Researching My Hometown Ancestors

It is nearly Christmas and winter still hasn't arrived for us. We had two weeks where the temperatures got down into the 50s and 60s but this week it has been in the mid to upper 70s again with frequent rain showers. It is hard for us here in Florida to realize that many parts of the rest of the country are having winter storm advisories. With weather like that we really don't get forced into staying indoors for days to do our family history research but when I do get a good chance to research, I want to make sure I am getting the most out of my time. So, here are some suggestions on making sure you are focusing on sources with the potential for high returns.

Map of Ohio where my research is focused.

I am one of those lucky people who don't have far flung ancestors to research. My research focuses on a very small area of Ohio consisting of parts of four counties; Auglaize, Darke, Mercer and Shelby. And within those four counties it is mainly within the four corners area as shown in the red square on the map.

First of all, I want to discuss the general process of finding the sources for your locations. This step, developing a locality guide, can help you learn more about the area you are researching and help you find the important resources that you need to be successful. The FamilyLocket blog and podcast have some great tips on creating locality guides. They have three podcasts on this specific topic: RLP 4, RLP 5, and RLP 18.

Where are some good places to begin developing your locality guide? First, I would suggest using the FamilySearch Wiki. If you aren't familiar with the FamilySearch Wiki, it is "a free, online genealogical guide created and maintained by FamilySearch. It contains links to genealogy databases, websites, other resources, research strategies, and genealogical guidance to assist in the search for your ancestors. Articles included are locality pages for countries around the world and topic pages that include pertinent genealogy record types explaining how to use the record, what it contains, and how to find it." The Wiki is developed and edited by teams of users, much like Wikipedia, who are familiar with the research topic and want to help provide the resources necessary for you to have successful discoveries. The Wiki can be searched by genealogy topic as well as locality. Since the topics are developed by volunteers, some sections may be more complete than others. For example, in my research of Auglaize, Darke, Mercer and Shelby counties in Ohio, I would look up each county in the Wiki to see what information is readily available: Auglaize, Darke, Mercer, Shelby.

Another website that I would use to help develop my locality guide is The Family History Guide. The Family History Guide is generally seen as a tutorial for learning how to use the big four genealogy sites (FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage) but it is also a great resource for finding locality information to help research your ancestors. To find the location information, click on Countries in the menu bar at the top of the Family History Guide web page and select the country you want to research. In my case I selected United States. Once on the US page, I selected Ohio from the list of states under the title bar and before the general lessons on US Records and Searches. On the Ohio page there are a series of general lessons to help you understand researching the state and there is a list of county resources at the bottom of the page. This list has the name of each county and a series of letters (for example, Auglaize A L G U). Clicking on the county name will take you to the FamilySearch Wiki page for that county. Clicking the A links you to the Ancestry card catalog for that location, L goes to the Linkpendium list for that location, G goes to Genealogy Inc's list for the location, and U goes to the USGenWeb page for the location. Each of these sites may provide you additional resources to add to your locality guide.

Google is another source for your research. Make sure you do a thorough search on Google and its various sites. Searching Google can help you find the local historical societies, libraries and museums which may have resources of information that can assist you. The search can also link you with others researching the same families and locations. Searching Google Books can provide county histories and other resources that can help build the historical context for your research. For example, I was able to find a book titled "History of Western Ohio and Auglaize County with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Pioneers and Prominent Public Men" published in 1905. These county histories can provide excellent hints for your research.

Newspapers are also an important resource when researching a particular location. I was lucky enough to have several of my local newspapers already online for free. One of my favorite free sites to look up newspapers is Ancestor Hunt. They have a general page about using newspapers for your research and a more specific page for finding resources by state. For Ohio, they have links to several hundred newspapers around the state in various collections. Two of my most used newspaper resources are the Community History Archive of the Coldwater Public Library and the Minster Historical Society's Newspaper Collection. These collections have more than 100 years worth of local newspapers for the Auglaize County area available online. You might also have luck finding local newspapers on the Library of Congress' Chronicling America site. Other locations to look for newspapers are University collections. For example, Bowling Green State University has their collection of newspapers here.

I also suggest that you look at maps for your area as you are researching. Historic maps will show boundary changes and potentially towns that no longer exist. Plat maps will show land ownership changes over time. Current maps will help provide current landmarks for you to use during your research. One of my favorite mapping sites is Historic Map Works. They provide a variety of old maps including plat maps and gazetteers.  Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps can provide details about buildings in an area. These maps show the footprint, construction materials, and floor plans of various building. Examples of these maps can be found in the Library of Congress map collections.

I hope these links will help you develop your locality guide and set you on the way to successful researching. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

Color the World - Comparing Various Colorizing Web Sites

My puppy, Tyrion, stealing my chair

It has been a bit over a month since my last blog post. Back in October I was in London speaking at RootsTech and doing some sight seeing with my wife. We had a great time visiting her ancestral homeland and even got to see where one of her ancestors was buried at the Tower of London and another in Westminster Abbey. Since then I have been pretty busy. Our new puppy is very demanding and every time I sit down at the computer he begins to cry, so I haven't had much opportunity to write lately. My wife named him Tyrion after her favorite character in Game of Thrones.

