RootsTech Live 2025 and more (British Columbia, Canada and Połaniec, Poland Resources)

RootsTech 2025 registration is now open! (Actually it opened September 25th and I already have my tickets.) Similar to last year, registration is free for those who join RootsTech virtually and it is $99 for in-person until October 31. After that the price for in-person attendance increases. You can watch the RootsTech Live announcement about registration on YouTube. If you are ready to register you can go to the RootsTech website.

There are a couple things coming up in the next couple weeks. Each Wednesday at 2:30pm Eastern, there is a RootsTech Live event on YouTube where you can learn more about RootsTech. During October they will be talking to some of the speakers for RootsTech. I will be one of the guests this week Wednesday (October 9). As I mentioned in my previous post, I will be doing two live webinar presentations during RootsTech. That means everyone, even those watching virtually, will be able to watch live or view the recordings later. The two topics are:

• "The Ayes Have It - Discovering Your Ancestors Through Voting Records"
• "A Deep Dive into the US Census Records" 

You can see more information on these talks and others on the RootsTech Schedule.

Also, beginning on October 31, I will be giving out two RootsTech in-person tickets valued at $99 each. These tickets will be awarded in either December or January. But please don't wait to see if you win before buying your tickets. Get your tickets now while they have the early bird special and you will be refunded the cost if you win. These passes have been provided to me by RootsTech/FamilySearch as part of my participation in the RootsTech Media. (As a member of the RootsTech Media, my attendance at RootsTech is complimentary and I am provided minor compensation in the form of food vouchers.)

Now that I have talked about RootsTech a little - by the way, have I mentioned how great RootsTech is in-person? - let me talk a little about some of the research I have been working on over the last week and some great resources that I discovered.

I helped a researcher discover her British Columbia, Canada ancestors earlier this week. She was not able to find her ancestor on Ancestry or FamilySearch in the British Columbia Death Registrations, 1872-1986; 1992-1993 or Online Index of Deaths, 1872-1985 collections. After a little research I found a great resource with a large number of genealogical records and even the digital images of the death records she was looking for. The resource is the Royal BC Museum Family History (Genealogy) Collection. I would highly recommend downloading the BC Archives Genealogy Research Guide if you have relatives in British Columbia, Canada. That document contains 13 pages of links to various British Columbia resources. You can find digital images of the birth, baptism, marriage, and death records on their Genealogy - General Search page. The search covers the following time periods: births (1854-1903), marriages (1871-1947), deaths (1872-2002), colonial marriages (1859-1872) and baptisms (1836-1888). 

Another researcher was looking for relatives in Połaniec, Staszów, Świętokrzyskie, Poland. We have been using the Geneteka website which provides a large collection of indexed vital records across Poland. But as we know, the indexes are great but not complete. Additionally, the original records (or digital images) provide much more detail than what is covered in the indexes. So FamilySearch to the rescue! I looked up Połaniec, Poland in the Catalog and found that there were digital images for the Catholic (1810-1884) and Jewish (1826-1884) records. All of the images are locked but since we were in the FamilySearch Center, I was able to pull up several of the records that she was looking for.

That's all I have for this post. I hope to be able to post regularly for the next couple months at least. And until next time, good luck with your research.

AI image created by DALL-E 3 - Genealogy researcher researching in an archive.