Stuck at home with the family?

Take advantage of every opportunity to talk to your relatives about their families, to record their recollections, to reminisce together, and you’re bound to learn something new about people you knew.  If you’ve never spoken with the senior members of your clan about their ancestry before, this is the perfect time to forge closer ties.  And it’s an ideal activity to involve the youngest members of your family in.

But where to start? If you’re not sure, there are plenty of ideas online.  Family Tree Magazine shares 10 tips and a six-page handout to download and use when interviewing family. 

And in these unusual times, you may have more time and technology at your disposal.  Video chats needn’t be just about what’s happening now.  Why not post or e-mail a few advance questions to a relative and set up a time to talk about them?  Even better, include a few photos of ancestors that you’d like identified, or some holiday snaps that will stir up fond memories.

All it will cost you is some of your time (and maybe a postage stamp).

Just a few other websites with ideas for you to plan and organise your interviews are

Geneosity  

Geni 

FamilySearch  

Free St George’s Day Online Seminar

FamilySearch are hosting four free English research classes on Thursday 23 April to celebrate the patron saint's day.  Note that MDT is 7 hours behind current UK time, so you won’t have to get up in the middle of the night to watch them.  The schedule is

• 9:00 a.m. MDT - A Researcher's View of Old English Life
• 10:30 a.m. MDT - England Non-Conformist Church Records
• 1:00 p.m. MDT - I Give and Bequeath: English Probate Records
• 2:30 p.m. MDT - Introduction to English Heraldry

To join any of these classes, click on the link below, then select the session you want to watch at the appropriate time.  You can sign in as a guest.

https://community.familysearch.org/s/feed/0D53A00004s2cEjSAI?language=en_US&fbclid=IwAR2Ke3qQNyGg7Mbc-Gp96uzACz94HzuKP1MAeovmMaiV2Um-o-9VPEY25Rg

FREE Family Tree Live virtual conference!

Originally planned to take place on 17th-18th April in London, the Family Tree Live event has been transformed into an online conference starting at 10 a.m. on the 17th, with some of the scheduled speakers now delivering their presentations via video tutorial – including yours truly, speaking on my favourite subject of researching family history for nothing.

For the full programme and to learn more about the topics that will be covered on both days, go to https://www.family-tree.co.uk/how-to-guides/family-tree-live-virtual-conference/

There’s also a free goody bag of downloadable worksheets and special offers to take advantage of.

All of this will be freely available for ONE WEEK so get there as soon as you can to take advantage of the talks and freebies.  Of course the organisers are using this opportunity to promote their magazine; they’re offering unlimited tutorial access to subscribers, so if you already take Family Tree Magazine you’re in luck.

The World's Largest Shared Family Tree

☙ In this, the latest in my series of posts about doing genealogy from home, I hope you'll find at least one new direction in which to take your family history research or skills. ☙

Opening a free FamilySearch account is a bit like opening up a box of different tools that will help you to be more productive in tracing, recording, sharing, and researching your family tree.  Even seasoned users of the website are constantly being surprised by the range of things they can use it for.

Once you’ve signed up, you can

☙  Add your relatives to the Family Tree. This aims to be one unified record of the human family.  You’ll probably have some ancestors already featured in it, because of the records FamilySearch have collected from around the world.  Build your part of the tree around those existing records

☙  Find more records for your family and attach them to your tree. Use the Catalog to identify resources to help build your research, as well as the suggestions that appear in your family’s entries in the Tree.

☙  Upload your family photographs, stories, memories, and sound clips

☙  Print off fan charts and decorative trees to display your research

☙  Read digitised books from many sources, available through the Digital Library.  Browse or search them for your family.

☙  Set up alerts to be notified when another FamilySearch user makes changes to an entry on the tree that you’re interested in

☙  Use the Activities section to engage young people in family history

☙  Improve your research skills using the resources found in the Research Wiki and Learning Centre – all available via the Help menu, where you'll also find how-to videos for using the website itself

☙  Join the FamilySearch Community and get answers to your research questions as well as collaborating with other genealogists

☙  Add to the available records by volunteering as an indexer 

☙  Download the Family Tree mobile app for those unexpected genealogy moments or research trips

And this is by no means a comprehensive list of what you can accomplish.  Explore the site and discover for yourself just how it can help your family tree to grow.

Watch and Learn

If you’re more of a visual learner – or even if you’re not – then online video classes and webinars may be perfect for brushing up your genealogy research skills, or getting started in a new area.

There is so much out there that I can’t possibly hope to cover it all in one post, so here are just a few FREE resources for you to browse.  They’re regularly updated, and you can sign up for notifications by e-mail.

