The importance of accuracy in family history research for temple ordinances

Here is a link to another blog post compiled by Cathy Pearce Anderegg about the importance of accuracy when submitting names for temple work.

Prophets Urge Accuracy and Sources Before Temple Work

 Sometimes it is very easy to locate lots of green icons (used to be green arrows) in FamilySearch Family Tree and reserve those names and take them to the temple and get the temple work done. But, how can you be sure that you are not duplicating temple work.

According to one statistical study done in FamilySearch Family Tree, if you find a green icon name for a person born after 1800 there is a 50% chance that the temple work has already been done. If you find a green icon for a person born before 1800 there is a 96% chance that the temple work has already been done.

Often our priesthood leaders make goals that we "find a name and take it to the temple."  So, we want to achieve this goal quickly and easily and we grab the first green icon we find in our FamilySearch Family Tree. For some members such as new converts who have no names in their FamilySearch Family Tree it is easy to find names to take to the temple. For multi-generational members who have many names in their FamilySearch Family Tree it is harder to find names to take to the temple. Some of our ancestors have had their temple work done hundreds of times, besides doing it themselves when they were alive.

Adding and documenting sources in FamilySearch Family Tree is a key way to reduce the amount of duplication. If this is done when you use the "search for duplicates" function you will be more likely to find duplicates.

The last time our family did sealings at the temple we were in the same group as a young couple who brought a stack of family name cards for marriages that were reserved by the wife's mother. As we started to do the sealings, it was obvious that many were duplicates with the same names and dates. We ran out of time and were not able to do them all. The sealer told the young couple that they should have checked for duplicates and then they would have time to complete all the sealings in that session.

List of RootsTech sessions available online

I was tempted to copy and paste Thomas McEntee's blog post, but decided that might not be ethical or in keeping with copyrights. Here is a link to his blog.

http://www.geneabloggers.com/rootstech-2017-session-videos-now-available/

There is a compact list of all the sessions online. RootsTech 2016 sessions are still available online as well.

I embedded a Vimeo of the My Heritage RootsTech After Party

My Heritage After Party at Roots Tech 2017

Ron and I were fortunate to get invitations to the My Heritage After Party held in the ballroom of the Marriott Hotel in Salt Lake City Friday February 10, 2017.

It was fun to relax a bit after a long day of classes and activities at Roots Tech in the Salt Palace.

And My Heritage just sent me this video of our fun party.

https://blog.myheritage.com/2017/02/the-rocking-myheritage-rootstech-after-party/

Report about Roots Tech 2017

This is a talk written for sacrament meeting in the West Jordan 4^th Ward February 12, 2017. (following a talk by Susanne Hunsaker and an intermediate hymn “Family History – I Am Doing It” from the Children’s Song Book  -- This is the working copy of the talk actually, it turned out to be much too long so a lot was left out when the talk was given and it was not given word for word.)

I think it is marvelous what Susanne has done in creating this book about her husband Dale Hunsaker. And it is marvelous that he kept a journal and wrote so much about his life. It is really a priceless treasure for their family. It is really a big project to write and assemble a book like this. I have not yet assembled a book like this and I admire anyone who has.

Ron and I are Susanne’s home teachers and when we last visited her, she showed us the book and Ron decided then and there to ask her to share it with the rest of you.  He asked me to speak at the same time. I knew I would be going to Roots Tech and my first thought was that I would be just be like the Young Men and Young Women when they go to camp or youth conference and are asked to make a short report. How hard can that be? But it is probably better not to know before you go that you are going to be reporting about it.

Thank you Susanne for selecting that song, the family history song. I like it because it is a happy song and I think we should be happy when we are doing our family history.  We should feel joy whenever we are serving the Lord.

I have been interested in genealogy for a long time. It is probably genetic. I remember at least one time visiting my Hurst grandparents and every horizontal surface in their house was covered with genealogy family group sheets and other papers. My Grandma Hurst was so excited about some new discovery and wanted to show it to my Dad. The only thing I remember is how happy and excited she was. My Grandma Rollins loved genealogy and temple work too. Sometimes she would come and stay with us in Salt Lake so she could visit the Family History Library. My mother told me that once she and Grandma were looking at microfilms and they were excited to find a name. Grandma said, “It’s like catching a fish, isn’t it.” She is absolutely right. It is like catching a fish.

