Well-known Mississippi television personality Walt Grayson will be the keynote speaker Saturday, June 13 for Mississippi State’s second E.O. Templeton Jr. History and Genealogy Fair.
Research enthusiasts in the two topic areas from around the state and region are being invited to the all-day event at the university’s Mitchell Memorial Library. Registration, which is free, begins at 9:30 a.m. in the first-floor auditorium.
Pre-registration is encouraged and may be completed either by phoning Special Collections at 662-325-7679 between 7:30 a.m-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, or visiting library.msstate.edu/genealogy.
Box lunches will be available for $8 and should be reserved before noon June 8.
In addition to Grayson’s 10:30 a.m. presentation in the auditorium and individual sessions on a variety of topics, the fair will include tours of the library’s visiting African American Treasures of The Kinsey Collection, as well as the permanent Charles H. Templeton Sr. Music Museum and Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library.
Grayson is the on-air personality at “Look Around Mississippi,” a long-running weekly feature of Jackson’s WLBT-TV. Beyond the capital city’s television coverage area, the Greenville native also is easily recognized as reporter, writer, producer and host of Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s popular “Mississippi Roads” travel program.
A fifth-generation Mississippian and member of the Associated Press Mississippi Broadcasters Hall of Fame, he is the author of four books about the Magnolia State. For more, visit msnewsnow.com/story/213259/walt-grayson.
Other fair speakers, at 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., respectively, will include:
n David Nolen, Grant Presidential Library assistant editor and reference librarian, on “‘My Family is American, and has been for Generations’: Ulysses S. Grant and Genealogy”;
n Heather Moore, special collections librarian at Mississippi College’s Leland Speed Library, on “Genealogy Help from Church Records.”
Microfilm machines, online databases and assistance with genealogy research will be available to fair participants. Persons requiring individual assistance with specific issues are asked to bring along essential research documentation.
Complete information on MSU Libraries is found at lib.msstate.edu.
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