Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Rabbit Hole!

I haven't had much time recently to do deep dives in genealogy, but I can come up with something for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Have you been down a genealogy rabbit hole lately?  What was it, and what did you find?  (If not, go find a rabbit hole!  Try your FamilySearch Notifications or Ancestry.com Photos or Stories.)

2.  Share your rabbit hole chase and results in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

My last rabbit hole was when Randy asked us to play around with FamilySearch's Full-Text Search two weeks ago.

As I described at the time, I didn't find any of my ancestors, so I started hunting around for other families I am researching.  The most productive search was for my aunt's maiden name of McStroul:  42 results!  And most of them were documents and stories I had not previously found.

A lot of what I found was newspaper stories.  I naturally put them into chronological order, so I could see how the family changed and developed over time.

I found it interesting to be able to follow stories about my aunt's brother over several years.  In early 1962 he completed training in the U.S. Army.  In 1969 he started college (presumably after leaving the Army, but I didn't find an article about that).  In 1973 he graduated college.  In 1978 he visited his mother from out of town for Christmas and was studying at a seminary.  In January 1980 he and his wife-to-be obtained a marriage license.  Sometime between January and May they apparently married, because his wife graduated college in May 1980 with her married name.

I found four World War II draft registrations where my aunt's grandfather was the registrar.  I figure he probably registered more than four people, so maybe the AI hasn't recognized his signature on others.

I found my aunt's mother's obituary and the obituary for her second husband.  I also found my aunt's parents listed in several deed indices in Erie County, New York.  I have a vague recollection that one of the children was born in Buffalo (I can't look it up right now, because my new computer is still in transition), so I guess they lived there long enough to buy and sell some property.  More to follow up on!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Do Some FamilySearch Full-Text Searching

Randy Seaver has more AI in store for us for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music) is:

1.  FamilySearch Full-Text Search continues to add databases and searchable images to their collections.  This is a gold mine, especially of land, probate, and court records.

2.  Pick one or two of your ancestors and see what you can find on FamilySearch Full-Text Search about them.

3.  Share your Full-Text Search find(s) in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

The results for most of my searches for my ancestors (and remember, an ancestor is someone from whom you descend, not a collateral relative; since there is no such thing as an "indirect ancestor", the term "direct ancestor" is redundant at best and nonsense otherwise) either had far too many results to look through, when I searched for just a surname, or no results at all, when I searched for full names in quotation marks to control the number of irrelevant results.  My names are not extremely common ones, such as Smith and Jones, but they are common enough that a blind search with no index produces far too many results to slog through.  My grandmother's name was Anna Gauntt, with no middle name that I have ever discovered, so I searched for "anna gauntt" and learned that the AI provides results with something between your search terms.  I was able to rule out all of those Anna Gauntts, because they either had middle names or initials or were not in the correct locations for my grandmother.  I abandoned my ancestors and searched for some of the unique surnames that I am doing research on.

My search for Gudapel, a name which has been used by only four people in the history of the world, produced two results.  Both had headers that read "History Records 1800–1902, Diaries 1800–1902 | New Hampshire. Genealogies 1978–1982, Society Records 1978–1982 | Maine. Genealogies 1978–1982, Society Records 1978–1982" (truncated on screen, but visible when I moused over the link).  If I were searching for a name that I did not know as well, I might have ignored these results, because I know the family was never in New Hampshire and Maine and would have no reason to appear in genealogies for those area.  Because I do know the name, I clicked on the links, hoping that maybe there was something from the 19th century, and discovered that the title was not particularly accurate.  Both links went to the same book, a 1941 Houston, Texas city directory, which did include the name of Geo. [George] Gudapel on two different pages.  While city directories can be classified as history records, the directory in question does not fall in the years of 1800–1902.  I'm not sure if I already had these directory listings.

I next searched for McStroul, a name which my aunt's grandfather created when he naturalized as an American citizen.  His original name was Moska Leib Strul.  He asked to have it changed to Leo Martin McStroul when he became a citizen.  The name McStroul belongs only to his family; when I find it, I know it has to be the right people.  When I entered it in the keyword field, I had 42 results.

I searched for McStroul when Randy did a previous FamilySearch Full-Text Search challenge.  At that time I had two results, both in my aunt's great-grandmother's will and probate.  The name appeared because my aunt's mother, who was the granddaughter of the deceased, was listed under her married name.  I noted at the time that the name actually appeared three times in the document, but only two were identified by the search.  This time the search picked up all three occurrences.

All 42 results for McStroul that Full-Text Search found were correctly read.  A couple of the given names were misread by the AI (such as Geo instead of what actually said Leo).  Many of the documents were ones that I have not previously found, such as articles in a Kingman, Arizona newspaper and naturalizations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where the McStroul family members appeared as witnesses.  So these are all useful in researching the family and are nice discoveries.

I tried searching for Szocherman, a name in my family that I believe more and more may be unique to that branch of my cousins.  I had no results.  But when I searched for Socherman, a spelling which some family members have adopted, I found many results, almost all of which were not for my cousins.  Amusingly, one that was my family was misread by AI and actually does say Szocherman.

After all of that, I tried to find a collateral relative in the database and searched for "frederick dunstan" in quotation marks.  Again the AI provided results with something between my search terms, and there were far more Frederick Dunstans than I had anticipated, more than was practical to look at.  I restricted the search to New Jersey and ended up with only four results, three of which were for Frederick C. Dunstan in Burlington County, which is exactly where my great-grandmother's brother should be found.  I believe this is the right person, so it appears he had a middle name, which I previously did not know, that started with C.  All three results are from deed indices from the early 1920's.  That does provide me with information about him.

Before I restricted the search to New Jersey, some of the results were for a Frederick Dunstan in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.  I looked at them bcause that isn't horribly far from New Jersey and found that they were for a Frederick Dunstan from Combe Martin, England, which is in Devon County.  My Dunstans were from Lancashire, so I knew this was not my guy, but ironically, his wife's name was Jane.  Jane Dunstan is my great-grandmother and the sister of Frederick Dunstan.  I did find that entertaining.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Try Out the FamilySearch "Famous Relatives" Page

I knew I wouldn't get far with tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  FamilySearch has a page for "Famous Relatives" at https://www.familysearch.org/en/discovery/famousrelatives.  It works if you are connected to the FamilySearch Family Tree.

2.  Check out the site.  Which connection surprises you?  Do you believe that the connection is correct?

3.  Share your famous relative connection in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

I clicked the link and saw this result:

I found it interesting that on the page behind the pop-up, it says, "Results in Famous Relatives are based on the information currently in your family tree."

As I routinely tell people, no individual has a family tree on FamilySearch.  Family Tree is one big collaborative tree to which you may have contributed, but it is not "your" family tree.  So saying that is disingenuous, at best.

I am disappointed that my information has to be entered for me to be able to use the tool.  I don't put information about living people into FamilySearch.  I would prefer that I be able to look up a deceased ancestor and use the tool with that individual.  But that does not serve the greater purpose of Family Tree, so it won't be happening.

