News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Upper Cumberland residents will have an opportunity to learn all about their family at the Upper Cumberland Family History & Genealogy Festival Saturday.
Putnam County Resident Anna Stephenson has studied Genealogy for over 25 years. Stephenson said she believes more people are interested in Genealogy because they want a sense of who they are.
“I think that we are all looking for a sense of belonging,” Stephenson said. “A deeper identity, Where do we come from? Who are our families? What trials did they face? What things did they accomplish? I think as we have gotten more mobile we have lost a lot of that information.”
Multiple counties from the Upper Cumberland will be represented at the Granville event. President of the Fentress County Historical Society David Steffey said they will offer a unique program that people can purchase to learn about their family tree.
“This program is unique in that the fact you can type in a name and another name and it will compare the two names and tell you your fourth cousins are twice removed and your fifth cousins are three times removed,” Steffey said. “And it will break it all down and show how you are related.”
Steffey said the program can trace families back to the 1700s. Stephenson will be demonstrating how to discover a family tree and determine what information is true. Stephenson said some websites can mislead people as a good portion of them have false information.
“The biggest thing is that there are lots of people out there for people looking for this information,” Stephenson said. “And there is a lot of information on the internet that may or may not be true, so we are going to tell you how to document your sources if what you are finding is actual facts.”
Pickett County Genealogy & Historical Society Secretary-Treasurer Judy Matin-Urban said people can discover some crazy untold stories about their family.
“I’ve had a lot of English ancestry that were not royalty but they were gentry,” Martin-Urban said. “And one of them was present for the coronation of Anne Boleyn.”
The festival is Saturday from 9am-5pm at the Granville Event Center and Granville Methodist Church.