But, I finally have a chance to write a short blog post so I decided to provide some input on the current interest on colorizing old photographs. I wanted to compare three of the leading colorization websites - Algorithmia, Colourise, and DeepAI. I had written a blog post about Algorithmia back on July 26, 2016, but decided to do this updated comparison now that there are competing sites out there.

All three of these sites are one step colorizing pages. All you have to do is upload the photo and hit the button to colorize the photo. I will show you the images from each site so you can compare them yourselves.








The first set of images is a photograph of a little girl's First Communion. The original was a sepia toned photo and I have no idea as to the color of the actual items.
















This photo was colorized at Algorithmia. The photo seems to be a bit overly pink in the skin tones in the face but almost grey for the hands. The piece of furniture that she is leaning on has a deep wood tone while the floor is an odd brown color with blue tinges. The background appears to be a vibrant blue sky with clouds and trees. The vine drapped over her has a blueish tint.

This photo was colorized at Colourise. The photo seems to be overly green and the skin tones are a bit muted. The piece of furniture in this photo seems to be made of metal with heavy steel colors or could be a darkly stained wood. The floor is grey and could easily be interpreted as concrete. The background here looks almost abstract with little discernible image compared to the other two images. The vine draped over her has a green tint and looks like leaves.













This photo was colorized at DeepAI. The piece of furniture appears to be wood at the top and then transitions into a darker color toward the bottom. The background in this photo has good colors but the blues are a bit muted compared to the one from Algorithma. The skin color is good but appears to fade off along the edges. The vine draped over her appears to have some red flowers with the green leaves.

This is the original photo of the Stueve family from Ohio. Hopefully we will see various colors in each set of clothes and have nice green grass when it is colorized.








This photo was colorized at Algorithmia. The grass looks fine but the other parts of the photo are not correct. Most of the skin tones are grey. The clothes tend to remain black or grey with red tones randomly placed.







This photo was colorized at Colourise. It is much more vibrant than the one done at Algorithmia. The skin tones look more natural but there are some random red spots around the chins of the men on either end.

This photo was colorized at DeepAI. The colors here are similar to those provided at Colourise but the random red spots are gone. 

This is the original photo of Jim Botkins. It is a nice sepia head shot.

This photo was colorized at Algorithmia. It has a blue tone to the image background which is also present in the image from DeepAI but not from Colourise.

This photo was colorized at Colourise. This photo seems to have a lot of darker tones around the face and the hair isn't as blonde as I would expect.

This photo was colorized at DeepAI. This image has a more consistent blue tone to the background and the hair and eye color look more natural compared to the other photos.










As you can see, the results of colorization depends greatly on which application you use. Also, Algorithmia adds a mark on each photo with their website. The other sites do not add a visible mark on your photos. Overall, I liked the results from DeepAI the most, followed by Colourise, and then Algorithmia last.

RootsTech London 2019 - Day 3 - October 26, 2019

Day three of RootsTech London is over and everyone is getting ready to head home but it was a great three days of genealogy. Yesterday I spent my day attending German classes. Today I attended FamilySearch classes.

The first class I attended was FamilySearch's Helpful Hidden Tools by Darris Williams. He discussed some of the things many of us might overlook while using FamilySearch. One of the things he talked about was the map of England Jurisdictions in 1851. This map shows county, parish, civil registration, diocese and many other boundaries of England at that time. This map can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/mapp. This is a great tool for those who are researching English ancestors. He also pointed out that there are many genealogies on FamilySearch including the IGI which can provide important hints. They are also beginning to add Affiliate Library pages to the FamilySearch Wiki. If you know of an affiliate library let them know that they can build their own page. Instructions can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/FamilySearch_Wiki:WikiProject_Creating_an_Affiliate_Library_Page. Did you know that there are now over 97,000 pages in the Wiki? Those pages are important resources that can help you discover how to research an area or topic. Then there is the Guided Research page which steps you through the process of your research. You go from page to page by selecting the appropriate response and at the end you should have a list of potential sites that will help you do the specific research. The Guided Research page begins at https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Guided_Research_for_Online_Records. These are some great new tools that we should all try.

My wife and her 12th cousin, Donny Osmond

After that class we went to the main auditorium to watch Donny Osmond discuss his family history and perform a few of his hits. The women went wild! He is an incredible performer and his stories were inspiring.

The second presentation I attended was What is FamilySearch? by David Rencher. David provided some good information on the history of FamilySearch, from its beginnings as the Genealogical Society of Utah back in 1894 to the international presence of FamilySearch today. They started indexing in 1927, microfilming records in 1938, and opened the Granite Mountain Vault in 1963. In 1998, they began using digital cameras to record new records, with over 300 cameras in the field. In 2004 they began digitizing more than 2.4 million microfilm rolls and in 2007 they put the first digital collections online. The first version of FamilySearch was released online in 1999 and the current iteration was released in 2013. So what can we now find online at FamilySearch? They now have over 7.4 billion searchable names and over 3.1 billion images, along with over 423,000 digital books.

The third class that I attended was Use an Ancestor's FAN Club to Get Past Brick Walls by Drew Smith, one of the Genealogy Guys. He provided several examples of how expanding your research to the Family, Associates and Neighbors (FAN) can increase your chances for success in researching elusive ancestors.