Top 10 Posts of 2024

I'm only a little late figuring this out.  We're just barely past halfway through January.  Now, if it were all the way at the end of January, that would really have been dragging my feet.  The big news is that this is the first time I've posted my Top 10 since the 2020 listing.  I guess I really did have a few rough years in there.

So, without further ado, what were the ten most popular topics (by readership) on my blog this past year?

Starting the list at #10 was the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge to use FamilySearch Full-Text Search.  My searches didn't go well, but my frustrations apparently engaged people.

#9 was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, this time about the best newspaper article I had found for my family history.  One of the articles had a photo of me!

Coming in at #8 is one more Saturday Night Genealogy Fun story (are we picking up on a theme here?), with five "different" facts about family members.  This gave me an opportunity to mention that my maternal grandfather supposedly played baseball with Jackie Robinson.

Who could have guessed that a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post would be #7?  This one asked us to write about a day we had fun with genealogy, and it definitely was fun the day I found my great-great-grandparents' Russian marriage record.

The #6 post has nothing to do with Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  It was when I celebrated my lucky 13th blogiversary (along with Lisa Hork Gorrell, of course).

#5 is my post lamenting some of the recent changes I have seen occur at the FamilySearch Center at which I volunteer, and pondering what might be coming in the future.

For the #4 post we return to Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, when I listed my genealogy goals for 2024.  I was trying to be cautious and optimistic at the same time.

And another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge comes in at #3.  This time it was the best research achievement I had had during the previous month.

The #2 post was when I noticed a problem with the year in the index of Russian records posted on JewishGen.  I haven't seen any changes to the index since writing about that.

And the #1 post in popularity on my blog in 2024 was when I explained all of the things I am not doing with AI in genealogy for, you guessed it, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  (And I'm still not doing them.)

So last year seven of the top ten posts were for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  That's still not surprising, not only because lots of people read Randy's blog but also because I was almost rebooting my blog after a few years of sparse posting.

I generally don't get a lot of comments on my posts, even those that are read a lot.  The #1 and #2 posts on the popularity list were tied for the most comments this year.

Thank You, and You, and You

Coming out of COVID, I really fell behind on posting on my blog, including for such things as thank yous.  Having been raised by my mother to tell people thank you, I have felt very guilty about this.  So I'm going to catch up on my thank yous from 2022 and 2023 and include them with those from 2024.

First I want to thank all those groups that invited me to be a genealogy speaker.  I am honored that you felt that I had information worth sharing with your members and attendees, and I appreciate you having chosen me.

• Mt. Diablo Genealogical Society
• Sacramento Public Library
• Genealogical Society of Washington County Oregon
• Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento
• Genealogical Forum of Oregon
• San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society
• American Mensa, Limited
• International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, Annual Conference on Jewish Genealogy
• Oakmont Genealogy Club
• Solano County Genealogical Society
• Olympia Genealogical Society
• Nordic Northwest
• Congregation Neveh Shalom
• Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois
• Santa Cruz Jewish Genealogical Society
• Mensa of Western Washington
• Virtual Genealogical Association
• Livermore-Amador Genealogical Society
• Lake County Genealogical Society
• Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage
• Pikes Peak Genealogical Society
• Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island
• South Orange County California Genealogical Society
• Contra Costa County Genealogical Society
• Triangle Jewish Genealogical Society
• Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County
• Foothills Genealogical Society of Colorado
• Jewish Genealogical Society of Toronto
• Upper Valley Jewish Genealogical Society
• Gresham FamilySearch Center
• Moreno Valley Genealogical Society
• Jewish Genealogical Society of Pittsburgh
• Greater Sacramento African American Genealogy Society, African American Family History Seminar
• Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston
• San Ramon Valley Genealogical Society
• Genealogical Society of Bergen County
• Heritage Quest Research Library
• Puget Sound Genealogical Society
• Orange County Jewish Genealogical Society
• Utah Genealogical Association, Summit of Excellence
• Wheaton Public Library
• New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, New York State Family History Conference
• Fountaindale Public Library

I was mostly able to maintain my genealogy volunteer work.  It's very rewarding being able to give back to a field so near and dear to me.  My health definitely was a factor in my level of involvement, but since so much was (and still is!) remote, I kept plugging along.  So a big thank you to the people I worked with at the Gresham FamilySearch Center, Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon, Genealogical Forum of Oregon in general and the African American Special Interest Group in particular, San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society, and (new for me last year) Geneabloggers.

Last on my list but most decidedly not least, thank you to the readers of my blog.  It's rewarding to know that people find it worth spending their time reading my comments and reflections on this incredibly engrossing pastime that we share.  I particularly appreciate when you write to me, online and offline, with your comments and feedback.  I hope you find this year's posts interesting as well.

Graphic created by WiR Pixs.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who Is the Earliest Ancestor in Your Paternal Tree?

Hmm, I need to figure out how to complete the exercise for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Today's challenge is to answer the question "Who Is the Earliest Ancestor in Your Paternal Tree?"

2.  Tell us about your earliest paternal ancestor in your family tree on your own blog post, in a comment here, or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!]

Okay, so I know who the earliest ancestor is in my paternal tree.  It's Peter Gaunt, the earliest Gaunt in Peter Gaunt 1610–1680 and Some of His Descendants by David L. Gauntt, published by the Gloucester County Historical Society.  (Even though I almost definitely also descend from Charlemagne, I don't have that documented.)

It's showing the line of descent I'm having trouble with.  I don't have all the information from the book entered into my family tree.

But the entire line has been entered into FamilySearch's Family Tree.  So I'll use that for my reference after my personal tree has petered out.

1.  Janice is the daughter of Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (1935–2019).

2.  Lynn is the son of Anna Gauntt (1893–1986).

3.  Anna is the daughter of Thomas Kirkland Gauntt (1870–1951).

4.  Thomas is the son of James Gauntt (1831–1899).

5.  James is the son of Hananiah Selah Gaunt (1795–1852).

6.  Hananiah is the son of Hananiah Gaunt (1762–abt. 1799).

7.  Hananiah is the son of Joseph Gaunt (1740–1806).

8.  Joseph is the son of Hananiah Gaunt (1707–1792).
(Up to this point I have been using what I have entered and documented in my family tree program.  After this I'm taking the information from Family Tree, but as far as I know it was taken from David Gauntt's book.)

9.  Hananiah is the son of Daniel Lester Gaunt (1688–1721).

10.  Daniel is the son of Hananiah Gaunt (1646–1721).

11.  Hananiah is the son of Peter Gaunt (1608–1680).

I will mention that the Gaunt line does go further back on Family Tree.  I know the book by David Gauntt is well researched and documented, and I trust the information there.  At the front he included a list of other Gaunts in Lancashire, England at the time of Peter Gaunt but whom he had determined were probably related but had to be from collateral lines, not direct lines.  That notwithstanding, I discovered that several years ago someone had added two of the names from that list as the father and grandfather of Peter Gaunt in the International Genealogical Index.  Since I don't have my copy of the book handy, I can't check the names that are currently connected as Peter Gaunt's father and grandfather against the list in the book.  Given that, I'm choosing not to include them, and I'm stopping at Peter.

