Wed, 14 September 2016
The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke
More episode highlights:
Listen now - click the player below: NEWS: Genealogy.coach NEWS: GENEALOGY WEBSITE UPDATES Findmypast.com: Scottish records Chronicling America: New state partners join the program Chronicling America: Expanding its current scope NEW RECORDS ONLINE: FREE CZECH RECORDS AT FAMILYSEARCH.ORG Czech Republic Church Records 1552-1963 Czech Republic Land Records 1450-1889 Czech Republic School Registers 1799-1953 On browse-only records: Though not fully indexed, the new Czech browse-only records number over 4 million. Click here learn how to use browse-only collections on FamilySearch.org.
Lisa Alzo, Eastern European genealogy expert and author of the new book The Family Tree Polish, Czech and Slovak Genealogy Guide comments on the significance of these records coming online: “These records are a real boon for Czech researchers because at one time the only to get records such as these was to write to an archive and taking a chance on getting a response or spending a lot of money to hire someone to find the records or to travel there yourself to do research in the archives. The church records contain Images and some indexes of baptisms/births, marriages, and deaths that occurred in the Roman Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and Reformed Church parishes, as well as entries in those registers for Jews. Land transactions containing significant genealogical detail for a time period that predates parish registers. The collection includes records from regional archives in Opava and Třeboň and from the district archive in Trutnov. School registers contain the full name for a child, birth date, place of birth, country, religion and father's full name, and place of residence. While researchers should keep in mind that not everything is yet online,and FamilySearch will likely add to its collection, having these records from FS is an amazing resource for anyone whose ancestors may have come from these areas. And hopefully there are more records to come!” GENEALOGY GEMS NEWS
Story of My Life by Sunny Morton, life story-writing journal available as a print workbook and as a writeable pdf e-book Diahan Southard will be at the Back to Our Past conference in Dublin, Ireland, October 21 to 23, 2016
Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. By the end of 2016, RootsTech will be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.
Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at http://www.backblaze.com/Lisa. Review your search results—especially those that pop up in the Images category.
MAILBOX: Robin’s YouTube Success Story
The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, 2nd edition has an entire chapter on using YouTube to find family history in historical videos YouTube for Family History: Finding Documentaries about Your Family
MAILBOX: FEEDBACK ON THE PODCASTS
Genealogy Gems Premium podcast
SHAPING UP WITH SUNNY MORTON Family Tree Magazine Podcast celebrates 100th episode
Sunny Morton has get-in-shape advice for us—from strengthening research skills to toning tech muscles--from the article "Shaping Up" featured in the March 2010 issue of Family Tree Magazine. More resources for genealogy education: Genealogy Gems Premium membership National Genealogical Society Educational Courses Boston University Programs in Genealogical Research Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree annual conference
GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB: Everyone Brave is Forgiven, the best-selling novel by British author Chris Cleave. A love story set in World War II London and Malta. This story is intense, eye-opening and full of insights into the human experience of living and loving in a war zone—and afterward. Everyone Brave is Forgiven is inspired by love letters exchanged between the author’s grandparents during World War II. Video: Chris Cleave on the U.S troops coming to Europe in World War II
Click here for more Genealogy Gems Book Club titles
GEDMATCH WITH DIAHAN SOUTHARD, YOUR DNA GUIDE What are they talking about? GEDmatch. GEDmatch is a mostly free online tool where anyone with autosomal DNA test results from 23andMe, FTDNA, and AncestryDNA can meet and share information. All you need to do is download your data from your testing company and upload it into your newly created GEDmatch account. GEDmatch is set up just like your testing company in that it provides two kinds of reports: ethnicity results, and a match list. Remember that ethnicity results, meaning those pie charts that report you are 15% Italian and 32% Irish, are based on two factors: a reference population and fancy math. GEDmatch has gathered data from multiple academic sources to provide you with several different iterations of ethnicity reports. This is like getting a second (and third and fourth, etc) opinion on a science that is still emerging. It is a fun exercise, but will likely not impact your genealogy research very much. The more important match list does allow you to see genetic cousins who have tested at other companies. Of course, only those who have downloaded their results and entered them into GEDmatch will show up on your list. This means GEDmatch has the potential to expand your pool of genetic cousins, increasing your chances of finding someone to help you track down that missing ancestor. Many also flock to GEDmatch because they were tested at AncestryDNA and thus do not have access to a chromosome browser. A chromosome browser allows you to visualize the physical locations that you share with someone else. Some find this to be a helpful tool when analyzing their DNA matches (though in my opinion it is not essential). GEDmatch also has some great genealogy features that let you analyze your pedigree against someone else’s, as well as the ability to search all the pedigree charts in their system so you can look specifically for a descendant of a particular relative. However, even with all of these great features, GEDmatch is still yet another website you have to navigate, and with that will be a learning curve, and certainly some frustration. So, is it worth it? If you are fairly comfortable with the website where you were tested, and you are feeling both curious and patient, I say go for it. It’s too much to try to tell you right this minute how to download your data from your testing site and upload it to GEDmatch. BUT you’re in luck, I’ve put step-by-step instructions for getting started in a FREE tutorial on my website at www.yourDNAguide.com/transferring.
After you’ve done the upload, you may need a little bit more help to navigate the GEDmatch site because there are so many great tools on it. I recently published a GEDmatch Quick Guide, where I have condensed into four pages the most essential features of GEDmatch to get you started and help you make use of this tool for genetic genealogy. Using my guide is an inexpensive and easy way to get a lot more out of a free online resource. I will also be adding more GEDmatch tutorials to my online tutorial series later this fall, which Genealogy Gems fans get a nice discount on (click here for that discount). By the way, have you tried GEDmatch? I would love to hear about your experiences. You can email me at guide@yourDNAguide.com.
DNA QUICK GUIDE BUNDLES: NEW AND ON SALE
Advanced DNA Quick Guide Bundle by Diahan Southard:
SUPER DNA Quick Guide Bundle by Diahan Southard with ALL 10 Guides
and Testing Companies:
and Advanced Tools
Genealogy Gems Podcast turns 200: Tell me what you think? FREE NEWSLETTER:
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Sun, 7 August 2016
The Genealogy Gems Podcast Did you know you can use Google to help identify images, to find more images like them online, and even to track down images that have been moved to a different place online? Find these great Google tech tips in this episode, along with 10 tech-savvy tricks for finding an ancestor's school records. You will also hear how to create a family history photo decoupage plate: a perfect craft to give as a gift or create with children. This blast from the past episode comes from the digitally remastered Genealogy Gems Podcast episodes 11 and 12 (originally recorded in 2007). They are now interwoven with fresh narration; below you’ll find all-new show notes. Google Image searches: Updated tips Click here to watch a short new tutorial video on using Google Images to find images for your genealogy research. Conduct an initial search using the search terms you want. The Image category (along with other categories) will appear on the screen along with your search results. For images of people: enter name as search term in quotes: “Mark Twain.” If you have an unusual name or if you have extra time to scroll through results, enter the name without quotation marks. Other search terms to try: ancestral place names, tombstone, name of a building (school, church, etc.), the make and model of Grandpa’s car, etc. Click on one of the image thumbnails to get to a highlight page (shown here) where you can visit the full webpage or view the image. If you click View images, you’ll get the web address.
To retrieve images that no longer appear at the expected URL: Click on View image to get the image URL. Copy the image’s URL (Ctrl+C in Windows) and paste it (Ctrl+V) into your web browser to go to that image’s page. When you click through, you’re back in Web view. The first few search results should be from the website with the image you want. Click on a link that says “cache.” A cached version is an older version of the website (hopefully a version dated before the image was moved or removed). Browse that version of the site to find the image. NEW Tip: Use Google Chrome to identify an image and find additional images showing the same subject, such as a place, person or subject.
From the Google home page, click Images. In the Google search box, you’ll see a little camera icon. Click on it. If you have an image from a website, insert the URL for that image. If you have an image on your computer, click Upload an image. Choose the file you want. Google will identify the image as best it can, whether a location, person, or object, and it will show you image search results that seem comparable. Click here to watch a free video tutorial on this topic.
