Family Tree Rhapsody

A little light-hearted take on family history. I love to admire someone else's creativity, because I don't have a creative bone in my body. Anyway, I do love family history and apparently, this family does too!
 

RootsTech 2014 Videos Online

If you weren't able to attend RootsTech 2014, here are main presentations that you can enjoy in the comfort of your own home!

Innovator Summit Keynote Speaker (Business and Developer track)

• Chris Dancy: The Most Quantified Human (48)

Thursday Speakers

• Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, and Annelies van den Belt, CEO of DC Thomson Family History, as keynote speakers. & Josh Taylor: Opening Keynote Speakers (90)
• Tammy Hepps: Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family from My Couch (60)
• Ancestry Insider: Do It Yourself Photo Restoration (60)
• Ron Tanner: FamilySearch Family Tree: What’s New and What’s Next (60)
• James Rader: Introduction to DNA for Genealogists (60)
• Randy Hoffman: Genealogy in the Cloud (60)
• Michael LeClerc: Sharing Your Family History with Multimedia (60)

Friday Speakers

• Dr. Spencer Wells and Judy Russell: Friday Keynote Speakers (70)
• David Adelman: Storytelling Super Powers: How to Come Off as Your Family’s Genealogy Hero (40)
• Lisa Alzo: Tweets, Links, Pins, and Posts: Break Down Genealogical Brick Walls with Social Media (45)
• Deborah Gamble: 5 Ways to Do Genealogy in Your Sleep (40)
• Daniel Horowitz: Finding family and ancestors outside the USA with new technologies (60)
• Christa Cowen: Getting the Most Out of Ancestry (60)
• Tom Taylor: How to Interview Yourself for a Personal History (60)

Saturday Speakers

• Stephanie Nielson, Todd Hansen: Saturday Keynote Speakers (60)
• Lisa Louise Cooke: Become an iPad Power User (60)
• Josh Taylor: Information Overload: Managing Online Searches and Their Results (60)
• Randy Whited: A Beginners Guide to Going Paperless (52)

Grove Creek/Timpanogos Stakes Family History Fair

Here is the schedule for the Grove Creek/Timpanogos Stakes Family History Fair to be held on March 22, 2014 in the Pleasant Grove Grove Creek Stake Center. We welcome all who would like to attend. We have a great schedule, will be providing a light lunch to class attendees and have a YOUTH TRACK scheduled as well. If you are local, please pass the word along!

Please pre-register here

Talking Pictures!

This is another great video from FamilySearch. Can't you just feel the excitement coming from the kids? Let's generate that excitement in our kids! The older I get, the more I realize that I don't want to be forgotten, even if I am a very ordinary person! :)

RootsTech 2014

RootsTech 2014 started out with this video.



It reminded me of this article from the New York Times that I had read a few months ago. Families are important and worth putting in our best efforts.

New Views on FamilySearch!

A new portrait view has been added to the Family Tree by FamilySearch. Below is a peak at it. To navigate to the portrait view, go to the options bar in the top left corner and click the down arrow. The three options available will be View Portrait, Traditional, Fan Chart. 

Did you know that you can see a seven generation fan chart of your family tree in addition to the standard five generation fan chart? Here is what the five generation fan chart looks like. Forgive me for chopping off the live children at the bottom!

If you want the seven generation fan chart, click on the printer icon right underneath the bar that says "view fan chart." This is what you will see. As you can see, I have a lot of research to do! My dad's family continues to be elusive!

Save the Date!

SAVE THE DATE!

Family History Fair

When: March 22, 2014

Time: 9:00 am-4:00 pm

Where: Grove Creek Stake Center 

1176 N. 730 E.

Pleasant Grove, Utah

Amazing speakers and instruction for all ages!

More details to follow!
To register, click here and follow the instructions. 

Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Meeting (UVTAGG)

Press Release: 3 January 3014

UTAH VALLEY TECHNOLOGY AND GENEALOGY GROUP MEETING - UVTAGG

The next regular, second-Saturday-of-the-month meeting of the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group - UVTAGG (Formerly the Utah Valley PAF Users Group - UVPAFUG) will be on Saturday, 11 Jan 2014, from 9 am to noon in the LDS "Red Chapel", 4050 North Timpview Drive (650 East), Provo.  Information about the Group, main presentations, classes, and class notes are available on their website http://uvtagg.org and the press releases are at http://blog.uvtagg.org .

The main presentation this month will be by Diane C. Loosle on DISCOVER THE FUTURE OF THE FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY AND FAMILY HISTORY CENTERS.  What does the future experience in the Family History Library and Centers look like? What are the future plans for the Family History Library and Centers? How will things change in the next few years with more records and books being available online? How do the new partnerships between FamilySearch and Ancestry, MyHeritage and DC Thomson Family History change things? What is the “discovery center” we keep hearing about? These and other questions you may have about the Family History Library and Family History Centers will be addressed.  Diane C. Loosle is the new Director of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, as well as the Family History Centers worldwide, so this will be a chance to hear what is really happening, not just rumors.  She is an Accredited Genealogist^® and a Certified Genealogist^SM  with a Bachelors degree in History from BYU with an emphasis in Family History and Genealogy and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Utah.   She has worked for FamilySearch for the past twenty years as a British Reference Consultant, British Reference Unit Supervisor, Customer Experience Manager, FamilySearch Genealogical Community Services Manager and now as Director of the Family History Library and Family History Centers worldwide. She enjoys spending time in the outdoors and traveling with her husband Mike.  Of additional interest to Utah County people is that she was in the BYU Cougar Marching Band while a student at the "Y"!  Information on her appointment as Director of the Family History Library is at https://familysearch.org/blog/en/diane-loosle-named-director-world-renowned-family-history-library/ 

After the main presentation the following classes are scheduled.  Check the meetings page at http://uvtagg.org/ for last minute changes or additions.  
(1)  Evernote:  Your Virtual Genealogy Assistant, by Sue Maxwell;
(2)  Q&A: Discover the Future of the Family History Library and Family History Centers, by Diane C. Loosle;
(3)  Making Your Trip to the Family History Center More Productive, by Ron Snowden;
(4)  Ask An Expert (Personal Help), by Don Engstrom and Finn Hansen;
 (5)  Video of November's main presentation: The Latest and Greatest in FamilySearch Photos and Stories, by Tim Cross;
 (6)  Ancestral Quest, by Gaylon Findlay;
 (7)  Legacy: New Features in 8.0, by Dean Bennett;  and
(8)  RootsMagic, by Renee Zamora.

All meetings of UVTAGG are open to the public whether members of the Group or not. The Group has the goal of helping individuals use technology to further their family history and there are usually about 100 attending the monthly meetings on the second Saturdays, most of whom are Family History Consultants. The officers are Gerhard Ruf, President; Laurie Castillo, 1st VP; Don Snow, 2nd VP; Liz Kennington, Newsletter Editor; Renee Zamora, Secretary; Kay Baker, Don Engstrom, and Rayanne Melick working with membership and finances, Bruce Merrill and Marie Andersen working with the DVD Library, and Chris Stevenson as the Webmaster.  Several of these will be there to answer questions, help with membership, distribute the current issue of the monthly newsletter TAGGology, and check out and sell DVDs of past presentations and classes to members of the group.  Many members don't live close enough to participate in the monthly meetings, but belong by paying the $10 per year dues to receive the monthly newsletter via email and purchase DVDs of the presentations and classes.  Gift memberships are wonderful presents for family history-minded relatives, friends, and Family History Consultants.  See more information on the websites mentioned above about the presentations, classes, and class notes, or to join the Group.  You can also contact President Gerhard Ruf at pres@uvtagg.org (801-225-6106), or 1st VP Laurie Castillo at laurie@everythingisrelative.net, or 2nd VP Don Snow at snowd@math.byu.edu.

