Social Media as a Genealogical Research Tool

I'm back again, the occasional blogger has returned. It's been another busy week. Last night my wife and I attended the first Dapper Dine-Out. This is a 1940s themed event where we dress up in period garb and visit local restaurants. You should have seen all of us out at the beach. Several people came up and asked to take photos with us. On Tuesday evening, I spoke to the Amelia Island Genealogical Society about using social media as a genealogical research tool. Amelia Island/Fernandina Beach is as far north in Florida as you can get (about a 4 hour drive) and happens to be where my wife's LeBoeuf family settled prior to 1880. So, while I was there, I spent some time doing research at the county library and at St. Peter's Episcopal Church. I was able to find 6 pages in the church's records for the family including baptism and burial for a baby (Horace Clifford Coker), confirmation and first communion for a son (James Vickery LeBoeuf), and confirmation for the mother (Mary Ann Vickery LeBoeuf). I also found that the specific newspaper that my wife's 3rd great-grandfather's obituary should be in was probably the only edition that is missing from the 1883 records, just my luck. But at least we still have the monthly list of deceased with some details.

So, as a follow-up to my talk this week, I decided to provide a blog about using social media as a genealogical research tool. This is one of those topics that is constantly evolving as more and more people get on social media. The main part of my presentation covered Facebook but I also discussed Pinterest, Twitter and Google Plus (G+) as resources.

There are many benefits of using social media for your genealogy research. One of the major reasons to use it is the sheer number of people who are subscribed to the various social media platforms. There are millions to billions of people on each platform, making it possible to meet relatives, discuss various topics, and learn from their expertise. Another benefit is the rapid response to questions. On some groups you can get responses within only a couple minutes. Many of the members use social media to challenge their abilities and are willing to take on difficult research topics. The discussions that develop around certain topics can provide even more information to help one find new ways to research their ancestors. And the big reason to use social media is that it is free! I love free resources.

I won't go into complete detail for each social media platform but I will provide a couple ideas on how to use each and you can investigate them on your own to see how they work for you.

Pinterest is a social media platform that revolves around collections of photos organized on themed bulletin boards. These boards can be on any topic but for genealogy they include surnames, places, crafts, research techniques as well as many other topics. Pinterest currently has over 175 million subscribers contributing over 1 billion boards. Below, I have included a screen shot of one of my Pinterest boards. The subject of this board is my Garman family research. As you can see, I have included photographs, newspaper clipping, links to blogs and other resources.

Example of a surname board on Pinterest. This is of my Garman family from Ohio.

Google Plus (G+) is Google's social media platform. G+ has nearly 400 million subscribers but only about 10% of them are active on a monthly basis. G+ has hundreds of genealogy related communities for people to explore. Additionally, one of the best things about G+ are the Hangouts. Hangouts are video conferencing calls. There are regularly scheduled Hangouts from several of the big name genealogists which you can call in to and see what they have to say. Below is a screen shot from Dear Myrtle's G+ Community.

Screen shot of Dear Myrtle's G+ Community.

Twitter is another active social media platform. With over 330 million active users, it is a growing community. Twitter has increased its character limit to 280 characters so your posts can now be longer and more informative. Twitter allows you to follow influential people and find microblogs for various genealogy topics. Below is an example of the results you might see when searching for genealogy on Twitter.

Example results of a search for Genealogy on Twitter.

And now for the mother of all social media platforms.....Facebook. Facebook has over 2.2 billion active subscribers....that is more than 25% of the entire world's population active on this one social media platform! Imagine the number of new cousins you could discover there. But with so many people using this platform, how do you find things? One blogger has been keeping track of all the genealogy related Facebook pages to help you find resources. Katherine R. Willson has a blog where she keeps this list of Facebook groups. So, how many genealogy related pages are there on Facebook? According to Katherine, there are now over 12,000 groups and pages dedicated to genealogy topics. These topics include regional pages, research topics, surname groups, and groups which offer personal assistance. A few of my favorite groups are as follows:

• Genealogy Translations - Members of this group provide translations of records.
• Photo Restorations - Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness has several helpful pages. Members of their photo restoration page provide free photo restoration of your damaged photos.
• Genealogy Events Club - This group announces upcoming genealogy conferences, events and calls for papers.
• GeneDocs Templates - This group provides templates to help you organize your genealogical research.
• and of course there is my genealogy related page - Miles Genealogy - Here you can see my upcoming appearances, keep up on my latest blog posts, and see what my current speaking topics are.

