IDQuest Home 2022 Handbook IDQ Genealogy Reveals
Time / Room |
Presenter(s) |
Presentation |
Presentation Description |
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Morning Keynotes |
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Video | Dan Debenham | Relative Race | Teams find healing, hope, and new beginnings as they race to find their long-lost relatives. |
Kathleen Brandt | DNA: Our Love – Hate Relationship | DNA analysis, international and nationwide documentation retrieval, free-colored research, military record retrievals, and tracing slaves, as well as Irish, Swedish, and German records. | |
Session 1 |
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Video | Marty Flanagan | What’s in Your DNA? | Learn about the four types of DNA: Autosomal, mtDNA, yDNA and the X Chromosome |
Donna Rae Pearson | What’s in an Oral History? | Learn how to conduct an oral history with useful tips and tools | |
Video | Kim Stanley | A Creative Guide to Writing Your Family’s Stories | We all love discovering a fantastic tale of our family’s past—whether it be the distant relative who journeyed on the Mayflower or the grandmother who riveted airplanes at a World War II factory. But how do we share these stories in engaging ways? This workshop provides the tools to enrich genealogical research with story and memory so that readers will feel what it was like to be in that moment. Exercises include developing characters, describing places and events of importance, and finding the heart of a story with the goal of creating an irresistible read. |
Kaily Carson & Lori Halfhide | Discovering your Orphan Train Ancestors | The history of the orphan train movement and how to research orphan train riders. | |
Video | Christina Valdivia-Alcala | Colonization, Migration and Longing for Rootedness | Christina will discuss her family’s migration to the United States and the impact of colonization that have caused a deep loss of ancestral history. She will share glimpses into generational trauma, maintaining cultural traditions of food and dance, along with commitment to social and environmental justice that help with the rootedness we often long for in today’s society.” |
Video | Steven Wright | Sankofa: Go back to the past and bring forward that which is useful. | Connecting the past with the present allows us to be more effective agents in shaping our understanding of the forces that will have the most positive impact on our collective future. The Sankofa comes to us from the Akan people of West Africa. It symbolizes the Akan people’s quest for knowledge with the implication that the quest is based on critical examination, and intelligent and patient investigation. In our quest, we honor those who have gone before us; they show us the way and teach us the strategies for survival, endurance and growth. But first we must find them. This session will be about considering some of the ways by which we might do that. |
Video | Phillip Baker | Genealogy: Chasing Your Family Roots | Dr. Baker will show how he got started with his family history research. From 1998, using submitted family trees through FamilySearch, contacting submitters by phone and following up with collecting records, he personally typed his family research. He has published six books with over 2500 total pages and one book of recipes. |
Session 2 |
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Video | Marty Flanagan | Why You Should Use AncestryDNA | Ancestry has a database of 22 million people with DNA linked to public access trees. You can also build your tree on Ancestry for free. Learn how this compares to everything else. |
Video | Renee Aldrich | Using FamilySearch | Overview of FamilySearch Family Tree |
Video | Lauren Gray | Genealogy Resources Available at the Kansas State Historical Society | Learn about the collections that are available at the Kansas State Historical Society to help you find your relatives. |
Video | Nancy Williams, Leslie Harris, Gayla Hoyt, Rosanne Wilson and Patricia Carpenter | Panel Discussion:
Daughters of American Colonists, Daughters of Colonial Dames of the XVII Century Daughters of 1812, Daughters of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, Daughters of Founders and Patriots of America |
This presentation will be a general panel discussion about how to join lineage organizations. Three organizations will be discussed specifically– United States Daughters of 1812, Daughters of the American Colonists, and Daughters of the Founders and Patriots of America. Mary Hoyt, Registrar; Gayla Hoyt, State President of USD 1812; Nancy Buckingham Williams, State Regent of DAC; and Patricia Carpenter, Chaplain of DFPA will be the panel. Each member of the panel belongs to at least two of the three organizations. |
Angela Bates | Nicodemus: Children of the Promised Land |
Within the context of settling in the West and at the end of Reconstruction, this presentation discusses the dynamics of mothers and their children after slavery, stories of children conceived in slavery but born free, and the contrast of life and decisions based on the simple concept of “choice,” which freedom afforded. |
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Video | Holly and Kristen Zane | Quindaro: America’s Largest Underground Railroad Site – Spawned from Bleeding Kansas | Learn about Wyandot Nation and the Wyandot Origins of Quindaro: America’s Largest Underground Railroad Site |
Video | Barbara La Clair | Researching Native American Ancestry | Lots of families have stories of possible Native American ancestry but lack the proof. Others know for certain that they have a Native American branch in their family tree but may not know where to look for records and documents to help fill out the stories of those ancestors. This talk will briefly cover how to look for proof of Native American ancestry, and then take a look at some examples of record types that are unique to Native Americans. |
