This new social networking tool has taken the genealogy world by storm, and we won’t let you be left out if we can help it. Our next webinar, Genealogist's Guide to Google+, will show you how to use Google+. Your registration for the live event even includes 30 days of one-on-one tech support from instructor Kerry Scott.

You’ll learn how to get started, set up your “circles,” and take advantage of the genealogical possibilities on Google+. Here’s a sampling of tips Kerry will share:

• Fill out your profile and upload a picture before you start adding friends. If you don't, people may mistake you for a spammer.

• Most genealogists will add you to their circles even if you're a complete stranger … but only if your profile indicates that you're into family history.

• You can have people in multiple circles. Is Aunt Millie into genealogy? Add her to your Family and Genealogy circles, so she sees the cute kid pictures and the big research breakthrough you had at the library last weekend.

• If you're posting something to a specific circle to keep it from being public, make sure you use the "lock this post" feature to prevent others from sharing it. Otherwise, one of your carefully selected circle members can share it with anyone.

The hour-long webinar takes place Tuesday, Oct. 25 at 8 p.m. Eastern (that’s 7 Central, 6 Mountain, 5 Pacific).

In addition to the month of tech support, attendees will get access to the webinar recording to view again as many times as they want,plus a PDF of the presentation slides.

Learn more and register for the Genealogist's Guide to Google+ webinar at ShopFamilyTree.com (for a limited time, our Early Bird registration special saves you 20 percent!).

Thursday, October 13, 2011 9:23:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• FamilySearch released more searchable records this week, including  more than 6 million Hungarian Catholic Church records, 4 million Mexican civil registrations, 1 million new Chinese genealogies (1500 to 1900), and Quebec notarial records (1800 to 1900). US additions come from California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New York, Washington and the Virgin Islands, plus 1942 WWII draft registrations. See the full list and link to each database here.

• Family tree site Geni introduced its $4.95-per-month Geni Plus service as a level between the free Basic and $12.95 Pro memberships. Genealogists’ frustrated feedback after changes to those memberships led to Geni Plus, intended for social genealogists who want to collaborate with other researchers. It's "designed to give these members more power to build their personal family trees while discovering some of the benefits of working with others on their family history," says CEO Noah Tutak. Features include unlimited relatives in your tree and GEDCOM exports for any profile you can view on Geni (up to 100,000 records). See Geni’s blog for more details. 

• Subscription British records site Findmypast.co.uk added a million 20th century merchant navy seamen records—the first time they’re accessible online. They list crew members of UK merchant ships from 1918 to 1941 and include photos.
  

• This from the New York History blog: If you’re planning to visit Ellis Island and see where many immigrants first entered America, you can download a $1.99 cell phone tour taking you through the immigrant experience. Read more here.
  

Friday, September 16, 2011 4:49:42 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

If you missed it, you can order the Virtual Conference video classes for on-demand viewing at ShopFamilyTree.com. 

One of my favorite parts of the conference was the live chats, which buzzed with research tips, questions and inspiration. For example, Thomas’ Saturday evening chat, Pick Thomas’ Brain: Ideas on Creative Approaches to Genealogy, was chock full of advice.

I’ve pulled some comments from the chat to share here (I made some edits and added topic headings so the Q&A is easier to follow).

On brick walls:

• Thomas: First, very often I think what we call a brick wall isn't really a brick wall . . .
  
  
• Joan: What do you mean by a brick wall not being a brick wall?

• Thomas: To me it is a matter of perhaps not having all the right tools at one's disposal. Or it could be a matter of going back and rechecking spelling, surname variations, etc.

• Allison FTU: A true brick wall is when you have exhausted every possible avenue for research and there is no more information

In many cases, what we refer to as a brick wall is really just an exhaustion of ideas

• Patricia: A Brick Wall to me is having a timeline just end with no leads. Just solved 2 of my brick walls by reviewing current finds in detail as if I was looking at the finds for the first time.

On ancestral adoptions:

• Terri: My brick wall is my grandmother, born and adopted in 1900. I thought her SS application might help, but she apparently fibbed on the application! Gave her adopted info as official
  
  
• Kerry: I've used church records to find babies who were baptized prior to their adoption. Not all were adopted at birth.
  
  
• Allison FTU: If you know what area she was born in, you might try guardianship records.
  
  
• Terri: Are guardianship records civil records, private institutions, what?
  
  
• Allison FTU: Guardianships are typically court records. So you do need to know which county to look in.

On going beyond well-known resources:

• Carol: I have a line that went to Nebraska. FamilySearch and Ancestry seem to have nothing and GenealogyBank only later years. Any links for Nebraska?