With all of these resources available, you should be able to find something to help you in your research. Just don't forget to step away from the social media occasionally and enjoy your current family as much as you research your ancestors.

The Story of an Orphaned Photo and the Mystery Woman - Lester Graham's Family

Occasionally I go to antique shows looking for interesting artifacts to add to my collection. Most of the time I don't find anything that I need, but I often find orphaned photographs. I feel sorry for these photos and wonder how they ended up in a collection of old photographs being sold at the shows. I will buy the ones that have identifying information on them and then try to reunite them with their families.

This photograph is one of those that I have found. So, what can I find out about this photograph and those involved in it?

Lester Graham's Family - front: George & Lester's wife - back: Henry, Rebecca, Ruth Graham

This photograph was taken at The Rippel Art Shop in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. The studio was owned by Conrad Rippel. Conrad was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, on 27 November 1854, and learned the skills necessary to become a photographer early in life. In 1878, he moved to Milton, Pennsylvania, where he and his brother John were partners in a photography studio. On 14 May 1880, the Great Milton Fire occurred, burning their business. Soon thereafter, Conrad relocated to Sunbury where he opened a studio and continued his trade of photography and eventually expanded to sell art supplies. The business was named the Rippel Art Shop. Conrad died on 13 March 1936, at the age of 82, having been ill for several years.

The back of the photo gives me a good number of hints to use when identifying the individuals. The photo says Lester Graham's family - Earl's brother (My "PapPap") - front seated: Lester's wife & George - left to right back: Ruth Graham, Rebecca and Henry. Notice that it appears that they have the back row of the photo turned backwards and it probably should have been Henry, Rebecca and Ruth Graham. It would have been helpful to have Lester's wife's name, but with all the other data I should not have a problem finding them.

Based on the photograph I know, or can assume, the following:

• Lester Graham had four children: George, Henry, Rebecca and Ruth;
• Lester's brother was named Earl;
• Lester's family probably lived in Pennsylvania, maybe close to Sunbury.

The first thing I did was visit FamilySearch.org to begin my search. My first search was for Lester Graham which returns several dozen pages of possible matches. Since the results are so broad I decided to narrow them down by adding Pennsylvania to the birth location. The birth location is a guess but I am assuming that they lived in Pennsylvania based on the location of the studio. Once I did that I received about a dozen matches for Lester Graham who lived in Pennsylvania. The first match is for Lester Graham born 1863 in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Northumberland happens to be directly across the Susquehanna River from Sunbury. Clicking on this record I see that his family consists of his wife Maggie Taylor and four children; George, Henry, Ruth and Rebecca. Additionally, Lester has a younger brother named Earl. It's probably a good bet that this is the family this photograph belongs to.

From the records I can see that Maggie and Lester were married on 15 October 1892. Their children were born between 1893 and 1899. The 1910 census lists Lester as a widower, indicating that Maggie died sometime before 1910. Lester's sister, Rebekah, is living with the family. I assume she was there to help Lester raise the children, ages 10-16. Lester's occupation in 1910 was as a machinist. All of this looks good when compared to the photograph. The children look like they could be between 10 and 16 and the picture could have been taken just before Maggie died. But why would they not have listed Maggie's name on the photo? Maybe she died many years before the photograph was labelled and the person labeling it didn't know her name?

The 1920 census lists Lester as a widower and all four children, ages 20-26, as living at home. That same census lists Lester as a machinist for the railroad, with George and Henry working as clerks with the railroad. So, it looks like Lester didn't remarry after Maggie's death. 

