Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Can’t come to RootsTech? Watch from home via a virtual pass

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Attending RootsTech isn’t possible for everyone, of course. (Though it’s so large sometimes it feels like everyone and his brother is there.) If you can’t attend in person you can purchase a virtual pass that allows you to watch a pre-selected group of 30 classes from the comfort of your home. The cost is $129 for the virtual pass alone or $79 if purchased as an add-on to an in-person registration. You have a year to view the recordings.

To see the line up of classes being offered in the virtual pass (it looks to me like a great lineup), check out the Virtual Pass page on the RootsTech website. You can also purchase your virtual pass on that page.

In the past some classes have been live streamed and that might well be the case this year. You can view past live streamed sessions now on the RootsTech Video Archive page.

I’m excited for RootsTech this year and am looking forward to presenting “The Imperfect Genealogist” there. If you haven’t already, please let me know in the comments if you’ll be attending. And if you’re going and haven’t downloaded the app yet, it is available!

Watch me discuss genealogy on Hoardganize podcast

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A couple of weeks ago I recorded a video podcast episode for Hoardganize, an organizing podcast hosted by Rachel Seavey of Collector Care. We focused on genealogy: getting started, as well as organizing results. I’m accustomed to audio podcasts, so I find it fairly tortuous to watch myself talk. I’m hopeful that it’s less tortuous for you. That aside, I think we had a great discussion and there’s some good info in there.

You can watch the video on YouTube or, if you prefer, listen to it on the Hoardganize website.

Here are some highlights:

  • Where to start: start with yourself and work up your tree (1:30)
  • Gather the basic info: birth, marriage, death, censuses
  • Track info in an Ancestry.com tree or download info and build a family tree using separate software
  • Research direct lines (9:00)
  • Move to collateral lines
  • Using Family Search (10:25)
  • Using libraries (15:06)
  • U.S. research versus other countries (16:11)
  • Organizing your documents (17:54)
  • My file naming protocol
  • Keeping track of what you’re doing now and what you want to research in the future

I hope you find it helpful. If you do, please feel free to share!

BCG offering free monthly webinars in 2020

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Are you ready to take your research knowledge up a level? The Board of Certification of Genealogists is offering free monthly webinars via their webinar partner Legacy Family Tree Webinars.

The webinars are normally held the third Tuesday of the month at 8 pm Eastern and are available free of charge to the public for one week after the live broadcast. The first one will be held on January 21, 2020.

You can see the full list of webinars on this page of the BCG website. Speakers include, among others, Thomas W. Jones, Judy Russell and Angela Packer McGhie. If you use the BCG affiliate link to register, BCG will get a small commission.

One of my goals for 2020 is to take more webinars from the comfort of home, so I was really happy to hear about these!

NARA 2019 Virtual Genealogy Fair is tomorrow!

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This one really snuck up on me.

The 2019 Virtual Genealogy Fair is being offered (free of charge) by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) tomorrow, Wednesday, October 23, 2019. This is the seventh year for the conference, offered by webcast on YouTube. It’s a wonderful resource.

You can read the lineup, with detailed descriptions of the sessions and links to handouts, here. Just click on each session title to access the handouts. There will be six one-hour sessions, bookended by opening and closing remarks. The event starts at 10 am eastern and ends at 4.

I’m traveling tomorrow, so I was thrilled to read that I don’t have to watch live. The webcast will be available on YouTube to watch later. You can even request transcripts of the sessions, taken from the closed captioning.

While you’re on the 2019 Virtual Fair webpage, scroll down to access links to prior Virtual Genealogy Fairs sponsored by NARA. Those are available to watch as well!