Session 3 |
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Video | Marty Flanagan | Expanding Your DNA Story | You can use MyHeritage to expand your DNA story. They have lots of great tools to help. |
Video | Jenny Coss | Digitize Your Photos: Proceed Wisely and with a Plan! | We will overview of some considerations and best practices to employ when starting a digitizing project. What are the different scan formats and resolutions, and when to use what? What equipment do I need? Where do I store my digitized photos and how do I organize them so I can easily find them in future? This session touches on these topics and gives you suggestions for follow up reading. |
Video | Cindy Cruz | Connect, Communicate, and Collaborate; Non-traditional Strategies for Researching Family History |
Cindy Cruz will demonstrate simple techniques to gather genealogical information from familiar websites that might not be obtained with conventional searches by name or location. Tips for locating resources and utilizing long-distance collaboration with other family historians will be emphasized. |
Mary Hoyt | Sparkle with DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) | Learn the history of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), records they provide and how you can connect to a patriot in your family. | |
Video | John Manning | One Irish Family’s Journey: From County Cavan to Nebraska | One of the difficulties in doing Irish family research is understanding how to start. Family history research becomes more challenging when we start to research our distant generations. As with other practices for family history, you need to start from what you know and use that information to find out more. This means you should take the time to evaluate your records and see if you have overlooked any meaningful clues. |
Video | Della Regenold | Are you a Mayflower Descendent | This presentation will cover Pilgrim history, information on the Mayflower Society, as well as research tools available to find Mayflower ancestors. It has never been easier to find a Mayflower ancestor. |
Video | Debbie Gurtler | Brick Wall Strategies for Elusive Ancestors | When facing a brick wall, there are several strategies you can try to overcome a roadblock. This presentation will discuss them for Hispanic ancestors but many of the principles apply to ancestors from anywhere. |
Session 4 |
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Video | Marty Flanagan | Tools to Organize Your DNA | Learn to use tools like DNA Painter, GedMatch, and tools at LivingDNA to help you organize your DNA. |
Video | Sherri Camp | Getting Started Building Your Family Tree | Learn how to build your family tree with some of the most popular stand alone and online software. |
Lenora Lynam | Finding Your Swedish Roots | Learn the basics of Swedish Genealogy to help you get started. You’ll learn what you need to have before you begin researching in Sweden. | |
Martie Rison | Founder of Topeka History Geeks | Learn How History Geeks Started and its Impact on Topeka | |
Kathy Meade | Searching in Older Church Records | Researching in the older church records (the early 1800s and 1700s) is more challenging because less handwriting can be difficult to decipher. In this session, we will review a couple of case studies navigating these records to help you to trace your heritage back to early 1700 solder records and present some tips and guidelines for information is provided in the records and the older and even the 1600’s. | |
Shari Golden | Tracing Immigrant Origins | This class will focus on 6 specific research options that may help you learn more about your immigrant ancestors: family sources, previous research, U.S. records, emigration/immigration records, naturalization records, and relatives/neighbors | |
Video | Brent Mai | Researching Volga German Ancestry Through Russian Archives | Catherine the Great invited Western Europeans, most of whom were ethnically German, to settle the Russian steppes in the 1760s. Over 30,000 people responded to this invitation and were settled in 106 colonies along the Volga River north of what today is the city of Volgograd. From arrival in 1764 until deportation in 1941, Russian authorities kept detailed records of the activities of these colonists and the local Lutheran, Reformed, and Roman Catholic clergy recorded pastoral acts (baptisms, marriages, and burials) in each of the parishes. Following Stalin’s deportation of the descendants of these colonists to gulags in Siberia and Kazakhstan in August & September of 1941, records that survived the war time were scattered among 4 major archives. Dr. Mai will be presenting at ID Quest on the documentation of Volga German ancestry that has been discovered in these archives and some of what is available to researchers to-date. |





In addition to extensive self-study, Coss takes courses through the Museum Studies Graduate Program at the University of Kansas. She also volunteers helping small history museums and archives apply conservation principles to their collections.
Sherri Camp is the Genealogy Librarian at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Topeka, Kansas. There, she teaches regular classes on genealogy and organizes cultural heritage programs and conferences, promoting genealogy and family history research. She has been a genealogist for over thirty years. She has a BA History, BA Sociology, and a master’s in liberal studies with a History and Technology focus from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas; she also holds a Certificate in Genealogy from Brigham Young University.
