The mystery of former East Orange major James W. Kelly, Jr.

My brother Jeff has begun a new blog about the elementary school he attended in East Orange, New Jersey, during the late 1950s: Stockton School.  I'm enjoying seeing the photos and reading his postings about some of the people whom he went to school with or who taught there. 

One of his more recent postings mentioned an occasion where he met the mayor of East Orange, James W. Kelly, Jr.  What baffles him (and me) is that we can't find anything about Kelly after he left office in 1970.  I plan to keep searching, but unless Kelly is still alive somewhere (living off the grid in a retirement community?), I find it hard to believe that I can't find any record of his death.  Unfortunately, "James Kelly" is such a common name that I can't say for certain that one of the ones in the Social Security Death Index isn't him.

If someone out there happens to know something about what happened to Mayor Kelly after 1970, I'm sure that Jeff and I would love to hear about it.

Altha Corinne Martin - 1938

Is blogging dying? Well, not exactly...

This New York Times article suggests that younger people are moving away from traditional blogs to other ways to share information (certainly Facebook and Twitter), but notice the statistics for older bloggers (the age groups into which most genealogists fall):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/technology/internet/21blog.html

RootsTech 2011

It would be odd to have a blog about genealogy and technology and not talk about where I am right now, attending the first annual RootsTech, a conference dedicated to the intersection of genealogy and technology! So far, this conference has been like no other genealogy conference I've ever attended. Yesterday was a keynote by Shane Robison, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer for Hewlett-Packard Company. Tomorrow, the Founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, will be a keynote speaker. Combine those with people already well known to the genealogy community (such as Curt Witcher and Jay Verkler), and you've got a high-powered event full of sessions for all levels of technology experience.

As a blogger and podcaster, I'm flattered that an entire area (the Media Hub) has been set aside for those of us who communicate online. Tables with power and wired Internet connections, plus a glassed-in area for video interview recording and audio interview recording. I'll be sharing interviews that I'm conducting as part of future episodes of the Genealogy Guys Podcast.

The toughest time is squeezing in every fascinating event without wearing out! But I'll be posting a few more entries about the conference before I leave.

A downside to DNA testing...

http://xkcd.com/830/