• Thomas: What time period? Were they Homesteaders?

• Carol P: Late 1800s to early 1900s

• Thomas: Last night I did a GeneaBloggers Radio episode mostly on Nebraska. 

• Allison-FTU: Also take a look at Nebraska State Historical Society, one of FTM's "best state websites"

On ordering ancestors’ vital records:

• Mary Ann: When I look for birth, marriage, and death certificates in the US, I am taken to sites where it is free for 7 days and then you pay. Is there a good site to find these certificates?

• Thomas: I personally don't recommend those sites. In most cases, if you know how to order them directly from the state or county, it is better and cheaper. What do others think?

• Mary Ann: Yet, the states’ [vital records office websites] are sending me to those sites.

• Kerry: I totally agree; I'd much rather order directly from the source.

• Terri: I have seen some states that use a private online payment service for their records, but there's generally an option to pay the vital records office directly.

• Thomas: I want to share an odd tool from the Centers for Disease Control of all places—Where to Write for Vital Records! 

• Allison FTU: It's also available to download as a PDF 

• Kerry: Some states (Minnesota, for instance) house records at the state historical society, and you can order (and in some cases, view) them online.

• Thomas: Did you know that some societies have a vital records service where they will, for a much cheaper fee, pull the records? Illinois State Genealogical Society does this for Illinois Death Certificates.

• Mary Kay: Or borrowing microfilm from your local FHC.

On hard-to-trace immigrants and F.A.N. clubs:

• Christine: Ancestor arrived in 1750 from Rotterdam, based on PA baptism records which are German Lutheran—don't have a clue where to start across the pond. Strategy much appreciated....

how to get from point of departure (Rotterdam) in 1750 to where he might have lived...

• Thomas: Have you tried the F.A.N. club approach? Friends, Associates, Neighbors?

Elizabeth Shown Mills uses that F.A.N. club term all the time.

Last night on my radio show, Gail Blankenau from Omaha who specializes in German Parish Records used the term "10 up and 10 down" meaning always go up 10 lines from what you've found and down 10 lines as well.

• Allison-FTU: Christine, have you heard of something called manumission records?

In Germany during the time period, emigrants had to pay a tax to be released from serfdom. The resulting records are manumissions

There's an often-referenced index to German manumissions by Werner Hacker ... let me see if i can find a link

• Christine: Would they have been microfilmed by the Family History Library?

• Allison-FTU: Yes! Check out this page on the FamilySearch wiki for more info 

• Thomas: I just found this for Germans to America  

On online research tools:

• Thomas: Want to let you know that my entire research toolbox is on my Destination: Austin Family blog

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 9:50:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6]

In this blog post Aug. 11, Geni announced that free, “Non-Pro” members can no longer add new profiles to the “historical” tree (any public part of the Geni tree) or merge profiles. Free members still can add to their private trees.

Geni Pro subscribers, who pay $4.95 per month for a one-year membership, now “have full permission to add on to, edit, and merge profiles in the historical parts of the tree,” according to the blog post.

Pro users also can search through all the 110 million public profiles on Geni to find relatives to add to their trees. Free members can search and find only their close relatives in the historical tree, as well as profiles they added and profiles they follow.

"Close relatives" means 4th cousins and closer, as well as third-great-grandparents and closer. In-laws are included.

“I'd like to make it clear that Basic (free) users did not lose their ability to view or edit any profiles as part of these changes," says Geni CEO Noah Tutak. “In fact, we did not change view or edit permissions at all. What we did is align permissions in the historical, public sections of the tree, beyond close relatives.”

But comments on Geni's blog post are largely negative. A common theme: Many members, some of whom have added hundreds or thousands of profiles to the site, feel Geni is cutting them off (without advance notice, according to the comments) after encouraging them for years to build its historical tree.

“Losing control” of their public data strikes fear in the hearts of genealogists. They don’t like to idea of others merging their ancestors without having to compare notes first. They have visions of mistaken merges and incorrect names and dates replicating themselves across the internet.

Tutak thinks Geni’s changes will reduce such errors. “These changes were designed to restrict merging to a smaller group of more engaged users, with the goal of increasing data quality,” Tutak says. “If a merge is made in error, the same set of tools are available now as in the past to correct mistakes. In the near future, we'll provide even more robust tools to undo merges that will make correcting these mistakes, which are extremely infrequent, even easier”

Several Pro users commented that they’ll no longer be able to entice relatives—who aren’t likely to purchase Pro subscriptions—to collaborate on building their family trees.