I decided to look further up the line that is posted on Family Tree.  Seven generations past Peter, the line goes to John of Gaunt, who didn't have any children who had Gaunt as a family name; they used the name Beaufort.  So I'm definitely not trusting what is posted there.  I guess I'll have to do the research myself.  (Or check with David Gauntt to see if he has continued his own research!)

(As an amusing side note to inaccuracies in Family Tree, my great-great-grandfather James Gaunt is entered as James Kirkland Gauntt and includes a photograph — of my grandmother's brother James Kirkland Gauntt, who lived 1905–1949 and looks quite a bit like a rakish gangster, with the same photo as is posted for his grandfather.  There is a surviving photo of my great-great-grandfather, but that ain't it, and I have never seen his name as James Kirkland Gauntt anywhere but in Family Tree.  It was just James Gaunt.)

This means that while Randy has a line back to his 33rd-great-grandfather, I have to stop at my 9th-great-grandfather.  On the other hand, I am confident in my information.

What Is Happening to FamilySearch Centers?

I have volunteered with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for 24 years, helping people with genealogy and family history.  When I started, in Oakland, California, I was at a Family History Center.  Later, the same location was called a Multi-Stake Regional Family History Center.  Then it became a FamilySearch Library.  Now I think they’re all FamilySearch Centers (FSC) except for the mother ship in Salt Lake City.

It is reasonable to assume that during 24 years many changes have occurred in how things are done at FSC’s.  One of the biggest was the transition to doing so much research online, which meant that FSC’s all now have lots of computers for visitors to work on (in Oakland, we had more than 75).  It would not be reasonable for me to expect that other resources and procedures would remain static.  But recent changes at my FSC have me worrying what will happen next.

I currently volunteer at the FSC in Gresham.  Over the past several months, we received several new computers (the church regularly upgrades its hardware).  It took a while to get them all up and running.  When they finally were operational, other staff and I discovered that only about a third of our computers are still running on Windows OS.  The others are now using Chrome OS.

No problem, I thought.  I am still bilingual (Mac and Windows), and I used to be trilingual (desktop publishing on an Atari ST, anyone?).  I figured it wouldn’t be that difficult to learn yet another OS.

I was kind of right. Opening the Chrome browser was easy as pie. But that’s all I was able to do.

I couldn’t find a “desktop.”  When I minimized the browser, I saw the wallpaper on what seemed to be the desktop.  But there were no icons for other programs, and I couldn’t actually access the desktop.  When I typed Ctrl-N, which in Windows or on a Mac would give me a new window that showed what files were there, I got a new browser window.  Say what?

I tried downloading an alternative browser to see how that would work.  I couldn’t.  The computer wouldn’t let me.  It just wouldn't download the file.

Since there were no other icons, that meant that the result of all my months of hard work convincing our FSC directors that installing Irfanview (the greatest free graphics program you’ll ever need, unless you use a Mac) was a great idea had been negated on two thirds of our computers.  So I tried to download it and install it.

Nope, couldn’t do it.  It just . . . wouldn’t.

I admit, I did not try searching online for how to use the OS.  Instead, I sent a message to the directors of the FSC, saying that I was confused by how the new spiffy Chrome OS worked and asking if maybe we could have a staff training day to help us learn how to use it.  I received an answer that didn’t really address the issue, but also mentioned that they would try to come by in person to talk about it.

They did that the same day.

They didn’t know the answer to my question about how we could install or use other programs either, so they called one of the helpful people at FamilySearch who are available when volunteer staff at FSC’s need assistance.

And we were told that with Chrome OS, the only programs you can install are ones from Google.  And the voice at the other end of the phone began to blandly explain that gee, if you wanted a word processor or a spreadsheet, you could use the handy-dandy ones from Google.

"But wait," I said.  "What about if I want to do graphics work?  Like trimming off all that extra black frame from images downloaded from Ancestry, so the files are cleaner?  Or straightening images that are a little off-kilter?  You know, the kinds of things I can do in Irfanview.  Does Google have a graphics program?"

"Um, er, well, that isn’t something I really know about," said the man at the other end of the phone call.

"Oh, and what if we have a patron who doesn’t already have a family tree program?  We used to have a few different programs installed, so we could show patrons how to use them and even enter some data to give them a quick family tree.  Does Google make a family tree program?  I don’t think they do."

"Um, er, I don’t really know," was again the answer from the man at the other end.

"So how useful are these computers to patrons who come in?  It really seems that they’re just kind of jacked-up Chromebooks if all they can do is browse the Internet."

He didn’t take kindly to that and started explaining how a Chromebook is a very useful computer, and besides, we still have the subscription sites available through the FamilySearch Library portal, so people still have a reason to come in.  At that point, however, I had to leave, as I had errands to run, so I didn't get to hear the end of his bland rationalizations.

FSC’s have already had to return the bulk of their microfilms.  (They wanted us to return all of ours, but I pointed out that not all of it had come originally from the Family History Library to begin with.)  They have been encouraged to get rid of their books (because, well, you know, everything is online).  And now the computers we have available for visitors pretty much only allow you to look at things online.  (Sure, we can install Google Office Suite programs . . . except we haven’t been taught how to do that, so we actually can’t.  Yet.)

I know there are excellent genealogists and family historians at FamilySearch, who know that not everything is online.  But I don't think they’re the people who are making decisions about what is available at FamilySearch Centers.

Many, many FamilySearch Centers across the county (and maybe across the world) have already been closed.  I’m worried that this change is an indication that the rest are doomed and it’s only a matter of time before they close also.  Because if all we can offer visitors is using a subscription site for free, is that enough to encourage people to come in?  Or maybe it will just be easier to pay for the subscription yourself and stay at home, looking things up at 2:00 in the morning in your bunny slippers.  Church members already have access to all or most of the subscription databases at home and rarely come in.  And when we have no more visitors, there will be no reason for us to be there, and our doors will close.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Is on Your FamilySearch To-Do List?

FamilySearch seems to be on Randy Seaver's mind a lot lately, and tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge continues the trend.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  When was the last time you visited the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, or visited a local FamilySearch Center?

2.  What record collections are on your to-do list, whether at the FamilySearch Library, a FamilySearch Center, the Full-Text Search feature online, digital microfilm on Images, or catalog links on the FamilySearch.org site?

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

The last time I visited the FamilySearch Library (which at that time was still known as the Family History Library) was the same as Randy, in 2020 during RootsTech.  I unfortunately have not had a chance to go back since then.

The last time I visited a local FamilySearch Center was, let me think . . . oh, this past Tuesday!  That's because I volunteer at my local FamilySearch Center in Gresham, Oregon and have a regular weekly shift.

