Continue to Enjoy RootsTech!

 Unlike previous years, the presentations will remain online throughout the year at www.rootstech.org

Try doing searches on things that are of special interest to you. And try looking for them on youtube.com using RootsTech as part of your search terms. Think of RootsTech, not as an event, but as a year-long process of gathering helpful information and honing your skills.

Personally, I have focused on tools, techniques, and purposes. I have enjoyed countless productive hours using the free index to British births, marriages and deaths. Freebmd.org.uk A presentation on this topic gave me better ways to use this tool. The same can be said of other tools such as a free account with Ancestry, findmypast or MyHeritage.

For a long time I have been looking for Mary Lanxton, who married my ancestor John Ing in 1747. One presentation suggested using the new Guided Research tool in the FamilySearch Wiki. I found Mary's christening in the right time and place using a different spelling, Mary Langston. This listed her parents as Thomas Langston and Ann. Then I found the marriage of Thomas Langston and Ann Levins in the right time and place.
This was wonderful!

Many of the presentations were about preserving and sharing family stories. I realize that any stories I fail to share may be lost to future generations. I discovered that by using Zoom with Chrome and Google Maps, I could create a movie of the journey of my Buchanan family from the small rural district of Binnawooda in Ireland to Canada, and then across Canada. For a shorter demo, see: https://youtu.be/U_pFgc8muLs

To create a video in Zoom, start a New Meeting for yourself, Share your Desktop and use Alt+R to record your voice and your screen, When you end the meeting, you should see a progress bar as Zoom saves your video in MP4 format. If you use Windows, the video should be found in the most recent Zoom folder in Documents. It will be called zoom_0.mp4 Move it and rename it, enjoy it and share it with your family. I love to find new uses for familiar tools!

Family history research has changed! Robert Kehrer (Senior Manager for FamilySearch Searching and Hinting) said “Hints find 70%-80% of the Indexed historical records for your ancestor. Search is for the other 20%-30%,” (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n27-ZbQr34I ). To help the hinting system, add an estimated date and place of birth if these are missing from an ancestor, and include alternate versions of the name, where appropriate. (Hint and Search also use the alternate names.)