• Here in Ohio, the 10-acre Fort Meigs, Ohio's War of 1812 Battlefield in Perrysburg, gives you a look inside the Buckeye State's role in the War of 1812.

• If an ancestor worked for the railroad, try the Western & Atlantic Railroad Tunnel and Museum in Tunnel Hill, Ga., where you can tour the South's oldest railroad tunnel, a museum and the 1848 Clisby Austin house.

• Out West in Nevada, you can step into your Silver State ancestors' shoes at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, which features American Indian artifacts, fossils, a recreated ghost town and underground mine, and more.

• At the Western Heritage Center in Billings, Mont., you can see special exhibits on Montana Women at Work and how the railroad shaped Billings. One of the museum's galleries replicates a 1930s dude ranch lodge.

• Among the many historic sites in Vermont is Burlington's Ethan Allen Homestead Museum, where the home of the Green Mountain Boys' leader has been restored.
  
  
• If you're lucky enough to be in Washington, DC, participating museums include the National Archives Experience, Newseum and National Building Museum.
  

Monday, September 24, 2012 2:02:13 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• This week MyHeritage.com announced the launch of its automatic Record Matching premium service. The service automatically searches the 4 billion records on MyHeritage.com websites (which now include World Vital Records and FamilyLink) for matches to people in your MyHeritage family tree. MyHeritage users will receive weekly email updates of new Record Matches and can visit MyHeritage.com to review, filter, sort, confirm and reject matches.

On his Genea-Musings blog, Randy Seaver has some detailed posts about using Record Matching to find information.

• Genealogy search engine Mocavo has acquired ReadyMicro, a company that develops document digitization technology. On its blog, Mocavo says it's planning several exciting announcements in the coming weeks about offering searchable records and forming partnerships to digitize organizations' records "at a very low cost and even, in many cases, at no cost." Stay tuned ...
  
  
• British burial records site DeceasedOnline has added records from London's Charlton Cemetery, opened in 1855. Records include scans of burial registers and some photographs. You can see a list of all the cemeteries included on the site here. You can search the site and get basic search results free; purchase credits to view additional details and records.
  

• Don't forget to enter our giveaway for a year's subscription to our Family Tree eBooks website—it's a digital library of dozens of ebooks on genealogy, history, heirloom identification, sharing and preserving your family history, and more, plus many issues of Family Tree Magazine. Click here to enter by September 30!

Friday, September 21, 2012 2:27:33 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Many of the common resources for Connecticut research have been published, transcribed, retranscribed, and republished in various formats, so always look for the original source of the information. In the webinar, we'll discuss key resources for tracing Connecticut families, including the Barbour and Hale records collections, which require a bit of sleuthing to use effectively.
  
  
• Connecticut keeps probate records by districts, rather than by counties or towns. But there's a quick way to search all of Connecticut's probate records through one central source! Tune in to the webinar to learn how.
  
  
• Connecticut's shared borders can cause dilemmas for genealogists. We'll talk briefly about the complexities surrounding the western border with New York and ideas for tracing Connecticut families who might've spent time in and around Dutchess County, NY.
  
  
• Subscribe to the Connecticut Society of Genealogists' quarterly The Connecticut Nutmegger. It'll keep you up to date on Connecticut resources and provide book reviews, record abstracts and other guidance.
  
  
• If you have a chance, visit the Connecticut State Library. Although many of its resources are on microfilm (much of it available through interlibrary loan or from the Family History Library), there's nothing like researching on-site and using resources in the original formats.

Thursday, September 20, 2012 10:31:28 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• 30/30 for time management—you work for 30 minutes or another set length of time, then take a break (iPad)
• Ancestry for displaying your Ancestry member tree and doing quick record lookups, though the search capabilities are limited compared to the full version of the site (Android and iPad)
• AroundMe for finding gas stations and food in unfamiliar towns  (iPad)
• CamScanner for digitizing documents and turning them into PDFs (iPad and Android)
• Civil War Today for newspaper accounts, diaries, letters and more from this day 150 years ago (iPad)
• CousinCalc for figuring out exactly how you're related (iPad)
• DropBox for sharing and accessing files across devices (iPad and Android)
• Evernote for taking notes and making them searchable and accessible across devices—you can get Kerry's video class on using Evernote for $10 off in ShopFamilyTree.com (iPad and Android)
• Find A Grave for searching the cemetery transcriptions and info on Find A Grave (Android)
• Focus Time for time management; you work for 25 minutes and take a 5-minute break, with a longer break after four cycles (iPad)
• GoodReader for reading PDF files (iPad)
• Google Translate (iPhone and Android)
• LastPass for keeping and generating passwords (IPad and Android)
• MyHeritage for displaying your MyHeritage family tree and searching the site (iPad and Android)
• PrinterPro for printing wirelessly from iPad to printer (iPad)
• Reeder for managing blog RSS feeds (iPad)
• RestingSpot for adding your ancestor's burial location GPS coordinates to the RestingSpot database (iPhone and Android)
• Scanner Pro for digitizing documents and turning them into PDFs (iPad)
• Symbaloo.com as an iGoogle replacement (iPad and Android)
• Wikipanion (iPad) or Wapedia (Android) for using Wikipedia
• Wolfram Genealogy & History Research Assistant for a variety of tools including historical weather to an inflation calculator (iPad)
• Zite for finding news stories and blog posts about your pet topics, such as genealogy (iPad and Android)