GEM: Decoupage a Family Photo Plate
Supply List:
Assembling your plate:
Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. By the end of 2016, RootsTech will be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.
Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze.com/Lisa, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems.
GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB
Our current book is Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave. Follow the story of Mary North, a wealthy young Londoner who signs up for the war effort when the Great War reaches England. Originally assigned as a schoolteacher, she turns to other tasks after her students evacuate to the countryside, but not before beginning a relationship that leads to a love triangle and long-distance war-time romance. As her love interest dodges air raids on Malta, she dodges danger in London driving ambulances during air raids in the Blitz. This story is intense, eye-opening and full of insights into the human experience of living and loving in a war zone—and afterward. Everyone Brave is Forgiven is inspired by love letters exchanged between the author’s grandparents during World War II. Video: Chris Cleave on the U.S troops coming to Europe in World War II Click here for more Genealogy Gems Book Club titles
GEM: Top 10 Tips for finding Graduation Gems in your family history
Ancestry.com has moved the bulk of its historical newspaper collection to its sister subscription website, Newpapers.com. Search your browser for the public library website in the town where your ancestor attended school. Check the online card catalogue, look for a local history or genealogy webpage, or contact them to see what newspapers they have, and whether any can be loaned (on microfilm) through interlibrary loan. Search the Library of Congress’ newspaper website, Chronicling America, for digitized newspaper content relating your ancestor’s school years. Also, search its U.S. Newspaper Directory since 1690 for the names and library holdings of local newspapers. FamilySearch.org online catalog Contact local historical and genealogical societies for newspaper holdings.
TIP: Use Google site search operator to find mentions of yearbooks on the county page you’re looking at. Add site: to the front of the Rootsweb page for the locale, then the word yearbook after it. For example:
Yearbookgenealogy.com and the National Yearbook Project, mentioned in the show, no longer exist as such
TIP: Go to www.whowhere.com and type the school name in “Business Name.” Call around 4:00 pm local time, when the kids are gone but the school office is still open.
TIP: Don’t be afraid to ask – ebay sellers want to sell! And if all else fails, set up an ebay Favorite Search to keep a look out for you. Go to and check out Episode #3 for instructions on how to do this.  MyHeritage.com is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. Click here to see what MyHeritage can do for you: it’s free to get started.
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Tue, 12 July 2016
The Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode highlights:
NEWS: FOIA Turns 50 FOIA for genealogy research: Use the FOIA to request: SS5- applications (Social Security) and Railroad Board Retirement Post-WWII Selective Service records: draft registrations and SS-102 forms (with more draft/military information on them), through the end of 1959; Naturalization certificate files from 1906 to 1956; Alien registration forms from 1940 to 1944; Visa files from 1924 to1944; Registry files for 1929 to 1944 (these document the arrival of an immigrant whose passenger or other arrival record could not be found for whatever reason); A-files, alien case files for 1944 to 1951; Certain FBI files and certain CIA records (here’s a link to the slides from a National Archives presentation on using FBI files for family history. Click here to read an article on the 50th anniversary of the FOIA and more on FOIA for genealogy
NEWS: NEW RECORD COLLECTIONS ONLINE Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, Honeymoon and Visitor Registers, 1949-2011 The Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast #133: Peggy Lauritzen on “Gretna Greens,” quickie wedding destinations (Genealogy Gems Premium website membership required to access) Announcement of Freedmen’s Bureau Project completion; In September 2016 you can access the full Freedmen’s Bureau Project at www.DiscoverFreedmen.org. New videos to help find your family history in Freedmen’s Bureau Records Where to find Freedmen’s Bureau Records online, and the Freedmen’s Bureau indexing project
NEWS: AncestryDNA Hits 2 Million Samples Ancestry.com blog post: AncestryDNA Reaches 2 Million Samples Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard talks about these AncestryDNA features in:
NEWS: UPCOMING CONFERENCES Midwest Roots, July 15-16, 2016 The Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #178 CeCe Moore talks genetic genealogy on genealogy TV shows Northwest Missouri Genealogical Society 3rd Annual Conference, July 30, 2016 3rd Annual Northwest Genealogy Conference, Arlington, 3rd Annual Northwest Genealogy Conference
GEMS NEWS: NEW VIDEOS ONLINE
How to create captivating family history videos: Animoto video tutorial series Tech Tip Tuesday tutorial videos NEW Genealogy Gems Premium Video: All About Google Drive (Genealogy Gems Premium website membership required to access) Evernote blog post about changed pricing
Follow-up email regarding The Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #192 from Chris, who blogs at Leaf, Twig and Stem Chris’ post about a compelling story of an adopted child in his family Chris’ post about the changing coastline in Sussex MAILBOX: “WHERE I’M FROM” The Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #185: Interview with George Ella Lyon “Where I’m From” video and contest results Tips for writing your own “Where I’m From” poem Santa Clara County Historical and Genealogical Society “Where I'm From” contest: “Anyone near and far may join our Contest. Each entry receives a gift from the. We will have a drawing from all entries of cash or a nice prize. Deadline for entries is Aug. 31, 2016. More information on scchgs.org.”
NEW GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB SELECTION
It’s a story inspired by love letters exchanged between his grandparents during World War II, when they were each in dangerous places: he on the island of Malta and she in London, both of which suffered some of the worst sustained bombing campaigns of the war. Everyone Brave is Forgiven is a fast-paced book. It begins in London in 1939 with Mary North, a wealthy young lady from a privileged family who, on finding out that war has been declared, immediately leaves her finishing school and signs on for the war effort without telling her parents. She fulfills an assignment as a school teacher long enough to make a meaningful connection with a school official and one of her students. Then her students (along with the rest of London’s children) are evacuated to the countryside, leaving her to figure out what to do next. The plot gets a lot more involved from here. There’s a love triangle, a long-distance romance, a series of scenes that take place on the heavily-bombarded island of Malta, harrowing descriptions of the London Blitz, homeless children who return from the evacuation only to find themselves parentless, homeless and in constant danger. It’s intense and eye-opening, but it’s compassionate and it’s still very readable for those who have less of a stomach for blood and guts but still want to understand some of the human experience of living and loving in a war zone, and then picking up the pieces afterward and figuring out how to keep living. Video: Chris Cleave on the U.S troops coming to Europe in World War II Click here for more Genealogy Gems Book Club titles
A key concept in genetic genealogy is that your genetic pedigree is different than your genealogical pedigree. Let me explain. Your genealogical pedigree, if you are diligent or lucky (or both!) can contain hundreds, even thousands of names and can go back countless generations. You can include as many collateral lines as you want. You can add several sources to your findings, and these days you can even add media, including pictures and copies of the actual documents. Every time someone gets married or welcomes a new baby, you can add that to your chart. In short, there is no end to the amount of information that can make up your pedigree chart. Not so for your genetic pedigree. Your genetic pedigree contains only those ancestors for whom you have received some of their DNA. You do not have DNA from all of your ancestors. Using some fancy math we can calculate that the average generation in which you start to see that you have inherited zero blocks of DNA from an ancestor is about seven. But of course, most of us aren’t trying to figure out how much of our DNA we received from great great great grandma Sarah. Most of us just have a list of DNA matches and we are trying to figure out if we are all related to 3X great grandma Sarah. So how does that work? Well, the first thing we need to recognize is that living descendants of Sarah’s would be our fourth cousins (though not always, but that is a topic for another post!). Again, bring in the fancy math and we can learn that living, documented fourth cousins who have this autosomal DNA test completed will only share DNA with each other 50% of the time. Yes, only half. Only half of the time your DNA will tell you what your paper trail might have already figured out: That you and cousin Jim are fourth cousins, related through sweet 3X great grandma Sarah. But here’s where the numbers are in our favor. You have, on average, 940 fourth cousins. So if you are only sharing DNA with 470 of them, that’s not quite so bad, is it? And it only takes one or two of them to be tested and show up on your match list. Their presence there, and their documentation back to sweet Sarah, helps to verify the genealogy you have completed and allows you to gather others who might share this connection so you can learn even more about Sarah and her family. Plus, if you find Jim, then Jim will have 470 4th cousins as well, some of which will not be on your list, giving you access to even more of the 940. This genetic family tree not matching up exactly with your traditional family tree also manifests itself in your ethnicity results, though there are other reasons for discrepancies there as well. In short, this DNA stuff is not perfect, or even complete, but if you combine it with your traditional resources, it can be a very powerful tool for verifying and extending your family history. Additional readings: 23andMe blog post: “How Many Relatives Do You Have?” “How Much of Your Genome Do You Inherit from a Particular Ancestor?”