Roots Tech 2014

Roots Tech 2014 is approaching rapidly! The dates are February 6-8, 2014 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year the organizers have moved to the bigger side of the Salt Palace Convention Center. Hopefully this means a little more breathing room! This IS a big deal. For more information, click here. If you look on the schedule, you will see that Saturday, February 8th is a Family Discovery Day. What does that mean? It means that there will be content for the whole family. Check it out here. 

Changes, Changes!

As of a few days ago (December 18, 2013), new.familysearch.org is read only. Here is the screen that you get when you go to new.familysearch.org.

FamilySearch.org is a really amazing program. Spend a few hours with it and you will never even miss new.familysearch.org!

RootsTech 2014 Keynote Speakers

The keynote speakers for RootsTech 2014 were just announced. This is going to be an exciting conference! Read more about them by clicking on their link.

Ree Drummond- The Pioneer Woman

Annelies van den Belt-CEO of DC Thomson Family History (formerly brightsolid)

Dr. Spencer Wells-Serves as director of the Genographic Project

. 

Judy Russell- The Legal Genealogist

Stephanie Nielson-The NieNie Dialogues

Todd Hansen-The Story Trek

Legacy Family Tree 8.0 is Now Available!

legacyfamilytree.com

Finally, the moment that I have been waiting for! Legacy Family Tree 8.0 was released TODAY! This makes my heart sing! Here is the press release.

SURPRISE, Arizona, November 26, 2013. Millennia Corporation, a leader in family history software, today announced the release of Legacy Family Tree 8.0. The new release contains dozens of significant new features and enhancements, including migration mapping, instant duplicate checking, origins and migration reports, potential problem alerts, and shared events.

In one software package, Legacy Family Tree 8.0 provides tools to help users record their family's history, organize their pictures, perform their research, and share their findings.

"Legacy Family Tree 8.0 continues to raise the bar of family history software," said David Berdan, president of Millennia Corporation. "Its new source quality tool, source labels, citations on Pedigree Charts and shared events give serious researchers the tools they need, while the new reports, charts, and family statistics get the entire family excited about their history."

The following new and updated features add to Legacy's list of robust capabilities:

• Origins Report - See where you came from and the percentage of "blood" you have from your countries of origin with the new Origins Report.
• Migration Report - See how far and wide a person's descendants spread out in the world with the new Migration Report.
• Migration Mapping - Legacy animates the ancestor's movement through time. Watch how they migrated from place to place. View their migration in street, aerial, or 3D modes. Hover over the balloon to see what happened in each location.
• Instant Duplicate Checking - As you are adding new individuals to your tree, Legacy instantly checks to see if perhaps they are already in your family file, helping you avoid inadvertently adding duplicates.
• Potential Problem Alerts and Gaps - Typos and accidental misinterpretation of data are now a thing of the past. The warning symbol is displayed immediately next to info that contains a potential problem. Unusual gaps of time are detected that you may have not previously noticed (like too many years between the births of the children).
• Shared Events - Save time and avoid errors by sharing an event amongst all the individuals who participated in the event. You can specify each person's role in the event.
• Family Bow Tie Chart - Displays the ancestors of both the husband and wife, as well as their children.
• Descendant Chart - Now available in left-to-right formatting.
• Source Quality - Now record the quality (original vs derivative, primary vs secondary, etc., direct vs indirect) of each source as you attempt to prove your conclusions.
• Source Labels - Now print Source Labels to attach to the top of your documents. You will never again lose the citation when making a photocopy for someone else.
• Source Clipboard - The Source Clipboard has been expanded to load up to five different citations that can be assigned at the click of a button.
• Pedigree Citations - Add source citations to your Pedigree Charts, and attach the complete bibliography.
• FamilySearch Integration - Share, discuss, download and interact with FamilySearch's Family Tree (optional).
• Wall Charts - Duplicate lines can now be suppressed, saving room for more photographs and captions.
• Chronology View - Now view the parent's, grandparent's, children's, and grandchildren's vital events in your ancestor's timeline.
• User Interface - Enjoy Legacy's modernized look-and-feel, new color schemes, and new ribbon menu bar. Add two additional custom buttons on the new My Toolbar.
• Tagging - View up to 9 tags at once. Advanced Tagging now shows the counts of each tag.
• Automatic Sorting - Children, marriages, and events are now automatically chronologically sorted as they are added. New global sorting tools are also now available.
• Statistics - Understand your family in new ways with dozens of new statistics: births by era, longest living individuals, average lifespan, longest marriages, families with the most children, most popular given names, most popular surnames, most popular locations and more.
• Media Relinker - It is easier than ever to locate missing or unlinked pictures. Moving from one computer to another is simpler to do.
• Media Gatherer - Got pictures all over your computer? The new Media Gatherer will help you copy or move your genealogy pictures to one common folder, making it easier to share your family file with another computer or family member.
• Web Links - Found evidence of your ancestor online? Easily add a web link to their media gallery to organize a list of their online presence.
• Color Coding - You can now color code from two starting points (one for you and one for your spouse, for example) and track the eight great-grandparents' lines.