I unfortunately am not as organized as Randy in my list of collections on my to-do list, no matter how much I should be.  I bounce around between many different record sets on a given day, depending on what family I am researching.  But I spend a lot of time with New York City vital records on a regular basis.  I am still not having much luck with the Full-Text Search; I guess the databases it searches so far are not yet related to the research I am doing.  And I do have plans to start working on land deeds and probate for a lot of my family lines, so they're on my to-do list.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Surname Search in FamilySearch Full-Text Search Will Collections

And we're playing with FamilySearch Full-Text Search again this week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  How many "Wills" for your grandparents' or great-grandparents' surnames are in the FamilySearch Full-Text Search feature (see https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text)?

2.  List the surnames and how many entries there are when you do an exact name search.  What does this tell you?  Have you found wills for all of your ancestors with these names?

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

I used Randy's method of searching so I would have results I could compare directly:

* On the Full-Text Search page, I put my surname in quotes (to make it exact).
* I then used the "Record Type" filter to select "Legal Records."
* Then on the "Legal Records" filter, I selected "Wills" to show only the records in that category.

Something to note is that not all records that appear under "Wills" are actually wills.

And my list is:

• Armstrong:  42,662 results

• Brainin:  4 results

• Dunstan:  386 results

• Gaunt:  1,203 results

• Gauntt:  201 results

• Gordon:  65,123 results

• Gorodetsky:  0 results

• Mackler:  137 results

• Meckler:  107 results

• Mekler:  4 results

• Novitsky:  2 results

• Nowicki:  40 results

• Sellers:  15,657 results

I listed thirteen names because I accounted for some variables.  My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Gauntt, but along with various family members spelling it Gaunt, before standardized spelling one person's name could appear either way.  My maternal grandmother's maiden name was Gordon, but her father's name was originally Gorodetsky.  My paternal grandfather's name was Meckler, but I have seen his father's name as Mekler, and later in his life my great-grandfather spelled it Mackler.  My paternal grandfather's mother's maiden name was Nowicki, but other family members who immigrated to the United States (including her father) often spelled it as Novitsky (to maintain the correct pronunciation).

What do these results tell me?  Well, I was not that surprised to see no results for Gorodetsky (suggesting that immigrants with that surname routinely changed it), but a little surprised at only four results for Brainin.  I didn't think the name was that uncommon.  I did not expect Mackler to have more results than Meckler or Mekler, and I definitely didn't expect Nowicki (the original spelling, which I suspect Americans often mispronounced) to top Novitsky.  Perhaps these relative numbers will change as more documents are added to the collection.

I expected that Gordon, Armstrong, and Sellers would have the most results.  I also expected the Gaunt spelling to have more than Gauntt (the spelling my grandmother and her family used).  I'm sure that most, if not all, of the Gordon results are unrelated to my family, as that name only began with my great-grandfather.

Let's see, which wills do I have for my ancestors?  The only one that comes to mind is for my great-grandfather Morris Meckler/Mackler.  I have not prioritized obtaining wills.  I suspect many of my ancestors died intestate, based on information I have.  But I should go out hunting for more wills.

I did see one Gauntt result that almost definitely is related to my family, as it included people in Burlington County, New Jersey.  None of the names is in my family tree at this point, though, so it's a collateral line.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Use FamilySearch Full-text Search

The challenge today from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is valid for varying definitions of the word "fun."

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Use the FREE FamilySearch Full-Text Search (https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text) to find a record for one of your ancestors that is new to you.

2.  Share your results on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please share a link in Comments on this post if you write your own post.

I'm going to be a party pooper again, sorry.

Non sequitur:  Have you ever heard the party pooper song?
"Every party needs a pooper, that's why we invited you.
"Party pooper!  Party pooper!"

Okay, back on track.

First, I admit I had not tried to use the full-text search yet.  I hate blindly fishing around in records and much prefer to have an actual research plan.

That said, I did as Randy suggested and tried to find a new record for one of my ancestors.  I would have been happy to find a record for a relative on a collateral line.

No such luck.

I went to the link that Randy provided.  I noted that it said I would be browsing "US Land and Probate Records, Mexico Notary Records, Australia Land and Probate Records, New Zealand Land and Probate Records and US Plantation Records."  (I also noted that to the left it said, "Only two collections are currently available to browse . . . .", so something is out of date.)

I decided I would try to find something in the plantation records by using as a keyword one of the locations I am researching in the part of my family that was enslaved.  So I typed in "upatoi" (a location in Georgia) and let 'er rip.

I got a total of 24 results.  Okay, that's pretty manageable.

Then I looked at the filters.

I had options of Collection, Year, Place, and Record Type.

The first one I tried to use to narrow down my hits was Place.  The only option was United States of America, which applied to all 24 hits.  Okay, that's useless.

I looked at Collection.  That gave me choices of "Alabama, Wills and Deeds, ca. 1700s-2017 (1)", "Georgia, Wills and Deeds, ca. 1700s-2017 (4)", "Pennsylvania, Wills and Deeds, ca. 1700s-2017 (1)", and "United States, Indenture Records, 1600-2001 (18)."

As I was hoping to find information about plantation records, I chose the Georgia wills and deeds.

Boy, was I disappointed.

Nothing about plantation records.  Nothing even in the 19th century.  "Muscogee, Georgia, United States Will 1949", "Muscogee, Georgia, United States Will 1955", "Marion, Georgia, United States Deed, Mortgage 1965", and "Marion, Georgia, United States Deed, Mortgage 1960."

Okay, let's look at the indenture records.

Of the 18 records, 16 are titled "Riverdale Cemetery, Columbus, Muscogee, Georgia, United States Enslavement, Cemetery" followed by a year ranging from 1881 to 1952.  Two are "Georgia, United States Enslavement, Cemetery 1921", and you can see from the teaser text that they're the same item.  So none of these years is during the period of chattel slavery in this country, which officially ended in 1865.  And I don't understand why cemetery records are listed under indenture records.  But I gamely clicked on the first result to see what it would show me.

The first link said it was for 1881.  The page told me it was a full transcript from "Riverdale Cemetery.  Cemetery Records 1866–2000, Enslavement Records 1866–2000."  Um, say what?  What enslavement records begin in 1866, the year *after* slavery officially ended?  And the record itself was an obituary for a man born in 1881 in Alabama.  The obit mentioned he had celebrated his 50th anniversary, so figure he was at least 70 years old; that means that he died about 1951.  Sure, it's a record having to do with Riverdale Cemetery, but saying it's for 1881 is misleading at best and a train wreck at worst.  How is this supposed to be helpful to me?

I clicked on the first link for "Georgia, United States Enslavement, Cemetery 1921" to see if it was any better.  It was listed as a full transcript from "Georgia.  Cemetery Records 1866–2000, Enslavement Records 1866–2000."  Okay, same logic problem as the previous one.  This was also an obit.  This man was born in 1877 in Upatoi and died at 82, so it's from about 1959.  The 1921 that shows up in the link name?  "The aldermanic form was government was abandoned in Columbus in 1921."  Even less relevant than the first link I tried!

