Hundreds attend Emancipation event ( Owen Sound, Ontario)

Festival chairman Dennis Scott and genealosgist Lisa Lee at family genealogy during the 148th Emancipation Celebration Picnis held Saturday at Harrison Park. Hanging behind are pictures of Scotts family. Lee found out the two are related while doing genealogy research.

Lisa Lee has traced her family lineage back to the early days of legal slavery in America.

Her fascination with genealogy began in 1970 when, as a 14-year-old girl, she began interviewing her grandparents about family history.

The California resident said she believes she is a “born” genealogist and that for each family, one person per generation is “chosen” as the ancestry researcher.

“I think the ancestors really do want to be found,” she said Saturday in an interview at Harrison Park in Owen Sound.

Lee was the keynote speaker at this year’s 148th Emancipation Festival, held each year to celebrate the abolition of slavery by the British and Americans in the 1860s. The event also commemorates Owen Sound’s status as the northernmost terminus of the Underground Railroad, which helped many slaves escape to freedom.

Lee, founder of the website gotgenealogy.com, set up a booth at the Emancipation picnic to promote the website and to help others discover their roots.

She has developed the 10 “Golden Rules” of genealogy to help others trace their family tree. She advises people to ignore spelling discrepancies in names or places — as many ancestors were unable to spell — and to document all research, so the next generation can pick up where the previous person left off.

“No matter how many decades you spend researching your family, your research will never be done. In that stead, plan on passing along your research to the next generation’s researchers. Leave excellent notes, cite all your sources, explain your shorthand . . . in essence, leave your research the way you’d have liked to have found it,” says Rule 9.

Lee said interest in genealogy continues to increase and is now the second-fastest growing online hobby.

“People want to be able to connect to something bigger than they,” she said.

She said learning about ancestry can give a person a sense of belonging, pride and inspiration.

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