That was easy....But we all know that the easy answer isn't always the right answer. I decided to dig a little deeper in the records to see if I could find Maggie's death date. So, I looked in the 1900 census to make sure she was listed with the family. To my surprise Lester is living at home with his parents and his siblings Rebecca, James and Mary. Also listed there are the four children and a nurse. Lester is listed as widowed!! Hold on a minute, that means that if this is correct, Maggie died sometime after the youngest daughter, Rebecca, was born and the 1900 census. Rebecca is listed as being born December 1899 and the census listed those individuals living on 1 June 1900. So she must have died sometime between December 1899 and the end of May 1900, leaving Lester with four small children to raise. Looking at FindAGrave.com I find memorials for Lester and Maggie. Maggie's memorial indicates that she died 10 January 1900, only about a month after her daughter was born. Lester died much later, in 1942. The interesting thing about the 1900 census listing is that the nurse's name was Beatrice E. Talor, age 19. Could this be Maggie's younger sister helping to raise the children? 

So, now that it appears that Maggie Taylor Graham died soon after her daughter Rebecca was born, and that Lester is a widower in all subsequent censuses, who is the person listed as Lester's wife in the photograph? It could be the nurse, Beatrice. But she would only be in her late 20's based on the age of the children. The picture looks like she is much older than that. Maybe it is Lester's sister, Rebecca. Rebecca would probably be in her 40's when the picture was taken. Also, it appears that Rebecca never married. She died in 1913, only three years after the 1910 census where she is listed as living with the family. 

In conclusion, I believe that the person listed as Lester's wife is actually his sister, Rebecca. Rebecca would have been in her 40's at the time of the photograph and was taking care of the children around 1910. The person adding the information on the back of the photo lists Lester's brother Earl as her PapPap, probably referring to her grandfather. By the time she wrote this, the family had probably forgotten Lester's wife's name as well as the fact that Rebecca had lived with the family to care for the children.

Genealogy As Entertainment

Television has a major impact on our lives. Today we see genealogy related media on a regular basis. The emphasis of many of these shows is on discovering our lost histories and they are often sponsored by companies such as Ancestry promoting their products to the masses. These programs have opened the door to a vast audience of people who may have never thought of their family histories before.

The first television show that I know of which focused on genealogical research and stories of individuals was Ancestors. Each half hour episode focused on a specific research technique as well as including stories from individuals on how their research had affected their lives. This series ran for 23 episodes on KBYU and also on local PBS stations starting in 1997. It was sponsored by Ancestry. The series can be seen in its entirety on the BYUTV.org website.

In 2003, PBS aired the first episode of History Detectives. This series has a team of experts who research the history of items, usually family heirlooms, that are believed to have historical significance. Even though this series wasn't specifically devoted to genealogy, it provided great examples of how family legends may have grown over generations and how the detectives are able to find evidence to prove or disprove the stories. Information about this show can be found on the PBS website.

In 2006, Reader's Digest Canada presented a series called Ancestors in the Attic. This show was part personal drama, part forensic investigation and part historical revelation. The hosts traveled around Canada and the world trying to discover the truths about a family's skeletons in the closet. The series lasted 15 episodes but ended when one of the hosts died while on the road filming an episode.

One of the pioneers in genealogy television was Henry Louis Gates, Jr. His first show, African American Lives, aired in 2006. This series consisted of four episodes featuring Quincy Jones, Mae Jamison, Chris Tucker, T. D. Jakes, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Whoopie Goldburg, Ben Carson, and Oprah Winfrey.

In 2008, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. followed up with four more episodes titled African American Lives 2. This series highlighted the family histories of Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner, Tom Joyner, Chris Rock, Don Cheadle, Peter Gomes, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Maya Angelou, Bliss Boyard, and Linda Johnson Rice.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., RootsTech 2018, keynote speaker.

Both of these series emphasized the use of DNA to trace heritage. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. spoke at RootsTech 2018, and explained how he became interested in the use of DNA to aid in ethnicity research early on. He mentioned that early DNA tests were done with blood samples and that samples had to be done in the labs. Through the use of DNA, Gates and his research associates were able to determine that more than 50% of African Americans have at least 12.5% European ancestry. That is the equivalent of the DNA contribution of one great-grandparent.

In 2010, Gates hosted Faces of America, a four part series that focused on the ancestry of Elizabeth Alexander, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Louise Erdich, Malcom Gladwell, Eva Longoria, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Queen Noor of Jordan, Mehmet Oz, Meryl Streep, and Kristi Yamaguchi. In this series, Gates focused on how the diversity of our immigrant ancestors made America what it is today.

