Marriage, Slavery, and RootsTech

This week's helping of free family history events -

 ☙ As a nod to St. Valentine's Day, MyHeritage is giving free access to its marriage record collections - all 279 of them - from 13-16 February. You can find them here, and sign up for an account if you don't already have one (it's completely free to register).

☙ On Saturday 22 February, the Southern Ontario group of Aberdeen & North East Family History Society are hosting a Zoom presentation on the topic of slavery and its impact on family history. The speaker is Sally Low, an experienced researcher who just recently discovered links to slavery in her own family. She will share what she learned and how, which should make for a very interesting talk. The meeting is open to non-members of the Society and you can sign up for it on their website.

☙ Coming up at the beginning of March is the annual family history fest that is RootsTech. Now firmly in hybrid mode, a great deal of its content is available online. Advance registration allows you to browse the schedule of classes and talks and decide which ones are of most interest. Previous years' presentations are available on-demand including a few by myself 😊

Black History Month

To mark Black History Month in the USA (the UK equivalent is in October), there are plenty of free resources on offer. Here are just a few:

Legacy Family Tree Webinars are showing five themed presentations on African-American research from the days of enslavement up until the present day. Find out how to reconstruct an enslaved family, use plantation and court records, and learn about the origins of Juneteenth.

Ancestry, as well as hosting webinars to help those starting out on researching African-American ancestors, have other talks to help you get more out of your DNA results and building your tree on the website.

The U.S. Family Tree magazine's website also features plenty of helpful articles on topics like Freedmen's Bureau Records, and case studies in tracing enslaved forebears. The site also offers free genealogy charts and forms to help you record and plan your research. You may have to sign up to an e-mail to receive the downloads, but you can always unsubscribe immediately afterwards if you don't want the e-mails.

To begin tracing African-American ancestry, a great place to start is the FamilySearch Research Wiki, with loads of ideas for online resources you can explore and helpful tips.