Watch the What's New Video here.

Pricing and Availability

Legacy 8.0 is now available at www.LegacyFamilyTree.com, for just US $29.95 for the download-only version or US $39.95 version which includes the 336-page printed user’s guide, installation CD, and beginner’s training video. Discounted upgrade pricing is also available for users of previous editions of Legacy Deluxe. The free, Standard edition can also be downloaded from www.LegacyFamilyTree.com.

 

Legacy Family Tree - Unlocked! a new book by Legacy's Geoff Rasmussen, is based on the brand new Legacy 8.0. In its 236 pages, you will learn how to better utilize some of Legacy’s best features by shadowing the research process of a professional genealogist, Legacy Family Tree developer, and host of FamilyTreeWebinars.com's webinar series. Be sure to add it to your cart at checkout!

About Millennia Corporation

Millennia Corporation is located in Surprise, Arizona. The company strives to provide top-quality genealogy software so people can record and track their family history. It is also the publisher of the award-winning FamilyTreeWebinars.com webinar series, now with more than 200 hours of quality genealogy education. For additional information on Millennia or the products they offer visit http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com.

Are Family History Efforts Landing on Deaf Ears?

Public Domain

Do you ever feel that your family history efforts in the ward are landing on deaf ears? Are you interested in a couple of new ideas? Penney Devey from FamilySearch has a couple of great ideas to try out in your ward! Check them out here!

Who Will Carry on Your Legacy?

Christian IX Denmark
Georg Emil Hansen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Have you ever wondered where all of your hard family history work will go when you are gone? I have, and because it is such a labor of love for me, I don't want any of it to go to the dumpster! There is a great article here by Deborah S. Gurtler that brings up some great points on this topic! We all want our history to survive, so we need to reach out to our children and grandchilden. They are the future.

Another Great Partnership!

Press Release from FamilySearch.com

DC Thomson Family History and FamilySearch.org to Make Billions of Records Available for People to Search

October 16, 2013

DC Thomson Family History and FamilySearch.org to make billions of records available for people to search

More than 13 million records launched today on findmypast.com

LONDON, England and SALT LAKE CITY, Utah--Annelies van den Belt, the new CEO of DC Thomson Family History, the British-based leader in online family history and owner of findmypast and Genes Reunited, has announced a major new partnership with US-based FamilySearch.org that will give family history enthusiasts access to billions of records online and new technology to collaboratively research their family roots. 

DC Thomson Family History, formerly known as brightsolid online publishing, is collaborating with FamilySearch, which has the largest collections of genealogical and historical records in the world, to deliver a wide range of projects including digital preservation, records search, technological development and the means to allow family historians to share their discoveries. 

More than 13 million records from FamilySearch.org launched today on findmypast.com, including major collections of births, marriages and deaths covering America, Australia, and Ireland. Around 600 additional collections, containing millions of records, will follow. 

The two organisations have a long history of working together on historical projects, including indexing 132 million records of the 1940 US census and two hundred years of British Army Service Records (Chelsea Pensioners) in a joint digitisation project with The National Archives. 