Mrs. Camp has served as a Family History Librarian at the Family History Center in Topeka, KS for seventeen years and a Family History Consultant since 2005; She is the founding president of Kansas Network to Freedom, which educates the public on the Underground Railroad in Kansas; She chaired the 2010 Underground Railroad Conference held in Topeka and presented her original research at the 2014 Conference in Detroit, Michigan.
She is also the author of African American Topeka a book that is part of the Images of American Series published by Arcadia Publishers in 2013. It celebrates 150 years of Topeka history. The photos of African American life in her book document the history of Topeka from its territorial days to the present. It is an acknowledgement of the African American’s contribution to their Topeka community.
Mrs. Camp’s family came to the Topeka area during the Exodus, in the late 1800s, and settled south of Topeka, later moving into the city of Topeka, the subject of her book. She sees collecting the stories and photos for African American Topeka as an opportunity to expand the efforts that are dedicated to helping African Americans discover and document their family history, genealogy, and culture.
She is the founding and current president of the Kansas Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) and served as the society’s National Vice President for five years and its president for two years; she teaches genealogy and history workshops and classes locally and across the country.
Sherri has taught in Topeka, in the Topeka Public schools. She is also active in the community and a member of the Topeka Alliance of Black School Educators and serves as the historian. She is also president and founder of Family Artifacts and Cultural Exchange, a research group that helps researchers of African American genealogy. She does presentations on the importance of family history research and has taught genealogy classes around the country as well as locally for local high school students. She is married, the mother of four with 12 grandchildren, including 5 bonus grands.





Shari Golden is a Genealogy Reference Associate at the Midwest Genealogy Center (MGC) in Independence, Missouri. Genealogy, research and storytelling have all held her interest in one capacity or another her entire life.
Golden was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but made her home in Oklahoma, Kansas and Minnesota. She is a graduate of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, and the University of Missouri – Kansas City. Prior to MGC, Golden worked in various facets of social services for 15 years. She transitioned those skills to her work in genealogy studies related to orphans, intergenerational trauma, boarding schools, poor farms, Indigenous research, and finding female ancestors.
Golden is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, which has helped propel her studies in Indian law, treaty rights and general native cultural research. When she has time off, she appreciates spending it in nature, gardening, painting, taking photographs, traveling, listening to music, attending powwows, and learning new skills.


Lenora Lynam is the Director at the Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage. Before this she was the archivist at the museum. Lynam grew up in Axtell, Kansas, with family ties to some of the earliest Swedish settlers of that area. She attended Bethany College in Lindsborg and earned a bachelor’s degree in History. Lynam began working for the museum soon after college. Her interest in genealogy served her well in the management of the museum’s large archives.
The archives draw people from across the country searching for their ancestors. With strong skills in Swedish genealogy Lynam enjoys helping researchers find connections both in Kansas and Sweden. She was involved with a project in 2015 to document Swedish settlement in Kansas and to make more records available to researchers.
Dr. Brent Mai has authored several books and dozens of articles on the history and culture of the Volga Germans as well as translated thousands of historical documents. He has spoken about Volga Germans at academic and genealogical conferences in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Mai worked with the archives that hold important documentation about the Volga Germans in Russia, Germany, Argentina, Canada and the United States.
Mai has led the descendants of Volga Germans on 11 tours to visit their former ancestral colonies in Russia. He holds degrees from Bethany College (Kansas), George Washington University, The University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt University. He currently serves as the Dean of Libraries at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida, where he also directs the Volga German Institute (VGI). Mai’s academic focus is on the socio-economic movement of the Volga Germans over the past 260 years, and much of his research is available on the VGI website (volga.domains.unf.edu).
John Manning, the principal researcher of the Country School Genealogist LLC, has more than three decades of research experience. Retired after 40 years as a U.S. Army officer and Federal employee, Manning brings a wealth of knowledge to enrich the experience of genealogy research and family history storytelling. He writes, lectures and consults on various genealogy topics, including Irish research, military records, and immigration and naturalization records.
Manning is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). His genealogy training and education include the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP), Writing Logical Proof Arguments Practicum, and attending the Genealogical Institute on Federal Records (Gen-Fed), held at the National Archives in Washington, DC. Additionally, he completed the Boston University Certificate of Genealogical Studies, the 18-month ProGen Study Group and attended numerous local, regional and national genealogy conferences.
Donna Rae Pearson received her master’s degree in History from Wichita State University and considers herself a radical historian. Her research focuses on the history of African Americans in Kansas and Historic Preservation. As a public historian Pearson firmly believes everybody has a story and the story must be told. As part of her duties as Local History Librarian at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, she is currently serving on both the City of Topeka’s Planning Commission and the Local Landmarks Commission.
