Organize Your Family History

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Special offers in honor of July 4th

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Genealogy bargains this weekendSeveral subscription-based databases are offering free access to specific holdings in honor of the 4th of July holiday. It’s a great chance to stay cool and dig into some research this weekend!

On Ancestry.com, you can access their records from the original 13 colonies now through Sunday, even if you’re not a subscriber.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society’s American Ancestors website is offering its Great Migration database free of charge through July 8.

You can freely search the Revolutionary War records at Fold3, the military database now through July 15.

If you have ancestors involved in establishing the U.S. now is the time to research them! I’m hoping to spend some time with the Great Migration database this weekend and see if I can find my early New York ancestor.

I learned about these special offers from Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy Bargains newsletter. If you don’t subscribe, you’re missing out! (It’s another free resource.)

Free live streaming of select Jamboree sessions

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Free live streaming of SCGS Jamboree!I’m very excited to be attending the Southern California Genealogical Society’s Jamboree June 5 to 7. (I loved the NGS conference so much, I’m ready for more learning!)

Here’s some great news: If you can’t attend in person, you can attend some of the sessions virtually. And there’s no charge, thanks to sponsor Ancestry.com.

Registration for live streaming is now open.  Once you register, you’ll have access to all streaming sessions. (You don’t have to register for individual sessions.) Four sessions will be streamed on Friday, six on Saturday and four on Sunday. You can see the list of streaming sessions on this Jamboree blog post. You don’t even have to be available that weekend; you can watch archived versions of the Jamboree live streams up until July 5. If you want to purchase recordings to keep forever, that’s another available option (and there are savings if you pre-order).

I’m also attending the DNA Day on June 4. Live streaming is available for that day as well, for a fee. You can watch any of a select six individual sessions for $20 each or all six for $99. The schedule is detailed in this post. These sessions are not archived or recorded.

SCGS is wonderful about educating the public. They offer free webinars twice a month. The fact that fourteen of the Jamboree sessions are being offered free of charge to genealogy enthusiasts everywhere is really laudable. I look forward to meeting these generous people!

 

 

Getting ready for a conference

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ngslogo200Tomorrow, the National Genealogical Society’s annual conference begins. It’s being held in St. Charles, Missouri, about 30 minutes from my home, so I am not staying at the conference hotel. Since no travel is required, I’ve barely given the conference much advance thought.

But today’s the day for me to focus on it and I’m getting really excited! I love attending conferences (I go to both genealogy and organizing conferences regularly) and I know that some pre-planning can be really beneficial. So today, I’m going to do the following:

  • Pick up the conference registration materials
  • Go through the syllabus and select the classes I’ll plan to attend
  • Familiarize myself with the conference app, which I downloaded a month or two ago
  • Mark the classes I select in the conference app
  • Go through the list of exhibitors and note the ones I want to make sure I see
  • Write down my goals for the conference
  • Think about the people I want to try to meet
  • Reach out to the blog readers who have told me they’ll be at the conference

Taking a few moments to think about and write down my goals for the conference is time well spent. Keeping my goals top of mind will inform my decisions about how to spend my conference time. In my case, I have goals for both my genealogy research and for this blog.

This is my first NGS conference and I’m really excited it’s finally here. I look forward to digging in to the conference materials this afternoon. I know I have four days of great learning and great interactions ahead of me.

If you’re attending the conference, please make sure you say hi!

Free genealogy resources!

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free genealogy resources!Who doesn’t like to save money on genealogy research? Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers, of whom I’m unabashed fan, sent out his free e-newsletter yesterday. It’s always a treasure trove, but this issue had a little something special: a link to a list of free genealogy education resources. He compiled the list for a talk he gave to the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference and he’s kind enough to make it available to everyone.

You can download the 25-item list here. But please, do yourself a favor and go to the Geneabloggers website and sign up for his newsletter that you can receive notifications like these. He’s always coming up with a great free resource or an offer or discount for genealogists. (And there’s even a Genealogy Bargains tag on the Geneabloggers website!)