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!

Join the Find A Grave community

If you have not joined the Find A Grave community, you might think about becoming a member. It is absolutely free to join and you gain so many benefits. One of the main benefits to Find A Grave is people going out to find the gravestones of your ancestors. There are many cemeteries that I might want to visit, but will never get the chance to. It is amazing to know that we have options that many other genealogist never had. This is not the only benefit of Find A Grave. This community is very willing to help the fellow genealogist.

There has been many different occasions where this community has helped me beyond the picture of the gravestone. Here is just one example:

I received an email from a Find A Grave member questioning whether the individual I had added to a cemetery actually was buried there. I went back to the death certificate to see where they said she was buried. I emailed them back with the information that was on the death certificate and asked for clarification about whether or not there could possibly mean a different cemetery in their area. Information came back to me about the cemetery. It was a civil war cemetery and has been left to nature and is very overgrown. The last interment that the individual knew about was about 3 years before my relative said they were buried there. The map at the library did not have any information about them being buried in this cemetery either. Instead of just leaving it at that, this individual asked for the birth and death information and parents of this individual to help me find them. They emailed me back several times with information they had found about the person. They found a gravestone for the father years ago that was not in great shape, but had put that on the website. When she was searching for information about this family she found that the son had gotten a military headstone for his father in this cemetery. The gravestone they found was not this military headstone, so they have determined that they are going to continue the search for these two headstones. The mystery has not been solved, but they are working on it. This Find A Grave member has gone up and beyond the call of duty, and I am going to benefit from their amazing work.

Because of all the help that I have received from the Find A Grave community, I try very hard to be a great community member back. Some things you might want to think about as you fulfill requests from people would be to...

1. Check gravestones around the one they requested to see if there might be others with the same surname. There have been times that babies can be found near parents that individuals seeking this information did not know about.
2. Share as much information with others as you can - obituaries or pictures can add details to the individual that other might not have.
3. Be willing to dig or research the reason as to why you might not be able to find the gravestone they are seeking. Be as thorough as possible and then write back to the individual seeking this information with what you have found. Don't leave them to find the problem only to wonder what is happening.

This is one community inside of family history that I have enjoyed because people have been so kind to me. They have helped me overcome problems in my family tree that without them, I would still be stuck. Thank you to the Find A Grave community for the great help you are to each other. This truly is an incredible group of individuals.

Give back!

These discoveries were made possible because someone took the time to do some indexing. FamilySearch is now asking for help with foreign languages - they have 20 times more searchable records in English than all the other languages combined. Help those around the world find their records. The family history library in Salt Lake City, is making Spanish indexing training available for anyone who wants to learn how. You do not have to speak Spanish in order to help, just learn about the records and what to look for. For online help check out this website: http://ldschurch1.adobeconnect.com/fhl-indexing if you are not comfortable with doing indexing in a different language, there are many other databases to choose from. Let's get involved in giving back to the community who helps us in our research.

Which Presidents did your Ancestors Survive?

Presidents come and go, it is the American way. Have you ever thought about which presidents led the country while your ancestors were alive. Who did your ancestor's vote for? How did they feel about them? You might be able to catch a glimpse of what your ancestors thought through voting registers. Voter information is not just good for knowing who one might have voted for, but there could be a lot more discoveries to be made. In voter registrations you might be given information like; name, place of birth, age, street address, length of residence, native or naturalized, information about their naturalization, party affiliation, physical characteristics, and more. These records can be a gold mine for hints to other larger documents. Each state and county hold their records differently, but there are voting registers availabe. Check Ancestry and FamilySearch to see what they have.

Make Gathering Your History a Priority

As a genealogist, looking backwardss is very easy. The journey back through the history of an ancestors life brings about an interesting story. It is amazing how many details can be found about our ancestors in all the records we research. Even with all the records one finds, we will never know exactly what their life was like, unless they left their own account behind.

