lectures in the Professional/Advanced stream: “Stories that Instruct: Using Case Studies to Teach Genealogy Methodology” and “Principles of Good Writing and Good Storytelling”.

Then on Saturday, for a special group of family historians, John will be hard at work providing the backbone of the Italian ancestry program. After all, he literally wrote the book on researching Italian ancestry.

Sunday won’t be a day of rest, however. In addition to the closing plenary in the afternoon, John will give a two-part morning lecture on “Writing a Narrative History”.

Based in Washington, DC, John taught classes for the National Archives and Smithsonian Institution for 21 years. Now he lectures nationally and teaches at Samford University and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. His publications include dozens of journal articles, two manuals, They Came in Ships and Finding Italian Roots, as well as a narrative family history, Only a Few Bones: A True Account of the Rolling Fork Tragedy and Its Aftermath. This most recent book is a history of the German-speaking merchants of the Mississippi Delta during Reconstruction; it is written around the mysterious destruction of John’s great great grandfather’s country store, and its five unfortunate inhabitants.

You can read more about John at his website.

Designed with input from the Ontario Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (OCAPG), the professional/advanced module will deal with thorny issues of genealogical evidence, proof and problem-solving. Delivering the three morning lectures will be Dr. Thomas W. Jones, who was introduced in this blog on July 24 (below) in regard to his presentation of the Houston Memorial Lecture.

Here is a tentative list of methodological topics on which Dr. Jones will speak in the professional/advanced module:

• Inferential Genealogy: Deducing Ancestors’ Identities Indirectly
• Organizing Evidence to Overcome Record Shortages
• The Jones Jinx: Tracing Common Surnames

Discussions are underway with speakers of comparable stature to deliver two afternoon lectures in the professional/advanced module. Stay tuned…

His credentials are legion. Let’s start with his post-nominal letters:

• PhD: OK, that one was easy—Dr. Jones is a retired professor of education at Gallaudet University, the world leader in liberal education and career development for deaf and hard-of-hearing undergraduate students
• CG, CGL: Certified Genealogist and Certified Genealogical Lecturer, as credentialed by the Board for Certification of Genealogists
• FASG: Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists (a lifelong honour limited to 50 individuals at any one time)
• FNGS: Fellow of the National Genealogical Society, an honour conferred this past May
• FUGA: Fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association
  

  Thomas W. Jones, who will present the Houston Memorial Lecture at the Ontario Genealogical Society Conference 2010 in Toronto

As to his service to the genealogy community, Dr. Jones is:

• editor of the NGS Quarterly (the journal of the National Genealogical Society)
• a former trustee and past president of the Board for Certification of Genealogists
• a trustee of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG)

In addition to elected fellowships, Dr. Jones has received the following awards:

• APG’s Grahame T. Smallwood Jr. Award of Merit (2004)
• the National Genealogical Society Award for Excellence for an essay in the NGS Quarterly (1997) explaining how name variations, a common surname, misinformation in a death certificate, census inconsistencies, and an altered record were overcome to connect a Florida family to its Virginia forebears
• the same award (2002)—he is one of only two people to win twice—for an article demonstrating and explaining how to piece together indirect evidence to reconstruct a lineage in eighteenth-century Ireland

Altogether Dr. Jones has contributed fourteen articles to NGSQ, ten of which have dealt with analyzing difficult genealogical problems and developing sound conclusions.

Dr. Jones is on the staff at the Samford Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research, where every summer he coordinates the genealogical writing course. He taught the 2009 course on skill building for the professional at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and in 2010 he will coordinate the course on advanced genealogical methods. He has spoken at myriad conferences about genealogical evidence, proof and problem-solving

At Conference 2010, his theme for the Houston Lecture will be “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Genealogists”.