Both of my parents were avid genealogists. My father wrote several family history books. Just recently I put my father’s research into a tree on Ancestry.com and made it public. I should have done this a long time ago. I received messages from other genealogists who are not members of the church. I learned that they already had read his Sanders book and had done further research. They wrote expressing appreciation for my Dad’s research and offering some good opportunities for further collaboration. And I personally have had some great experiences with doing family history and taking family names to the temple. I have a testimony of temple and family history work.

Well I guess I had better tell about Roots Tech. Roots Tech is an annual conference sponsored by FamilySearch and many other companies. It is held in the Salt Palace every year. There were about 25,000 people this year.  It is like Disneyland for genealogists, a happy place on earth. The happiest place on earth is the temple.  {Just like many people like to get a hotel right in the park so they can spend more time at Disneyland, someday I would like to get a hotel downtown by the Salt Palace.}

Wednesday was Innovator Summit day and it is mostly about technology and for the type of people who are entering the competition for developing new products to facilitate family history. It is a serious competition. The first prize is $90,000.

There are over 200 sessions for Roots Tech and a huge Expo Hall of exhibitors all trying to get your attention and many of the exhibitors have short classes and demonstrations, so like when you are going to Disneyland you need to make careful plans so you can get the most out of your experience and focus on what you really want to do. So I made four goals.

1.     Have fun.

2.     Focus on learning more about the FamilySearch Family Tree web site and the major partner sites (Ancestry, My Heritage and Find My Past). I decided to sacrifice learning about DNA, journaling, how to organize all my photos, other important stuff that would detract from what I really need to learn right now.

3.     Learn about new developments. I wanted to leave room for the possibility that there would be something that would appear that would be very helpful and that I would be inspired to pursue. I prayed that the Spirit would lead me to what I needed. I also prayed that I would be led to things that would help me in my own family history research.

4.     The fourth goal was to learn about things that would help me in my calling, especially since I was just recently sustained and set apart as stake family history leader and stake indexing director. And I am still ward family history consultant too. So I have been thinking and praying about how to fill these callings. I found this sentence in some training materials from the Riverton FamilySearch Library. It is a quote by Elder L. Whitney Clayton. “I encourage you to see yourself as someone who helps kindle the faith by which members do this work, not just as a person who teaches skills. Family history is a work of faith.” I will say right now that it was announced by the Family History Department a few days ago (on February 9 to be exact) that all family history callings at the area, stake, or ward level are now called temple and family history consultants.  I think this will help me get more clarity about my calling.

OK, those were the goals and here is what happened. {The night before RootsTech started we had five mother goats have their babies, 12 baby goats. So we were running late. But Ron drove me to the Salt Palace to save time. I thought I would miss the long registration lines. But this year they decided to be strict and not let people into the hall without their badges. So I waited in line for about an hour and missed all but the last 15 minutes of the first session with the Property Brothers Jonathan and Drew Scott. I conversed with two women while I was in line. One woman was head of the Daughters of American Revolution for Utah. The other woman had gone on a mission to Laos with her husband and now she is learning Chinese symbols from genealogical records and translating them into our characters. I don’t really understand what she is doing, but it makes my calling sound a lot easier. Both women have ancestors who were accused of being witches in colonial New England.}

Regarding goal # 1: I had lots fun. Some of the speakers for our general sessions were HGTV’s Property Brothers, LeVar Burton from Roots, Star Trek, Reading Rainbow, Kenyatta Berry from Genealogy Roadshow, Cece Moore the Genetic Genealogist, Buddy Valastro TLC’s Cake Boss. Buddy helped judge a cake competition sponsored by Orson Gygi Company so I got to see all the decorated cakes and vote for the people’s choice award. There were four special events. Thursday night the Tabernacle Choir and orchestra and Oscar Hammerstein III and Dallin Vail Bayless had a special program in the conference center featuring the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Friday night we had a cultural celebration with Burundi African Drummers, Irish Dancers and Luz de las Naciones (The Light of the Nations in English). Sister Lorena Black sings in this choir. It is a very large choir and they have an orchestra and dancers and soloists. They are really good. You can find them on You Tube. They have performed in the conference center. They are like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir only in Spanish. Only part of their choir was able to perform for us and one of those selected was Lorena.

