Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

2018 RootsTech livestream schedule

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I’m excited that I’m attending RootsTech, but for those who can’t make it, RootsTech is livestreaming a small selection of the keynotes and breakout sessions at next week’s conference.

Here’s the schedule. The sessions will be streamed live on the RootsTech homepage and then afterward recordings will be posted on the website for a limited time.

Visit the Livestream page on the RootsTech website for descriptions of each of these sessions.

Wednesday, February 28

9:30 a.m.–10:30 a.m. | Family History in 5 Minutes a Day
Speaker: Deborah Gamble

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | DNA–One Family, One World
Speaker: David Nicholson

1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m. | Organizing and Preserving Photograph Collections
Speaker: Ari Wilkins

3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. | Finding the Answers: The Basics of WWII Research
Speaker: Jennifer Holik

4:30 a.m.–5:30 a.m. | Wednesday General Session and Innovation Showcase
Speaker: Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch International

Thursday, March 1

8:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m. | Thursday General Session
Speaker: Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | MyHeritage DNA 101: From Test to Results
Speaker: Yaniv Erlich

1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m. | Google Photos: Collect, Organize, Preserve, and Share
Speaker: Michelle Goodrum

3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. | Unlocking Roman Catholic Records
Speaker: Brian Donovan

4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. | A Gift of Life: Who’s Writing Your Story?
Speaker: Deborah Abbott

Friday, March 2

8:30 a.m.–9:30 a.m. | Friday General Session
Speaker: Scott Hamilton

11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. | findmypast’s British and Irish Hidden Gems
Speaker: Myko Clelland

1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m. | Finding the Right DNA Test for You
Speaker: Jim Brewster

3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. | How Not to Leave Your Genealogy Behind
Speakers: Amy Johnson Crow and Curt Witcher

4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. | Finding Elusive Records at FamilySearch
Speaker: Robert Kehrer

Saturday, March 3

8:30 a.m.–9:30 a.m. | Saturday General Session
Speakers: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Natalia Lafourcade

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | Civil Registration Indexes of England and Wales
Speaker: Audrey Collins

1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m. | Advancing Your Genealogy Research with DNA
Speaker: Anna Swayne

3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. | Pain in the Access: More Web for Your Genealogy
Speaker: Curt Witcher

That’s a lot of free information available to you! I heartily encourage to attend as many of these talks as you can, from the comfort of your computer, tablet or phone. In my experience, RootsTech presentations are top notch.

 

A fun way to link family history with the Olympics

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Ancestor Olympics!I was contacted by Ann Golightly Jeffs of the crafty blog Ivory Bloom about the free printables she’s created in honor of the Olympics. They’re Ancestor Cards, like baseball cards, that you can download and then add your ancestors’ names and birth/death dates and places and even their pictures. (You can do the adding either in software or by hand, after printing.) The idea is that you root in the Olympics for the countries your ancestors are from.

The blog post is full of advice on ways to incorporate family history into the Olympic celebrations (including making Olympic torches!). I think if you have kids or grandkids, it would be a great way to teach them an appreciation for their roots.

Included among the printables is a medal count chart, which would be a fun way to see ancestors competing against one another.

I think these are great ideas. I’m definitely in favor of anything that helps promote an appreciation of family history!

Raise your hand if you’re going to RootsTech!

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RootsTech 2018 is a little later than usual (February 28 to March 2) and I’ve just today started to focus on it. I deleted last year’s app on my so that I could download this year’s version. Turns out, if I’d read this blog post, titled 7 Ways the Mobile App Will Enhance Your RootsTech Experience I would have realized that all had to do was open the 2017 app, tap Exit to Show List, and select RootsTech 2018.

The app really is robust, allowing you to access information about conference sessions, exhibitors, schedules and more in a variety of ways. I’m going to make sure I budget some time in advance of the conference to go through it and put sessions on the app’s schedule so I’m not feeling stressed while at the conference.

Apparently 15,000 attendees are expected at this year’s conference to learn from their choice of 300 sessions and 200 exhibitors. I can’t believe I can attend a conference of that scope and not feel completely overwhelmed. It really is very well organized. One thing I’ve learned is to schedule down time and give myself permission to skip a conference session if I’m feeling exhausted. (I find that being around so many people can be draining.) If you’re attending for the first time you might want to check out this RootsTech blog post, A Survival Guide to RootsTech.

In years past I’ve had a great time meeting readers of this blog at RootsTech. If you’re going and you’d like to say hi in person, just leave a note in the comments and we’ll figure that out. I hope to meet some of you in person this year!

Broaden those search terms

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For about a year, I’d been trying to find my great grandfather’s half-brother, Wayne Horace Adams (1907-1976), on the 1920 census. His parents had divorced and I could not find Horace or his father, my 2nd great grandfather George Washington Adams, on that census. I knew that 74-year-old George had received custody of 12-year-old Horace in the 1919 divorce. And I knew that George would enter the Home for Disabled Soldiers in 1922. My curiosity about what happened to this teenager was strong.

I searched for him hither and yon, using everything I knew about him in my search terms. I thought I had searched for him with all his half siblings but in September I found him living in Oklahoma with his half brother John Quincy Adams, whom I apparently had missed checking on. That was an exciting find! (Because I was in a library when I found it, my cheers had to be silent, but that didn’t make them less exuberant.)

Once I found Horace on the 1920 census I wondered why he hadn’t come up in my searches on his name. I found the culprit: The enumerator had made a correction making Horace’s  age, which was 12, look like 42. (That’s a close up at the top of this post.) It was indexed as 42 and so he didn’t come up in my searches.

I realized that if I had left out his year of birth in my searches, I would have found him more easily. Lesson learned!