RootsTech Connect: Sneak Preview

 

Kirkpatrick Juxta Parish Church of Scotland, Dumfriesshire
Image by Michael Drummond from Pixabay

From 25th February, two presentations I’ve recorded for the RootsTech Connect conference will be online.  Here’s a sneak preview of their content:

The Riches of the Scottish Kirk Session Minutes

In the days when the established Church of Scotland exercised a great deal of social control, being summoned to appear before its local committee of elders and the minister (known as the kirk session) would have struck dread into the heart of many a parishioner.  The minutes of these meetings contain so much colour and detail about ordinary Scots and how the church authorities dealt with society.  They provide a fascinating insight into the everyday lives of your ancestors.  Find out more about them in my presentation!

 

Getting the Most Out of Scottish Vital Records on ScotlandsPeople 

ScotlandsPeople is the website of National Records of Scotland, the official record-keeping organisation of the Scottish government.  It hosts many different categories of records including census and probate, but my RootsTech presentation will focus on the statutory birth, marriage and death records.  I’ll look at the details you find on each of these different categories of certificates, as well as the “Golden Year” of 1855 and the Register of Corrected Entries.

You can search for these presentations (called "Classes") on the RootsTech website and add them to your personal playlist.

During the conference, 25th-27th February, there will be chat times scheduled when I will be online to discuss the presentations and take questions about them. There will also be the option to message any conference participant or speaker.  We’re all doing this for the first time ever, so this may change, but if it does I’ll keep you updated here on the blog and also on Twitter @FrugalFH.

The classes – all of the RootsTech Connect videos! – will be online and freely available for at least the next twelve months, possibly longer.  There are hundreds to choose from, so the biggest problem will be deciding which ones you need to watch!

To learn more about RootsTech Connect and how to join this free global event, read my previous blog post.

RootsTechConnect 2021 Schedule

At last, the classes for RootsTech Connect have been revealed!  There are absolutely hundreds of them, and in this initial list (which runs to 18 pages) they are arranged by title, so you can browse through them or search for a specific topic or speaker using the Ctrl + F keys on your device, or Command + F if you have an Apple.

All of these classes will be available on-demand from the start of the conference on Thursday 25th February for a minimum of twelve months.

If you haven't registered for this free event yet, go to the main RootsTech page and sign up.  To get the most out of the conference and all its features, you'll need to have a FamilySearch account - create one here. 

You can check out my previous blog post to find out more about RootsTech Connect and how you can join in.

The keynote speakers’ presentations, listed below, will be available according to the schedule shown, and repeated throughout the conference.

Coming Soon: RootsTech Connect

 

Update: Click here for the RootsTech Connect Class 

& Keynote Speaker Schedule

The global pandemic has caused untold disruption to our lives, and one of the less crucial aspects of that has meant that family history events have had to be postponed or changed.  As the world has embraced video conferencing for work, play, and family get-togethers, genealogy organisations large and small have realised that it means their reach can be extended beyond the normal attendance in person they’ve had in the past.

No less a major player in the genealogy community than FamilySearch has adopted this approach with enthusiasm.  Its RootsTech conference is an annual international event usually held in the USA, with a ticket price of over a hundred pounds to attend.  But this year, it’s been thrown open, free, to anyone with an internet connection and as many hours to spare as they like.

Reinvented as RootsTech Connect, it takes place from 25 to 27 February; however, all the presentations (over 800 of them) will be pre-recorded, to watch on demand not only over the days of the conference, but for at least a year afterwards. 

Taking part will be a dozen keynote speakers from the worlds of sport and the arts as well as family history, including well-known names like actress Sunetra Sarker and musicians Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  They’ll share what their family’s history has meant to them.

The RootsTech “classes” – shorter-than-usual presentations, on video – will cover dozens of topics (listed here) and you can build your own playlist of the ones you want to watch, or simply choose something at random.  No chance of a class being over-subscribed here!  

Many classes will be available in multiple languages thanks to online technology, and speakers from across the globe will be sharing their know-how about the records they use.  Experts on subjects like DNA and adoption will deliver presentations, and there will be cultural and heritage elements to the event, too.

As well as the classes, there will be areas on the event’s website where you can interact with the speakers and download their handouts.  And just like any genealogy conference, there will be exhibitors – in a “Virtual Marketplace”, where companies and groups can promote their products, be that books, technical innovations, or subscriptions, and you can ask them questions about their wares.