PROFILE AMERICA: First hamburgers at a 4th of July picnic |
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Wed, 8 June 2016
Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode #192 with Lisa Louise Cooke
Highlights from this episode:
NEWS: Dropbox Improvement Dropbox file-sharing tip: “If you ever want to unshare something you’ve already sent out (like to remove access to a sensitive document), it’s easy to disable an active link.” Just sign in to dropbox.com. “Click the link icon next to the file or folder, and click ‘remove link’ in the top right corner of the box that appears. You can also remove the link by visiting dropbox.com/links and clicking ‘x’ next to the file or folder.” How to share folders on Dropbox
NEWS: MyHeritage and Tribal Quest FamilySearch Helping Preserve and Provide Access to African Records and Family Histories Ghana Oral Genealogy Project (on FamilySearch.org)
NEWS: New Premium Video
Genealogy Gems Premium website membership: Click here to learn more Click here to watch a free video preview
MAILBOX: Russ Recommends the U.S. Public Records Index
Genealogy Gems Podcast episode 181: What to use while waiting for the 1950 census Russ recommends the “U.S., Public Record Index, 1950-1993, Volume 1 and 2.” “Volume 1 is far more interesting with more data. A search will return a Name AND Birth date, along with more than one ADDRESS, Zip Code and sometimes phone numbers.” Ancestry’s description of its online database for Volume 1 says original data comes from public records spanning all 50 states, such as voter registration lists, public record filings, historical residential records and other household database listings.
U.S. Public Records Index on Ancestry.com: Volume 1 and Volume 2 Free partial version (1970-2009) at FamilySearch.org Another partial version (1970-2010) at MyHeritage Thoughts about using the U.S. Public Records Index (some of these points come from the FamilySearch wiki): Not everyone who lived in the U.S. appears in the index, and you’re more likely to find birth information for those born between 1900 and 1990. What you’ll find is primarily where someone lived, and often when they lived there. It’s rarely possible to positively identify a relative in this index, since there’s limited information and it spans the entire country for up to a half century, and you can’t follow up on the record it comes from because the index doesn’t say where individual records come from. As Russ says, this is a great resource to use in combination with other records. It’s a similar concept to the way you might consult uncited family trees: great hints to go on and follow up with further research into verifiable sources. When you find more recent listings, you can sometimes find telephone numbers for living distant relatives. The Family History Made Easy podcast has a 2-episode series (episodes 14 and 15) about cold-calling techniques for reaching out to distant relatives you don’t know.
MAILBOX: Katie on Cold-calling and Adoption and DNA Katie blogs her family history adventures at McKinnon Ancestry. Click here to read a blog post with her story and see more pictures that go with it.
INTERVIEW: Amie Tennant
What have you learned in the process of preparing for certification? “I think the biggest thing I have learned is the meaning of true exhaustive research. We talk a lot about that in our genealogy standards, but essentially, it is looking EVERYWHERE for EVERYTHING that might shed light on your research question.” Why do you want to become certified? I want a way to determine how well I am doing. A measuring stick of sorts. What is the process like? The process is the same for everyone. Once you have decided to become certified, you apply to the BCG. They send you a packet of information and you are “on the clock.” The clock is up in one year, unless you ask for an extension. The portfolio you create consists of: Signing the Code of Ethics Listing your development activities (like formal coursework or enrichment activities); Transcribe, abstract, create a genealogy research question, analyze the data, and the write the research plan for a document that is supplied to you; Do those same 5 things for a document of your choosing; A research report prepared for another person. A case study with conflicting, indirect or negative evidence; A kinship determination project (a narrative genealogy that covers at least 3 generations) There is a lot of great free content on the BCG website: articles, examples, and skill building activities.
GEM: How to Create Family History Videos Quickly and Easily Visit our page on how to create family history videos which includes video tutorials and inspirational examples. Genealogy Gems App users can watch Episode #1 of the video tutorial in the Bonus content area.
Beatrice Nash is a bright, cosmopolitan young lady who has grown up traveling the world with her father. Now he’s gone, and she’s landed in the small village of East Sussex, England, where the locals aren’t entirely thrilled about engaging her as a female Latin instructor for their schoolchildren. She spends a summer fighting for her job, meeting a local cast of engaging eccentric characters (both gentry and gypsy) and trying not to fall for handsome Hugh. Then the Great War breaks out. This novel follows Helen’s popular debut novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, which became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 21 languages. Genealogy Gems Premium website members can join us in June to hear our exclusive and fun interview with Helen Simonson.
GENEALOGY GEMS PODCAST PRODUCTION CREDITS: Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer Sunny Morton, Contributing Editor Vienna Thomas, Audio Editor Additional content by Lacey Cooke, Amie Tennant |
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Tue, 10 May 2016
Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode #191 with Lisa Louise Cooke
NEWS: Upcoming Live-Streaming from FGS from Periscope
Free Periscope app in App Store or Google Play Lisa’s Twitter handle: @LisaCooke
New German Records with James Beidler
His new book: Trace Your German Roots Online: A Complete Guide to German Genealogy Websites. Jim mentioned this new website for Protestant church records: Archion.de Links to new German genealogy databases: CHURCH. An enormous collection of Lutheran baptisms, marriages and burials is now searchable on Ancestry.com. You’ll find over 24 million records from “parish registers from numerous Protestant communities in Baden, today part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg…[and] some communities to the north, such as Wiesbaden in adjacent Hessen.” Another new Ancestry.com collection contains over a million birth, marriage and death records taken from weekly church reports in Dresden, Germany for 1685-1879. CIVIL REGISTRATIONS. Nearly 300,000 indexed names have been added to a free online collection of civil registrations for Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany (1811-1814, 1833-1928). IMMIGRATION TO U.S. A new database on Ancestry.com catalogs German immigrants to the U.S., 1712-1933. MILITARY. Over 400,000 records are part of a new Ancestry.com collection of Bremen military lists (1712-1914). According to the collection description, “The core of the collection are the muster rolls created by recruiting commmissions including actual musters from 1894-1917 for men born between 1874 and 1899. These records are arranged in chronological-alphabetical order and contain detailed information about male military personnel in the city.” Get the book on sale at Shop Family Tree by clicking the link below and then save an additional 15% with our coupon code:
MyHeritage Book Matching
Sunny's result:
Canadian Conferences Coming Up Lisa Louise Cooke at the Ontario Genealogical Society, June 3-5, 2016 at the International Plaza Hotel, Toronto
The Great Canadian Genealogy Summit (CANGEN), October 21-23, 2016 at the Courtyard by Marriott in Brampton, Ontario
MAILBOX: Thom’s Google Success Story with Google Earth and Google Books
Click here to read a blog post to see Thom’s full story with his map overlay and the Google Book search result he found Learn more about Google Earth for genealogy: FREE Google Earth for Genealogy video (Get started!) The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, 2nd edition, by Lisa Louise Cooke (fully revised and updated in 2015) Google Earth for Genealogy video tutorial series: available as a digital download or a 2-CD set
Donna’s Evernote Question Q: What’s the best way to move Evernote notes into notebooks? A: Sometimes getting organized can gobble up all your research time. So one approach I often recommend is just to move Evernote notes as you use them. That way you can keep researching, while getting more organized each day. As you create new notes you'll be putting them directly where they belong, and as you use existing notes, you can tidy them up as you go. If you feel more comfortable getting everything moved in one fell swoop, that's good too. One way to save time is with a simple trick: decide what you have more of (genealogy or personal) and then move ALL your notes into that notebook. Now you only have less than 1/2 of your notes that need to be moved. You can move the rest to the other notebook by selecting multiple notes at once. Here's a step-by-step breakdown:
Click here to find more great resources for using Evernote for genealogy, including free tips, step-by-step helps, a unique Evernote cheat sheet and free and Premium videos Click here to learn more about Genealogy Gems Premium membership
INTERVIEW: Amy Crow and 4 Apps for Local History (and Tips for Using Them) History Pin: “like Pinterest for history.” Especially strong for local history in England, Ireland, Scotland, but also wonderful for the U.S. A lot of organizations have added photos and curated them into collections, like Pinterest boards. Instagram. Follow libraries, archives and historical societies that are in towns where your ancestors lived. They may post historic photos from their collections. Instagram now has a feature where you can share photos with those you follow on Instagram. Use it to share a cool old picture that relates to your family history with a young relative. The Clio. This website and local history app (available through Google Play and on iTunes for iPhone/iPad) shows you historic sites around you when you turn on your location services. The resources, descriptions and bibliographic entries on this site are great to follow up with for your research. What Was There. At this site (or with the iPhone app) you can view historic photos plotted on a map near your current location. Use it to look around and ask the question, “What happened here?” if you’re on a walk or visiting somewhere. The site is integrated with Google Street View. You can also upload your own old photos if you know where they were taken and do an overlay in Google Maps, in much the same way Lisa teaches about doing in Google Earth.
GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB: The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson The Summer Before the War: A Novel From Sunny: This novel takes place in a small English town just before and then right into the events of World War I. The heroine, Beatrice Nash, is trying to find her footing as an independent, educated woman. She’s got a romance on the horizon, and she’s getting to know some fantastic characters, gypsies and gentry when—bam, here comes WWI, first as rumors and dinner conversation, then as a trickle of refugees into town and finally as a horrible pull on their local young men into combat. Lisa always asks me when we’re talking about possible titles for the Book Club, “What does this book mean to us as genealogists?” For me, The Summer Before the War does a couple of things. First, I think it can be difficult to imagine our ancestors in living color with a full range of human emotions. When we can find photos, they’re black and white (or brown and white). When we find them in print, they’re often more reserved in what they say than we like. Times were stricter then, and we may make assumptions about their passions and how they lived them out. What a novel like The Summer Before the War does for me is remind me that people at that times had just as many feelings as I do. They lived and breathed and loved and hurt and were tempted and frightened and everything else. Yes, a novel is not a historically accurate re-creation of my ancestor’s character (or anyone else’s ancestor’s characters, for that matter), but it places the human spirit in a certain time and place, perhaps a time and place that was also inhabited by my relatives. It helps me imagine their lives from a fuller perspective. The other thing I love about this book is that it reminds me that history didn’t happen in neat intervals. Sometimes I separate out in my mind certain events in an ancestor’s timeline. During these years they went to school, or got married and started a family, or worked as a teacher. But then you dump a war on top of that timeline. You realize that for some people, the war snuck in the back door of their lives and stayed there while they were trying to get married and start a family or work as a teacher, or all of the above. Of course, for those who went to the front or to whom the fight came, the story is more dramatic, but even then, the war happened to them within the context of other things that were already happening. The Summer Before the War is really good at showing how the conflict just gradually dawned on this English village, before becoming an everyday and grim reality for many of its residents, and the final chapter for a few of them. The book is The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson. Helen joins us for a fantastic conversation about the book in next month’s Genealogy Gems Premium podcast (Lisa will put an excerpt from the interview into this free podcast, too). So use the link in the show notes to grab your copy of The Summer Before the War and enjoy it. It’s a fun, easy read but with plenty of meat on its bones for those who love history---and re-imagining the lives of their ancestors.
DNA WITH DIAHAN: Changes at AncestryDNA Change is afoot at AncestryDNA. Again. While stability and predictability seem like honorable qualities in a company or product, when it comes to tech tools, in the ears of tech companies, those words sound more like dated and old. Of course, we are used to this by now. I had a client tell me recently that he wanted to be in touch sooner, but his grandson “upgraded” his computer to Windows 10 and then promptly left for college the next day, leaving him fighting with a new interface and operating system. The good news is, you won’t have this problem with Ancestry’s new update. There aren’t any changes to the interface or the layout of the information. In fact, many of you will not even notice at first that your match list has changed. But in fact, there likely have been some adjustments made, as we see below: Some of your third cousins have been demoted to fourth cousins. Some of your fourth cousins have been demoted to 5th-8th cousins. Some of your Distant Cousins have disappeared off your match list You have new cousins on your Distant Cousin match list. In general, from what Ancestry has showed us, you gain more than you lose. Changes in the dregs of your match list may not seem like that big of a deal, so why am I telling you about it? Probably because I am a nerd, and I like cool science stuff, so I think you should too. You see, Ancestry has made some big changes in the way that they are calculating matches. They are getting better at it. Which means you match list is now more representative of your ancestral connections, even at the very distant level. There are two big pieces to this matching puzzle that Ancestry has tinkered with in this latest update: phasing and matching. You will remember our discussion on DNA phasing (link) and how it can impact your matching. Ancestry has developed a robust reference database of phased DNA in order to better phase our samples. Basically, they have looked through their database at parent child duos and trios and noted that certain strings of DNA values often travel together. Its like they have noticed that our DNA says “A black cat scared the mouse” instead of “The brown cat ate the mouse” and they can then recognize that phrase in our DNA, which in turn helps our DNA tell the true story of our heritage. In addition to updating the phasing, Ancestry has revamped their matching method. In the past they viewed our DNA in small windows of information, and then stitched those windows together to try to get a better picture of what our DNA looked like. Now instead they have turned to a point by point analysis of our DNA. Again to use a sentence example, with the window analysis we may have the following sentence windows: ack and J ill went t he hill t etch a pai l of water.
Of those windows you may share the “etch a pai” with another individual in the database, earning that cousin a spot on your match page. However, the truth is, that bit could say “sketch a painting” or “stretch a painful leg” or “fetch a pail.” With Ancestry’s new method, they are able to see farther on either side of the matching segment, making this clearly “fetch a pail.” That means better matching, which means more confidence in your cousin matches. The downside to this update is going to come in the reorganization of some of your relationships. Ancestry has tightened their genetic definition of your third and fourth cousins. Basically, that means that some of your true 3rd cousins are going to show up as 4th cousins, and some of your true 4th cousins are going to be shifted down into the abyss of 5th-8th cousins. What is really upsetting about this is what this does to the Shared Matches tool (link). The shared matches tool allows you to gather matches in the database that are related to you and one other person, provided you are all related at the 4th cousin level or higher. This tightening of the belt on 4th cousins means that some of them are going to drop through the cracks of that tool, really limiting its ability. Grr. Hopefully Ancestry will fix that, and expand this tool to include all of your matches. They have their fairly good reasons for this, but still… So, as the winds of change blow yet another iteration of the AncestryDNA match page, I think we can see this as an overall win for doing genealogy with our genetics at Ancestry.
Get Diahan's DNA quick reference guides at the Genealogy Gems store. Let Diahan Southard be Your DNA Guide.
PROFILE AMERICA: The First High School Here’s a link to their post |
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Wed, 6 April 2016
Genealogy Gems Podcast Highlights from this episode:
Click the player below to listen: NEWS: NGS Streaming Sessions
National Genealogical Society: NGS 2016 is offering registration packages for the following live-streaming lecture series: Thurs, May 5, 2016: Land Records, Maps and Google Earth How to Follow and Envision Your Ancestor’s Footprints Through Time with Google Earth by Lisa Louise Cooke
NGS Live-Streaming Registration More Conference Streaming Sessions by Lisa Louise Cooke: RootsTech 2016 (these are free!) Mobile Genealogy Tips and Tricks Proven Methodology for Using Google for Genealogy
NEWS: New Genealogy Records Online Birth, marriage, and death records for Western Australia on Findmypast.com; deeds and mortgages for South Jutland, Denmark on FamilySearch.org; Yorkshire, England Quarter Session Records and Probate Records on Ancestry.com; Land tax records for Devon, Plymouth & West Devon, Englandon Findmypast.com;
Brazil civil registration records on FamilySearch.org; United States War of 1812 Index to Service Records at FamilySearch.org Freedmen’s Bureau marriages at FamilySearch.org; Louisiana wills and estates updated on Ancestry.com; North Carolina civil marriage bonds and certificates at FamilySearch.org Maryland church records on FamilySearch.org; New York State church records at Findmypast Illinois marriage records on FamilySearch.org in 3 collections: North Dakota funeral homes (hosted by the Red River Genealogical Society) at Ancestry.com--search for free; 1945 South Dakota state census at Ancestry.com updated
NEWS: Family Tree Maker Direct Import into RootsMagic How to directly import your Family Tree Maker files into RootsMagic.