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 12:34:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• preventing "sick" sources in your family tree
• documenting genealogy sources
• using DNA testing in your genealogy research

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 10:12:52 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

For our final Guest Blog in our ‘Meet the Presenter’ series, we have a piece by genealogy Jedi Thomas MacEntee. Here’s what he has to say:

Welcome to the Fall 2012 Virtual Genealogy Conference at Family Tree University. Once again, I’m pleased to be a part of this unique, on-line event that provides important educational content to the genealogy community.

What’s So Great about a Virtual Genealogy Conference?

A virtual genealogy conference is just like a conference you attend in-person but with more flexibility and just as many opportunities to network with other genealogy researchers. At the Fall Virtual Genealogy Conference you’ll find pre-recorded webinars (a total of 15!), scheduled chats where you can ask the experts various questions, a message board and even a virtual gift bag filled with genealogy goodies!

The upcoming conference is a great alternative for busy genealogists as well as those that can’t travel long distances to attend genealogy conferences.

Why Technology Should Matter To Genealogists

I’m of an age where I remember the introduction of the personal computer and its impact on not just genealogy, but life in general. I don’t consider myself a “techie” especially since my academic background is more in the arts, language and literature. However, I’ve come to realize that if I don’t keep on top of technology that I risk being left behind. So even though it can be similar to “homework” in school, I make it a point to stay informed and to try out different apps, websites and other technologies. I may not incorporate them as part of my genealogy research, but knowing is better than not knowing.

That’s why I try to ensure that several of my presentations focus on how genealogists can use specific technologies to advance their own research. My goal is to present these new sites and apps in an easy-to-learn atmosphere where you’ll feel comfortable asking questions and making your own decisions as to what technology is best for your own situation.

My Presentations and Chats

During the conference I’ll be offering three new presentations covering tips for working with search engines, how to get what you want from the FamilySearch website, and easy ways to use a research log for your genealogy. In addition, there will be a live, on-line chat session covering cloud computing and genealogy where you’ll get to “pick my brain” on various programs and which program is best for you.

Stay In Touch

For me, the best part of any conference is making new genealogy friends and staying in touch with them. Sometimes we meet up again in person, or we stay in touch on-line. Either way, it always helps to network with other genealogists. Feel free to keep tabs on what I’m up to by following my websites GeneaBloggers and High-Definition Genealogy , or email me at hidefgen@gmail.com.

The conference starts TOMORROW! But there is still time to register--click here and use the code FRIENDSOFTHOMAS at checkout to save $40.

Thursday, September 13, 2012 12:53:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist, author and contributor to Family Tree Magazine. Her primary passions are history and food, which she'll blend together like cake batter at this weekend's Fall Virtual Conference. In this guest post, the author of From the Family Kitchen talks in detail about her VC sessions:

Social history and genealogy go hand in hand. As family history researchers we tend to focus solely on the dates and places of our ancestor’s life. That’s important, but it’s one thing to know the dates and places and another to fully understand what was going on during that historical time period. Social history is the story of people’s everyday lives. Social history places your ancestors in context. It will even help make your research more interesting to the non-genealogists in your family. The session itself is called "Top 10 Tools For Social History", in which we'll talk about resources you can use for any research project. These will include images, online catalogs and collections.

My second presentation, "Cook up Answers About Immigrant Ancestors", is a chance to see social history in action. What does food have to do with your ancestor? Everything! Food is so integral to everything we do in our families. It’s part of celebrations, holidays and even somber events. Food and food history resources can help us learn far more about our ancestors. I can’t wait to tell you about all the available resources, such as community cookbooks.

Please join me at the Virtual Conference. What a great way to spend a weekend. Talking genealogy from the comfort of your own home!

ACT QUICKLY:Only three days until the conference! Register now for the Fall Virtual Conference and save $40 with coupon code FRIENDSOFGENA.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:28:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]