RootsTech 2020 - Day 1

Day 1 of RootsTech in Salt Lake City begins the 10th anniversary of the event. I can't believe this is my fifth year attending. Each year I have come in a different role. The first year I was an attendee. The second year I was a volunteer. Last year I was a speaker. This year I am working in the expo hall with The Family History Guide.  Each experience has been great, I have learned a lot from the classes, and I have made many friends while at RootsTech.

So, in my previous blog, I mentioned some exciting news. Do you want to know what it is? (drum roll please) - RootsTech is returning to London! The conference will be held November 5-7, 2020 at the ExCel Center. Early bird registration will start at £79 for the full conference and £39 for one day passes. Registration is now open at https://rootstech2020london.smarteventscloud.com/portal/login.ww.

My wife and her niece meeting for the first time at RootsTech

In other big news, this was my wife's first time meeting her niece. RootsTech bringing families together!

Now that the big news is out, let's talk about what happened at RootsTech Salt Lake today. I'll start with the non-class items.

Genealogy Community Builders Forum with FamilySearch was this morning. This project developed when a small group of us from around the country met at last year's RootsTech for some brainstorming. We started having monthly teleconferences which we called The Bridge, where we discussed how we could bridge the gap between the genealogy community and the general public. Over the course of the year we evolved and started a Facebook group called Connecting Family History with Local Community. The Facebook group allowed us to grow the network of individuals interested in sharing experiences connecting with their local communities. Now we have added a FamilySearch Community called Family History Community Connections.

I also had a discussion with MyHeritage where we discussed what I thought were the highlights from MyHeritage that have helped my family history research. This interview was video taped and will be posted later.

My wife and I attended the FamilySearch sponsored lunch where we learned about some of the new projects that we can expect to see this year. Many of the items discussed were the same as last year, including faster access to digitized records, new technology which allowed for faster indexing of records, an increase in the number of field teams digitizing records, and a focus on collecting oral histories. There are now more than 4 billion images on FamilySearch and this number is increasing by the second. As an example of how fast images are being added, there were 41 collections updated or added just today. You can sort the new collections by date to see what has been added. Some collections are being updated within 24 hours of the images being filmed. New technology is increasing the rate at which images are being indexed. About 30 years ago the 1880 census was indexed in 17 years. The 1930 census was added in 2002 in about 15 months. In 2012 the 1940 census was added in 4 months. When the 1950 census comes out in 2022 we might see it indexed in about 1 month. Right now about 2 million top tier records are added each day. The number of oral histories has also been increasing. Currently there is a focus on recording the oral histories of African elders. There are now 47,000 oral histories containing 57 million individuals. One last advancement is the increased use of smart optical character recognition (OCR). This allows the computer to recognize people, places and relationships based on the context of the document. Using this technology they were able to index 25 million obituaries in 8 hours.

In addition to these activities I was able to attend several classes. The first class of the morning was Big Data of the Past - The Fundament for Building a Family Tree of Mankind. The presentation was about the Time Machine Organization. This presentation was given at RootsTech London and I wanted to see how things have advanced since then. This is an incredible project which uses handwriting recognition to evaluate documents, gather data, and correlate events. When it is fully developed it will be able to reconstruct the populations of the past. Images of places can be put together to build digital models of a city. Records will place people within those communities and provide background information about their lives and social interactions. They have a website called Xarxes that displays an example of how this is expected to work.

I also attended D. Joshua Taylor's presentation of My Ancestor was a Farmer: Telling Their Stories. The focus of this talk was on the records that can be used to characterize a farmer's life. One very important record set for farmers is the US Census. These records provide occupations as well as family structure information and some can provide real and personal property values. Beyond the census records there are non-population schedules such as the Agriculture Schedules. These records contain details about the production of the farms. They were collected from 1840 until 1910 but the records from 1890 to 1910 were destroyed. The remaining records (1840-1880) are not all located in one location. Some are at the National Archives, others are on Ancestry, while still others are in state archives. Knowing where these records are located is half the battle. He also discussed other records such as probate, estate, newspaper advertisements and classifieds, associations and organizations, and land and tax records which can be used to build the story of your farming ancestors.

The last class I attended was Put a Face to a Name - Finding Old Family Photos by Lisa Lisson. This presentation discussed how you can find family photos. She stated "No 'cousin' is too far geographically or on the family tree not to have photos of your ancestors (or at least information) on your old family photos." There are many sites where family photos can be found including Archive.org, Flickr, and eBay. Additionally, collections of yearbooks, church histories, published family histories and online family trees can be good sources for photos. And for those of you who have black sheep in your families, don't forget the mugshots.

As you can see, there are many different topics being presented at RootsTech. I hope everyone attending is able to attend the classes they are wanting to hear. For those of you at home, the live stream schedule can be found here.

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.