Also Friday My Heritage sponsored an after party at the Marriott for VIPs and invited guests. I am not sure why I was invited, but Ron and I went and had great time. Maybe I will put my whole talk on my blog. (There was Karaoke and dancing and games and food. A gentleman from Denmark joined us at our table and then a woman from Norway and her friend from Minnesota also joined us. Niels the Danish gentleman has come to Utah for RootsTech four times. I will share just one thing that I thought was very interesting. He told us that he had got to meet the children of Monte J. Brough and asked if we ever knew Monte J. Brough. We knew Elder Brough because he used to be our regional representative. He knew Monte J. Brough because he was the founder of FamilySearch and getting genealogy on the internet. So I have been thinking about how we view accomplishments like this versus how the world views them. It is kind of interesting.} Saturday the fun things were the cake competition and a concert by Vocal Point and Noteworthy from BYU. So goal #1 Have Fun was achieved spectacularly.

Goal #2 was to learn more about FamilySearch and the partner programs. Ron Tanner taught a class about FamilySearch Family Tree and new developments. The most exciting thing is that there is now a FamilySearch Lite which doesn’t have many of the features of the Internet based program, but it can run on a feature phone or flip phone and is part of a Facebook free package. Members of the church in less developed countries can enter names and reserve them for temple work using this simple FamilySearch Family Tree program on their phones. Ron Tanner is a very courageous man. He was one of the masterminds of New Family Search and he has had many genealogists mad at him, yet he has continued to keep working and facing the criticism and now things are getting much better. I was also impressed with a presentation by James Tanner about My Heritage. He said I am going to tell you what it is and what it does and I don’t really have time to teach much else. So I decided that in my calling I will teach what it is and what it does. Many of you are better equipped than I am to teach yourselves how to do it. Or Aleia Mason who is assistant stake temple and family history consultant can teach you. I read somewhere that it takes about four hours to learn a new software program. So how about this, I tell you what something is and what it does and you figure it out yourself or find someone more qualified to teach you.  Both Ron Tanner and James Tanner belong to the same Tanner family that Sister Masters and Sister Mason belong to. So I hope that is significant. I hope there is something genetic there. I look forward to working with Sister Masters and Sister Aleia Mason.

I learned that FamilySearch actually has 137 partners. You can find them in the app gallery on the FamilySearch home page. So for some of them I commit to teaching you what they are and what they can do. And that is where I am on my goal #2.

Goal #3 was to look for new things. Here are some new things I learned about.

·        Up until now in the Catholic Church it was up to the local parish priests whether church records were available for research and under what conditions. But the company FindMyPast  made a deal with the Vatican to digitize and index 50 billion Catholic records. They announced it at RootsTech and the records are starting to be online.

·        FamilySearch completed a project to index Freedman Bureau records a few months ago. These records are about emancipated slaves and will be very helpful for African Americans to find their families. Friday was African heritage day at Roots Tech. There was a full slate of classes about African American research.

·        I got to see the new indexing program. Sometime this Spring we will no longer have to download a program from the Internet when we index. It will be online and you can index using a tablet if you want.

·        Yesterday I thought I had lost my cell phone somewhere in the Salt Palace and by the time I found it in my bag where it was all the time, I was late getting to a class that I wanted to attend and it was full and so was the class next to it. So I was looking for another class and saw a sign for a class called “Tracing your Tracting Ancestors.” What do you think that was about? Any ideas? I went in and saw a screen with the words “Go Ye Into All the World” 1830-1930 Early Mormon Missionaries. So that class was about a fairly new database of missionaries on the Church History Library web site. Probably I was “pushed” into this class because I learned that I have at least one ancestor who is not on this site and he needs to be and I can see some other possibilities too. That’s all I will say about that.