My wife and I talking to Dan Debenham

We also spent some time in the Expo Hall today. We were able to talk to Dan Debenham from BYU TV's Relative Race. We had a great conversation about the production of Relative Race.

The final event of the night was a fireside with Elder Bednar and his wife talking about family history.

Overall, this was another successful RootsTech prepared by FamilySearch. I am looking forward to the 10th anniversary of RootsTech Salt Lake in 2020.

RootsTech London 2019 - Day 2 - October 25, 2019

Day 2 of RootsTech London is over. It was another great day. I spent most of the day attending classes on German research.

The first talk I attended was Sources and Structures for Successful Genealogical Research in Germany by Dirk Weissleder. This presentation covered primary sources such as church and state registers. Civil registrations in Germany didn't start until 1874. Prior to that church registers are the primary source of information for German researchers. In the lack of primary sources many researchers have to rely on secondary sources such as tax lists, court documents, address and telephone directories, and town or village chronicles. Other sources of information can include Ortsfamilienbuecher (village family books), and Leichenpredigten (Protestant) and Totenzettel (Catholic) which include funeral cards and funeral mass records. More records are going online at various sites including compgen.de. You might even get lucky searching the Familienkundliche Literaturdatanbank at http://famlit.genealogy.net.

Marc Jarzebowski presented How to find German Church Records on the Internet. His talk focused on the two major sites for German church records - Archion for Protestant records, and Matricula for Catholic records. Archion has been able to digitize at least part of all but three of the regional churches in Germany. Bremen, Schaumburg-Lippe and the Reformed Church are not included in the Archion collection. Matricula, on the other hand, is not as complete for Germany, with only five diocese being partially represented in its collections. However, Matricula does cover additional countries including Austria, Poland, Serbia and Luxembourg. If you are lucky enough to find records on Matricula, you will not be able to download them. Another difference is that Archion is a subscription site while Matricula is free. As a note, church records found in the state archives are usually the duplicate records while those found on Archion and Matricula are the original records. These original records may include notes that are not present on the duplicates. If you find the duplicate records but can't find the record on these two sites, you will know which parish they came from and can request a copy of the original record from that parish.

Public Records in Germany in 19th Century - Standes- and Zivilstandsregister by Roland Geiger was also a very interesting talk. He went into detail about what information can be found in various record types. One of the interesting bits of information he mentioned was that civil marriages were required even if someone was married in a church. This resulted in two sets of records for the marriage which may have different dates for the marriage event. He also mentioned that civil records are not always held in the local town, they may be in nearby towns or regional archives. This could cause problems if you are trying to research in the local archives.

The last talk of the day was Getting Started with German Family History Research by Ursula Krause. Ursula is a Progenealogist with Ancestry. She provided a sponsored talk to discuss the resources available on Ancestry for German research. There were a couple things that she said all German researchers need to be aware of in their research. One was that the boundaries have changed over time, from independent cities and states to the consolidated Germany. Another thing that we need to be aware of is that religions might change in an area based on who was ruling. These changes may result in records being found somewhere other than where we expect to find them. We also need to be aware of name variations and how first names may be abbreviated. For example Freiderich may be abbreviated Fred. or Fr. or could be spelled Freiderik. Additionally, some records, such as passenger records from Bremen, were destroyed so it could be difficult to find some of the records we need in our research.

These presentations will help me to increase my success in researching my German ancestors. However, German records were only a portion of the presentations given today. There were many other topics including Irish, DNA, Italian, Chinese, Scottish and others on the schedule for today.

The keynote talks were by Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch; Tamsin Todd, CEO of FindMyPast; and Kadeena Cox, British Paralympian. Kadena talked about her mother's life growing up in Jamaica and immigration to England. Kadeena was a promising Olympian until her stroke at the age of 23. After her stroke she continued to train for the Olympics and then was diagnosed with MS. Now she competes in the Paralympics and will be participating in the Paralympics World Games in in Dubai in November.  Tamsin Todd spoke about a few new collections at FindMyPast including the 1921 UK Census, additions to the British Newspaper Archive, and tree-to-tree matching. The entertainment was provided by Tre Amici.

Tre Amici at RootsTech London.

Tomorrow is the final day of RootsTech London. I hope everyone has a great day and learned something new while they were here or watching the live broadcasts of classes.

RootsTech London 2019 - Day 1 - October 24, 2019

Ok, I know it has been a few months since my last post - actually it was my last day at RootsTech in Salt Lake City. But now I am in London for the first international RootsTech conference. I was even able to get my wife to come along for a vacation in London, sightseeing for several days before the conference started. We had a great time visiting her relatives buried in the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey.

Day one of RootsTech London was great. The RootsTech teams did a great job of organizing the event and everything went very smoothly. I presented my talk on exploring European archives online. It was well attended and I had a lot of people come up after the talk to ask questions.

So, what else did I do on the first day of RootsTech London? I attended great presentations, visited the Expo Hall and met up with old friends. I attended two classes on DNA, one by Angie Bush and the other by Diahan Southard. Angie Bush talked about some of the tools that can be used to assist your research using DNA. She talked about how you can triangulate common ancestors, use DNA Painter, and had an overview of the tools Ancestry has available. Diahan Southard discussed the various DNA tests and compared each company's products. She also talked about the differences in Y-DNA, Mt-DNA and Autosomal DNA and how they can be used to improve your research.