She highly values participatory research projects that give underrepresented groups agency to tell their stories in the most accessible way possible. During her 20+ years of experience, Pearson has created community-driven exhibits, conducted oral history projects, developed local history workshops as well as conducted local history tours.
Recent Projects
Her presentation, “Mapping Inequality” was recently chosen to be part of the Humanities Kansas Speakers Bureau. Her recent consulting work has included Reclaiming Home, a project that focuses on the impact of Urban Renewal on the integrated Topeka community known as the Bottoms. She co-owns the historical consulting company, The Other Road, which is currently developing a walking tour of a historic African American neighborhood in Topeka. Oh! Pearson enjoys doing road trips to random spots. She doesn’t have any animals but does enjoy the company of her three children and family.
Pearson has conducted and participated in numerous community engagement and oral history projects. She has more than 10 years of experience in the museum field as well as an additional 10 years in archives management. During the past 20 years, Pearson has developed the skills to create community-driven exhibitions.



Christina Valdivia-Alcala was born and raised in both Topeka’s Oakland neighborhood and a farm outside of Grantville. She grew up in a large family unit that stressed volunteerism, political involvement, and civil rights. She graduated from Hayden High School and has a B.A. from Washburn University in History with a minor in Political Science. Christina obtained her degree as a non-traditional student and in the early 1990’s she traveled to El Salvador and conducted oral history projects on the post-civil war lives of combatants.
Christina has volunteered for decades in Topeka’s Mexican American community including interviews of community elders, chaired her daughter’s Fiesta Mexicana Royalty Contest, chaired publicity on the Fiesta Mexicana planning committee and expanded arts and culture for children during Fiesta. She was a member/officer of MANA de Topeka in the early 1990’s. Valdivia-Alcala has served on the Shawnee County Civil Service Board, the Advisory Board for the Center of Latin American & Caribbean Studies at the University of Kansas and the Shawnee County Historical Society.
In 2012, Valdivia-Alcala founded the Tonantzin Society, grassroots all volunteer community organization. The Society has been responsible for numerous primary and secondary educational projects. Additionally, the organization has hosted community events in Topeka and across the state. The Society preserves and educates on Chicana/Indigenous/ Latinx art and culture with additional emphasis on social and environmental justice. One of the Society’s major programs (with Kansas public school educators, KSBE, KSDE and legislators) is Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Program for Kansas Public Schools (7-12). She currently serves as Tonantzin Society Director.
Christina lives in the Oakland community and is married, with one daughter and two grandchildren.
The Zane Sisters, Holly (Wakǫresatáhtaʔ = She Who Extends Her Paw) and Kristen (Yarónyaʔawiʔ = Voice that Floats from the Sky) are enrolled members of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas (Bear Clan), and regularly speak to groups on the culture and history of the Wyandots (and other Immigrant Tribes) in Kansas, including the Wyandots involvement in the establishment of the abolitionist town of Quindaro.
Holly Zane, JD, graduate from KU with degrees in Honors English and Law, has represented her tribe pro bono in federal litigation to preserve and protect its burial ground in Kansas City, Kansas, the Huron Indian Cemetery and has served in various roles on the tribal council. She has worked over the last decade as a human resources professional for the State of Kansas.
Kristen Zane, PE Emeritis, graduated from KU with a degree in Civil Engineering and has studied Federal Indian Law at UCLA Law School. Although Kristen is now retired, she spent her entire Engineering career in the Kansas City area and was the first minority and second woman president of the Kansas City Engineer Club. She is currently working on a grant funded project with other retired tribal members to data archive all Wyandot records throughout the U.S. and Canada and previously served as secretary of the tribal council.
The Zane Sisters can often be found at Kansas museums, libraries and historic sites, such as the Shawnee Indian Museum, Grinter House Place Museum, Old Quindaro Museum, and Fort Scott, wearing traditional Wyandot period regalia, performing as living historians of Bleeding and Civil War Kansas and demonstrating forgotten crafts, such as pine needle basket weaving, corn husk doll-making and Iroquois raised bead work.


She started teaching DNA at the Topeka Genealogical Society (TGS) six years ago. She completed a week of training with Ce Ce Moore and another week with Blaine Bettinger. Flanagan also attended a week taking DNA classes at Root Tech at Salt Lake, Utah from the experts. She has taken her genealogy to the next level, as she has proven her lines, to National Society of the Daughters of The American Revolutionary War, Colonial Dames of the 17th Century, Daughters of the American Colonies, War of 1812, Daughters of Union Vets of the Civil War and General Society Mayflower Descendants. She has found four pilgrims in celebration of 400 years of their landing in America. Flanagan’s presentations will cover DNA.