MAILBOX: Carol and the Coast Guard in Google Books Google Books search on "USCG Beale:" search results include this PDF document Google.com search "coast guard history" 1920..1935 "Beale:” results include Cutters Historical Bibliography U.S. Coast Guard museum and historian’s office United States Coast Guard Academy Library
MAIL: Gail’s Trouble with Gmail If you’re not receiving the Genealogy Gems free weekly email newsletter, consider these possibilities:
Gmail is a powerful, free tool for using and archiving email. That’s why there’s an entire chapter on Gmail in The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, 2nd edition. Gmail can help you sort and even keyword-search your past email, and this book will show you how. MAILBOX: Neik from The Netherlands with Research Tips Neik’s tips on researching in The Netherlands CONVERSATION GEM: Celeste’s Google Search Success Story and Google Search Methodology Tips Google for Genealogy: Google Keyword Search Tips 7 Free Google Search Features Every Genealogist Should Use For Genealogy Gems Premium members (See all Premium videos at http://lisalouisecooke.com/premium-videos):
CONVERSATION GEM: Jillian on Irish adoption law A letter from a reader on Irish adoption policy
INTERVIEW: Scott from Extreme Genes Helps Solve a 30-Year Old Missing Persons Case
More “Cold Case” Inspiration: Premium Video: Genealogical Cold Cases (To learn about Premium membership click here)
BOOK CLUB: The Summer Before the War: A Novel British author Helen Simonson’s debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel It’s the early 1900s, and main character Beatrice Nash has recently lost her father. The estate settlement lost her control over her own funds and freedom. She comes to a small English town as a Latin teacher and must mind her manners and local politics to keep her job. Beatrice meets a man and the appeal appears mutual, but he’s already engaged. This isn’t just Beatrice’s story. You’ll meet an entire village full of charming and irascible and expatriate and unconventional and way-too-conventional and mysterious characters, including the local gentry and the local gypsies. They all have their own stories, which unfold as they begin to experience the first great shock of the 20th century close-up: World War I. First it’s the stunned refugees who they enter the quiet village in which the story is set, and the drama that unfolds as the village tries to rally and care for them. Eventually you’ll see the battlefront through the eyes of a few characters who enlist, not all of whom are going to make it back home. Despite the realities they face, this is somehow still an easy and charming read, one into which it’s easy to disappear. Helen Simonson will join us in June to talk about The Summer Before the War. |
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Wed, 9 March 2016
Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 189 NEWS: Relative Race BYUtv’s new reality series Relative Race (http://www.relativerace.com/) premiered on February 28, 2016. The show “features four married couples as they travel across the US in search of long lost relatives, armed with only paper maps, a rental car, a $25 per diem and a flip phone.” (Interview with two contestants later in the show.)
Databases of Runaway Slave Notices New York Times on new websites that will launch databases of runaway slave notices: Irish Collections and Tips from Findmypast Index to Irish Parish Records for 1670-1900 at Findmypast.com (FREE FOREVER to search), with links to free digitized content at the National Library of Ireland
Click here to link to Q&A with Brian Donovan, head of Irish Data and Development at Findmypast on getting started in Irish research
MyHeritage Updates Its Search Technologies Click here to learn more about Record Detective II from the MyHeritage blog.
MAILBOX: Marquise’ new blog: The Blakeslee Tribe Kim recommends my free Family History: Genealogy Made Easy podcast series for beginners and those who want a “genealogy do-over.” She particularly mentions a three-part series on immigration and naturalization records in Episode 29, Episode 30 and Episode 31. Matt’s suggestion for Find A Grave: leave virtual flowers on the “tombstones” of deceased relatives so other relatives can find you:
INTERVIEW: Janice and Patrick Wright from Relative Race Relative Race host Dan J. Debenham described how BYUtv’s original competition reality show came into being: “What could we create that would be very different from what’s currently out there and that would show people discovering family all across the country?" Four teams race from San Francisco to New York in 10 days. Their goal? Find unknown relatives, complete challenges, and don't get eliminated.
In this episode you will hear from Team Black: Patrick Wright is an executive at Alpha Media, a growing radio broadcast media company based in Portland, OR; Janice is a freelance Media Consultant. They joined the Relative Race show because they love travel and adventure.
BOOK CLUB: Interview excerpt with Tara Austen Weaver on Orchard House Author Tara Austen Weaver talks about gardening and family, and how tending a garden isn’t so different from nourishing family relationships.
DNA GEM: 3 Reasons to Test with Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard My youngest child, Eleanor, is nearly 8, so it was fun to have a 2 year old over the other day. She loved following Eleanor around, and Eleanor was equally thrilled to have someone to mentor in the ways of big girl play. I took special delight in listening to my daughter’s patient and surprisingly complete answers to our guest’s constant inquiries of “Why?” It got me thinking about the Whys of genealogy, and especially of genetic genealogy. I decided that there are three main reasons to have your DNA tested for genealogical purposes.
DNA possesses several qualities that make this record type stand out from the rest. First and foremost, it cannot be falsified in any way. No name change, no deception, no miscommunication or misspelling can tarnish this record. Even if it is not a complete record of our family history, the story that it does tell is accurate.
So much of genealogy work, especially in today’s digital world, is intangible. We add ancestors to our pedigree charts with a click of our mouse, having no idea of their physical characteristics, never once setting foot in the same places that they did, or if they preferred bread and butter or toast and jam. But with the advent of DNA testing, I am able to see a physical connection between me and my ancestor. The first time I saw it seems unremarkable. It was just a blue line on top of a grey line, representing the location in the DNA where I had the same information as my cousin. But that line meant that we had both inherited a physical piece of DNA from our common ancestor, Lucy J. Claunch. That realization didn’t add names or dates to my pedigree chart- Lucy had been on my chart since the beginning. But it did add a sense of purpose and reality to my genealogical work. In short, it inspired me to know more about Lucy and to tell her story because I felt inextricably tied to it. Perhaps many of you don’t need a DNA test to feel similarly motivated, you already understand what I learned: Her story is my story. But because I have her DNA in me, I am able to take that idea one step further. Because she lives on in me, my story is her story. So I better make it a good one. Has your DNA motivated you to find out more about your story? Genealogy Gems readers and listeners get a special price on Diahan Southard's DNA Video Training
PROFILE AMERICA: Voter Documentation
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Wed, 17 February 2016
Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 188 Highlights from this episode include:
NEWS: Findmypast creates new partnerships During RootsTech, Findmypast.com announced new partnerships with RootsMagic, Legacy Family Tree, FamilySearch, Family-Historian, Puzzilla, Billion Graves and RootsCity. A press release stated that “Findmypast will make its vast record collection of more than 8 billion records available to customers via these partners. The rollout of these partnerships will begin in 2016, with exact dates to be detailed later….Customers using these various family history products will benefit from having Findmypast’s record collection embedded within the actual product in ways that each partner determines will benefit their customers most.” NEWS: More on the Family Tree Maker Roller Coaster On February 2, Ancestry.com announced an agreement with RootsMagic to connect their family history software with Ancestry.com by the end of 2016. Hooray for being able to continue to sync your online tree with your master tree at home in your own control, your own software, where Ancestry says you’ll also have access to Ancestry hints and searches. On the same day, Ancestry also announced the acquisition of Family Tree Maker software for both Mac and Windows by a company called Software MacKiev. According to Ancestry, “This new agreement means you will receive software updates and new versions from Software MacKiev, and have the ability to purchase new versions of Family Tree Maker from Software MacKiev as they are released.“ Ancestry hopes to have both these solutions fully functional by the time Family Tree Maker software stops being supported at the end of this year. NEWS: New Genealogy Records Online IRELAND CENSUS RECORDS. MyHeritage.com has added to its site “over 8.7 million Irish census records from the 1901 and 1911 censuses [which record every household member]. Both collections are completely free and contain images.”