I then tried to cut down on the number of hits.  I had "upatoi" as my keyword, so I added "crawford" (one of my family names).  Silly me, I thought the search engine would search for records where both words appeared and cut down the number of hits, maybe even to zero.

I was wrong.

Instead of 18 results, I now had 6,760.  It would appear that adding a term causes the search engine to return results with either of the search terms, not both of them.  I did note that if you add a plus sign in front of a term, it will include that term.  When I searched for +upatoi and +crawford, I had no results.  Well, I did cut it down to zero!

I tried one last search.  I used "slaves" as my keyword.  I had 446,052 results.  I restricted the place to Marion County, Georgia, and the number of results dropped to 41.  The links were to wills and deeds ranging from 1846 to 1862 as far as the period of slavery was concerned, but several titles listed years after 1865 and even into the 20th century.  I clicked a link to one that was titled "Marion, Georgia, United States Deed, Mortgage 1936."  The image was said to be from "Marion.  Deeds 1845–1965, Mortgages 1845–1965."  It was actually from 1858–1859.  I did not find "1936" anywhere in it; the closest was "one hundred thirty six."

I went back to the search results page and added "kinchafoonee" (another location associated with the family), and the results stayed at 41.  Since my previous attempt at adding a name appeared to indicate that the search engine was returning results with either search term, I interpreted this to mean that none of the records for Marion County include Kinchafoonee in the text, or at least not with that spelling.  When I added a plus sign in front of each term, I had no results, so my interpretation appeared to be correct.

I never even saw anything with results that said they were from plantation records.  I suspect that the only way to get those is with the plantation owner's name.  Since I still have not found the name of a single slaveholder in my family, I guess I won't be getting far with those.  I did not see a way to focus my browsing on just one set of records included in the full-text search.

Obviously, the advantage of the full-text search is that it's creating a searchable database of words from handwriting, which is very cool, and that you don't have to wait for a real index.  On the other hand, it's like putting a search term into Google, which used to be great but has been getting worse for quite some time.  You get results with your search term (well, if you're lucky; nowadays Google routinely returns results with no appearance of your search term anywhere on the page), but the context could be anything.  An index gives you context.  And yes, I admit I am very biased, because I'm an indexer.

After this dismal experience, I am reminded of a study I read about many years ago.  Researchers observed people searching for information.  The people searching used an index or did a general text search, such as by using Google.

Even though search results were consistently better and desired information was found more quickly when using the index, the majority of searchers, when allowed to choose the search method, defaulted to doing a general text search the majority of the time.  When it was pointed out to them that the results were better with the index, the response was that it was simply easier to do the general search, and they didn't care that the results were not as good.  Me, I care.  My time is valuable.

I am very happy for Randy that he found five new records for his ancestor.  After seeing my search results, I think I'm going to wait for actual searchable indices for these record collections.  I get tired of beating my head against the wall after a while.

Addendum:  I decided to try one last time, with one of the unique surnames I am researching.  My aunt's paternal grandfather changed his name when he became a U.S. citizen.  He made up a name, which is unique to that family.  If I find that name, it's my aunt's family.  I searched for that name in the database and got a grand total of two hits:  my aunt's great-grandmother's will and her probate.  The reason the name showed up is because my aunt's mother (the granddaughter of the deceased) was named in the will under her married name.  Because it's a unique name, it allowed me to find the will, so that's a new record!  Yay, I found one, even if for my aunt's ancestor and not mine!  And now I know when her great-grandmother died, which is new information.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Genealogy Fools Day Is on Monday

I always associate April Fools' Day with my brother and myself, because my mother told me that she was told her due date for each of us was April 1.  It's one of the few times I can say I'm happy I was late.  But this week, for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver is asking when we genealogists were fools.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  April Fools Day is Monday.  When were you a Genealogy Fool?  What wrong, funny, or silly genealogy effort did you make?

2.  Tell us about them in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

One of the biggest genealogy mistakes I have ever made, and which lasted an extraordinarily long time, was trusting an index entry without looking for the original record from the beginning.

In the LDS International Genealogical Index (IGI), I found an entry for what appeared to be the marriage of my great-great-grandparents Joel Armstrong and Sarah Deacon Lippincott.  It stated that Sarah's parents were Jesse and Elizabeth Lippincott.

Because I knew that information in the IGI generally came from actual microfilmed records, as opposed to unsourced family trees, I trusted this and added the information to my tree, then researched the people listed as Sarah's parents.  I took the tree back two or three more generations, which was the result of some effort, because you pretty much can't go around New Jersey, and particularly Burlington County, without tripping over lots and lots of Lippincotts.  They're everywhere.

Then FamilySearch added images of church records from New Jersey to its online record collection.

And I discovered that there were actually two different Sarah Lippincotts who married close in time to each other in Burlington County.  Mine did marry Joel Armstrong, but her parents were not Jesse and Elizabeth Lippincott.  They were Abel A. Lippincott and Rachel R. Stackhouse.  Jesse and Elizabeth were the parents of the OTHER Sarah Lippincott.

Somehow the two different marriage entries had been conflated in the IGI.

Oops!

So I excised a huge amount of my research and started over.  And yes, I absolutely felt like a fool.

On the other hand, at least I was willing to admit I was wrong and start over.

My cousin's husband, who had made the same mistake I had, refused to believe it was a mistake and stuck to his guns, even when I sent him the information about the two different Sarahs' marriages.  (And it's even correct in the IGI now.  Well, somewhat correct.  Now it says that Sarah's parents were Abel A. Armstrong and Rachel R.  At least the given names are right.)

As of the last I heard, he still had Sarah's parents as Jesse and Elizabeth.

You can lead a horse to water . . . .

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

As I look back on the past year, I want to thank all of those who were part of my genealogy world, particularly as our world in general changed so much.  First I would like to say thank you to those conferences and societies that chose me to be a speaker.  I am honored to have been part of their educational programs during the year.

• RootsTech/FamilySearch
• Legacy Tree Family Webinars
• Genealogical Forum of Oregon
• IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy
• Sacramento Public Library
• Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State
• Linn Genealogical Society
• Genealogical Society of Washington County (Oregon)

And because 2020 was the pandemic year, some groups that chose me as a speaker had to cancel or significantly rearrange their events, and I didn't end up giving presentations to them after all.  I still am proud that they chose me for their original plans.

• Oregon and Southwest Mensa Regional Gathering
• Vancouver Community Library
• Federation of Genealogical Societies Annual Conference
• Genealogical Forum of Oregon Open House

Thanks go also to the genealogical societies for which I volunteered during the past year.  I continue to serve on the board of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society and also have responsibility for editing the quarterly journal ZichronNote, programming, and publicity.  I am the very active coordinator of the African American Special Interest Group (AA SIG) of the Genealogical Forum of Oregon.  And I am still involved with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon, although I moved from board member to vice president, and then to president when the previous president had to step down for health reasons.  If it weren't for genealogical societies, many people would have even more difficulties accomplishing their research.  I am happy to be associated with thriving groups filled with other energetic volunteers.