The conference traditionally features volunteer helpers in their distinctive “Ask Me Anything” t-shirts, and while this year the t-shirts may be absent, the helpers will still be there online to answer your queries about all aspects of RootsTech.

For younger genealogists aged 11-35, there will be a series of family history challenges starting on 25 February.  And for everyone participating there is Relatives@RootsTech  – an online app which will allow you to discover cousins you never knew, who are also registered.

So how can you take part?  Just go to https://www.rootstech.org and register, free of charge.  To take advantage of all the activities, you’ll need to have a free FamilySearch account, and if you’re interested in connecting with long-lost relatives, add your information to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree – an ambitious project aiming to build one universal genealogy of the human family.  Did I mention it's all free...?

And then sign onto the RootsTech website on February the 25th to check out everything that’s on offer!  At the last count, well over 200,000 people had registered.  Why not join them? This will be a unique opportunity to connect with relatives and fellow genealogists around the world, as well as increasing your family history knowledge and skills.  Hopefully it will also inspire you to use what you learn to build your family tree.

Postscript: If you’ve got Scots ancestors, you may want to watch one of my RootsTech classes, which are about using ScotlandsPeople, and the Kirk Session Records.

What's The Truth? Inaccuracies in records and how to spot them

 

In this post I want to highlight some ways in which we can be misled by the records whose accuracy we often take for granted.  I don't mean only simple mistakes, because while that may well be the case, a lot of inaccuracies creep into records when people are trying to blur the truth.  This could be due to a desire to conceal something that was socially unacceptable, such as illegitimacy; or worse, something that would criminalise them – bigamy, for instance.  

Here, I've listed some examples.  Of course, some genuine miscommunication may occur when an event is being recorded, as in the first example below.  This is not an isolated incident; I've encountered several such cases in Scottish records.

☙ Individuals who go to a registry office to report a life event may misunderstand the registrar’s questions; for example, a man registering the death of his wife is asked “and the mother’s name?” but he misinterprets the question and gives his own mother’s name instead.  If you notice a married couple whose respective death certificates record both their mothers with the same full name, this might be the reason!

☙ When it's available, compare the marriage date a couple gives later in life with their actual marriage date.  It’s not uncommon in Scotland to see different marriage dates appearing on the birth certificates of a couple's children, or to spot the marriage date being “adjusted” to disguise a birth that would indicate illegitimacy.

1890 Scottish marriage certificate

☙ Watch out for someone giving inconsistent information about their parents, such as someone whose father isn't named on their birth record, but for whom a father is given on their marriage or death record. An example in my family is Frederick  Byrne.  He has two middle names, but he doesn't give them on his marriage record; they would certainly make his birth record easy to find if he had.  He was illegitimate at birth, with only his mother Barbara Byrne named on the certificate as a parent.  However, on Frederick's marriage certificate (above) he gives the name of a maternal uncle as his father and combines the names of his grandmother and great-grandmother to create a fictitious mother.  And just to be on the safe side, he claims both of his parents are deceased, so that nobody can contact them and challenge the relationships.

☙ Occasionally you may find a census record that changes a child’s birth surname to that of the man with whom her mother has subsequently formed a relationship. This may have been an assumption on the enumerator’s part, or perhaps the instinct of the family to appear "respectable".  Then, in subsequent records, the child reverts to her birth name.  Blended families are nothing new, but greater stigma was attached to them in the past than now, especially if a couple were living together without the benefit of marriage.  Due diligence on the researcher's part can often ferret out the surname preference of the individual vs. the claims of their parents.

☙ The couple may be listed as married on a census record (or even a gravestone) – but were they?  Check for a marriage event before or round about the time of their eldest child’s birth.

Certificate with notation in Register of Corrected Entries

☙ In Scotland, an added bonus to civil registration records is the Register of Corrected Entries (RCE). Look in the left-hand margin of a certificate, or at the top of the certificate screen on the ScotlandsPeople system, for a notation that indicates a link to the RCE. These are amendments which may be, for instance:

• Updates to a child’s name, including changes when it was registered incorrectly
• A record of the father’s name when paternity has been established in the case of an illegitimate birth
• Corrections to inaccuracies in names of an individual on a record 
• The findings of the procurator fiscal or a Fatal Accident Inquiry, in the case of a sudden death. This can include information not given on the death certificate.

The RCE is an excellent source of additional knowledge, especially in the case of sudden deaths.  It's a favourite of mine, and in a future post I'll write about them in more detail.

Meanwhile, remember the genealogist's maxim:

"Never assume!"