“A member with a free account can build out a large enough tree to get a good feel for the quality of Geni's tools and decide whether or not they would like to use Geni for their entire tree,” says Tutak.

“The number of users contributing to the world [public] family tree is a small percentage of our overall user base, and so far we haven't seen a slowdown in the growth of the tree due to these changes.”

Family tree sites have struggled for years with how to build accurate trees that are large enough to attract additional contributions—that’s why we're still waiting for the trees feature on the new FamilySearch.org to be publicly available. Skewing benefits toward paying users—who, theoretically, are more heavily invested and knowledgeable—is one approach. It’s also likely to anger free members. Many comments on Geni's blog predict that the site won't survive this change.

You can read genealogists’ opinions on the changes at Genea-Musings  and Dear Myrtle. 

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 12:57:49 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

Start by following @AskArchivists on Twitter (you'll need a Twitter account, of course). Then on June 9, tweet your question and include the hashtag #AskArchivists. You can direct your question to any archivist who’s joining in, or to a specific participating archive—for example, including @USNatArchives in your tweet directs your question to the US National Archives.

Participating archives in the United States and Canada are listed here (the list is still growing). So far, they include the National Archives, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, North Carolina State Archives, Association des archivistes du Québec, Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, plus many college and university libraries.

Get more Ask Archivists Day details on the Ask Archivists blog, and of course, by following @AskArchivists on Twitter.

Monday, May 23, 2011 11:14:51 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

The winner of the grand prize—a two-year Geni Pro account and a year of Famliy Tree Magazine—is Sadie Morgan of Rossville, Ga.

The second-prize winners, who’ll receive the Family Tree Magazine "Beginners Guide to Genealogy" digital download and a three-month Geni Pro Account, are:

• Kim Cotton
• Lori Pilla
• Laura Ramsay

We're contacting the winners to deliver your prizes. Congratulations to them, and thank you to everyone who entered. We enjoyed reading about how you got into genealogy! (You can see the entries on the Facebook pages for Family Tree Magazine and Geni.)

Thursday, May 19, 2011 11:00:34 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Now through May 8, write a post on the Family Tree Magazine Facebook wall or Geni Facebook wall describing how you first got into genealogy.

One person who posts will be randomly chosen to win a one-year subscription to Family Tree Magazine and a two-year Geni Pro Account. 

Three runners up will win a copy of the Family Tree Magazine "Beginners Guide to Genealogy" digital download plus a three-month Geni Pro Account.

Good luck!

Here are the contest rules:

1. No purchase necessary.
2. Winners will be chosen randomly.
3. Odds of winning are directly related to how many people enter the contest.
4. One winner will be chosen to win the grand prize. Three will be chosen to win the secondary prize.
5. The contest starts at 12AM ET May 1st, 2011, and it ends at 12AM ET May 8, 2011.
6. You are responsible for anything in regards to the legality of entering a contest in the area in which you live.
7. Rules can be updated at any time without notice.
8. The winners will be notified via their provided contact information the week following the end of the contest.
9. The winners have seven days to claim their prize.
10. One entry per person.
11. You must have a free Geni.com account.
12. To be eligible to win, you must live in the United States.

Monday, May 02, 2011 1:03:17 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

Family Village lets you create a pedigree chart (or input data from the FamilyLink Facebook app) and “immigrate” ancestors from the chart into your Family Village. You can outfit them in historical attire, assign them jobs, and build out the village with houses, landscaping and more (including heritage-related items like international flags and the Eiffel Tower).

The game also searches several websites for free genealogy records related to the information in your pedigree chart, and let you import those records into a family library. You can invite Facebook friends into your village to check out the library.

Partnerships with additional providers of genealogy records and other content are in the works, says Jeff Wells, CEO of Family Village developer Funium. He cautions, though, that the game is “not a research tool.”

You can play Family Village for free, with the option to spend actual cash (in the form of “game dollars”) on some of your ancestors’ purchases. For example, every ancestor gets a newspaper printed on the day he or she was born. You’ll view the headlines, and you can buy a copy of the whole thing.

The game adheres to Facebook privacy standards, wells says, with privacy settings you can adjust.

Wells got the idea for Family Village when his family didn’t share his excitement over his genealogical finds. “We wanted to do something that would end up being a segue way for people who don’t have the interest to get involved in family history,” he says.

According to Wells, 300 million people play social games each month, and 3 to 4 percent of those players spend money on the games. He’s hoping genealogists’ spouses and teenagers will get interested in Family Village and learn more about their heritage.