Gates continued his documentation of the ancestry of celebrities in 2012 with Finding Your Roots. This series is now in its fourth season. Each episode covers the life of several individuals and presents them with their very own book of life which includes a family tree and copies of photographs and records discovered through their research. Recent episodes of this series can be found on the PBS website.

Beyond what Gates has done there are several other series that focus on genealogy. One of the most well known is Who Do You Think You Are? This is actually two series, one for the BBC and the other aired in the US on NBC and then on TLC. The BBC series began in 2004 and is now in its 14th season. The US series began in 2010 and is now in its 10th season. Both series follow the same format of a one hour episode focused on the family history of one celebrity. Each episode tracks the path of research, going from place to place where important parts of their history played out. Seasons 4 through 8 can be viewed on TLC's webpage.

The Generations Project from BYU TV, began in 2010. It follows the story of an individual as they discover their family history. Each episode tells the story of one individual through their meetings with researchers and travels to important places in their family history. This program lasted three seasons, all of which can be viewed on BYU TV's website.

Heir Hunters is a BBC series that is now in its 12th season. This series traces the research of heir hunters and probate detectives looking for distant relatives of people who have died without a will. Information about this show along with episode clips can be found on BBC's website.

Long Lost Family premiered in 2016 on TLC and is now in its third season. This show focuses on reuniting biological family members, with many episodes being the search for biological parents of adoptees. The series also has versions that run in Britain and Australia. Each hour-long episode focuses on the stories of two individuals, how they became separated from their families, and the search for their families. Ancestry databases and DNA play a big role in the research. Full episodes of the TLC series can be found on TLC's website.

BYU TV is in the third season of their family history reality series Relative Race. I like to think of this show as a mix of Amazing Race and Long Lost Family. Four pairs of contestants race across the US looking for relatives they have never met or ones that they were separated from many years ago. Each pair is given the same set of equipment to start the game. This includes paper maps and a flip phone. At the beginning of each leg, the teams receive a text message telling them which city/town they are headed to. Once they arrive at that location they have to take a selfie to prove they have arrived. Then they each have to perform two challenges in order to receive the clue to their relative's home. Once they arrive at their relative's home they have to take a selfie of them with their relative. The winner of each episode is the team that has completed the trip in the least time compared to their estimated time. The losing team gets a strike. After receiving three strikes, the team is removed from the game. The winning team, after 10 days of travel, receives $50,000. This series can be viewed on BYU TV's website.

Another series that began in 2016 is Genealogy Roadshow which is now in its third season. This series focuses on ordinary people and their family histories. There are three hosts who discuss the research that was done to discover the stories behind each person's discoveries. Episodes from this series can be found on the PBS website.

PBS, BYU and TLC have lead the way in airing of these genealogy related shows and Ancestry has been a major sponsor. Some of these shows, especially Long Lost Family and  Relative Race are real tear jerkers and can leave you feeling exhausted for the individuals. If you want to see these shows and can't find them on their hosted sites you can try looking them up on Youtube.

Now that I have provided you with all of these great shows I know what you will be doing this weekend. Can you say binge watch!?

Thinking Outside the Box

I have been somewhat busy with conferences and speaking engagements lately. As you all read in my previous posts, I was in Salt Lake City for a week earlier this month attending Roots Tech 2018. The week after that I did a presentation for our local German Genealogy Interest Group and a couple hour talk for the Treasure Coast Genealogical Society then went up to Jacksonville for three talks at the North Florida Genealogy Conference. The next week I did a radio spot where I talked about genealogy research and had a presentation at the Martin County Genealogical Society and did a two hour program for our Stake Family History Consultants. So now I am getting ready for the Indian River Genealogy Conference coming up on April 14th where I have three more talks and am the conference coordinator. 

One of the talks I have been giving lately is called Thinking Outside the Box. This talk discusses websites that some may not have considered. The following post is a shorter version of that talk, explaining how some of the sites I included have helped me with my research. I hope you enjoy it and find something useful to take with you.

We all tend to begin our genealogy research in similar ways by looking for names, dates and places. We gather family information, visit cemeteries where our ancestors are buried, look at the books in local libraries and search the major online databases. But limiting yourself to these sites may result in you missing out on some important clues and great stories. Thinking Outside the Box is all about finding those rare and little-known stories that may be stored in the corners and attic of the internet. The sites discussed here are the ones that you may not have considered in your genealogy research but just may turn out to be treasure troves of information.