IRELAND PARISH RECORDS. Findmypast.com subscribers now have access to an exclusive index to the National Library of Ireland’s free online collection of digitized-but-not-indexed registers from 1000 parishes, with over 10 million baptisms and marriages.
(US) DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH RECORDS. Ancestry.com has added a new collection of Dutch Reformed Church records (1701-1995)
US MARRIAGES. Findmypast has just released an enormous collection of marriage records from across the United States. “Containing over 450 million names from 1650 to 2010…the US Marriages collection will, when complete, include over 100 million records, 60% of which have never been published online before.” A third of the data are already online. NEWS: MyHeritage Audio Recordings Audio Recordings feature on the MyHeritage app: Use to interview relatives right from their profile in your family tree, where you’ll now find an audio icon that looks like earphones. Tap it to create a new recording or to access recordings you’ve previously saved. Listen to the recording anytime, download it to your own computer (which you should definitely do to store as your master file) and share it with anyone who is a member of your family website on MyHeritage.com.
Audio Recordings is free and available on the latest version of the MyHeritage mobile app on the App Store and Google Play.
NEWS: RootsTech Follow-Up Live-streamed RootsTech 2016 sessions by Lisa Louise Cooke: Lisa Louise Cooke’s RootsTech 2016 lecture on Google methodology, with top tips and strategies taken from her book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox. The lectures below were streamed live from the Genealogy Gems theater in the RootsTech Exhibitor Hall. Click to watch them: give the video a few seconds to adjust to the proper orientation.
MAILBOX: Here’s the news article Cathy sent in along with her email about learning more about her grandfather’s death. Inspired by the Genealogy Gems blog post about Googling for coroner’s records to solve mysterious deaths, she went looking for coroner’s records online, too. “Well, I still haven't found the Coroners' Records but I did find a couple of newspaper articles - & apparently the body was indeed found on 21st December - but he had been missing since June!” MAIL: Trisha finds Railroad Retirement Board Records Railroad Retirement Board’s instructions for genealogists (redirects inquiries to The National Archives, which has an entire webpage dedicated to its Railroad Retirement Board records. Additional railroad history and genealogy suggestions:
BACKBLAZE NEWS PC World/Mac World article on Backblaze cloud-based computer backup service: “When it comes to backing up your precious data, investing in an online backup service is one of the smartest things you can do.” However, if you ever DO need to restore your hard drive, it’s not so easy to download the massive amounts of files you probably have. The solution has generally been to ship an entire hard drive to a customer, but that can cost $100 or more on top of regular backup service fees.
The article gave Backblaze two thumbs-up for its new solution: the Restore Return Refund Program. It refunds the cost of those hard drives they send you when you return them within 30 days after restoring your data. It’s a $99 refund for USB flash drives and $189 for USB hard drives, so it essentially makes this a free service. Other leading cloud-based computer backup services either won’t ship hard drives at all or continue to charge large fees for it. Other online magazines--The Next Web and Verge—gave similar reports.
INTERVIEW: Lisa talks to Cindy and Sabrina at Union College Cindy Cochran of Lincoln-Lancaster County (Nebraska) Genealogical Society and Sabrina Riley of Union College on the Lincoln-Lancaster County Genealogical Society collection at Union College What’s in their collection?
BOOK CLUB: Update from Book Club Guru Sunny Morton
We hope you’ve gotten to savor Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow by Tara Austen Weaver, the current featured book of the Genealogy Gems Book Club. You’ll love her mouthwatering descriptions of food; fascinating insights into gardening; and touching descriptions of how we nurture and harvest our family relationships in ways not so different from gardening. In the next episode of the free Genealogy Gems podcast, you’ll hear a snippet of our interview with Tara Weaver in the free Genealogy Gems podcast. Next month, Genealogy Gems Premium website members will be able to hear the entire interview with Tara on the Premium podcast. Additional books that were recently recommended at the Genealogy Gems Book Club Open House at RootsTech 2016:
DNA GEM: Diahan Southard Comments on NPR article Recently NPR published an article entitled “DNA, Genealogy, and the Search For Who We Are.” This sounds like exactly the kind of article that I would want to read, considering that I am, after all, Your DNA Guide. However, after only the first two sentences of this article, I stopped reading. I could already tell this was one of those articles, you know, the kind meant to sensationalize and not to communicate accurate information. I closed the browser page. I just don’t have time to read information that is meant to incite, and not to inform. But then I read some comments from some friends that had read it, and then Lisa asked me to review it for you, so I read it in its entirety. It was difficult to get through, even though it wasn’t very long. There are just so many things that are wrong with the presentation of this material. Let’s take three big ones. First of all, the “facts” are taken out of context. Yes, it is true, your genetic pedigree is not the same as your genealogical pedigree. Your genetic pedigree can only contain a finite amount of information while your paper pedigree can contain limitless amounts. In general, our personal set of genetics will only connect us to half of our fourth cousins, and it is true that if we go back far enough we will have zero DNA from some of our ancestors. The author implies that this kind of incomplete information is unacceptable and should be discarded. What he is missing is that by genetically connecting me to my fourth cousin, that fourth cousin is genetically connected to another fourth cousin, who I might not share DNA with, but through the testing and the genealogical research, I can confidently identify as kin. One of the powers of DNA is that it allows you to create networks with living people who can work together to verify and expand our knowledge of our ancestors. Secondly, this author claims that DNA testing and traditional research are mutually exclusive. He claims, “…family and family history are one thing, and DNA-based ancestry is another.” I don’t think I even need to comment on that. That is just wrong. Genetic genealogy is just one more tool in our toolbox to help us answer family history questions. Before I go on, I think we do need a little perspective about where this author is coming from. As US citizens, many of us have enjoyed the rapid growth and general acceptance of the genetic genealogy industry. The author of this article gained much of his content from sources in the UK. Unfortunately, the UK has seen a stream of less-than-reputable companies hawking genetic genealogy-like products that are frankly a scam. So, from that perspective, caution when entering a genetic genealogy experience should be exercised. That background knowledge, provided by my colleague Debbie Kennett in the UK made me feel a little sheepish about my initial hostile reaction to the article. But then I read again where the author states, “It is family that matters — and family is relationship, not DNA,” and I am back on my soapbox. Perhaps this author did not pay attention in 7th grade biology. DNA is family. That’s how this works. I have heard so many stories from so many of you reporting how it was this very DNA stuff that led you to a discovery about your family. Just yesterday I received an email from a woman who recently reconnected with a relative she found through DNA testing. She said, “Spent a week with Carolyn and her husband out in Colorado this Fall and the time spent together is beyond words. It is as if we had known each other our whole lives. But then again on a different level, I am sure we have known each other.” To me, that is a story worth telling, a story that is every bit as real as one that is discovered using only paper research methods. DNA deserves a spot in your family history research. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
PROFILE AMERICA: “Oh Canada” |
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Wed, 13 January 2016
This New Year’s episode is packed with fresh energy and perspective!