Will you play Family Village? Do you think it'll appeal to those already into genealogy, or will other people get hooked on it, too?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 10:45:08 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [10]

The hunt celebrates the new Discovering the Civil War exhibit opening April 30 at NARA’s Washington, DC headquarters. It’ll send participants scouting for answers across the National Archives' social media sites, including more than a dozen Facebook pages and Flickr, YouTube and Twitter sites.

Visit NARA’s main Facebook page Monday for the scavenger hunt kickoff.  Those who complete the hunt and submit their answers will be entered into a drawing for four Discovering the Civil War t-shirts from the NARA gift shop.

For more details and rules, see NARA's facebook page.

Saturday, April 24, 2010 5:00:18 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Going to the National Genealogical Society conference starting April 28 in Salt Lake City? Stop by the Generation Maps exhibit hall booth Wednesday, April 28, from 2 to 5 p.m., for a Family ChArtist debut party. They’ll have refreshments, discounts, drawings, and demos of this online service for creating family trees.

• Archives.com (formerly GenealogyArchives) released a free internet search feature that scours several online genealogy resources, such as FamilySearch. To use this search, go to Archives.com and run a search on the homepage (if you’re a member of the site, you must be logged out). Web results will be listed below a summary of Archives.com results.

• You can get a seven-day free trial membership to search Archives.com’s own collection of 1.2 billion records and create a family tree on the site. Regular subscriptions cost $39.95 per year.

• British subscription and pay-per-view genealogy site Familyrelatives.com released a new batch of school and clergy records. School records might range from student registers to mini-biographies. Clergy lists name 200,000 members of Anglican and Catholic clergy for England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
  

• The Library of Congress will preserving every public tweet since Twitter’s inception in March 2006—that’s billions and billions of Tweets. See the library’s announcement for more details and some interesting discussion.

Friday, April 16, 2010 1:05:26 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Your local library and libraries where you're researching, such as the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (whose Virtual Library is on Facebook) and the Houston Public Library
  

• Other repositories, such as the Library of Congress, National Archives  and Family  History Library
  

• Genealogical societies based where you live and where your ancestors lived, for example, the California Genealogical Society and Library and New England Historic Genealogical Society
  

• History museums, such as the Cincinnati Museum Center, Missouri History Museum, and Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture
  

• Heritage and history organizations such as the Germans from Russia Heritage Society 

• Businesses and products, such as Footnote, the "History Detectives" tv show, and, of course, Family Tree Magazine

Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:33:54 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

All-around
These bloggers give you a little (or a lot) of everything: news, research advice, their own family stories, photos, opinions and more. There’s no one quite like the Genealogue, so we thought about that blog for awhile. It landed in this category because the Genealogue posts a satirical take on genealogy news, holds occasional research challenges and blogs about his own family history every so often.

Personal/Family
These blogs primarily cover the blogger's (or, in a case or two or more, bloggers') own research and ancestors. Family historians write what they know and what’s important to them, so this is our biggest category.

Local/Regional
Most posts in these blogs cover resources, genealogy events and history for a city, town, state or region.

Cemetery
These blogs focus on cemetery research, gravestone photos and the like.

Photos/Heirlooms
Content on these blogs is primarily about sharing, researching and preserving family photos and/or heirlooms.

Heritage
Here, blog content focuses on a particular heritage group, such as African-American, Jewish or Irish. We had some tough decisions in this category, as some family-related genealogy blogs by nature also examine that family’s ethnic heritage.

News/Resources
Blogs in this category deliver a range of genealogy news and information about new resources.

How-to
These blogs have instructional content on genealogical resources and methodology. In some cases, bloggers wrote about their own research and ancestors, but framed posts in an instructional manner.

Genealogy Companies
Blogs in this category are written on behalf of a genealogy company, and contain helpful (but not overly advertising-oriented) information on the company’s products, as well as other resources.

Genetic Genealogy
Blogs that are primarily about genetic genealogy and family health history.

Monday, October 05, 2009 9:37:39 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

• The Genealogy Guys will record their podcast before a live audience at the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference. The audience will get to submit questions for possible inclusion in the podcast. The conference is Sept. 2 to 5 in Little Rock, Ark.; the podcast recording is 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 3. Look for location information at the conference.
  
  
• Geni is offering a free two-week trial of its Geni Pro premium service, which includes more stats, matches and member collaboration than the free basic service. (Geni Pro subscriptions are normally $4.95 per month.)
  
  
• Ancestry.com’s subscription-based Canadian site, Ancestry.ca, has added French Deaths by Guillotine 1792-1796, with 13,000 names of French citizens executed during the Reign of Terror. The names come from a book written in 1796 by a French journalist.
  