And as my blog continues to plug along, I very much appreciate my readers.  Your comments, both online and offline, let me know that you find it worthwhile to spend some of your time reading my commentaries about our shared hobby.

I learn something from everyone I interact with, and I'm glad I leanred with all of you during 2020.  The adventure of 2021 will probably keep us on our toes, but at least we have genealogy to keep us sane at the same time.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Top 10 Free Genealogy Sites

I'm not really a fan of "Top 10" and similar posts, but at least I can come up a list fairly easily for the subject Randy Seaver has chosen for today's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Last week we defined our top 5 or 10 fee-based genealogy websites.  This week, let's define our top 10 free genealogy websites!

(2) List your Top 10 (or 20 if you want!) FREE genealogy sites and a short reason for listing each of them.

(3) Share your list on your own blog, in a comment on this post, or on Facebook.  Please leave a link to your list wherever it is.

Drum roll, please:

1.  FamilySearch.org, absolutely.  Not only does it have a massive collection of records, it also has a wonderful wiki with great information on so many research topics.  Plus there are the FHL catalog, online digitized books, learning center, and the FamilyTree, if you want to have your tree online.  And all totally FREE!!

2.  Chronicling America.  Since I love newspaper research so much, this one is a natural, plus it's our tax dollars at work for us.  Chronicling America is the online collection that grew out of the mandate for all states to catalog and digitize their historic newspapers.  One day, all fifty states will finally be posted . . . .

3.  SteveMorse.org.  You can also find this site by going to StephenMorse.org and StephenMorse.com, but not SteveMorse.com.  Just remember, that guy is the imposter; the genealogy Steve Morse is the real deal.  Steve started working on his genealogy shortly before the Ellis Island database went online; when he discovered how badly designed the search engine was, he created his own, and it has only grown from there.  Not only does he have better search pages for Ellis Island, he also has pages for most of the major immigration databases and a huge list of BMD search sites, plus all sorts of cool tools, such as transliterating Cyrillic and Hebrew to the Latin alphabet and figuring out the dates for Easter and Passover every year.  And a whole bunch more besides those!  Oh, just go check out the site and bookmark it!

4.  DeathIndexes.com.  This is actually just one section of a cool site created by Joe Beine.  There are also links to sites for German research, immigration databases, Black research, county histories, and more.  Plus you can sign up for e-mail notifications of when new links are added.

5.  CyndisList.com.  This is still the granddaddy (or should I say grandmomma?) of genealogy portals.  It includes links to hundreds (thousands?) of categories of genealogy sites covering all sorts of topics, and more are added regularly.

6.  FindAGrave.com and BillionGraves.com.  These are two different sites owned by different companies (Ancestry owns FindAGrave; BilliomGraves is independent), but they're essentialy the same thing:  collections of data collated from tombstones in cemeteries and contributed by volunteers.  There's overlap between them, and each has information the other doesn't.  If you're looking for a death, check 'em both out.

7.  Family Tree Webinars.  This used to be an independent site, part of the company that created Legacy Family Tree software, until the parent company was gobbled up by MyHeritage.  The site itself isn't totally "free", but most of the Webinars offered are free to watch when they air and for up to a week afterward.  Lots of genealogy topics are covered, sometimes multiple speakers covering the same subject at different times.

8.  Wikipedia.  At first I thought of one specific page on Wikipedia, the List of Online Newspaper Archives, which I contribute to regularly.  Then I decided I should broaden the listing to include the entire site, as a free online encyclopedia is useful for research in so many ways.  But my favorite page is sitll the List of Online Newspaper Archives.

9.  U.S. GenWeb.  This is a volunteer contribution site for the United States.  It's broken down by states and counties.  You never know ahead of time what you're going to find for a given location, because you don't know what someone might have contributed.  So it's always good to check and see what is there.  And if you feel like contributing, or maybe vounteering to be the coordinator for a county that doesn't have one, so much the better.  Oh, and there is an archive of older U.S. GenWeb info, too.  (There is also a World GenWeb which works similarly, so check that out too.)

10.  Google.  Yes, I know, Google isn't actually a genealogy site per se, but you can use the tools to help you with your research, and it is free.  And as Randy pointed out in his top 10 list, in addition to Search (which I admit keeps getting worse and worse as Google continues to dumb it down for mobile users, but I still like it better than the alternatives), Google also has Blogger (the platform I use for this blog), Translate, Images, Books, News Archive, Maps, and more.

So there they are, my top 10 free sites that I use for genealogy.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Thanksgiving, Genealogy Edition

We're getting into the Thanksgiving spirit early here for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

(1) Think about the answers to these questions about your thankfulness for genealogy:

a.  Which ancestor are you most thankful for and why?

b.  Which author (book, periodical, Web site, etc.) are you most thankful for and why?

c.  Which historical record set (paper or Web site) are you most thankful for and why?

(2) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in Comments to your own blog post or Facebook post.

Okay, here are mine:

a.  The ancestor for whom I am most thankful is my maternal grandmother, Lillyan E. (Gordon) Meckler (1919–2006).  Not only did she spark my initial interest in family history because she (along with my mother) related stories about family members all the time while I was growing up, she had four big boxes of photographs along with many more photos that were displayed in her home.  I convinced her to identify all the photos and allow me to label them, luckily before she had a stroke and was functionally blind, and she could no longer see the photos to tell me who was in them.

b.  The author for whom I am most thankful is David L. Gauntt, who wrote Peter Gaunt 1610–1680 and Some of His Descendants, a very well documented 583-page book about the Gaunt/Gauntt family, beginning with Peter Gauntt in Lancashire, England.  This is my paternal grandmother's family and has wonderful information about so many generations.

c.  The historical record set for which I am most thanksful is FamilySearch.org, which provides all of its information for free for everyone to use.  The records cover the basics used in genealogy — censuses and birth/marriage/death and related records— along with military records, pension records, land records, family histories, and so much more.

FGS Conference: Librarians' Day and Society Day

So I was lucky enough to win a registration to this year's FGS conference, and here I am in Fort Wayne, Indiana!  (The last time I was here was 24 years ago, when I still worked full time in the adventure game industry.)  Librarians' Day and Society Day fall on the Tuesday and Wednesday preceding the main part of the conference, and I learn a lot at these days also.

The highlights of Librarians' Day were a presentation by Matthew LaFlash about Omeka, an open-source content management system that is being used to put all sorts of great information online (Newberry Library's Transcribing Modern Mauscripts, the Bracero History Archive, and Ohio Civil War 150, for example), and a rollicking but informative panel discussion titled "Hit Me with Your Best Shot", where speakers including Allen County Public Library's Curt Witcher and FamilySearch's David Rencher (newly named as director of the Family History Library) took any and all questions from attendees.  (Rencher reminded us several times that everything on FamilySearch is still free.)  Some of the topics covered:

• The importance of labeling photos and what to do if they aren't.  Even if photos aren't labeled, you can still look at the context, such as signs, geography (mountains, lakes), dateable items such as cars, etc. to garner information about them.  Recording the provenance is very important, as that might provide context also.

