MAMMOTH CAVE NATIONAL PARK — Karen Phillips was one several people who turned out Friday night for the genealogy workshop at Mammoth Cave National Park.

“Roots in the Cave” helps with family research for people whose ancestors might have lived in what is now Mammoth Cave National Park.

“I come every year because my family is from here,” said Phillips, who is originally from Cave City. “I think the workshop will be interesting. I haven’t gone to a whole lot of those. I’ve done a lot of hunting on my own, but it never hurts to get pointers from somebody who knows.”

Joining her for the workshop were Barbara Jeter, Carol Collins and Donnie Collins who were interested in learning more about Floyd Collins and his family.

“Floyd Collins is his great and her great uncle and Floyd Collins was the fellow who got trapped in the cave at Sand Cave. The Collins family had property many, many years ago, of course before it was turned into a national park, and it just sounded like an interesting thing we would like to hear and learn more about,” said Carol Collins, of Horse Cave. “As we get older we treasure more about our past and our past ancestors and want to know more about them. That’s one reason we’re here and to learn what we can about other people.”

The workshop, which was taught by J. Mark Lowe, of Springfield, Tenn., focused on how to locate ancestors through land they may have owned and memberships in fraternal military organizations, such as the Grand Army of the Republic and the Confederate Veterans.

Lowe became interested in genealogy at the age of 7 while attending a family reunion.

“There was a family there of a name that I didn’t recognize. I asked my dad why they were at our reunion. He said, ‘Well, they’re kin to us.’ And so I kept asking questions as a 7-year-old. We swung over to Smiths Grove and he stopped and we popped out. He stood at the foot of his grandmother’s grave and he introduced me.”

Lowe’s father also introduced him to other relatives buried at the same cemetery and gave him a quick history lesson about the family.

“So at that point I was somewhat hooked. That summer I was still interested. He took me to visit one of his aunts, who was involved with the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), who had prepared for me to spend my summer at the Warren County Courthouse with the county court clerk,” he said.

That summer Lowe learned how to look up marriage records, wills, estates, probate records and deeds.

“From that time forward I’ve been learning,” he said. “I understood from the beginning that these pieces of paper represent real people and so it’s all about stories. I’m caught up with the stories.”

This year marked the 16th year for the genealogy workshop and Lowe has been speaker for many of them.

“We’ve got some people who have come every year since we’ve started,” said Joy Lyons, chief of programs for Mammoth Cave National Park. “So we try to vary it every year with Mark focusing on specific types of genealogy or specific types of records and documents.”

The genealogy workshop was followed by a cemetery workshop on Saturday.

“In the past we tend to use the first hour as a classroom situation where we can show images and go over the legalities, like what’s legal in the state of Kentucky regarding the protection of cemeteries and what’s not,” Lyons said. “And then we pick a cemetery to go out into. Different years we will do different things. We’ve surveyed cemeteries, we’ve gone walked around and showed people different people how to read cemetery stones.”

This year the workshop focused on the preservation of tombstones — how to clean and repair them.

The genealogy and cemetery workshop is just one among many events that take place at the national park throughout the year. For more information on what’s happening at the national park, visit www.nps.gov.