·        Another serendipitous thing that happened was that I was just passing by the BYU Family History Technology booth and noticed a sign that said “How to use saturation to avoid duplication in FamilySearch.” {There was a BYU Student telling about an online game called Geneopardy that he had developed. It is like Jeopardy except the questions come from your own tree on FamilySearch. This is the same group that developed Relative Finder, if you have ever played around with that.} So next, the professor told about the saturation concept.  I learned that the saturation concept builds on the way we used to do name extraction. They pick one area and collect all the records in that area. Instead of just extracting names they do some additional research. Maybe in the future you will be able to volunteer for a project to take some names and find sources that prove that person’s birth date, or their marriage date or their death date, kind of like volunteer indexing but a step further. They are working on doing this in Ohio with another group and they mentioned they were going to do one county in North Carolina and I immediately suggested that they do Montgomery County and filled out a form and gave them my email address. So maybe I will be hearing from them. So goal #3 to learn some new things was accomplished for me and some of my prayers were answered.

My goal #4 was to learn about things that will help me in my calling. This happened mostly on Saturday at Family Discovery Day. I would like to tell you a few things I learned from President Russell M. Nelson and Sister Wendy Watson Nelson. When Elder Bradley introduced the Nelsons he told us that their presentation would be widely distributed throughout the church and we were just the “studio audience.” I called Sue Richards last night and asked her to put the web site for this talk in the program. I found it online but it was kind of complicated to get to it. But as of this morning there is a link to their talk on the home page of lds.org and it is available in 7-8 languages. I watched it again this morning. I strongly encourage everyone to watch it and that will be much better than anything I could say. They used the format of a scrabble game and these were the words: family, Elijah, hearts, stories, detours, sacrifice, missionary, sealing. Elder Nelson shared a sacred experience from his family when his great grandfather returned from the spirit world to visit his 27-year-old son, Elder Nelson’s grandfather on April 6, 1891. The Nelson Family has always considered this a sacred experience and only shared it with family and close friends, but now Elder Nelson has decided that since he is a general authority that all the members of the church are his friends and it is time to share. It tells some of the same things that Joseph F. Smith later saw in his vision of the redemption of the dead in 1918.

One other thing I will tell you is that Elder Nelson says that he always tells missionaries that if he were a missionary today his two best friends would be the ward mission leader and the ward temple and family history consultant. So, Sister Masters, Elder Masters, Elder Steed, Elder Gilchrist – I am your new best friend! I don’t know exactly what we are going to do, but I have faith that we can do it.

Three other Family Discovery Day sessions are also online including the presentation by Sherie Dew, Vai Sikahema, and Reno Mahe which I attended and one by Hank Smith about promoting family history in your home which I did not attend. Since I am the missionaries’ new best friend I decided to go to the breakout session about missionary work.

I have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that Jesus is our Savior. I know that his church has been restored. I know that we can be together with our families for eternity. Lately my ancestors are bombarding me with things. As we get closer to the second coming the veil between earth and the spirit world is getting thinner and thinner. Family history is a work of faith. We will do it. We will be richly blessed. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Drake Book of Remembrance Photos

Another free slideshow design by Smilebox

Untangling Difficulties in FamilySearch Family Tree

I recommend this online webinar to everyone who is interested in doing their family history.

Untangling Difficulties in FamilySearch Family Tree.

James Tanner is a very competent genealogist who is now a volunteer at BYU Family History Library. This webinar is a BYU Family History Library webinar that was presented on March 18, 2016.

Almost everyone who has accessed FamilySearch Family Tree has had difficulties or found gross errors in their family tree. This is particularly true for multi-generational members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And those who are descendants of pioneer polygamist families will encounter the phenomenon of IOUS (Individuals of Unusual Size).

James Tanner explains how FamilySearch Family Tree was created and which records were used to create it. He also enumerates some of the common mistakes that will be found such as many duplicate entries, wrong individuals in families, and dates and places that don't work with the people involved.

This webinar was a reality check for me. Recently I heard a speaker who extolled the virtues of FamilySearch Family Tree. He said that the average church member could find 200 individuals who need temple work done just by doing a search at Family Tree. I tried that and found only 2 possibilties in my pedigree. So any hopes of finding "low hanging fruit" in my research were dashed. I will not be able to do my family history work by just looking for "green arrows" or whatever icon is now used in FamilySearch to indicate that one can reserve temple work for that person.