To begin thinking outside the box, you need to consider what information may have been important in an individual’s life. Consider their career, land ownership, writings, travel, accomplishments, voting, and pictures. For example, I have a relative who was a veterinarian. I happened to find an article that he had written in a veterinary journal. My wife had a relative who ran a lumber company. We were able to find a picture of his company's steam locomotive that was used to transport the lumber. In this discussion, I will give you some hints on web sites that may help you find these little known treasures by thinking outside the box.

First of all, Google is your friend. Beyond the standard Google search engine, Google has many very specific search engines.

1.    Google Books (books.google.com) is a great source for out of print and out of copyright books, especially regional histories. One example that I have found is the 10^th reunion of the Princeton University class of 1895. This book had a short one page biography of one of my wife’s relatives. The biography included his wife and son’s name, date of marriage and birth date of son, and some details about his business ventures.

2.    Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) is a search engine for professional, educational and government journals and documents. While researching a family name, I ran across an article from the Smithsonian Institute about the restoration of a 19^th century English papier-mache chair. You may wonder how this could provide relevant genealogical information. Well, in one of the footnotes it discussed the invention of a new papier-mache technique developed by Charles Bielefeld, one of my wife’s relatives. The footnote referenced a London newspaper from August 1853 where a story of Mr. Bielefeld had run. The newspaper story described how his new technique was used to construct houses that could be shipped in pieces (early modular homes) from England to Australia. Builders were then able to use these modular pieces to construct a small town in just a matter of days.

3.    Google Patents (patents.google.com) searches the US Patent Office records. If any of your relatives submitted a patent, the record would be found there. I have discovered that several of my relatives, as well as my wife’s relatives, were inventors. One of them invented the insulation for the Arctic pipeline.

4.    Google Images (images.google.com) searches a large collection of images from all over the internet. These images can be used to help tell the story of your ancestors. You can find images of places, events and even people that might be important to your research.

5.    Google Maps (maps.google.com) is a great tool that many of us probably use frequently to find directions. But did you know that you can actually add features to the map? You can add information, like addresses and dates from a census, to a Google Sheet and then import it as a map layer. I have used this to trace migration patterns of families. You can also see landmarks such as towns, cemeteries, churches, schools, rivers, mountains, etc., that might have influenced your ancestors’ lives. These maps can be used to place your ancestors in context with their surroundings.

Now that you have explored some of the Google world, we can move on to some other outside the box sites. Since we were talking about maps, let’s look at a few real estate sites. I use Zillow and Trulia quite often to research residences. Using the address from a given record, such as the census or city directory, you can search these real estate sites to see if the residence is still there. They often give you information like the year it was built and details about the floor plans. One example of this showed that my great-grandparent’s home in 1930 was built in 1925.

Have you ever gone to an auction and found some antique that intrigued you? You might have wondered what the story behind a photograph or painting might be or who was in that image. Internet auction sites provide a great opportunity to find old treasures. One of my favorite auction sites is eBay. There you can find old family bibles, photographs, books and other memorabilia. Some of it might even belong to your families. I have been able to find tokens for a bakery that my family had run as well as Westerheide Cigar boxes and other items. You can set up e-mail notifications by saving your searches. Our most prized discovery was found in an online second-hand store in Seattle, Washington. That was a painting on my wife’s 4^th great-grandmother, Sarah Pullen Walters (1816-1896). Not only is it a great painting of her, but it also had some family history information written on the back.

Many states have Memory Projects. Florida’s is located at www.floridamemory.com. This site has a variety of records that you can search through. They have voting records, vehicle registration records, military service cards, and a huge collection of photographs and post cards. It was interesting to learn that a relative drove a Cadillac Touring Sedan in 1913, or that one served on the USS Wissoe during WW I. We have found photographs of a relative’s front porch and even a steam locomotive with their company name emblazoned on it. All of these small items provide just that much more to the story of their lives.

