Free Probate Records

The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS)  has given the world free access to 32 probate related databases for one week. The last day you can access these databases for free will be Tuesday, 25 April, 2017.

The databases available contain probate records for Colonial Massachusetts and other New England colonies, New York, New Brunswick, Canada and other states.

In order to get access to these great databases you will have to sign up for a free guest membership on AmericanAncestors.org. When you get to their website, take advantage of the learning you can have. There are some really great explanation about what probate records are. They teach you how to find and use probate records from the different databases. Here is the link the the exact page about the probate records.  https://www.americanancestors.org/features/probate

Don't forget to take advantage of these free probate records. Thanks NEHGS for keeping these great records.

Rootstech Google Books Class

Google Books is a gold mine for genealogy. They have over 25 million books digitized and searchable. All of these books are out of copyright so if you are looking for books about your ancestors or the place they lived, this is a great place to start. (Remember there could be histories found about a location, that can lead you to records. You don't know what you will find until you look.)

In order to search on Google Books here is something you will want to know about the makeup of the search engine. You can use the Boolean Search features which include:

• Quotation Marks - exact words or phrases
• OR - Looking for specific things in two places - Springville Utah OR Illinois
• Minus Sign - Subtract words - if you are looking for James Harrison -president
• Asterisk - letters or words can appear between two words - city * directory would bring things back like city telephone directory
• NumRange (..) - Narrow your search to a specific time span. 1804..1839

You can add multiple Boolean characters to a search ... "Indiana" city * directories 1830..1840. Mix and match. With Google Searches, you have to figure out what is going to pick up your information. Typically I start broad and then start to narrow my search.

Thank you Shirley Smith for bringing this information back from Rootstech. It is a good reminder of how we should be searching.

FHL Discovery Center

The Family History Library has created a great new experience for families and youth. Previously when you walked into the library you would have noticed a closed off and stuffy library. This is no longer the experience you will have. When you walk into the library now, you will see many large t.v. screens and people having fun learning about their families.

Some of the activities you can participate in are:

1. Relative finder
2. Learn all about me
3. Find out where you come from
4. Picture your story
5. Record a story

This weekend while at the Saturday, Family Discovery Day, I got my family to attend. While we were at the conference, I took them to the library to try out this experience. We had so much fun. Let me share a few experiences we had to give you an idea how much fun this experience is.

My mom was looking at relative finder, and a man came up to her and said, "Hi, cousin." We went to his screen and found out how we were connected. We then got into a conversation, getting to know each other. My cousin came from California to meet me. It was awesome!

I took my sister over to the getting to know you screens, and we had fun sharing what happened to each of us during the year we were born. For me - cd's outsold vinyls for the first time - Wow we don't even really use these any more. We looked at the price of gas during each of our birth years and the price of stamps - can we say inflation?

At the immigration station, you not only get to see where your ancestors came from, but they have some reasons as to why people left certain areas of the world. Reasons could be famine, or religious persecution, etc. Another thing here, we could see historical pictures of different places your ancestor lived. Wow!

We took pictures together as a family, we were able to pick out the background and then stand in front of the green screen. We also took individual pictures where we put our face into a certain picture. There were so many to pick from, we had fun laughing together at what we looked like.

Last, we got the family together for an interview. They had questions that brought on some thinking, and laughing. At first, they thought it was very uncomfortable, but by the end of the 10 minutes we were relaxed and having fun.

All in all, this experience was incredible. It really is something you should try out with your family, youth groups and YSA groups. It will bring a lot of laughter, and many moments of WOW! Come in and understand why family history is so awesome. You do need to schedule a time to have this experience. For information about scheduling check out this website: https://familysearch.org/discovery/ 
You too can have some of these great experiences so come in and enjoy!

Rootstech Livestream

Can't make it to Rootstech, does not mean that you will miss out on the Rootstech experience. Here are the classes that you will be able to livestream each day of the conference. In order to livestream you will have to go to www.rootstech.org and there will be a button that will take you to the livestream. Check out all the great classes they have available for you!

https://www.rootstech.org/live-stream-schedule

You will also be able to livestream the Family Discovery Day by going to lds.org or going to the Mormon Channel's YouTube channel.

Create Timelines for your Ancestors Life

I have been looking for a way to show my ancestors history in a visual way. I wanted something that would be interesting to my family, so it had to be more than just dates and places. I decided that I wanted to create a timeline of the events in my ancestors life. These events would include historical events as well as personal events in their lives. This timeline needed to be more than just words - pictures needed to be added to enrich their time looking at that ancestor. I went looking for something that was free, and could easily be added to my website which I have already created for my ancestors.   

The search was on - I started looking at the different options out there for timelines. Many programs have free versions, but there were too many restrictions for what I wanted to accomplish. You can only put in so many dates or pictures before you have to start paying. I finally came across a website called TimelineJS created by the Northwestern University Knight Lab. This website walked me through the entire process of how to create this timeline. It uses google sheets where you replace their information with your own. You can add as many events as you like and you can add pictures, youtube videos, twitter posts, maps, Wikipedia articles, documents, and sounds and more to make your timeline interactive for people. I was also able to embed this timeline onto my website for my family to enjoy.

I loved how the timeline looked and presented the information I had entered. Check out their website for more information.

Here is a small timeline that I created to see if you might like to try out this program. Enjoy!

 

We are so blessed

Rootstech App

If you are going to Rootstech this year you really need to get the Rootstech app. Go to the store on your phone or ipad and search for Rootstech. This years app is pink. The app has so many things to offer your conference experience. On the app, you can figure out which sessions you want to attend. Check out who will be in the expo hall and decide which ones you want to visit. Check out the speakers they have coming this year. The handouts for the classes are found on the app, and you have the ability to download them while you have a good internet connection. If you don't want to do that, but want to take notes on the handout you can do that too. You can also create general notes on this app which are not connected to a class. You can keep all of your Rootstech information all in one place. This is a great app to explore and have for this week of learning. Play with the app before you head out to the Salt Palace Feb 8-11. Have fun exploring the app to see what it can do for you!