• ProQuest, the creator of the HeritageQuest genealogy service, ProQuest Historical Newspapers and other databases for libraries, is working on a new search platform that’ll make I easier to find information related to your genealogy search. Expected launch is 2010.

The company is also adding Boston’s Jewish Advocate (1905 to 1990), Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent (1887 to 1990) and the Detroit Free Press to Proquest Historical Newspapers.

• The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF), which is building a huge database of DNA results linked to individuals’ family trees, is moving a set of its 100,000 archived DNA samples to room temperature storage with a technology based on organisms’ ability to survive in a dehydrated state. Other copies of each sample will remain in cold storage.

Friday, July 10, 2009 4:08:53 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• To keep tabs on this weekend’s Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in Burbank, visit the Genealogy Gems blog, Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and Genea-Musings. Twitter users can search for #scgs09.

• The Federation of Genealogical Societies 2009 conference early bird registration deadline is next Wednesday, July 1. Make the deadline and you’ll pay $175, a savings of $50. Register online or by mail (must be postmarked no later than July 1).

The conference is Sept. 2-5 in Little Rock, Ark.

• The New England Historic and Genealogical Society is organizing a few genealogy research trips, led by expert genealogists. Groups are headed to St. John’s, Newfoundland, July 12-19; the NEHGS Library in Boston Aug. 10-15; Edinburgh, Scotland, Sept. 20-27; and Salt Lake City Oct. 25-Nov. 1.

Find more details and prices on NEHGS’ events calendar.

• Keep an eye on Miriam Midkiff's city directories portal Online City, County and Rural Directories. This week, she's added links to directories from more than a dozen US states and several Canadian provinces.

• In response to a survey, FamilyLink updated its We’re Related Facebook application to let users put pets at the bottoms of their pedigree charts. (I'm not sure what the chart-with-pet looks like, so if you've done this, send me a picture.) It sounds fun—let’s just hope no one gets Bruno and Great-grandpa Charlie mixed up.

Friday, June 26, 2009 3:13:56 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• When you search and view a record, you'll see member names of Ancestry.com users who’ve edited the record (for example, by entering an alternate transcription of the name), or saved the record to a tree or shoebox.
  

You’ll also get suggestions for related message boards (such as the Roberts surname board for your search on Jeremiah Roberts) and people who’ve listed related research interests in their profiles (for example, others looking for Robertses in Muncie, Ind.). Then you can visit that person’s tree or contact him through the site.

• A tab in your Ancestry.com member tree will show you other members’ ancestors who may match people in your tree. If the match looks promising, a Connect button links the trees and shows you more details—including buttons highlighting new or conflicting information. You can remove the connection altogether, or click the buttons to decide what to do with each fact: keep the new information out of your tree, it as an alternate fact, or use it to replace your information.
  

You also can contact the member with the matching tree through Ancestry.com to thank him or ask about any errors. This way, the “good data” in Ancestry.com trees will become more prominent than erroneous data, Graham says.

• As you link to others’ trees, you build a network of researchers—called “connections”—who share your genealogical interests. More tabs show you your connections’ activity related to people common to both trees, including updated information and records and new records added.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 1:21:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [5]

• Build a flexible family tree with people on “nodes” you can move around to change the shape of your tree. You can add siblings, step-parents, partners and other family members who wouldn’t make it onto traditional trees, and set up a profile for each one. You also can modify two individuals’ relationship.
  
  
• Print your tree with an easy-to-use tool that lets you resize the tree, print on multiple pages, and see where the edges of pages will fall.
  
  
• Invite relatives to add to their Life Archives (or you can do so on behalf of deceased people) by following writing prompts designed to tease out everything from “Rules We Live By” to “First Real Job.”
  
  
• Also under Life Archives, fill out Life Experiences for your ancestors and use them to generate a scrolling timeline set to music. (The timeline feature is “limited” for free accounts.)
  
  
• Create a memoir in easy chunks by answering a series of questions.
  
  
• Upload photos and video in the Media Archive (under Life Showcases) and turn them into a gallery or “Life Cube” slideshow (also limited for free accounts). You can import photos from Facebook and other social networking sites.
  
  
• Search the FamilySearch Record Search Pilot and the rest of the Web from within Arcalife.
  
  
• Generate a virtual time capsule of images and stories, choose people to send it to and designate a future date to unlock it.
  
  
• You’ll eventually be able to use fee-based services for conducting oral history interviews, printing large family trees, converting photos or videotapes to digital and more.

Monday, June 15, 2009 1:53:26 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Monday, May 18, 2009 2:02:12 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]