Also:
NEWS: Family Tree Maker Software Discontinued Here’s the announcement and my initial comments that reached nearly 30,000 people on Facebook (at press time): What Ancestry’s Retirement of Family Tree Maker Software Means for You
NEWS: New Records Online AUSTRALIA CIVIL REGISTRATIONS. A new browse-only collection of Tasmanian civil registrations (1839-1938) is now online at FamilySearch.org. It includes district registers, counterfoils of marriage certificates and some church records. ENGLAND PARISH AND ELECTORAL. Significantly-updated indexes of Kent parish registers and registers of electors (both dating to the 1500s!) are now online at FamilySearch, as Lancashire parish records to 1538 and another collection of parish registers back to 1603 that include Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. ITALY CIVIL REGISTRATIONS: More indexed images continue to be added regularly to the free collection at FamilySearch.org! Click here for the current list. PHILIPPINES (MANILA) CIVIL REGISTRATIONS: More than 400,000 indexed records for the city of Manila have been added to an existing collection of Philippines civil registrations at FamilySearch.org. WALES ELECTORAL REGISTERS. Over 1.6 million indexed names from electoral registers for Glamorgan and West Glamorgan, Wales (1839-1935) are now searchable at FamilySearch.org. BONUS AUDIO ON THE APP: BRITISH IN INDIA. Findmypast has published new record collections relating to British overseas travelers, workers and expatriates. The first includes “British people who either lived, worked or travelled in India from as early as 1664 up to 1961 with an index of births, marriages, divorces and deaths compiled by the Society of Genealogists.” There are also new collections from the India Office: births and baptisms and wills and probates. DIGITAL BOOKS. A new FREE collection of 150,000 digitized books is searchable at MyHeritage.com. Among the titles are family, local and military histories; city and county directories; school and university yearbooks and church and congregational minutes.
GEMS NEWS: RootsTech 2016: February 3-6 in Salt Lake City, Utah RootsTech 2016: What’s Happening! Here’s the schedule for my official RootsTech lectures and those of our regular Gems contributors: Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: 11:00 Soothe Your Tech Tummy Ache with These 10 Tools, Lisa Louise Cooke Saturday: If you’ve been to my booth at a major conference in the past few years, you already know about the “Outside the Box” mini-sessions I’ve presented along with some of my partners in the past. These sessions have been SO popular that people end up lining the walkways around our booth, several deep, crowding the exhibit hall aisles in to listen and sign up for the free handouts. This year, I’m planning an even richer class experience at the Genealogy Gems booth. There will be 20 sessions, some of them shorter and some longer, taught by myself and my dynamic partners at Genealogy Gems and Family Tree Magazine. I have quadrupled the size of our booth so we can invite many more of you to come in, have a seat and hear these sessions in comfort, without having to stand in the aisles. Here are the FREE classes we’re teaching at Genealogy Gems booth #1230 in the RootsTech exhibit hall:
Remember, if you register for RootsTech before January 18, you’ll save a LOT on registration (you’ll pay $169 instead of $249 for the full 4-day event). Come by and say hello at our booth!
GEMS NEWS: “Where I’m From”
MAILBOX: Where I’m From Picture books by George Ella Lyon recommended by Katharine:
MAILBOX: Family Tree Maker Sue’s email: she decided to use RootsMagic family history software and, following my suggestion, signed up for Backblaze cloud-based backup service.
Click here to read a blog post that answers Charles’ question about why not to continue using Family Tree Maker after it “expires.” Click here to read about specials for Family Tree Maker users and what I do with my master family tree. Click here to access Moving your tree from Family Tree Maker to Reunion, for Reunion 11 (for Mac) software, as recommended by Bill Click here to read which family history software I recommend and why Click here for more Family Tree Maker questions and a couple of bonus questions about keeping Ancestry.com subscriptions or transferring to MyHeritage, which does offer free desktop family history software that syncs with its online trees. MAILBOX: GOOGLE SEARCHING CORONER’S RECORDS Click here to read a detailed answer to Lydia’s question on Google searching coroner’s records The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox is available through the store on my website at www.genealogygems.com.
INTERVIEW: Judy Russell Robert from Covington, LA wrote in with this excellent question! Here’s the full question and an accompanying image: “We have a copy of our great great grandfather's Warrant from the War of 1812. This has never been redeemed. I expect that the time for redeeming has long since expired but can't find confirmation of this anywhere. I have an affidavit from my grandmother dated 1911 stating the grant was lost or destroyed when she was a little girl being raised by her grandmother, the widow of one of the two brothers listed on the certificate. Her husband, one of those two, died before 1850 and therefore his will has no mention of the Land Grant. The certificate I have is a copy of a re-issue by the Commissioner of Pensions dated 1917. From the wording on the note the Commissioner scribbled on the copy he sent, it appears he hand copied the information on file onto a blank certificate and certified the copy.
I have attached a copy of the certificate we have (above) and a copy of what I have been able to fill in for what is not too legible (below). I have blanked out the family names and certificate number since it is not clear to me if it is or is not redeemable and I don’t have any control where this information may end up once committed to the internet. My main interest now is whether or not the certificate could still be good or if these grants have all “timed out” and none could therefore still be redeemable. I spent about a half day researching on the internet but could not find any information indicating grants were still redeemable after all this time.” Listen to the podcast to hear Judy’s advice about researching laws or statutes relating to our genealogy questions—and to hear how she answered this fantastic question. Library of Congress: A Century of Law Making for a New Nation Preserve the Pensions: War of 1812 Pension Digitization Project
Genealogy Gems Book Club: A New Book!
Orchard House by Tara Austin Weaver Tara Austin Weaver's Tea & Cookies blog: www.teaandcookiesblog.com Tara’s recipe for Orchard House is one part food, one part gardening and two parts family drama, liberally seasoned with humor and introspection. The “book jacket” summary of Orchard House, from the publishers: “Peeling paint, stained floors, vine-covered windows, a neglected and wild garden—Tara can’t get the Seattle real estate listing out of her head. Any sane person would see the abandoned property for what it was: a ramshackle half-acre filled with dead grass, blackberry vines, and trouble. But Tara sees potential and promise—not only for the edible bounty the garden could yield for her family, but for the personal renewal she and her mother might reap along the way. So begins Orchard House, a story of rehabilitation and cultivation—of land and soul. Through bleak winters, springs that sputter with rain and cold, golden days of summer, and autumns full of apples, pears, and pumpkins, this evocative memoir recounts the Weavers’ trials and triumphs, what grew and what didn’t, the obstacles overcome and the lessons learned. Inexorably, as mother and daughter tend this wild patch and the fruits of their labor begin to flourish, green shoots of hope emerge from the darkness of their past. For anyone who has ever planted something they wished would survive—or tried to mend something that seemed forever broken—Orchard House is a tale of healing and growth, set in the most unlikely place.” In March, we’ll play an excerpt from an exclusive interview with Tara Austen Weaver in this podcast. Genealogy Gems Premium website members will be able to listen to the full interview in March’s Genealogy Gems Premium podcast. RootsTech Book Club Open House: Thurs, Feb 4, 10am-11am at the Genealogy Gems booth #1230 in the Exhibitor Hall. Stop by and chat about books or family history or both! Free bookmarks, display copies of featured titles a win chance to win a great Book Club prize just for suggesting a book.
PROFILE AMERICA: Ellis Island Opens |
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Tue, 8 December 2015
Genealogy Gems Podcast
This month’s episode celebrates upcoming holiday family time with a special segment on interviewing relatives. Diahan Southard offers her thanks for DNA connections that are helping fill holes left by adoption. And you’ll hear about:
NEWS: MyHeritage Search Connect Genealogy companies are getting smarter, there’s no doubt about it. The latest smart-searching feature from MyHeritage.com is one great example. MyHeritage recently released Search Connect ™. This is new technology that helps you find others who have been searching for the same rare surnames that may be on your family tree. Here’s how it works. For several years, MyHeritage has kept a database of who is searching for what ancestors. I can only imagine how huge that database is! They have now put that database to use as a social networking tool. They whittled it down, at least for now, to just those folks searching for rare surnames. Just that database has 30 million names in it! Now when you search for those rare surnames in the SuperSearch area of MyHeritage, results from the database of other searchers are included in your search results (and they even get translated if needed, thanks to MyHeritage’s Global Name Translation tool). You can click to look at their larger search history to see if this is really a match for you, then contact them through the site. You can also search on that database separately here. The database will continue to be updated weekly, so it will stay fresh. Also, you can opt-out if you DON’T want your past or current searches to be included in it. All you have to do is log in to your family site and click on your name in the upper right-hand side of the screen. Select ‘My Privacy, then on ‘My member preferences’ on the left and uncheck ‘Enable Search Connect™’.”