I also attended a class titled The Power of Big Data - Let's Build a Time Machine. This talk described how a consortium of organizations and universities are using data from historic records to create the world of the past. They are working on AI and other technologies to automatically assess records for specific information. More information on this project can be found on their website at https://www.timemachine.eu. The panel of presenters discussed several of the projects that they are currently working on. One project traced the political leaders of Venice by building their family trees and determining how heredity influenced the potential for being elected to offices in the Venice government. Another project they discussed was a population study for a community in southern Spain. This project can be found at http://dag.cvc.uab.es/xarxes. There were several other projects including a 4-D urban history explorer. This program searches for online pictures which it then situates in perspective with the landscape. This allows you to "walk" through a model of the town, looking at the images to see the details of the buildings. This project can be found at http://www.urbanhistory4d.org. There are many other projects being developed within the Time Machine consortium. Take a look and explore the future of historic big data.

The last class that I attended was one sponsored by the British Museum talking about their digitization projects. They are working with a variety of partners to digitize historical records and make the accessible to the public. They currently have a web archive storing over 500 terabytes of information. Their collections can be found at https://www.bl.uk. The British Library Labs (https://www.bl.uk/projects/british-library-labs) is working on a variety of projects including optical character recognition for their Qatar Digital Library and Bengal Collections. Both of these projects use manuscripts with foreign script which has been more difficult to transcribe using computer learning but they are making great strides in making these documents accessible to all. Another project they are working on is an assessment of how the Industrial Age impacted people's lives in Britain. This project is looking for volunteers to help them prepare the documents (https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/bldigital/living-with-machines). Another project that they are looking for volunteers to help with is the transcription of historic playbills. This project can be found at https://www.libcrowds.com/collection/playbills.

There are so many new initiatives working to make the historical data available to us today. I can't wait until these projects are complete and we can explore the world of our ancestors in a more immersive way.

RootsTech 2019 - Saturday - 2 March

Last Day of RootsTech

Well, RootsTech 2019 is now over. It was a great week and the crews did a wonderful job of keeping everything running. Since I was speaking today I decided to take it easy on the classes and try to get a few things done before I left.

Today I attended a joint class by FamilySearch and The Family History Guide called Discover, Gather and Connect Your Family Together. This presentation focused on activities we can do with our families and others to encourage family history. It has been found that children with a knowledge of their family history have greater self confidence, self worth, sense of identity and belonging, and can handle stress better. As they learn about their ancestors they gain a better understanding of their world and the trials and celebrations that have come before them.

Elder Bradley D. Foster said "We want everyone to have that discovery experience, because that is what changes their hearts."

So, how do we get our families excited about family history? FamilySearch and The Family History Guide have provided a variety of activity videos to help us. FamilySearch's activities can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/discovery. The list of activities on The Family History Guide can be found at https://www.thefhguide.com/act-index.html. These activities are designed to be age appropriate and suited to any size family, from the individual up to multiple generations. Families can do simple activities such as recording their ancestor's recipes at https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/recipes. Or they can take on more complex projects such as recreating a part of an ancestor's life (https://www.thefhguide.com/blog/creating-ancestor-connections-fun-ideas-from-the-family-history-guide-childrens-activities-section). Check out the activities pages and see which ones are designed for your family.

I also attended the BYU Family History lunch. The presenter talked about the Family History program at BYU and some of the innovative projects the students are working on. These projects included the Tree Sweeper and Virtual Family Tree. Information about their projects can be found at https://fhtl.byu.edu. They also discussed the Family History degree program and the conferences and webinars they produce.

Tear down of RootsTech 2019

My talk on the Tour of Online European Archives went well. I had good attendance considering the location of the classroom and it being the last class session of the conference. The audience had lots of questions about their favorite archives and seemed to be genuinely interested in the topic.

Now the crews are taking down the conference and getting ready for the next event. We will all have to wait another year for RootsTech 2020 which will be held on February 26-29. I hope to see my friends, both new and old, there next year.

RootsTech 2019 - Friday - 1 March

Crowds at RootsTech

Three days into RootsTech and I am still alive. There are so many things to do here that many genealogists are overwhelmed trying to learn everything we can in only 4 days. They have said there were 15,000 pre-registered attendees for the conference. Saturday is Discovery Day and the crowds are expected to increase by several thousand more.

Today was my day to focus on some German research classes. One class I attended focused on German Family Research in the Digital Age. This class was led by Dietmar Cziesla of FamilySearch and Andreas Hedwig from the Hessisches Landesarchiv. There were a couple major points presented concerning how Germans feel about the use of social media and sharing information. While 50-60% of Germans have Facebook accounts, they don't share information like Americans. They tend to use the WhatsApp app because they feel it is more private. This is evidenced by the fact that between 83% and 96% of Germans, depending on age group, have WhatsApp accounts. Also, Germans are not as likely to do DNA tests but Ancestry and MyHeritage are trying to increase the comfort level so more will provide DNA samples and more matches might become available in the next few years.