Van den Belt said: “This is fantastic news for our customers all over the world. As a leader in online family history we will be able to offer access to a much wider variety of records dating back hundreds of years and the first batch are ready to search on findmypast. The convenience of searching many treasures from FamilySearch.org along with our own extensive collections will provide rich new insights for our customers. 

“This partnership with FamilySearch will accelerate the momentum of our next phase of global growth into new non-English-speaking markets and give more people more access to more records to uncover their family history. This really cements our position as a market leader.” 

“We are excited to work with DC Thompson Family History on a vision we both share,” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch. “Expanding online access to historical records through this type of collaboration can help millions more people discover and share their family’s history.” 

DC Thomson Family History is the British-based leader in online family history, which operates major online sites including findmypast, Genes Reunited and the British Newspaper Archive. It launched in America last year with its findmypast brand.

DC Thomson Family History has a strong record of partnerships with non-profit and public sector organisations such as the British Library and The National Archives among many other major archives and organisations around the world.

Notes to Editors

About DC Thomson Family History 

DC Thomson Family History, is a British-owned world leader in online genealogy, with a record of online innovation in the field of family history.

• It boasts 18 million registered users across its family of online genealogy brands
• It hosts over a billion genealogical records across its family of brands including Genes Reunited and findmypast

DC Thomson Family History helps partners to digitise their precious collections, providing them with an archival quality digital surrogate of their records, or publishing existing indexes and transcriptions. 

Several successful partnerships with DC Thomson Family History include (but are not limited to):

1911census.co.uk with The National Archives; comprising 36 million records, this is one of the largest online family history projects undertaken by The National Archives and a commercial partner.

ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk is a pay-as-you-go e-commerce site operated by brightsolid as a partnership between the National Records of Scotland (NRS) and the Court of the Lord Lyon. The site allows searches of 50 million names, has more than 30 million images and over one million registered customers.

The British Newspaper Archive (BNA) is a 10-year partnership project between the British Library and DC Thomson Family History. The content for the website comes from the newspaper collection at Colindale Library, and the plan is to have 40 million, fully-searchable pages on the website by 2021, with at least 8,000 pages being added to the site every day.

About FamilySearch

FamilySearch International (online at FamilySearch.org) is the largest genealogy organization in the world. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. FamilySearch is a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources free online at FamilySearch.org or through over 4,800 family history centers in 70 countries, including the renowned Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Media Contacts

Paul Nauta, FamilySearch PR Manager Phone: US +1-801-240-6498 Email: nautapg@familysearch.org 

Carolynne Bull-Edwards, Head of ContentPhone: UK +44 7932723866Email: cbull-edwards@brightsolid.com

Click to read related Frequently Asked Questions.

My Heritage and FamilySearch Enter into Strategic Partnership

TEL AVIV, Israel & SALT LAKE CITY, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MyHeritage, the popular online family history network, and FamilySearch.org announced today the signing and commencement of a strategic partnership that forges a new path for the family history industry. Under this multi-year partnership, MyHeritage will provide FamilySearch with access to its powerful technologies and FamilySearch will share billions of global historical records and family tree profiles spanning hundreds of years with MyHeritage. This will help millions of MyHeritage and FamilySearch users discover even more about their family history.

“For more than a hundred years, FamilySearch has been dedicated to working with the world’s archives to preserve their records for future generations”

FamilySearch will provide MyHeritage with more than 2 billion records from its global historic record collections and its online Family Tree. These records will be added to SuperSearch, MyHeritage’s search engine for historical records, and will be matched with family trees on MyHeritage using its matching technologies. MyHeritage users will gain access to an unprecedented boost of historical records and family tree profiles, which are key to researching and reconstructing their family histories. This reinforces MyHeritage's position as an international market leader, with gigantic assets of family trees and records, which are the most globally diverse in the industry.