This cycle can continue through the generations after us, unless we take a stand and work on our own history. Many times we are so concerned about searching backwards that we forget that we are not putting for the effort needed for ourselves. As I have researched my ancestors, I have realized some of the things which I wished were included in their histories. Think about what you would like to know about your ancestors, and try to leave that behind for your descendants. Here are a few things I came up with:

1. Journals: you can choose to write your journal online or on paper. If you are going to type your journal, you might think about leaving your descendants a little bit of your own handwriting. A connection can be made between you and your ancestors by seeing their own personal handwriting.
2. Share the good times in your life, but also share the hard times. Our lives have ups and downs and so will your descendants. You can help them through their lives by sharing how you were able to make through some of your hard times.
3. Write about historical events and how they affected your life. A large example would be 9/11. Let your descendants know how you felt on this day and how you felt it changed America. You can also tell about things that happen in your state, city, or neighborhood. This adds unique details to your history, which will create a picture of what your entire life was like.
4. Recognize moments in your life to share. Make it a priority to put something together after a trip or event in your life. If you wait too long, it becomes hard to sit down and remember your experiences. You forget things, and too much has happened since that you feel you have to put together.
5. Don't just write your history. Remember to share photos of you and your life. When you share a picture online or in books remember to identify who is in the photo. You might even consider putting information about the event and the date the photo was taken. If these things are not connected with that photo, things will be lost.
6. Include others in your history. You might think about bringing your family together to talk about a certian event in your life. As you are together, you might think about recording it. You will find that your siblings will have different views about the event. Even with all the different perspectives, it will be in your own voice, and your descendants will be able to listen to all involved. 
7. While you have time, remember to interview your grandparents and parents. They know about people you don't know. They can also share about their lives, and fill you in parts of your own life which you don't remember.

The main point is to share your life with those that are here and those who will come after you are gone. Remember that we have a chance to leave something great for our descendants, but sometimes it feels like an impossible task. You don't have to write your history all at one time, nor do you have to use only one method. This is something we all need to work on, so together we can make this task happen. Join us this year in our efforts to collect our own history. Watch as we give tips, tricks, questions, and ways to do this work. Together we can find ways to get better at putting our history together.

It's right around the corner

 Come join the genealogy community for four packed days of amazing classes, great people, and lots of learning. The great thing about this conference is you don't have to be a genealogist to fit into this community. Come, ready to visit with people from all over the United States and the world. Pick from over 200 classes that will fit the level you are currently at. Check out the expo hall to see what new things will be coming this year in family history. If you can't make it, you will not be left out - Rootstech will stream some of their classes for your enjoyment. For more information about this conference visit their website: www.rootstech.org

https://rt2017.smarteventscloud.com/portal/newreg.ww

I was not alive when Martin Luther King Jr gave his "I have a dream speach." Nor did I live through the riots, peaceful demonstrations; the fight for equality for all. This however, doesn't mean that I can't learn from this man who gave his all to a cause he thought just. He led a nonviolent movement to achieve what seemed an impossible goal; equality for everyone regardless of color or creed. He used powerful words which have transcended time. One quote from Martin Luther King Jr which to me describes who he was is, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." Thank you for the words and example you left with all of us. 

https://rt2017.smarteventscloud.com/portal/newreg.ww

Fun Family History Items From BYU

I went looking for what BYU had to offer the public in regards to family history. While looking I ran across the BYU family history technology lab. These are computer science students who are using their field to create things for family history.  Here are a few of the apps that I liked:

1. Geneopardy - this uses your FamilySearch account and comes up with jeapardy questions. I played myself to see what it would be like. This was so much fun for me to play, and would be even more to include my entire family. Check it out and have a great family history game night.
2. Virtual Pedigree - Navigate the tree in a whole new way. New clues to places to research in your family. This was fun to learn about.
3. Pedigree Pie - Use a fun way to see what countries your family comes from. 

These are not the only things that can be found on this site. Go to the website to find out all they have to offer. Use their fun apps to help spread the joy of family history to your families.