If so, there’s a product I saw at the BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy 2012 that I think you’ll like.  It’s called “Research Ties.”

This product is created by Jill Crandell, AG.  Crandell is the director of BYU’s Center for Family History and Genealogy.  She designed this tool this tool to help you create online research logs and electronic documents, and tie them to your genealogy database.

Research Ties promises to enable you to do the following:

• Online access from any computer
• Link to your genealogy database to pull in your source citations
• Copy/paste or download images and hyperlink to log
• OCR search capability to search for person, family, surname, or locality
• Form objectives and log research in one place
• Improve research analysis by quickly locating and opening electronic documents

Crandell is so convinced this tool will be valuable to you, she states that if the house catches on fire, now you can take the children with you, rather than your research!

I’m sure by now you’re dying to know how to examine this system!  It’s still being tested and is not yet available to the public. HOWEVER, you can leave your email address with them to be notified and when the beta test is ready. 

I told you you’d like it!  Go to ResearchTies.com to sign up to be part of the beta test! 

For my first stop I attended, “Find Lost Ancestors in the Draper Manuscripts,” by Mary Hill.  The Draper Manuscripts hold a gold-mine of genealogical information concerning those who lived sometime between the Revolutionary War and about 1850 in a central state such as  Missouri, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, etc.  The manuscripts are available on microfilm, yet are difficult to search.  Hill used this collection to trace one William Riddle who was hung because of his Tory allegiance during the Revolutionary War.  Hill walked us through steps to find people in this collection.  You can find more information about these manuscripts at the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Draper Manuscripts page.

Next stop, Barry Ewell’s class, “Use a Digital Camera to Cut Your Research Time by Half.”  I always gain so much when I attend Ewell’s classes.  He covers tons of ground at lightening speed, but then gave attendees his email address with a special code to put in the tag line, and he will send us the dozen or so files that of information used in his presentation.  Knowing that, I didn’t feel like I had to keep up taking notes, just worked at keeping up with what he was teaching us.  It was a great presentation and I wish I could have attended more of his this week.

In Donald and Diane Snow’s lecture, “Freeware and Shareware for Family History,” they shared programs useful to genealogical work. The time limit constrained the Snows to only show six programs, but their syllabus material covered many more.  The six they featured were:

• Everything – a program to search your desktop and organize files, available from voidtools.
• Evernote – to clip and file web clippings, available from Evernote.com.
• Q-DIR – for opening several windows at the same time and facilitate file management, available from SoftwareOK.com.
• PDF-XChange Viewer – use this to enter information on a .pdf form, available from Tracker Software Products.
• PhraseExpress –  a clipboard extender useful for entering common phrases, available from Phrase Express.
• Faststone Capture 5.3 – a capture tool that enables scrolling down to capture the whole image, available from A + Freeware.

Echo King, an employee of Ancestry, shared, “U.S. Census Records on Ancestry.com.”  Ancestry has just completed and released the entire 1940 U.S. census, and they have made some improvements for viewing it. For instance, they added a highlighting feature with the subject of the search highlighted in yellow on the census image, their family in green.  Ancestry also added category tags to help as you maneuver across the page, and name label overlays so when you hover on an image, the indexed word will appear.  She addressed other censuses such as the Mortality Schedules, Slave Schedules, Veterans Schedule (1890), Agricultural censuses, and 1890 census substitutes.

Finally, David Williams of Fold3 demonstrated “Finding Your Family on Fold3.”  Fold3 is “The web’s premier collection of original military records.” Fold3’s collection is growing as fast as they are able.  Williams demonstrated Fold3’s search feature, asked for a name from the class.  Knowing my dad was missing in action in World War II, I gave them my dad’s name, David Farrell.  Williams entered my dad’s name in the search engine, and up popped the report for my dad’s plane shot down April 17, 1943.  The list included the other men on my dad’s plane.  Just like that!  Fold3 promises to be VERY valuable for helping us access military records.  If you feel deprived for having missed this lecture, the site has Training Center Tutorials on their home page.

The BYU Conference and exhibitors hosted a random drawing in which many of those attending won one of several prizes such as  RootsMagic products and books, Barry Ewell’s new book, Paul Larsen’s book, charts from Family Chartmasters, a book from Family Roots Publishing,  a one year membership to Sharing time, a one year membership to the Utah Genealogical Association, and a registration to next year’s conference!