FamilySearch members will benefit from MyHeritage's unique technologies which automate family history discoveries. Smart Matching™ automatically finds connections between user-contributed family trees and Record Matching automatically locates historical records relevant to any person in the family tree. By receiving accurate matches between FamilySearch’s Family Tree profiles and historical record collections, such as birth, death, census, and immigration documents, FamilySearch members will be able to more effectively grow their family trees in size and in depth and add conclusions supported by historical records.

“For more than a hundred years, FamilySearch has been dedicated to working with the world’s archives to preserve their records for future generations” said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “Their massive undertaking has made family history more accessible to everyone. This partnership highlights MyHeritage’s technology leadership and our firm commitment to adding historical records on a massive global scale, accelerating our vision of helping families everywhere explore and share their legacy online. We look forward to a fruitful future working hand in hand with our friends at FamilySearch.”

“FamilySearch values collaborative partnerships that enable more people, in more places, to discover their family history” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch. “MyHeritage is an innovative company that has a fast growing, global online audience. We are excited to commence this partnership which enables FamilySearch to better serve the global family history community.”

Do You Have Pioneers in Your Attic?

Mountain West Digital Library, used with permission

Do you have Pioneers in Your Attic?

Do you have original documents relating to the overland migration period 1842-1865? 

There is a free scanning event happening at the Pleasant Grove Library (Utah) on September 14, 2013. Attached is a flyer about the event.  This event is FREE and the scanning will be done on site. You will keep your materials and a digital copy will be sent to you. 

This is just one of may of these events scheduled around the state. For more information, click here. 

Click here to see additional scanning dates and locations.

This event is sponsored by the Utah Academic Library Consortium and Mountain West Digital Library in partnership with local libraries and museums. 

Ancestry.com and FamilySearch Join Forces Again!

 © 2013 Eva Ekeblad 
( used under CCBY-NC-SA 2.0)

Ancestry.com has announced a long-term partnership with FamilySearch. It is anticipated that one billion international genealogical records will be digitized in the next five years. Read the rest of the article here to gain a perspective of what this truly means for the genealogical community at large!

The Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies (FEEFHS)

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend the annual workshop presented by The Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies (FEEFHS). It was the first workshop that I have attended specifically tailored to my area of interest. All I can say is "why did I wait so long?" This workshop was amazing and for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by enthusiastic genealogy buffs who had surnames as weird as mine! That in itself was a revelation! The workshop had classes in the morning and then we were free to research at the Family History Library until we were kicked out when they closed! As part of the workshop, each participant met with a consultant who could help them search their particular country of interest. I was so excited to have a consultant who used to live in Lithuania, understood my challenges AND happened to live in the same town as me! The same town thing was a huge bonus! I now have two Lithuanians (there may be more, I don't know about) living in my town who can help me with translation whenever I happen to find something that won't translate in Google Translate!

Since Lithuania and much of Europe's boundaries have changed over and over during the last century, we had some great history lessons. It was amazing to watch as countries changed, dissolved, renamed themselves something else, got conquered, etc. I quickly learned that the way to work on genealogy in eastern Europe is to know the history. I also learned that real estate and eastern European history have something in common... "Location, Location, Location! For real estate you want to buy in a good location. For eastern European genealogy, you have to know the location of your ancestors. Unfortunately, I only have Lithuania listed on records that I have found. So, I need to search deeper and cover everyone associated with the family. Sooner or later, someone is bound to list where they are from on a record (at least that is the hope!).

I also learned that I need to learn a little Russian, at least enough to recognize main record titles. There are some great Russian language tutorials on line at FamilySearch.org. You can also Google Russian language, Russian alphabet, Russian genealogy, etc. You get the idea.

All in all, I had a blast at this workshop and am already planning for next year! Hopefully, I will be able to impress Professor Thom Edlund with my Russian skills! Actually, he is the master so I probably won't impress, but I can at least make a brave attempt at it this year!

Digital Preservation, Part 3

Here is the final part of Gary Wright's digital preservation series.  It is a great wrap up! I figure if I am going to put so much effort into my research that I had better put that much effort into preserving it! Otherwise, I'm afraid that all of my effort will end up in the local landfill! A sad thought indeed!