There are many more sites that you can discover beyond the standard sites when you start to think outside the box. But before I end, I want to recommend that everyone take a more detailed look at social media as a research tool. Facebook has thousands of genealogy related groups and pages. A document at https://socialmediagenealogy.com/genealogy-on-facebook-list lists nearly 12,000 Facebook groups related to genealogy and is about 400 pages long. This list is updated regularly so you should check it often. I have found these groups to be invaluable in discovering new research sources.

I hope some of these sites give you ideas on how to think outside the box as you research your family history.

RootsTech 2018 - Synopsis

As I promised in my previous post, here is a highlight of the social life at RootsTech. By the way, it took me a couple days to recover from the exhaustion and jet lag. It is an exhausting week.

Many people attend RootsTech to catch up with old and new friends. Those friends may be personal friends from around the country or world, or they may be virtual friends from our social networks. This picture includes a personal friend, relatives she has found while researching, and a Facebook friend. We all managed to meet up at RootsTech.

RootsTech had an app which identified your relatives attending the conference. Many people discovered new relatives while they were at the conference. I, on the other hand, had no relatives attending.






Beyond finding friends, many attendees love the entertainment that is offered. These pictures are of the BYU Ballroom Dancers performing a tribute to "The Greatest Generation". The BYU Jazz Band performed the music. The audience of several thousand enjoyed the big band music and some even were dancing in the aisles.

Other entertainment included Natalia Lafourcade talking about her heritage and singing on stage, and talks by Scott Hamilton and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

MyHeritage sponsored an After RootsTech Party featuring a jazz band, lots of dancing, food and fun. We all appreciate the work MyHeritage puts into their events. It gives us an opportunity to wind down and network with our fellow researchers.

Many of the sponsoring groups have lunches during the week. The picture to the right was MyHeritage's Friends Breakfast the morning after their After Party. Many of us were very tired but it was a great breakfast and we got to talk to other researchers about our ideas.

And finally, the closing ceremony. We were at the Conference Center where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed with several Hispanic dance and music groups to celebrate the cultural heritage of our neighboring countries to the south.

By the way, what does it take to put on such a large conference? See the info graphic to the right for a general ides.

All-in-all RootsTech is not only a great place to learn research techniques but is also a social experience beyond compare. The days can be long, but the rewards are great. If you have never been to RootsTech I recommend that you add it to your bucket list.

RootsTech 2018 - Day 4

Day 4, the final day of RootsTech 2018, was an incredible event. We started the day with a talk by Ken Chahine of Ancestry DNA. He talked about the progress that has been made in DNA and genetic genealogy since 2014. In 2014, they had 300,000 DNA samples in their database. Now they have over 7 million. Ancestry DNA has found 350 global DNA regions to provide users with more detail on their ethnicity.

After that, we were entertained by Natalie Lafourcade. She is an Hispanic singer who sang on Coco. Tomorrow night she is performing for the Oscars. She performed several songs and talked about her heritage. Ancestry presented her with their research on her ancestry. They traced one of her lines back to France. Her other line was from Chile. They found that several of her ancestors were musicians. The whole presentation brought many in the audience to tears.

Natalie Lafourcade

After Natalie sang we heard from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He started the discussion by saying how the miniseries Roots inspired him to look at his ancestry. He talked about discovering his several great grandmother Jane Gates (1819-1888). The experience of his search then led him to develop several TV series including "Faces of America" and "Finding Your Roots". He is now working on a curriculum based on students doing their genealogy. Every child would complete a family tree and take a DNA test. The results of the tree and DNA test would help the students learn about different cultures, social sciences, biological sciences, math and other subjects. He has put this program to a test with a summer camp and series called "Finding Your Roots - The Seedlings".

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

I attended a talk by Jennifer Utley, from Ancestry. Her talk focused on how Ancestry researches several genealogy based TV shows, including "Who Do You Think You Are" and "Long Lost Family".  Each 42 minute episode of "Who Do You Think You Are" requires 1,000 hours of research.

The last talk I attended was Lisa Louise Cooke's "Reconstruct Your Ancestor's World with Google". This presentation focused on the Google toolbox (Google Search Engine, Google Books, Google Patents, Youtube, Google Earth, Google Images, and Google Scholar.) Once you have determined the basic facts of someone's life, you need to use these tools to fill in the gaps such as the life in the community, companies your ancestor may have worked for, what events occurred during their life, etc. She gave an example of one of her ancestors who repaired carriages and then went on to work on horseless carriages later in life. She was able to determine who he worked for and find some images of the company along with images of her ancestor. Lisa also discussed basic search techniques that help to focus your search.