Alas, this conference came to an end, but I’m not done.  I hope you’ll stay tuned because I plan to write a couple of posts about some new products and services. 

Day Three and I wasn’t so exhausted from the first two days that I needed extra sleep.  In fact, excited about the day’s classes, I couldn’t sleep past 6:30 AM!

Today’s keynote presenter, Rod DeGiulio, titled his talk, “FamilySearch: All About Records.”  DeGiulio is a Senior Executive Vice President of FamilySearch International, and heads up the acquisition and digitization of records around the world.  It’s FamilySearch’s goal to provide free and easy access to the world’s genealogical records, so they are working to ramp up the digital pipeline of records.

DeGiulio discussed the 2.5 million rolls of microfilm in the LDS vault, said that 23% of those images have been digitized, and that they have a goal to have the whole collection digitized in the next 3-4 years.  That’s not to say all the images will be indexed at that time, but they hope many will help in the ongoing indexing projects.

FamilySearch currently has 210 camera crews capturing images in 48 countries throughout the world.  Their goal is to bring an image from capturing it to online in two weeks!  Today they have 607 million images from 1225 archives, and are adding one million images each day.   A contract has just been signed to digitize ALL the civil registration in the entire Italian nation.  That’s 130 million records!

Concerning indexing, 155,000 FamilySearch volunteers have indexed 99.9% of the 1940 U.S. census.  DeGiulio asked for continued indexing help, now focusing on the U.S. immigration project.

What’s next for FamilySearch?

• Make online records easier to use.
• Lots more online records and images.
• Adding index correction capabilities.
• Many more projects with partners.
• Help nations to document the undocumented.

What can you do?

• Pray technology will continue to develop and doors will be opened to records.
• Indexing: Immigration, and Non-English Vital Records
• Serve to help preserve vital records

After DeGiulio’s presentation, I attended a lecture by John Titford titled, “Who Was Mrs. Williamson?  An 18th and 19th Century Genealogical Detective Story.”  Titford had acquired a manuscript book of entries dating 1833-1846 that he had determined were made by a Mrs. Williamson.  Through the 1841 England census, Titford determined Mrs. Williamson had an agency for placing servants in homes and the book was a recording of her notes.  By correlating many records, he determined the identify of Mrs. Williamson.

While giving this lecture, Titford presented one page from this book on the PowerPoint screen.  Titford wasn’t tracing the servants, so it was just a random page from the book.  To our surprise, one of the students in the class pointed to one of her ancestor’s name on the page!!!!    It was amazing.

Titford addressed things to do when you hit a brick wall in your research.  He recommended questioning the original facts and testing them one at a time.

I also attended Titford’s lecture titled, “Marry ‘em off, Kill ‘em off.  Researching a London Family 1640-1840.”  Titford used a case study from his family files concerning research in metropolitan London.  He showed how English research should span many counties to prove a case.

Two lectures I attended were taught by Alan Mann, an employee of FamilySearch.  He titled these presentations, “Recently Filmed Resources for Irish Research,” and “England’s Records of the Poor – Coming to a Website Near You.”  Mann instructed us on Irish Tithe Applotment Books, Griffith’s Valuation Records, and pre-valuation records such as House books, Field Books, Tenure Books, and Quarto Books.

The  last class I want to mention was taught by Hannah Z. Allan titled, “Organizing Records: Burying the Dead, Not the Living.”  Allan’s lecture led us to more digitization of our sources and described a new product to help do just that.  I attended an overview of this product and will write more about it another day.  I think you’re going to like it!

So again, this girl is cooked.  Time to relax.   Now, I’m going to try to get some sleep.

Disclaimer:  I am an official blogger for this conference and BYU has covered my registration, but I am not beholden to BYU in any way.  The opinions expressed herein are solely my own.

