Genies Meeting Monday with Lots of News

Our regular monthly Genies meeting is back to 3^rd Mondays.  Next Monday, March 18 is our meeting day and am I ever full of things to talk about.

The RootsTech Conference is always filled with company announcements and they make the news.  On Monday Linda Q. and I will bring our syllabus handouts for your perusal and will talk about our favorite classes and tips.  Links to the syllabus and the videos are here:  https://mailchi.mp/abundantgenealogy/rootstech-2019-free?e=cb7c45b1c4syllabus

The biggest news from RootsTech surrounds the DNA tools from Ancestry and MyHeritage that I wrote about in the last blogpost.  If you are really interested, don’t miss two videos made by Blaine Bettinger.  His blogpost with the videos is: https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2019/03/12/new-tools-everywhere-exploring-the-new-tools-at-myheritage-and-ancestrydna/

One surprising, but understandable, comment Blaine made is that the Ancestry ThruLines tool is more helpful to people with smaller trees than people who have been researching for years.  This tool hypothesizes possible ancestors through 5^th great-grandparents based on DNA matches and other people’s trees.  If your tree is too small, there won’t be enough to go on and you may not have any ThruLines.

Depending on interest, we will walk through some of these DNA tools in the later part of the meeting.  Even if you are not using MyHeritage yet, you will learn about some differences between Ancestry Tools and MyHeritage tools. 

If there is time, I would like to make the case for keeping our trees in the Family Search collaborative Family Tree.  Some people underestimate the value of one big tree.  I won’t spill everything here but this is worth some discussion.

Elizabeth and I and perhaps others will be at the WGS Seminar on Saturday and surely, we will be talking about Cyndi Ingles and her technical tips on Monday.

In other news…

Thomas MacEntee writes: “I always download [records] to my computer RIGHT AWAY. Ancestry record sets have a limited license and can (and have) expired in the past. See the article Why You Should Download Your Files From Ancestry and Every Other Website”: https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/why-you-should-download-your-files-from-ancestry-and-every-other-website/).

Another favorite of mine is Lisa Louise Cooke.  She publishes about little used records.  Try this: “School Yourself: 10 Ways to Find School Records for Genealogy”  https://lisalouisecooke.com/2016/08/31/school-records-for-genealogy/) and “6 Best School Records for Genealogy” https://lisalouisecooke.com/2018/09/02/school-records-genealogy/.

And my newest BFF’s Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer gave a talk “Getting Organized One Paper at a Time”.  They published a blogpost with links and a podcast RLP34 here:  https://familylocket.com/rlp-34-getting-organized-one-paper-at-a-time/  The 4-page handout is at the Tucson Family History Fair link., I love this mother-daughter team.  This week their podcast RLP35 is about US Church Records with part 2 next week.

I can’t stop talking.  It’s just because there are so many great resources available for genealogists.  Many are online and many are free.

Bring your own suggestions and tips and join us for genealogy conversation this Monday at 1:00.