Currently there are 50 million German record images available online, 30 million of those are from Hesse. The physical records in Germany are held in 65 different archives and consist of over 1,000 miles of shelves. One collection that was mentioned was the War Maps collection. I found it interesting that this collection contained detailed maps of the east coast of the US. The oldest records in the German archives date back to the 8th century and church parish records start in the 14th century. The partnership between FamilySearch and the Hessisches Landesarchiv has resulted in 11 million digital record images being put online. They are now working on hand writing recognition applications and expect surname indexes to be available within the next couple years. Place searches are already available for these records. One great resource in the German archives is the website www.arcinsys.de. Check it out to see the number of collections already available. Additionally, FamilySearch has five digital camera crews currently working in Germany to digitize new records and they have a partnership with Ancestry to index the German Lutheran Church records.

MyHeritage DNA AutoCluster

MyHeritage talked about some of their new DNA tools - AutoClusters and the Family Theory of Relativity. Both of these will make DNA relative discoveries much more efficient. The AutoClusters organizes shared DNA matches into clusters of related individuals. Each cluster likely has a common shared ancestor. Once you find a cluster (a block of similar colored boxes), you can begin to determine how that group is related.

MyHeritage's other new DNA tool, the Family Theory of Relativity, uses data from various sources including family trees from MyHeritage, FamilySearch and Geni, along with records such as censuses, and DNA matches to build an estimated family tree which shows how you may be related to a DNA match. All that is required to develop a theory is for both individuals to have a family tree on MyHeritage with at least 1 person in the tree connected to the DNA sample. Users are expected to review these matches and provide feedback as to the accuracy of the estimates.

MyHeritage also announced an extension to their DNA Quest program which was started at RootsTech last year. That program contributed 15,000 DNA kits to adoptees and provided support to find their biological families. This year, they will provide an additional 5,000 kits. The program starts today and runs through April 30. Adoptees can register for the program at www.dnaquest.com. 

I hope you have enjoyed reading my posts about what is happening at RootsTech. I will be speaking tomorrow so I don't know how many classes I will be attending. So, I'll say goodnight for now. 

RootsTech 2019 - Thursday - 28 February

Are these your ancestors?

Hi there, day two of RootsTech is now over. It was another busy day and I am going on only 4 hours sleep (time change problem). So, what happened today? I spent more time in the Expo Hall today talking to vendors and seeing what new things were available. I also ran into these guys in the picture. I wonder if they are related to me?

My first class was New FamilySearch Record Innovations. This class discussed how records will be changing over the coming years. One thing they discussed was indexing. Last year there were 260 million records indexed by 327,696 indexers. In 2019, researchers will be able to thank the indexers for the records they worked on. Each indexed record will be linked to the indexers and arbitrator that worked on that record and there will be a Thank You button which the researcher can click to send a message to the indexers and arbitrator. This will probably be released sometime around July/August. Also, later this year, indexers will be able to take advantage of automatic name and place lookups. Names and place names will automatically be filled in as the indexer types the information for the record. This is currently in final testing. Additionally, there will be new ways to volunteer so that more indexers will be available to handle the increased number of digitized records. If you remember from my post yesterday, we are currently 40 years behind in indexing and each year enough new records are digitized to add another decade to the backlog. That means by the end of 2020 we will have a 60 year backlog of digitized images needing to be indexed. Another new item is that users will be able to edit records in the record details screen of the search results. This will start with being able to correct errors in names but will eventually expand to include places and other fields.

And what about all those unindexed records? There are currently 3.65 billion images available on FamilySearch. 1.36 billion of those images are browse only while 915.4 million of them are in the Family History Catalog. Only about 20% of the total number of images are indexed and that percentage is decreasing every year as new records are added. Currently it takes an average of 249 days for an image to go from digitization to being published on the FamilySearch website. Soon that time lag will be decreased to only 24 hours. Imagine that the images are scanned one day and available online the next day.

Explore Historical Images beta site

FamilySearch is now beta testing the Explore Historical Images function. This page allows you to search by place, date, event or film number and will provide a list of images not yet searchable or browseable through the regular FamilySearch website. As an example, I took the screenshot of the results for Auglaize County, Ohio. There ended up being 93 record sets for this area that are not yet available on FamilySearch but I can see them here and search through the tens of thousands of new images.

Additionally, FamilySearch again reiterated their work with computer aided indexing. The computers aren't as accurate as human indexers but they can more quickly index large numbers of typed records. The example of the GenealogyBank Obituary Collection only taking 3 weeks to provide 50 million indexed records was discussed and they also announced plans to add another 38 million more records very soon.

Ancestry Labs beta projects

The General Session featured Ancestry.com and some of their big news. Ancestry announced that they currently have more than 15 million people in their DNA network and they announced the release of DNA ThruLines in beta this week. This is another way to look at your DNA results and see connections between people. They also announced MyTreeTags which allows users to tag information to highlight details or tag for future research. These products can be accessed at https://www.ancestry.com/beta. Ancestry also announced several new expansion areas including 12 new state vital record collections, expanded US immigration/naturalization collections, expanded US WW II draft card collection, the world's largest obituary collection (newspapers.com), global expansion by adding more records for Denmark, France, Finland, Mexico and Norway, and 94 new African American DNA Communities.