There is going to be no substitute for good old-fashioned research. I need to find good sources and write citations for them and document everything! I need to do the detective work. Unfortunately there is no easy way to "untangle" the difficulties in FamilySearch Family Tree. No Free Lunch!

James Tanner recommends that you start with "the first person in the line with verifiable names, dates and places." All information beyond this point is conjectural and unsupported. I have heard this before. Every real genealogist will say, "Go from the known to the unknown." Be ready to revise the traditionally accepted genealogies. Resist the temptation to jump back in time before the records are substantiated.

Therefore, I have concluded that I need to start my research from the very beginning and create an accurate genealogy in my Legacy Family Tree program. This will be a lot of work. But maybe by the time I establish a good foundation FamilySearch will have eliminated the New Family Search program. Then FamilySearch Family Tree will be more correct and easier to work with.

Three Rules of Genealogy from James Tanner

Today I am writing a very simple post with three important rules of genealogy that should be obvious.

First rule of Genealogy: When the baby was born, the mother was there.

Second rule of Genealogy: You can't find what's not there.

Third Rule of Genealogy: Everyone dies. 

For more elaboration on these rules please consult  Genealogy Star, an excellent genealogy blog written by James Tanner.  Genealogy Star

Mocavo and FindMyPast

From James Tanner's excellent blog post of Wednesday March 23, 2016 on http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/ I learned that the merging of Mocavo.com and FindMyPast will soon be completed.

FindMyPast has really grown and expanded. It started in the United Kingdom as a company focused on British genealogy and was part of Bright Solid which merged with D. C. Thompson & Co., Ltd. Now it has added numerous databases and I believethat now it actually has more United States records than British records. FindMyPast was a major partner in the Community Project of the indexing of the 1940 U.S. Census. Because of collaboration between FamilySearch  and FindMyPast, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can have free subscriptions to FindMyPast.

There are employees working in Utah. One of them is my grandnephew Jeremy. Preparing Mocavo for the merge is Jeremy's project. Kudos to Jeremy!

The Find My Past area in the Expo Hall at RootsTech 2016 focused on its large collection of marriage records. We were given formal invitations and small organza bags of Jordan almonds as a promotion.

We are very very blessed to have so many convenient online resources for genealogy research.

Adventures with BYU Relative Finder

I have heard of Relative Finder before. But I decided to visit the web site because on March 19, 2016 I was at the Saturday Seminar at the Riverton FamilySearch Library and attended a class by Van Celaya. Van Celaya is an instructor for BYU Family History Library. His presentation was very positive and upbeat and his enthusiasm for family history is contagious.

So I decided to check out BYU Relative Finder and login in with my Family Search account and see who I am related to.

Here are some of the results:

The closest relatives of the "celebrities" on their list are:
Henry B. Eyring -- 3rd cousin
Mitt Romney -- 3rd cousin
Jeffrey Holland -- 4th cousin

Other apostles that I am related to are:
Elder Cook
Elder Oaks
Elder Stevenson
Elder Ballard
Elder Hales
Elder Bednar
Elder Anderson

I am related to a multitude of U.S. Presidents including Barack Obama!

I am related to about 20 Mayflower passengers, but the one I have thought was my relative, John Billington, was not on the list.

Movies stars that I am related to are:
Lucille Ball
Humphrey Bogart
James Stewart
Oliver Norwell Hardy
Henry Fonda

My husband is related to
Elder Haight
Elder Christofferson
Elder Perry

It is interesting that most of these relationships come through the lines of my 2nd great grandmother Laurinda Atwood. The program said it would find your closest relationship and that you might be related in other ways as well.

Of course, because of errors in FamilySearch some of these relationships may not be true.

The whole experience made me realize that virtually everyone is our relative and we need to be more kind and understanding of all of our Heavenly Father's children. We are all brothers and sisters.

Hurray Free Memberships!!! Full Steam Ahead!!!

Today I received an email from FamilySearch that I am entitled to free memberships at Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, FindMyPast.com. I knew this was coming. It was announced at RootsTech 2014 that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would be eligible for free memberships because of collaboration and sharing of the resources of the church with these organizations.