GEMS NEWS: Contest Results Recently we ran a contest celebrating our milestone 1000th blog post on the Genealogy Gems website. We counted down our Top 10 posts of 2015 and many of you helped us share those posts on Facebook. Charles Meiser was one person who helped, and he won a copy of the Video course Pain-Free Family History Writing Projects by our very own Contributing Editor Sunny Morton.
I do have a nice consolation prize for those who didn’t win: a coupon code for 25% off your own copy of Pain Free Family History Writing Projects Video Course GEMS NEWS: Write of Your Life Podcast A few months ago I was interviewed on the Write of Your Life podcast. The thrust of what I talked about was the importance of what I call “family founders,” those people we can look to in our tree for inspiration and think of as role models. Family history helps modern families grow and heal. The people we meet on our family tree—people with the same genes we have—inspire and teach and motivate us in ways they never could have imagined, and maybe we never could have, either, until we “met” them. Click here to listen to the interview. And then I’d love to hear from any of you about how family history has meaning in YOUR life.
MAILBOX: Where I’m From Poems Between now and the end of the year, I encourage you write your own poem. Just make a list about where you’re from—the places, people, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, phrases, songs and rhythms that are part of your story. Shape it into a poem. Then call in to share it with us on our voicemail at (925) 272-4021. Those who do so by December 30, 2015 will be eligible for a chance to win a one-year Genealogy Gems Premium membership or renewal. Next month, I’ll share a couple more of your entries on the podcast. Give it a try! Click here to learn more about this contest.
MAILBOX: The Case of the Missing Parents Continues
Cluster research, in which you try to recognize little migratory groups and use other members of the group to learn more about your own ancestor of primary interest. It’s a concept that Contributing Editor Sunny Morton wrote an entire how-to class on. She gave some great tips from that class in the November 2015 Family Tree Magazine podcast, which I also host. That brick-wall-busting class is called Cluster and Collateral Research 101. DNA testing. Depending on which test she takes, her results may lead to common relatives descended from those “missing” parents. I recommended the “Getting Started” DNA guide I offer through the Genealogy Gems website. It’s an inexpensive and helpful way to start your DNA journey. As your DNA journey progresses, the entire series of DNA guides written by our resident DNA expert, Diahan Southard, can help with next steps.
SPECIAL INTERVIEW: Kathy Hawkins: Interviewing Tips for Older Relatives Here are four tips she shared that I especially appreciated:
Kathy shared information about Timeslips Creative Storytelling, which teaches caregivers how to have more meaningful, joyful interactions with memory-impaired loved ones. Click here to see a pdf with some creative storytelling and arts materials that Timeslips offers.
BOOK CLUB: Excerpt from Citizens Creek
This month, over on the Genealogy Gems Premium podcast, our Premium members will hear an exclusive interview with Lalita Tademy, author of Citizens Creek. In this episode, we also play a brief excerpt for you. If you’re enjoying these snippets of interviews and you’re not already a Premium website member, consider whether it’s finally time to take the plunge. With Genealogy Gems Premium website membership, one LOW price gets you an entire YEAR’s access to current and ALL back episodes of the monthly Genealogy Gems Premium podcast. That podcast is like this podcast—but on steroids. You get MORE meaty interviews, more fun conversations and exclusive, full-length interviews with the authors of our Book Club selections. You also have access to my most popular classes on video, which if you were to take them at conferences or purchase something like them from another web site would EACH be more expensive than the entire annual membership price. Why not try it for a year? Get as much out of it as you can—there’s definitely a year’s worth of materials to watch and listen to. At the end of the year, YOU decide whether to renew—I never auto-renew my subscribers. It’s always your choice to continue to enjoy Genealogy Gems Premium privileges.
DNA GEM: Filling Empty Seats at the Table with DNA Earlier this year we related the story of Mary McPherson and her cousin Dolores Washington-Fleming who discovered a common connection through Peter Edward Williams. Mary is a descendant of his wife, and Dolores through his slave. Mary and Dolores welcomed this new connection and shared information about their common ancestor. As they reunited for the first time, perhaps they talked about what life might have been like in the 1850’s in the south, and how their ancestors would’ve never guessed that the two of them would be gathered around the same table. As word spreads of the power of DNA testing to reveal the secrets of the past, many adoptees are flocking to genetic genealogy testing companies with the intention of filling the empty seats at their holiday tables. The New York Times reported a touching story of Khrys Vaughan who felt her identity crumble when she found out she was adopted. Turning to DNA testing she was able to connect with cousins and feel a biological connection she didn’t know she had been missing. Even though she still has many open seats at her table, she felt that filling even one meant that she was no longer biologically adrift, but could now look at someone and say, “This is my family.” A similar story broke recently out of California. Just days old, Jen Chervin was found outside a hospital in Yuba City, CA. That was 40 years ago. But this year, Jen used the power of the genetic genealogy database in combination with some serious genealogy work to find her parents. While neither is in a position to openly embrace her as a daughter at this time in their lives, Jen now has a name card to place at seats of honor around her holiday table, all thanks to a simple saliva test. This has been a landmark year in my own family. In one seeming miracle after another, I have added the names of maternal grandparents and great grandparents to my family tree as DNA testing has helped my mom fill in some of the missing pieces in her life. We have had a true Texas welcome from some of her paternal second cousins, and an outpouring of kindness from a maternal second cousin. While our place cards for mother and father are only tentatively penciled in, I know as I look around our genetic holiday table, I am excited about the new faces I see and I can’t wait to learn more. If you want to get started filling seats at your table, there is no time like the present to give yourself, or someone else, the present of DNA testing! The first rule in DNA testing is to test the oldest generation. So parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles should be first on your list. If you are that oldest generation, then pat yourself on the back and get swabbing! The savvy shopper begins with the AncestryDNA test for all interested parties, and the YDNA 37 marker test from Family Tree DNA for all males. Then sit back and wait for the results to roll in! As they do, check back here at Genealogy Gems for tips on how to use that data to fill seats at your holiday table next year. And turn to Diahan Southard’s DNA quick reference guides in the Genealogy Gems store at http://shop.lisalouisecooke.com/
PROFILE AMERICA In November 1904, he received a patent for the world's first detachable electric plug: the two-, now sometimes three-prong plug familiar to us today. Remarkable as it sounds, at the time electric terminals would extend out from a wall, and any electrical device had to be hardwired to them--a time consuming process with a chance of electrocution. Hubbell was no one-hit wonder, as in the 1890s he created an electric switch and patented the pull-chain electric light socket.” |
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The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show
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In this episode, I’m celebrating the 100th episode of another podcast I host: the Family Tree Magazine podcast. So I’ll flashback to one of my favorite interviews from that show, an inspiring get-in-shape conversation for your research skills: how you can strengthen your research muscles and tone those technology skills to find and share your family history.
YouTube video with Robyn’s father: 
The genetic genealogy community has a crush. A big one. Everyone is talking about it. “It has such great features.” says one. “It has a chromosome browser!” exclaims another. “It’s FREE!” they all shout.
finding recent relatives
Getting Started in Genetic Genealogy
Amie Tennant is the newest member of the Genealogy Gems team. She contributes to the blog at 
Resources:
, became a NYT best-seller and has been translated into 21 languages. Her newest book, The Summer Before the War, is another great read: light and charming, with a dash of romance and humor. It’s so easy to read and love.
In genealogy, primary information is given by a source with firsthand knowledge of an event, with the best primary information being created at or around the time of the event. I think we can safely say that DNA falls into that category on both counts. Therefore, it is an excellent source of genealogical information and should be obtained as part of a thorough genealogical search.
We welcome the 
Winners: Everyone who entered will receive a year of Genealogy Gems Premium Website Membership! In this episode you’ll hear Beverly Field’s wonderful poem, and you’ll hear from more winners in coming episodes.