Patricia Heaton, from Everybody Loves Raymond, finished off the General Session by talking about her family and the stories around them.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

I attended the Ancestry sponsored lunch where Henry Louis Gates, Jr. spoke about a short film project called Railroad Ties. Railroad Ties was based on the story of the underground railroad and more specifically the escape of Mary Weems from slavery. The story revolved around 6 strangers and how genealogy research was able to connect them all to this event. If you want to see the story you can go to https://www.ancestry.com/cs/railroadties.

I thought Henry Louis Gates, Jr. made some very profound statements during this discussion.  He said "One of the biggest misconceptions today is the idea of racial purity." The average African American is 25% European. He himself is 50% European based on his DNA. Even European Americans are mixed ethnicity, having portions of their DNA represented in several different countries. He also said "We are all united in our amnesia of our ancestors." At one time he thought the lack of knowledge of ones ancestors was specific to African Americans. He believed that they didn't know about their ancestors because of the impact of slavery but after researching the genealogies of various people for his TV shows, he realized that we all have a lack of knowledge that basically begins with our great grandparents lives. We have very little concept of who our ancestors were beginning only 3 generations ago. He believes that "Genealogy can revolutionize how we teach American and World History." If we realized how our ancestors were involved in history or affected by it, we would have a greater appreciation for the history that we study in schools.

As always, there was so much to learn today that I can't provide everything in just one blog. If you want to see some of the talks that were given this week, you can visit the RootsTech YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/user/FamilySearch/videos. I hope this information is helpful to you. Now, it is time for me to get some sleep because tomorrow is another packed day.  Goodnight!

RootsTech 2019 - Wednesday - 27 February

Crowds gathering for the first day of RootsTech 2019

Wow! Day one done at RootsTech 2019. Another great day of genealogy and networking down and the crews and volunteers have been doing a wonderful job keeping everything going. So, what did I learn today and how will it affect your genealogy research in the future?

First of all, I attended the Access and Preservation sessions this morning. These sessions were developed to help archivists learn more about what various archives are doing to make their records more available and useful to the public. David Carmichael, archivist for Pennsylvania, commented that archivists know what they do but many don't know why they do it. They need to talk more with the users to see how the materials they have in their archives are being used and hear the stories those records provide, not just know that they have so many linear feet of records on a particular subject. Mr. Carmichael also discussed the different problems they experience with storing digital records versus the physical records. Many archives have records that are several hundred years old but often have difficulty maintaining digital records in a usable format over the period of a few decades. Back in the 1980's his archive scanned many of their collections in a digital format developed by IBM but that format is no longer supported. Luckily they had maintained their physical collections and could scan them in a more modern format. Now they store their records in PDF-A format which is an archival pdf format and should last for the foreseeable future. Another problem they have today is that many modern records have never had a physical presence. These records, such as e-mails and digital photography, have only been digital. Several positive features of digital archives is that they can be monetized and there are companies that are producing digital records for the marketplace at a rapid pace. Additionally, digital records allow cooperative efforts and virtual communities to develop. Groups of people can get involved by providing and indexing collections that might not have been available otherwise.

Joe Price of the BYU Linking Lab discussed several projects his students are working on. One project is working with computer AI to learn handwriting recognition. The billions of digital records that are currently available can be compared with what humans have indexed so the computers can begin to learn to recognize the handwriting patterns. Another project is using these large record databases to begin statistical analysis of communities or groups of people for scientific studies. This moves the records that we think of as genealogy records into a new realm of users which may provide us more insight into their lives. For example, they are taking the 1850-1940 census information and the computers are linking them together into a census tree to follow people and their migration patterns. This analysis can follow individual families across the range of census records and also link them to other records such as school yearbooks and directories to gather more information. They are now linking records from the major genealogy databases to build the stories of individuals. This helps to find people who are not yet in FamilySearch's Family Tree through Tree Extending Hints. One example of this is a webpage called the Social Networks and Archival Context (http://snaccooperative.org).

The third talk in the Archives and Preservation series was from Kris Rcepzynski, archivist for Michigan. He talked about the seekingmichigan.org website and how their partnership with FamilySearch has provided increased access to various Michigan records. This website is undergoing a major facelift and will re-emerge later this year as michiganology.org. They are currently working on putting up county probate records as well as county naturalization records. They currently have naturalization records for 70 out of the 83 Michigan counties online.

During lunch I attended the FamilySearch talk. They discussed the three major problems they are experiencing.
1) My country's records are not a priority. - Priorities are being set by the number of requests they have gotten for various records. Some areas have very few requests and are therefore lower on the priority list.
2) There is a backlog for indexing records. - The current backlog is 40 years. By the end of 2019 the backlog will be 50 years and by the end of 2020 it will be 60 years. This is due to the large number of new records that are being digitized. We either need to find a way to increase the number of indexers from the 300,000 we currently have or find a new way to index records.
3) We aren't getting records fast enough to avoid loss. - Every year more records are lost due to various reasons. There just aren't enough crews out there indexing these at risk documents to avoid losing some.

