A search for the truth behind the family stories she grew up with in southeastern America inspired internationally renowned lecturer, lawyer and genealogist Judy Russell to start digging into her family’s past more than 30 years ago.

Ms Russell will travel from her home at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia to Brisbane to share wisdom gained through combining law and genealogy as The Legal Genealogist at the Genealogical Society of Queensland’s family history conference Connections 2025, at Brisbane Technology Park, from March 21-24.

While she has not yet been able to find a link to a Mayflower ancestor – a desire as close to the heart of many Americans as the hope to uncover a convict past is to many Australians – she has found a surprising number of family stories to be true. Or as close to the truth as legal records will let her go.

“My mother's family is Scots-Irish and they are storytellers – but they never let the truth interfere with a good story. I grew up listening to the stories but went to law school and practiced law before I got to the point of really wanting to know if any of the stories could be even marginally true. The legal background has given me a leg-up in searching records and documentation,” she said.

“For every record we come across in family history, there's a legal underpinning. In common law countries, we wouldn't have deeds if it hadn't been for the Statute of Frauds passed in England in 1677. We wouldn't have birth, death or marriage certificates. What elements of a record we can rely on as evidence is largely because of the legal purpose of that record. When you put it all together, the two march hand in hand.”

» Brisbane will host Australasian family history conference, Connections 2025 in March, 2025. Click to download high res image.

The theme of transportation runs deep for Ms Russell who will open the conference with an address on the topic 'A sentence of transportation' on Friday, March 21 at 9.30am.

“Here in the United States, being a Mayflower or Jamestown descendant is like having 17 convicts in your family in Australia. It’s the fronter mentality that we are proud of and want to find a connection to. The problem for us in the United States – and this is the thrust of what I will talk about, is that even though a huge number of early arrivals in America were convicts being transported, we deny our convict past. We’d rather see our ancestors as indentured servants. America wants to romanticise its ancestors. The same is going on with Australia’s convict past because convicts are romantic ancestors, they’re interesting.

"The truth is, for all of us, we have every reason to be proud of those early transportees. Those who survived transportation, whether it was the early years to the Americas or the later years to Australia, were tough people who faced incredible odds and not only survived but thrived and passed on this frontier spirit to their descendants."

Sessions explore ethics and research tips

Ms Russell will present two Master Classes – 'You be the judge – ethics in action’ (8am, March 22) in which she will tackle family secrets and the tension between privacy and genealogical discovery, and ‘Digging deeper – extracting every clue’ (8am, March 23) which will aim to help family historians interpret clues from records. She will also present a general session, ‘The robot genealogist – separating fact from fiction in AI-assisted research’ (12pm, March 22).

Ms Russell said it was not enough for family historians to find a name and place and think they had found a family connection.

“Being able to reliably tie our families to a particular person requires digging deep into every record and extracting every clue. There are only so many vital records and when you have to start really digging deep into alternative sources such as manuscript collections to meat on the bones of your research, that can be the breaking point for a lot of people.

“Family history research also requires focus on the ethics of genealogy because we have new tools such as DNA and AI. AI is going to be a wonderful tool to move forward in some respects.

"However, it has the capacity to hallucinate, make up facts and sources out of whole cloth. It’s going to be our job to distinguish between the two and use it effectively and ethically.”

For Ms Russell, it was at a family funeral that she realised the time to discover the truth behind the family stories was disappearing.

“Everybody wants to know where they come from. For some, it's a very superficial introduction. With DNA testing, all some want to know is – am I a Viking, am I a nomad? Of that group, only a tiny percentage gets bitten by the bug and wants to know more.

“If you get bitten even a little bit, the connection with history is so powerful. In 2019 I stood in a church in London where my ninth great-grandfather was baptised, my 10th great-grandparents were married, and my 11th great-grandparents were buried. It was an amazing feeling of rootedness and connectedness. It’s the group that wants to know more that we as genealogists want to reach sooner and in a more powerful way,” Ms Russell said.

Connections 2025 will be held at Brisbane Technology Park, Eight Mile Plains from March 21-24. It is the first of its kind to be hosted by the leading Queensland family history society and will combine the 17th Australian Conference on Genealogy and Heraldry and the 5th History Queensland State Conference.

Conference details at a glance:

• Venue: Brisbane Technology Park, 1 Clunies Ross Court, Eight Mile Plains
• Cost: $515
• Extensive program: 48 presentations, six Master Classes, trade fair
• Exclusive access to GSQ’s resource centre
• Gala dinner
• Heritage tours of historic Brisbane