• The best method for scanning photos (this was actually answered by a professional in the photography business who was in attendance):  Scan at the highest resolution that is practical (300 minimum, 600 better, and 1200 if you have the storage space) and save in TIF format.  As a corollary, saving files in at least three locations was also brought up (because Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe [LOCKSS]).

• The confusion surrounding which files on FamilySearch.org are available in which locations.  An icon identifies whether images must be viewed at a Family History Center or affiliate library, but nothing differentiates between which of those can be seen *only* at a Family History Center and not at the affiliates.  The good news is that almost everything that is restricted can be viewed at both, but no solution right now to let you know quickly which can't.

• Limited hours at several Family History Centers.  Family History Centers are governed locally, and not all of them are able to provide enough volunteers to be open more regular hours.  Because of this, FamilySearch has been expanding the affiliate library program (currently at more than 400 libraries), so that restricted digitized images can be more widely available.

• Which microfilms from the Family History Library are digitized first.  Part of what helps decide the priority of films to be digitized is based on the rights negotiations that FamilySearch holds with the original records holders.  Digitizing films more quickly can make further negotiations go more smoothly, both for more digitization and more records.  (That doesn't explain all of it, of course, but it was nice to hear some reasoning.)

• What to do when newspapers no longer sell microfilm for archival purposes but refer libraries to online subscription options.  This one had no good answer.  Because microfilm has become so expensive, it isn't a viable option for many companies anymore.  Unfortunately, online subscriptions leave the libraries (and everyone else!) owning nothing, so when you drop the subscription, you have nothing to show (like Microsoft and its online Office 365 software).  You are essentially only "renting" your access.  We were told that the Sacramento Public Library paid more than $1 million to have the Sacramento Bee digitized from microfilm that it provided (but were not told which aggregator stuck it to them).  This situation is only going to become worse, and the large information aggregators (ProQuest, NewsBank) will be holding libraries hostage.

• Where to share copies of family histories, research, photographs, etc.  Share them everywhere that they could be considered relevant:  Allen County Public Library, FamilySearch, local genealogical and historical societies, Internet Archive, ethnic societies, and anywhere else you can think of.  Always check with the repository first to make sure it will accept a copy (whether physical or digital), but the more places the information is available, the better the chances that someone who is interested will find it.

And a couple of comments from Curt Witcher:  We should all be trying to pursue, preserve, and present stories.  And facilities always appreciate feedback from visitors.  Think about the latter the next time you go to an archive or library — offer feedback before you leave!

Librarians' Day ended with a behind-the-scenes tour of some parts of the Allen County Public Library (ACPL):  the Genealogy Materials Handling Unit (intake and assessment of donations), FamilySearch Book Scanning (a partnership with ACPL), Internet Archive (another partnership with ACPL), and the Lincoln Collection Library and Fine Book Room.  It was so interesting to get insight into how donations are processed, see ongoing scanning of public-domain books, and view many original Abraham-Lincoln-era photographs, letters, and newspapers.

Internet Archive scanning in progress

Wednesday was Society Day, with sessions geared to those of us in leadership and volunteer positions in genealogical societies.  I attended a session on how to apply business management principles to society procedures and processes, and one on leadership and conflict resolution.  Both had a lot of useful information I will be taking back to the societies with which I am involved.

In between those two sessions I went to the annual FGS meeting, attending as the delegate of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society.  I had received notices about the meeting and had been wondering why no agenda was distributed beforehand.  That question was soon answered.  The entire annual meeting took three minutes.  The agenda was shown on a screen and was approved by voice vote.  The treasurer said that the society had been audited and was in good financial standing, with no details.  No announcements were made, and the meeting was adjourned.  I'm not sure why delegates are even encouraged to attend.

The final event I attended on Society Day was the presentation by Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist.  Titled "Preserving the Past, Protecting the Future", Judy's talk focused on the attacks that have been made over the past several years on records access and facilities budgets.  Citing circumstances such as the loss of the most recent three years of the Social Security Death Index, New York City's decision to severely restrict birth records (older than 125 years) and death records (older than 75 records), and the encroachment of the Right to Be Forgotten into far too many areas (including a proposed Indiana law that would allow the total destruction of someone's criminal records, leaving no trace that the crime ever occurred), she declared that it is the calling of genealogists to serve as guardians of history.

And how do we do that?  We need to stay informed, join together, and reach out.  You can stay informed by signing up for notifications from the IAJGS Public Records Access Alerts List, which sends out announcements related to access to public records.  You can also stay informed about the activities of the Records Preservation & Access Committee, a joint venture between several genealogical groups, which monitors records access issues.

Joining together has been effective in several instances of keeping repositories open and reopening facilities that have been closed.  And efforts to reach out should include a broad range of individuals, such as archivists, librarians historians, the news media, and medical researchers.

In Judy's words, we all need to pitch in, speak up, and meet up.  I took my first step tonight.  I've written to RPAC, asking how I can help.  What will you do?

IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Florida (in July!)

Here I am at the 37th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, in Orlando, Florida.  (Who schedules a conference in Orlando in July?)  As expected, it's miserably humid, but the air conditioning in the hotel is working perfectly.  (Some attendees think it's too cold, but I'm very comfortable.)  As I told everyone before the conference started, people in Florida take their air conditioning seriously.

The conference started bright and early Sunday morning.  The first session I attended was "Outreach for Societies and Organization Leaders", one of a series of eleven, running through the conference, aimed at genealogical societies.  Outreach has been one of the issues lately for my society, so I headed over there.  I got some good ideas and a handy worksheet to take home and discuss with my board.

I'm giving five talks here at the conference, the most I've ever been scheduled for.  I'm very happy to say that they are spread out over the conference, with only one on a given day.  The first one was "Jewish Genealogy:  How Is This Research Different from All Other Research?", on Sunday.  After two time changes, it ended up at 4:30 in the afternoon (which was much better than the original 7:30!).  I'm happy to say it went very well, with several good questions from attendees.  One woman found me on Monday to let me know that the talk helped her knock down a brick wall!

Talks by Mark Fearer, on immigration laws and documentation, and Banai Lynn Feldstein, on her new Crowd Sourced Indexing, rounded out the afternoon for me.  Then, before the evening keynote, I attended the IAJGS presidents' reception for the first time, standing in for the real SFBAJGS president, who had decided he didn't want to go to Florida in July.  It was great to network with everyone, but I was very surprised to discover that the light snacks provided were not kosher and that there was no kosher option for observant attendees.  That seemed to be a significant oversight (or blunder, depending on your perspective).