So, what is FamilySearch doing to address these problems? Imagine is everyone, from individuals to public archives, had the ability to upload any documents they have and those records could be processed, indexed and published all within 24 hours. That would provide unlimited record access and allow communities to work together to preserve their own sets of records. This is happening in several test areas now. Another advancement is the ability of computers to perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of not just typed documents but also handwritten ones. Last year in a test of the computer's abilities they were able to OCR 50 million obituaries in only 3 weeks. This is now the GenealogyBank Obituary Collection we find on FamilySearch. They were able to use the Amazon servers to perform this task in record time. Now FamilySearch users are able to go in and fix indexing errors from this test. They are also working on a new image search process where the computer will estimate where a record should be in an unindexed collection of digital images based on the information you put in the search process. This will save countless hours of searching image after image trying to find your ancestor. Once you find the proper record you can attach it to the person as a source and index it right there.

Martin Luther King III speaking live at RootsTech

In other news, tonight Elder David A. Bednar announced a $2 million contribution to the International African American Museum. This money will be used to construct the Center for Family History which will be part of the museum in Charleston, South Carolina. The Church and FamilySearch have been major partners in the development of this museum and will continue to support its mission of providing a source of education about the period of slavery and life after slavery. Martin Luther King III also spoke about the importance of everyone, but especially African Americans, being able to discover their roots.

Devon Noel Lee interviewing me at RootsTech

FindMyPast announced several big items. One is that the Catholic records from the Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia and Liverpool Diocese are now available on their site. They also discussed their acquisition of RootsFinder and their partnership with Living DNA. These partnerships, along with their exclusive rights to the digital UK 1951 Census collection make it one of the best sites for researching your English and Irish ancestors.

What else happened? Well, I was interviewed by Devon Noel Lee for her Family History Fanatics YouTube channel. We discussed doing research in the European archives. I also manned a table with several of my fellow members of the Second Life Virtual Genealogical Society. We were talking about the benefits of becoming a member of SLVGS to people who came by. All in all, it was a very productive day and I learned some new things about the genealogy world. But now it is time to get ready for some sleep so I can do this all again tomorrow. Good night all.

SLVGS crew manning a table at RootsTech

RootsTech 2019 - Tuesday - 26 February

Do you know what RootsTech is? Have you attended a RootsTech Conference in the past? RootsTech is the largest genealogy conference in the world, held in Salt Lake City, the mecca for genealogy. They are expecting over 14,000 people per day to attend. The conference runs for four days, from Wednesday, February 27 until Saturday, March 2 and today was the day of preparations for many of us.

View flying over the Rocky Mountains

So, what was today like? Well, for me it consisted of flying from Orlando to Salt Lake City. I left my home at 4am, boarded my flight in Orlando and spent the next 4 1/2 hours in the air. The flight was great, there was almost no turbulence, and we even arrived 25 minutes early.

Once I arrived, I boarded the UTA Trax which is a train line that runs throughout the city and to adjacent communities. This is one of the best metro lines I have used. It was less than a 10 minute ride from the airport right to my hotel.

After checking into the Plaza Hotel, I went across the road to the Salt Palace, where the conference will be held. They had early registration this year and it was seamless for me. I already had my name card which was sent to me earlier so all I had to do was pick up my bag, lanyard and speaker badge.

After registering, I decided to check out the room that I will be speaking at this year. My presentation is in room 155E at 3:00 on Saturday. That happens to be the last presentation session of the conference. I was surprised at the size of the rooms this year. They seem to be quite a bit larger than in previous years.

Room 155E where I will be speaking.

I walked around the Salt Palace for at least a half hour reacquainting myself with the layout and quickest route between classes. You need to know the layout so you can get to your preferred class. If you get lost you might miss out on that one class you really wanted to take.

One of the things many of us do at RootsTech is network. I had a meet-up planned for lunch for some of the members of the Second Life Genealogical Society. I am the current President of the organization and this is the only chance we get to bring us together and talk about our research. It was great getting back with some of them and meeting some for the first time in real life.

Julianne Trotter (FamilySearch) and me discussing indexing.

I also had an opportunity to meet up with Julianne Trotter from FamilySearch. She was one of the leads for the Zoning project that ran for awhile during 2017-2018. Zoning was a process where indexers selected newspaper articles related to birth, marriage and death events so they could be indexed later. We discussed where the project is now and also how to increase public interest in indexing more records. I mentioned one of the projects that I have been doing for several months which I call Genealogy on the Street. Each month I have been attending a local street market and setting up a genealogy booth where we do genealogy research for random people who come around. This has been a great success and has brought many new people into our Family History Center. I think we had a good discussion and it has made me think more seriously about some of the outreach plans I have been considering for the last couple years.

Now it is time to begin to relax, get things ready for tomorrow, and make sure I know which classes I want to attend. There will be a lot to do over the next couple days and I hope to be able to provide my readers with some insight on this conference and some helpful tips for their research.

German Immigration Records

I have decided to post a series of articles concerning German genealogy research and this one will be the second. I hope these articles will help those of us who have German roots.

Many times when we are just beginning our research we set a goal of finding our immigrant ancestors. Why is that? For some of us, that seems like a start to our story as Americans - the typical immigrant story of desperation, coming to the land of promise and making a name for ourselves. For others, we want to see how long our families have been in the country and if we qualify for membership in a lineage society. My wife has several waves of early immigrants including Jamestown and the Pilgrims as well as some more recent immigrants. She has nearly a dozen direct ancestors who were Patriots in the Revolutionary War. For me, on the other hand, all of my ancestors arrived during the mid 1800s during one of the mass immigration waves from Germany.