The first one is Legacy, a webinar company owned by MyHeritage.  Although many of their presentations cost to view, they have a selection available at no charge.  Currently their recent 24-hour genealogy marathon webinars are free until 6 April.

Their special offer for the month of April will have one webinar unlocked each day following scheduled topics. 

FamilySearch Webinars and Online Classes has an extensive range of resources.  Many are already archived but there is also a list of what's coming up in the near future.  The page has a link (near the beginning) to a long list of other places that hold webinars.

Plus you can search or browse their FamilySearch Learning Centre by topic, such as research skills or software guides

OR

to access these FamilySearch resources by region or country, navigate to Search>Records, then click on the map for the region you’re interested in – New Zealand, for instance. The next screen displays any learning courses that will help you research your family in that part of the world; in this case, a 22-minute presentation on how to use NZ birth, death and marriage records online.

You can watch these online or download them for later use, which might be handy if you don’t have 24/7 wifi.

And then there’s the Genealogy TV YouTube channel and its huge selection of videos with lots of tips, tricks, and advice.  You’ll find similar videos by searching YouTube or using your preferred search engine.

STOP PRESS:  A LIVE free online conference on Scottish family history will be streamed on Thursday 9 April, starting at 7 am UK time.  It’s being hosted by research company Scottish Indexes.  Several speakers are donating their time to this event, plus the website owners will be promoting their resources with some presentations.  Check out the subjects on the programme to see if you fancy an early rise.

You Can Make Records More Accessible

How can you increase the amount of widely-available family history resources?  A growing number of records are being digitally imaged and hosted by recordkeeping organisations – but some of these collections are vast and would take ages to trawl through, not to mention the hard-to-read handwriting they sometimes contain.  

Transcribing these records into readable text is the first step to creating indexes which make them infinitely more accessible and useful, and this is where you can play a significant part.  By giving just a little of your time, you can help build an index to some records, leading a genealogist like yourself to discover ancestors they would otherwise never have found - all without leaving home.

Here are three projects looking for volunteers to transcribe their collections.  If you took part in February’s Transcription Tuesday event, you’ll recognise these organisations – in fact, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine is making Transcription Tuesday a weekly occurrence...details coming up!

For the FamilySearch or Ancestry projects, you'll need to set up an account with their website if you don’t already have one – but this is absolutely free and doesn’t require any payment details from you.

Now is your chance to contribute something really valuable to the family history community.  Do get involved! 

The National Archives are appealing for more help with their Navy WWI crew lists project. Visit Royal Navy Lives at Sea to learn about the project and sign up via e-mail.

  

FamilySearch Indexing 

Join the fun at FamilySearch Indexing and use their online program.

Pick a set of records to work on from dozens that have been sourced and digitally imaged worldwide.  Or try a few different ones!  And be prepared to receive one of the project’s ‘thank you’ messages from a grateful genealogist once your indexed records are online.

Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine's Transcription Tuesday will be making a regular appearance, starting next week with Ancestry’s 1820-1843 English Criminal Lunatic Asylum Registers.  Instructions on how to get involved and download the Ancestry keying tool are here. 

I’ve been involved in projects like this for many years now, and can attest to the value they add to records, and to your genealogy skills.  Some of these collections are fascinating, and who knows, you might even come across one of your own ancestors when you least expect it.  I was indexing a batch of Scottish christening records when to my amazement I saw my great-grandmother’s name staring at me from the register (pictured below).

You can read more about the recent Transcription Tuesday projects here.

Take A Virtual Cemetery Walk

Now that you’ve gathered some information from your family and home sources, and checked for more details online, perhaps it’s time for your daily walk.  Why not take a virtual walk round the cemetery of your choice?  Here’s what to do:

1. Click on FindaGrave.com 
2. Click on the ‘Cemeteries’ tab.
3. Using the ‘Cemetery Location’ box, search for the area where your forebears lived, or if you already know the name of the cemetery, use that search function. 
4. Once you’ve selected a graveyard, click on the link giving the number of memorials that have been recorded in it.
5. Listed alphabetically by surname are names copied from gravestones in this cemetery.
6. More information is available by clicking on the name of an individual.  This may include a photograph of the memorial and names of family members also listed on it.
7. If you’re interested in finding more graves for this family, a list of places is given, starting with this cemetery, and then widening to include the same town, county, and country.  Clicking on one of those will let you search further afield for more relatives.
8. Or, continue through this graveyard and browse the rest of the headstones.
9. The site is free to sign up for, and once you do so, you can add entries and upload photographs to the site. You’ll also be able to leave a virtual floral tribute on a memorial’s listing, and a note too if you wish. This can be a good way of connecting with new cousins! 

Top tip: If you’ve had trouble deciphering a headstone, check if somebody has uploaded a clearer photograph of it to this or a similar website, such as BillionGraves.