Well, okay, and me, too…
The Legal Genealogist is one of 150 genealogists from around the world whose names appear on the ballot of John Reid’s third annual contest for Rockstar Genealogists on his blog, Canada’s Anglo-Celtic Connections.
John defines a rockstar this way:
Rockstar genealogists are those who give “must attend” presentations at family history conferences or as webinars. Who, when you see a new family history article or publication by that person, makes it a must buy. Who you hang on their every word on a blog, podcast or newsgroup, or follow avidly on Facebook or Twitter?1
Last year, I was honored beyond belief to come in third, in the bronze prize place, behind two of my mentors and friends, Elizabeth Shown Mils and Thomas W. Jones.2 Just being on the same page with those two is an honor — being in the winner’s circle with them was amazing.
This year, I’m honored to be nominated again, and… and… and…
I want you to vote for someone else.
Oh, you can vote for more than one someone, so please do go ahead and vote for me, too, if you’re so inclined.
But I’d like you to vote as well for someone from a list of people who write and speak only on genetic genealogy. (I write about DNA too, but only on Sundays.)
Here’s why.
My friend Roberta Estes, who is a genetic genealogist and one of the nominees, has offered to donate $250 to the Preserve the Pensions campaign if a genetic genealogist comes in anywhere in the winner’s circle.3
Now you all know how near and dear that cause is to my heart. It’s why I climbed out of bed at oh-dark-thirty at the FGS Conference in San Antonio in August to walk to the Alamo to raise funds. And since this $250 can be doubled once by contributing through a local society, then doubled again by matching funds from Ancestry, your votes here could bring in $1,000 to help digitize War of 1812 pension papers.
There’s no limit to the number of people you can vote for — John says he will break the voting into categories when the polls close Friday or Saturday — but you can only vote once. Once you leave the voting booth, you can’t go back to add someone or change your vote.
But there are some really great people to choose from — including some fabulous genetic genealogists. And if any one of them makes it into a winner’s circle, Roberta has to pony up! Here are some folks to think about:
• CeCe Moore (Your Genetic Genealogist)
• Tim Janzen (see his DNA and Mennonite genealogy links here)
• Blaine Bettinger (The Genetic Genealogist)
• Bennett Greenspan (president of Gene by Gene and founder of Family Tree DNA)
• Debbie Kennett (Cruwys News)
• Katherine Borges (director of ISOGG) and
• Roberta Estes herself (DNAeXplained).
If you’ve heard these folks speak, if you’ve read what they’ve written, and you’ve been impressed (and how could you not be?), please consider casting at least one of your votes accordingly.
Let’s make Roberta Estes pay up — and Preserve the Pensions!
Oh, yeah, and vote for me too, willya? And Elizabeth, and Tom, and…
The voting booth is accessed through John’s blog post here.
Thanks.
SOURCES
- John Reid, Rockstar Genealogists 2014: Who Do You Think They Are?, Canada’s Anglo-Celtic Connections, posted 1 Sep 2013 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 8 Sep 2014). ↩
- See Judy G. Russell, “The company you keep,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 17 Sep 2013 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 8 Sep 2014). ↩
- See Roberta Estes, “Rockstar Genealogists – Sweetening the Pie,” DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy, posted 9 Sep 2014 (http://dna-explained.com/ : accessed 9 Sep 2014). ↩
I’m counting my pennies Judy:)
I sure hope you need to have 25000 pennies soon!!
Well, I found out one thing. My husband reads my blog. LOL
Uh oh. I hope you have 25000 pennies of your own, not in a joint account!
done and done!
Thanks, Megan!
Ms Judy are people allowed to pay to solicit votes? Starting to sound like REAL elections! 🙂 DNA will definitely get my vote!
I think when it’s (a) a beauty contest and (b) for a very good cause, it’s allowed.:) Plus we all do have the fact that we can vote for as many people as we’d like! True, we should only vote for those whose work we know — but perhaps this will spur folks to look at genetic genealogists they may not yet be familiar with!
I voted and checked your name first!! Anyone who gets up at Oh dark thirty is worthy of my vote for this fantastic cause, and your programs are in the “must attend” category!
Aw… thanks so much!
I had a look yesterday to see what it was, but didn’t have time to vote. So today I went to vote and it told me that I had already visited the site once.
The “joys” of cookies. All I can suggest is trying again from a different computer.
You can also try again using a different internet browser, it worked for me (I used Internet Explorer to browse and Chrome to vote).
Judy,
Because Roberta is contributing through a society (one match), she will then be matched again by Stern-NARA, and then by Ancestry – quadruple matching. So, according to the woman with the pensions I talked to at FGS $1 becomes $8. So, instead of digitizing 2 records, each dollar would end up digitizing 16. For more info see http://voice.fgs.org/2014/06/preserve-pensions-try-matching-funds.html
I passed a jar around last night at our meeting and collected $114. I will keep doing it for a few months and see what happens. The Stern-NARA match is not time limited – but it is up to a certain dollar amount – which she said they were not close to yet. So vote for a genetic genealogist AND then do a matching fund campaign with your local societies.
Good for you for doing that, Carolyn! Keep that jar going around! (Just for the record, the Muscogee (Georgia) Genealogical Society raised $140 by passing the hat last Saturday!