If you are of German descent, your ancestors probably came to the country during one of the major German influxes. The first significant influx of German immigrants was in the 1680s and they settled in New York and Pennsylvania. This group consisted of the Quakers and Mennonites who were seeking religious freedom. Many of them originated from the Lower Rhine region of Germany.

The second group were the members of the Palatine migration in 1709. This migration consisted of about 15,000 immigrants from the Palatine region located in southwestern Germany. These people primarily settled in New York and North Carolina. These immigrants cited poverty as their primary reason for leaving Germany.

Another large influx of German immigrants occurred between 1728 and 1820. About half of these immigrants were known as "redemptioners", poor Germans who came to America as indentured servants.

Distribution of Germans - 1872

One of the largest waves of German immigrants occurred between the 1830s and 1880s. This is when  my ancestors arrived. Between 25% and 37% of all immigrants each year were from Germany. This major influx can be divided into two groups. First, between the 1830s and 1860s, the majority of immigrants came from Hessen-Darmstadt, Hessen-Kassel, Westphalia, Hannover, and Oldenburg. The second group, between the 1870s and 1880s, were generally from Mecklenberg and the Prussian provinces of East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Posen, and Brandenberg. These immigrants tended to be farmers destined for the Midwest states, arriving in cities live Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. They were fleeing the political upheavals and revolutions which were occurring in Western Europe.

The first step in discovering your German immigrants is probably to trace them in the US census records. This is generally fairly easy since the more recent census records (post 1850) have information such as the place of birth of the individual, place of birth of their parents, and some indication of immigration status and/or year.

Once you determine which influx of immigrants your ancestors belonged to, you can begin to figure out which port of entry they may have used. For example, they could have come in through one of the major ports of entry such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Galveston or New Orleans. New York had two ports of arrival, the most recent being Ellis Island (1892-1954) but prior to that it was Castle Garden (1820-1892). Each of these ports have a website that you can search for your immigrants in: Ellis Island - Castle Garden. Records for the Port of Philadelphia are available for the period 1800-1945.  Port of Baltimore records are available for 1820-1948. Galveston has records from 1846-1948. New Orleans records are available for 1800-1945. Many German immigrants who settled in St. Louis of Cincinnati came in through New Orleans and then took river boats, or other modes of transportation, up the Mississippi River.

Once you have found the port of entry you will be able to find the ship's passenger list. Sometimes these are just lists of the names and ages of the passengers but other times they are a wealth of information. You could find the nationality or place of birth of the immigrant, the date of departure and arrival, port of departure and arrival, age, height, profession, last place of residence, name and address of relative they are joining in the US, and the amount of money or number of trunks they are bringing to the country.

Example of a ship's passenger list with excellent information.

Hopefully you are able to find a passenger list like the one above. This one has the name of the immigrant, age, sex, occupation, nationality, city of last residence, name and address of relative in Germany, and destination, along with the ship's name, port of departure and date. You can see that Emil Augenstein was born in Ellmendingen, Germany and that he still had family living there.

Most German immigrants left from one of four major ports; Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, or Le Havre, France. Between 1850 and 1891, 41% of German immigrants left through the port of Bremen, 30% via Hamburg, 16% from Le Havre, and 8% from Antwerp.

A complete collection of Hamburg passengers from 1850 to 1934 can be found on FamilySearch and Ancestry. The FamilySearch records must be searched at your local Family History Center due to contract requirements.

Unfortunately, all of the Bremen records from 1875 to 1908 were destroyed because of lack of storage space. Additionally, most of the records from 1920 to 1939 were destroyed during WW II. FamilySearch does have a searchable index of Bremen passenger lists from 1907-1908 and 1913-1914. The Staats Archiv Bremen also has a database of ships and passengers which contains the surviving records from 1904-1914 and 1920-1939. To use this database you need to know the name of the ship and its departure date which can be found in US immigration records. If you can find the person's name in the FamilySearch index you will then know the name of the ship and its departure date and can look up the passenger list from that voyage.

Obituary for Theresa Terling Wise

Most immigrants from southern Germany left from Le Havre but their records are incomplete and consist mainly of passengers on commercial cargo vessels between 1750 and 1886. The Groupement Genealogique du Havre et de Seine-Maritime has placed a partial list of 45,000 passengers, 25,000 sailors, and others who departed from Le Havre between 1780 and 1840 online. You can search to see if your surname is included in the list but you have to pay to see the records.

How else might you find where in Germany your ancestor was born?  You could try to locate an obituary for your ancestor. The obituary pictured here tells me that Theresa Terling, my great-great grandmother was born on January 26, 1839 in Glandorf, Germany.

Another set of records that can be helpful for finding German immigrants are the WW I Enemy Alien Registration Affidavits. These records were required for all non-naturalized "enemy aliens" during WW I. That means that if your German ancestor had not become a naturalized citizen of the United States prior to the beginning of the war he had to register. These records include a wealth of information including name(s), current and previous addresses, length of residency, birth date and place, employer, immigration date and port of arrival, and parent's names.

WW I Enemy Alien Registration

For more ideas on where to find German records check out the German Roots website.

Good luck and I hope you can find your German ancestors.