There were many more presentations during the week than I have mentioned in my blog. I was only able to provide feedback on the few that I attended. I plan on providing one more post about RootsTech on Sunday or Monday, once I get back home. That post will focus on the social life of a RootsTech attendee. Stay tuned for some fun.

RootsTech 2018 - Day 3

Day 3 of RootsTech started with Scott Hamilton, Olympic gold medalist, giving a key note talk on the challenges he has faced in his life and how his family supported him. He discussed being adopted, having several bouts with cancer, losing his mother to cancer, losing his father while he was away announcing an Olympics, being with his coach the day before he died, his marriage and two biological children, serving in Haiti in disaster relief, and adopting two Haitian children. After his talk, representatives from FamilySearch provided Scott with a history of his adopted family and some of the interesting stories associated with them. Later, he was informed that FamilySearch had researched his biological family and will be reuniting them later this week. It was an incredible story.

  

Additionally we heard from the producer of Relative Race, Dan Debenham. This is season 3 and their 90 minute premier will be airing this Sunday at 7:00 pm Mountain Time on BYUTV. You can watch it on https://www.byutv.org/relativerace if you don't have BYUTV on your provider. If you haven't heard of this show, I describe it as being similar to Amazing Race but their destinations are relatives they have not known. The challenge is that, as they cross the country, they are not allowed to use any technology other than old flip phones and paper maps. In the past, they have reunited adoptees with their biological family members, found long lost relatives, and introduced contestants to unknown relatives. They had a Q&A session with two of the teams, Red and Green. If you are interested in being a team on future seasons you can apply at http://www.trrcasting.com. During the Q&A session we were told there would be a significant twist and that you should watch Team Blue during the premier.

Relative Race Producer Dan Debenham during the Q&A session

FindMyPast discussed many of their new collections. Their US Marriage collection now contains over 280 million records and another 100 records will be added this year, making the total number of names over 400 million. They are continuing to work on adding records to their US Catholic archives by adding 200 New York parishes this week and will continue to roll out areas including Cincinnati, Baltimore and other diocese over the rest of this year. They are also continuing to add records to their Scotland, Ireland and England Catholic collections. FindMyPast also announced the release of a combined tree in partnership with FamilySearch. This combined tree can be found at www.findmypast.com/new-tree.

One of the sessions I attended was Beyond Subscriptions - 25 Free Genealogy Websites. This presentation talked about some of the top sites to consider when doing your research. Their top picks for initial research were FamilySearch, Cyndi's List, US Genweb and World Genweb. They also discussed libraries and recommended starting your research with the collections at Allen County Public Library and Midwest Genealogy Center. They also reminded us to discover the collections at the local libraries and universities. Cemetery sites, such as BillionGraves, FindAGrave and a variety of state cemetery projects can provide a wealth of information on your ancestors. Military records can be found at a variety of sites including Preserve the Pensions (War of 1812), and the Patriot and Grave Index from the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR).

The number of online searchable books has increased greatly over the last couple years. Some of the recommended sites include the Digital Public Library of America, Internet Archive, and FamilySearch Family History Books. Passenger lists for the majority of immigrants can be found at Castle Garden (1820-1892) and Ellis Island (1892-1954). They also suggested a few ethnic sites including AfriGeneas, JewishGen, and Native Web Genealogy.

The last class I attended was by The Family History Guide. The Family History Guide is a non-profit 501.3c organization. It's resources are free and will always remain free. The site is available in multiple languages and is a great resource for researchers. They are an official training partner for FamilySearch and provide in depth tutorials for FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage and FindMyPast. You can even track your progress on each of the training modules. There are many age appropriate family history activities included that can help you encourage your children to participate in research. Another great part of the site is the Countries tab. This tab includes hints and links to site that have information on how to research each country. It even goes to the county level in the US.

This was another great day of learning at RootsTech. Tomorrow is Family Discovery Day and many more classes. I hope you are all taking these tips and finding new research ideas.