I did not expect it would happen so soon. I surmised that maybe by the end of the summer I would be able to get my free memberships. I already had current memberships with Ancestry and My Heritage and I have had a membership with Find My Past before. It was very easy to make the transition to an LDS membership at all three sites. All three are now linked to my FamilySearch account.

I also paid my tuition for my next Genealogy course, Introduction to Genealogical Research, at Salt Lake Community College today.

Yesterday I started an online course at The National Institute of Genealogical Studies which is entitled Google for the Wise Genealogist.

Tomorrow I am going to start a 4-week class on Roots Magic software at the Riverton FamilySearch Library taught by Ron Ray.

It is full steam ahead for genealogy and family history in my life.

RootsTech 2014 Information Overload: Managing Online Searches and Their Results

D. Joshua Taylor taught the class on Information Overload: Managing Online Searches and Their Results GS1375. He is the lead genealogist for findmypast.com. He is also the current president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), I have seen him on the NBC TV show "Who Do You Think You Are?" And I have heard him lecture at other conferences. He is very organized and his presentations are always wonderful. He has very helpful syllabuses also.

I attended only part of this session. I was really overloaded with information by Saturday February 8, 2014 at 1:00 PM. I was doing something in the RootsTech Exhibit Hall and got to class late and it was packed.  It is usual for D. Joshua Taylor's classes to be packed.  But later I watched the entire session online at the rootstech 2014 web site. I gained many good insights to researching online.

I had never heard of Yippy.com before. But I think I will enjoy the expand and cluster approach to searching once I learn how to do it. It should be a helpful search engine to use.

Here are the five main points of the presentation:
1. Keep a family history "golden rule." This means that for every one hour spent researching you will spend approximately two hours planning the research and two hours following through. That seems like a long time, but it is probably worth it in order to save time in the long run.
2. Keep an updated research plan for websites. Mr. Taylor recommends electronic lists so they are always handy for whenever you have some time to research.
3. Organize your digital life. I really need to do this. I have a messy desktop on my computer and though I have started organizing my genealogy files, I have a lot more I can do.
4. Develop an "after research" system. This reminds me of David Dilts and his "Nine before You Recline" list, except Dilts wrote his system for paper research. Taylor recommends that you develop your own system to name, store and organize your files. It is critical to do the organizing right after each research session.
5. Prioritize your research. Taylor uses As, Bs, Cs, Ds. I think he must have read Alan Lakein's book on time management. He also suggested only working on researching two or three families at a time. Since everything you discover in research typically leads to two or three more places to search, it is important to limit the number of families you are working on or things can really get out of hand.

This was a very informative class. I would like to go back and view it again after about a year of genealogical research. I am sure that as I do more research the suggestions will make more sense and be even more valuable. I am glad that it is available online.

RootsTech 2014 The New FamilySearch Indexing Program

On Friday February 7, 2014 I attended class RT1193 taught by Scott Flinders about the new FamilySearch Indexing Program. Scott Flinders is the product manager for FamilySearch Indexing. This was very interesting. There are some exciting changes coming. Some of the things that I remember that were exciting were:

• The new program will be browser-based. It will not be necessary to download the indexing program to your computer. This will be great for a few people I know who use their employer's computers and are allowed to use these computers for personal use but are not allowed to download programs. At least that is the excuse they give me when I invite them to do indexing. 
• There will be an indexer and a reviewer and this should save a lot of time. If the indexer and reviewer have different opinions, both opinions will be saved and be searchable. I am not sure if the arbitrator role will disappear entirely.
• Researchers who find information because it was indexed will be able to send a thank-you email to the person who indexed the record.
• Volunteers will be able to perform other roles such as setting up projects. This should reduce those images with "no extractable data" and "duplicate images." And the images should be easier to read if someone can adjust the readability of the images as they are being set up.
• Indexers will be able to see a series of images in a project which will give more context to what they are working on. 
• The program will suggest projects for the indexers to work on, based on their previous experiences and interests.
• There will be gradual changes in colors, fonts, layout, etc. Some of these have happened since I attended RootsTech.
• We do not know exactly when the new program will be fully operational. It will be later in the year, probably in August 2014 or after August 2014.

