Free Online Genealogy Presentations

 

Legacy Family Tree Webinars 1-Day Conference – Saturday 29th January 

Legacy is a subscription website which, from this Saturday, begins a monthly series of free one-day conferences, using their existing presentations which are usually only available to subscribers. They will also include some new classes. Of course this is a marketing strategy, to draw in paying customers, but these conferences really are free.

This month, the theme of the conference is Organization, and the free classes are

• Organization: Create a Finding Aid to Locate Your Records, by Teri E. Flack
• Get Organized Using the FamilyRoots Organizer Colour-Coding System, by Mary Hill
• Maintaining an Organized Computer, by Cyndi Ingle
• Organize Your Online Life, by Lisa Louise Cooke
• You Can Do This: Photo Organizing and Preservation, by Thomas MacEntee

There is no timetable or registration; the presentations will simply be made available on the set date.  Visit the conference website and choose which talks you want to watch, in whichever order you like.  As part of each class, there will also be a free speaker handout (syllabus) to download.

Family History Library Classes and Webinars - Mondays-Thursdays

FamilySearch hold regular online classes throughout the year.  For February and March these will cover using the website's different tools to find, document, and add photos to your family record.  Research Webinars are also scheduled to help build your skills in areas like researching different countries' records, using DNA, and understanding Latin handwriting.

Registration is necessary as class numbers are limited, so when you see a topic you are interested in, sign up for it right away.  And the beginning of March will see FamilySearch's second free global event, RootsTech 2022 - watch out for a future post here about that!

Scottish Indexes Conference XVI – Saturday 12th March

Husband-and-wife team Graham and Emma Maxwell operate their genealogy research business from their home in the west of Scotland, and since the advent of the global pandemic which severely restricted access to essential archives, they have diversified significantly. Just under two years ago, they started organising online conference programmes and made them available at no cost to anybody who wanted to join in via either their Facebook group or Zoom.  Each talk is shown twice on the day, to allow viewers from around the world to take part in their timezone.  You can browse previous presentations and handouts at their Past Conferences page. 

Have you been deliberately avoiding Zoom presentations? 

1.    Not all of these events require you to use Zoom

2.    It's completely free to use the basic package.

2.    Zoom isn't the problem it's been cracked up to be! Watch the first two-and-a-half minutes of this introductory video to see how straightforward it is to join a Zoom meeting.

  

Transcription Tuesday 2022

It’s become an annual tradition for Who Do You Think You Are? magazine to hold its crowdsourcing event, Transcription Tuesday, in February.  Everyone is invited to take part, and as usual, this year there are a few different projects involved.

For 2022, Tuesday 1st of February is the big day, but you should decide which project you’re going to work on in advance so you can familiarise yourself with the instructions. Additionally, you may need to register with the project to participate. To transcribe any record set, all you’ll need is your usual internet connection and PC or laptop.  You’ll have access to digital images of records, and these are the sources you will extract details from and type into the project software or document.  Choose the records you want to help with from

☙ FamilySearch: the world's largest genealogical record organisation is seeking help to transcribe English parish registers.  If you don't already have a free FamilySearch account, you can easily create one, and this will allow you to pick a project under the "Indexing" tab on the website.  

☙ HMS NHS: Seamen's Hospital registers.  Learn about these fascinating naval medical records, and check out the project's home page, which includes a chat function to put you in touch with other volunteers. 

☙ National Library of Wales Photo Book Collection: tagging 19th century photographs of everyday life in Wales.  More on joining this project can be found at Who Do You Think You Are?'s website. 

☙ Stories of St James's Burial Ground: the 18th century burial registers of the Parish of St James, Piccadilly.  This graveyard beside Euston Station was excavated by archaeologists in advance of an engineering project, and the burial records are held by the City of Westminster Archives.  They will need both transcription and highlighting. Find out more at the project's website. 

 

Help for Using the 1921 Census

Census Records by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

It’s been a big week for genealogists with English or Welsh ancestors! The 1921 Census was released on FindMyPast and has been greeted mainly with rejoicing.  There have been some folk who want to be able to access it free of charge, but then they’d have to go to a library and scroll through miles of microfilm, since the charges pay for the digitising and indexing that has been done.  And of course, it IS free to access at three archives/libraries in England and Wales. 

There's plenty of online material explaining how to make the best use of the collection to track down grandparents and great-great-aunts (and in some cases, parents - you know who you are). Some of these free resources are listed below.

☙  Family Tree magazine posts an Introductory User Guide (although there is a charge to watch their “Celebratory Census Conference”)

☙  The National Archives hosted an expert panel discussion which you can watch back on their Facebook page

☙  FindMyPast’s YouTube channel has several videos about the background to the census and its digitsation project plus a short how-to clip. 

☙  They also have two Facebook live events coming up this week, on Wednesday and Thursday (both at 4pm UK time), where you can ask questions about the census and hear about some of the interesting finds made by the conservation team

Some of the most useful suggestions for searching the 1921 returns have come in the shape of social media posts by family historians sharing their tips.  Tune in to Twitter for #AncestryHour, either in real time any Tuesday at 7pm (UK), or by catching up using the hashtag later on, and you’re sure to see the census discussed and perhaps catch some ideas for research strategies.

Scottish Indexes Conference

In other online event news, this Saturday (15th) sees the latest Scottish Indexes Conference. It will run two showings of each presentation, morning and afternoon, for participants in different time zones.  The talks will cover topics of particular interest to researchers with Scots heritage, such as crofting, Edinburgh and Lanarkshire records.  Find out more about the speakers, and how to watch, via Zoom or Facebook on the Scottish Indexes website.