The keynote was great.  Robert Watson of Lynn University gave an entertaining, informative talk about Alexander Hamilton and his relationship to Jews and the American Revolution.  Apparently Hamilton has been a favorite historical subject of Watson's for some years, and now I know a lot more about the "bastard orphaned son of a whore and a drunken Scotsman."  Since I have not seen the musical Hamilton, I learned on Sunday that Hamilton was taken in by the Jewish community of Nevis after he was orphaned for the second (or was it third?) time.  There he learned to speak Hebrew, to add to the seven languages he already knew.  Apparently Hamilton, who was incredibly intelligent and a prodigy when he was young, wrote a significant number of George Washington's speeches and letters, including many of the latter sent to Jewish congregations around the United States.  Watson was a wonderful speaker; it was easy to see why he was twice named Teacher of the Year by students at Lynn.

Monday started out far too early (7:00 a.m.!) at a breakfast hosted by FamilySearch, which is working on finding and digitizing ever more records.  The meeting was held to reach out to researchers in the Jewish genealogical community to help identify records of interest.  I'm hoping something can be worked out for records from the Jewish Cuban community.

I tried going to some talks in the morning, but I abandoned one after the speaker spent the first 15 minutes talking about personal reminiscences rather than the stated topic, and another when the speaker used words of one syllable and enunciated everything as though he were talking to kindergarteners.  (I know, I'm so fussy.)  Then I headed off to the IAJGS Media Lunch, where several bloggers, tweeters, and others discussed ways to help publicize next year's IAJGS conference in Warsaw, how Jewish genealogical societies can take advantage of social media, and how International Jewish Genealogy Month can be updated to become a more effective outreach tool.

In the afternoon I learned about finding Israeli burial data from Daniel Horowitz, then went to a talk purported to be about one thing but that actually ended up promoting a Web site.  That was . . . disappointing.  I left early and spent the rest of the afternoon in the new "mentoring" area, helping people who came by looking for research advice.

The evening wrapped up with two presentations.  Dr. Alexander Beider, who is well known in Jewish genealogy for the many books he has written on Jewish names, spoke about the historical, linguistic, and onomastic facts supporting the commonly accepted theory that Eastern European Jews migrated there from Western Europe.  That talk was followed by Dr. Harry Ostrer discussing the genetic evidence that supports the same theory.  It was quite an interesting evening, and I think I'm going to somehow find the money to buy Dr. Beider's book about Yiddish dialects.  Once a language geek, always a language geek.

My commentary on days 3 and 4 of the conference is here, and that for days 5 and 6 is here.

RootsTech Ruminations

I am really surprised how quickly time has passed since RootsTech ended.  I planned to post about it right after the conference, but somehow a week and a half has slipped by while I've been catching up to my regular life.

This year's experience was quite a bit different from when I attended two yeas ago.  That year the FGS conference was held in conjunction with RootsTech, which worked out well for me, because three quarters of the sessions I attended were FGS ones.  I found the vast majority of the RootsTech sessions so basic that I didn't feel I would learn anything from them.

Being a speaker this year was the biggest difference, of course.  I had to pay much more attention to the time on the two days of my talks!  (I'm glad both were in the afternoon, as I'm not much of a morning person anymore.)  I'm happy to report that both talks went well, with good questions from attendees and many thank yous for the helpful information.  I was even interviewed about my classes for the RootsTech Facebook page!

One negative aspect of the conference was like "déjà vu all over again."  My talks (on Freedmen's Bureau and Freedman's Bank records), along with almost all other presentations that were part of the Africa-focused research that was heavily promoted this year, were in the very, very, very far end of the Salt Palace, closer to the Family History Library than to the main hub of activity for the conference.  (This is where the FGS talks were in 2015.  I joked then about FGS being the red-headed stepchild.)  That meant that none of the talks (that I know of) had as good attendance as they should have.  It isn't as though there aren't appropriately sized rooms closer to the main hall that could have accommodated our sessions.  And I'm not the only person who has commented.  One has to wonder why FamilySearch would market African Heritage Day so much and then put the classes that supported it so out of the way.

Another thing that was (happily) different this year was that several RootsTech sessions were actually geared for intermediate and more experienced researchers.  I found quite a few presentations to attend and learned a fair amount.  By far my favorite speaker during the conference was Myko Clelland of FindMyPast.com.  I missed his first talk — on the British Newspaper Archive collection on FMP — but I did attend his talks on British crime and punishment records and on British research beyond the census.  He was knowledgeable, entertaining, and a great presenter.  I never did figure out what he thinks is so difficult to pronounce about his name, however.

Another standout session, primarily because of my own presentation on the same subject, was the talk by FamilySearch's Ken Nelson on Freedmen's Bureau records.  He was the coordinator of the Freedmen's Bureau digitization and indexing project for FamilySearch, and he explained how he assessed the records and decided which ones would be prioritized for the project.  This helped me understand what is and is not indexed and why, and I've been able to share the information with others.

I also learned a lot in Bernice Bennett's session on the Southern Claims Commission.  Hers was the best talk I have heard on this subject.  I feel much more comfortable now with beginning my research into these records.

I had a great time meeting and networking with other genealogists.  Not only did I get together with other genealogists about potential future projects, I saw people I know leaving behind-closed-door meetings.  Lots of business was going on at the conference, on many levels.

Unfortunately, not everything was good.  Besides the "afterthought" location of the black genealogy programming, one major bone I had to pick with the conference was the decision to make handouts available only via the app.  I don't have a smartphone, which meant I didn't get to have handouts.  And the handouts for my sessions weren't even available through the app when I taught my first class!  I guess this is RootsTech's way of saying that if you don't have a smartphone, they don't want you to bother coming to the conference; you are not their target market.  The only place I could find information about this policy was buried near the bottom of the FAQ online, though I freely admit I may have missed it somewhere else.  Personally, I think this is shortsighted of FamilySearch, but my opinion carries no weight.

And not all classes were as good as Myko Clelland's.  I think the worst I went to was one by a prominent British genealogist who claims to be "the best genealogist in the UK."  That person's session covering what was supposed to be "unique" and "unusual" records spent half the time rehashing records that are basics of research and are known to most researchers.  A lot of ego but not much substance.  Another woman in that session and I had a running commentary during the talk, as one common record after another was discussed in great detail.  (That attendee is a missionary working at the Church History Library; she has an ongoing project to identify and find detailed information on all the members of the Mormon Battalion.  There was so little of substance in the presentation that she worked on her own research during the entire talk.)

My other big beef with the conference is the large number of sessions presented by company employees that weren't always clearly noted as such.  I think every talk that is essentially advertising for a company's site and/or services should be marked as "vendor session" in the program.  Then at least you know what you're in for.

I was so busy at the conference, I had hardly any time for the Family History Library.  I did get over there for a few hours to work on my Mundy research, in my search for my grandfather's biological father.  I didn't make huge progress, but every little bit helps.

Notwithstanding the problems I experienced at the conference, overall I had a great time, and I'm very happy I was able to attend.  I hope my talks were reviewed well by attendees, and maybe I'll have presentations accepted next year on my own merits.