The Ancestry Insider blog has done a far better job than I have done of reviewing this class. Here is the link to the Ancestry Insider Review.

Every Family Has a Story, Discover Yours

I really enjoyed this short little video shown at RootsTech 2014.

Every Family Has a Story, Discover Yours

I shared it in my ward with the Relief Society and with my family.

RootsTech 2014 Keynote Speaker Judy Russell

Judy Russell is a lawyer and a certified genealogist. Her blog is called The Legal Genealogist. She teaches at several genealogy institutes and many conferences.

She was the first keynote speaker on Friday February 7, 2014. Her topic was something like Every Family Has a Story, What's Yours? She emphasized that pieces of oral family history can be lost in just three generations. It must be "purposely and accurately passed down from generation to generation." She used examples from her own family history.

I was so impressed with her presentation that I volunteered to give a lesson on this topic in our ward Relief Society on Tuesday March 4, 2014. I showed part of her presentation which was online at the RootsTech web site to the sisters and led a discussion about how to preserve our family history. Some of the sisters brought scrapbooks and journals and books that they had prepared and they told about them.
Judy Russell is very active in using and promoting DNA testing in genealogical research.

I really liked her story of how she discovered that her family was not descended from Alexander Baker of Massachusetts and how she broke the news at a family reunion. See The Cousin Who Isn't.

RootsTech 2014 Old World, New Records: findmypast.com as Key Resource for Tracing British Ancestry presented by Elaine Collins

Elaine Collins is Director of Global Partnerships and head of content acquisition for DC Thompson Family History. She talked about the core records that are part of the Find My Past collections and also about some new records that are becoming available. Some of the core records are census and BMD (birth, marriage and death) records as well as international passenger lists. Some new records are 19 million British rate books which predate census records.
There is a section of Find My Past called My Records which can serve as a research log. There are places for timelines, facts and events, included LDS ordinances. There is a Find My Past capture app for iPhone which will record interviews and take photos.
Parish register collections are being linked to the IGI or the International Genealogical Index.
More military records are being added, especially with the Imperial War Museums being established.
Actually they have more U.S. records than U.K. records just because there are more Americans than Britains. They have a very good Civil War collection.
Find My Past has partnered with Allen County Public Library to enhance PERSI or Periodical Source Index and make more original sources available digitally. See the news at Persi Finds New Home at Find My Past.
I do not know a lot about using Find My Past. I would like to spend four days at a conference or workshop just learning about it.

RootsTech 2014 What I Learned about DNA Testing and Family History Research

The second class that I attended on Thursday February 6, 2014 was RT1374 Advanced Techniques for Use of Autosomal DNA Tests to Break through Genealogical Brick Walls presented by Tim Janzen, M.D. Tim Janzen is a family practice doctor in Portland, Oregon. He has been interested in genealogy for many years. He is the co-administrator of the Mennonite DNA project and an advisor to the company 23andMe.

This was a very technical class. Dr. Janzen prepared a detailed syllabus for both of his presentations at RootsTech. (I only attended this one.) He gave urls to more online information including a link to the Power Point presentation that he used. The Power Point presentation covered a lot more information than he was able to present in the hour class.

I had not intended going to any of the presentations about DNA testing, but then my sister got her results from her testing at 23andMe just one week before RootsTech and she shared her results with me.
I was fascinated! I knew that genetics is a rather complicated discipline and had decided to focus on RootsTech classes that would be immediately helpful in my research. But after seeing her results I wanted to learn more. This is a subject that I could really delve into. It would be fun to go to the Institute for Genetic Genealogy First Annual Conference http://i4gg.org/  next August 16 and 17 at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center in Washington D.C. This is going to be one geeky conference! If I were a younger person I might consider making a career of being a genetic genealogy researcher and learning how to do chromosome mapping and triangulation. I think there is a great future for DNA testing in genealogy.

I did not attend any of the other DNA classes, but I did visit all the related booths in the exhibit hall.
At the very last minute I purchased an Ancestry DNA test kit for the conference special price of $89. I collected a saliva sample from my mother and submitted it. Her genealogy paper trail has been completed for 5-6 generations back, so we did not find any new information yet. But there are at least a dozen family trees in ancestry.com that relate to her family tree. There are connections on the Rollins, Whitaker, Robinson and Bybee lines.

