“Tips & Tricks to Uncovering Your Past” is the theme of the Pastfinders of South Lake County Genealogical Society’s third annual Mid-Winter Conference.

Registration is underway for the conference, which is scheduled from 9am-4pm Feb. 15 at the Lake-Sumter State College auditorium on the Clermont campus, 1250 N. Hancock Road. Seating is limited, and registration is $30 per person, a news release states. Visit pastfindersslc.org and click the “event registration” tab to choose your lunch option and register for the conference. Members of Pastfinders may log in to the website before registering to receive a discounted admission price.

The conference will kick off with a short film on Clermont’s history during the 1920s. Doris Bloodsworth, co-author of the new book, “Clermont: From Gem of the Hills to Choice of Champions,” will be available for a meet and greet.

The morning will be dominated by the genealogy couple of Clyde and Kathy Stickney. Kathy will start off teaching participants about research in “Finding Out More About Your Ancestors Through Newspapers.” Then Clyde will join her for “Establishing Generational Relationships Prior to the 1880 Census.”

After lunch and a brief tour of the genealogical facilities at Cooper Memorial Library in Clermont, Dick Eastman will have two presentations: “Better Than Soundex,” about utilizing a better system than the Soundex Code that the Census Bureau and genealogists have been using since 1918, and “Finding Genealogy Books for Free and for Pay,” in which he will explain how to find the many online resources of genealogy and history books.

Dick is well-known in the genealogy world and the author of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter (eogn.com), which has been available for subscription for more than 23 years. He worked in the computer industry for more than 50 years, and in the early 1970s, he started creating a family database on punch cards.

From left, Kathy Stickney, Clyde Stickney and Dick Eastman. // Provided photos