RootsTech 2014 Will Your Family History Have Lasting Value? presented by Thomas Jones

On Friday February 7, 2014 I attended the second class taught by Tom Jones. It was RT1933 Will Your Family History Have Lasting Value? 
This was a very motivating class with great personal application for me. I think that all genealogists want to create a family history that their descendants will cherish and that has irreplaceable value. That is our goal.

Tom Jones began the class with a very specific challenge: "Consistently make your first genealogical priority to do today what future generations cannot do tomorrow." He elaborated saying that because of advances in technology and availability of records and DNA results that future generations will be able do some research much easier and more quickly than we can do today. But they will not have access to older members of our families. So our first genealogical priority needs to be to get information from these older family members and from our own memories before it is gone. He advised us to gather our family's oral history systematically and then to share it widely. He said not to interpret it. Do not present it as fact or fiction. Collect photographs and artifacts and share them on paper and electronically. Collect as many DNA samples as you can afford.

After this challenge, he urged us to acquire skills. He shared his personal history with us. He became interested in genealogy as a teenager in Lubbock, Texas. He learned by subscribing to genealogy magazines and getting books from the New England Genealogy Historical Society on loan. He said that he believes that his first twenty years of research was almost a total waste. It took him a long time to become a competent genealogist. He said genealogy research is hard, complex and requires an advanced skill set. Some of his suggestions were:
Plan your research.
Learn state by state and country by country about the records available.
Use FamilySearch Wiki.
Read the original handwriting and language.
Interpret the records.
Learn to follow a trail of records.
Use the information you have to get more information.
Use an evidence approach rather than an information approach.
Read a lot and write a lot. (Hmm, this is another reason for me to keep up with this blog.)
Study Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
Take courses.
Read genealogy periodicals and study the case histories.

The next section of his presentation was about creating a genealogy of enduring value. There are four essentials. (BEAD)
A is accuracy. Accuracy is invisible.
B is biography. This is the meaning or the uniqueness of a person.
D is documentation.
E is explanation.
There is very little online that meets these standards, unless it was first in print.

After this class I went to the Exhibit Hall and purchased Genealogy Standards: 50th Anniversary Edition by the Board for Certification of Genealogists edited by Thomas Jones.

RootsTech 2014 Can a Complex Research Problem be Solved Solely Online? presented by Tom Jones

My first class RT1911 for Thursday February 6, 2014 was taught by Thomas Jones entitled Can a Complex Research Problem be Solved Solely Online? The short answer was "Yes, but...."
This class was an interactive case study of one George W. Edison 1860-1940. Tom Jones took suggestions from the group and then showed what he had done step-by-step. (The room was completely full and I am sure that there were some who were not able to attend.) He led us through the sources and the evidence for the life of George W. Edison. Eventually he resolved all the conflicts. George had four wives and five marriages and lived in three or four states, so it really was a complex research problem. Most of the evidence was available online, but Jones did some on site research as well. In one case, he had hired two different researchers to do a search at a court house and neither had found any results. He visited the court house himself and within 40 minutes he had the information he needed. He advised us to not trust what someone tells you, do your own research.
I was very impressed with Tom Jones's scholarship. I have heard him speak before. This is one class that I was not going to miss.

RootsTech 2014 Keynote Speaker Ree Drummond Thursday February 6, 2014

Ree Drummond is famous for her blog The Pioneer Woman. I had never heard of her, but when I heard that she was going to be a keynote speaker I looked her up online. I liked her on Facebook and have really enjoyed her posts. However I really wanted to win a pair of cowgirl boots. :(  I entered the contest every day, but did not win. It was fun to see all the designer boots though
I didn't take any notes during her presentation. I just sat there being fascinated by her story. She is not really a genealogist, but she is an example of someone who is connecting with the rest of the world. She can teach us "genealogists" how to be more interesting and how to involve our families. I got some ideas of how photos can be used to build self-esteem and a sense of belonging in children.
I was amazed that Ree Drummond lives on a ranch in Oklahoma in a remote location and yet she can have a hugely popular blog, a fantastic Facebook page and a cooking show on the Food Network.