The keynote speaker, John Titford, is a feature writer and genealogical consultant for Family Tree magazine, titled his presentation, “A History of British Accents and Dialects.”  From London, England, Titford majored in English Literature at St Johns, Cambridge University.  Highly entertaining while he educated us, Titford expounded on the need to understand accents and dialects to glean information and clues.  For instance, some words or accents are only used in certain portions of England.  So, knowing that, when a record states a person “starved to death,” if it was recorded in the 1700s in Nottinghamshire, it meant a person froze to death.  “Outrider” was a commercial salesman, the word only used in three counties in England’s west country.  Thus, you may find clues through accent or dialect to determine a person’s origin!

On to the classes:  FamilySearch Family Tree is FamilySearch’s new Tree (not to be confused with the now old tree called New FamilySearch) so it was important to me to see this new tree.  I attended Ron Tanner’s, “FamilySearch Family Tree,” and Samantha Sulser and Amanda Terry’s, “If New FS is New, Why Do We Need Family Tree?”  Ron Tanner, FamilySearch Product Manager cited the many problems with New FamilySearch, then talked about their efforts to fix those problems with the FamilySearch Family Tree. (I’m going to call it FSFT for right now).  FSFT is not fully functional yet, but they hope to have the “official” release by the end of 2012, at which point they will be shutting down New FamilySearch.

Here’s the elements they plan to incorporate in FSFT:

• Open Edit – Anyone can change anything, but the changes must be source cited!  YEAH!
• Real Sources – Needed to prove conclusions then state why that source proves that conclusion.
• Discussion – A place to talk about differences of opinion.
• Notifications – To you will be notified when someone changes something.
• Open to all people
• Edit relationships
• Upload source images
• Get everyone using FSFT
• Change log to see who changed what and when with the ability to restore to an earlier version before the edit

Tanner said that the goal is accurate genealogy of mankind preserved forever.

Sulser and Terry’s lecture demonstrated negotiating through FSFT in greater depth.  To access this new tree you only need to “sign on” once, then every time you sign on to FamilySearch.org, you will see the “Family Tree” button right next to the FamilySearch logo.  Limited access is available as the site rolls out.  Here’s the links to access the site:   For LDS Church members:  www.familysearch.org/invite/familytree_tab.  For public or community users:  www.familysearch.org/invite/public1.

While we’re on the subject of FamilySearch, I attended a class by David Barss titled, “Introduction to the FamilySearch Community Trees.”  (I’ll call it FSCT for now.)  The FSCT is locality based, lineage linked, and sourced in a genealogy database.  Creators are trying to trace everyone in a community, whether it be a town, county, state, country, ethnic or religious group. This is a growing project that currently has 85 community trees, 23 geographic regions, and 8.2 million lineage linked records.  There are many ways to get to this site. One way is to go to http://histfam.familysearch.org/.  As FamilySearch, collaborators, and partners donate to this site, we may be seeing lots more growth in this database.

The last class I attended today was taught by Apryl Cox, AG, titled, “Reading England’s Pre-1858 Probate Records.”  I’ve heard Cox before, so I was not disappointed.  She taught principles of English probate, then led us through application as we practiced on examples of old handwritten documents.

Now, the day is done, this girl is cooked, and I need to rest up for another full day tomorrow, so I’ll sign off for now.  Hope to see you back here tomorrow!

I live about thirty minutes drive from BYU, so will be driving from home each day.  This morning, I had my own personal chauffer because we’re a one car family and Bruce needed the car today.  So, we both headed out early.  We drove south through the I-15 construction zone.  The joke here in Utah is that we have four seasons: pre-construction, construction, post-construction, and winter.  So,  it was no surprise that I-15 is still under construction.

Those attending came from far and wide. I talked to one woman who came from the neighboring town of Orem, Utah. On the flip side, or should I say another part of the country, one couple came from Alaska! I’m a pretty good genealogist, so when I saw their Alaska license plate, I came to that conclusion.

This morning’s keynote presenter was Richard E. Turley Jr., who is the assistant LDS Church Historian and Recorder.   From 1996 to 2008, Turley worked in the combined Family History and Church History Department.  (Those departments were split in  2008).  So, he had a lot of things to share in his talk titled, “Memories of a Family Historian.”

Turley took us down memory lane as he described the family history roller coaster ride highs with success followed by lows of opposition.  The first surge in numbers during Turley’s work occurred in 1999, when he appeared on “The Today Show” with Matt Lauer.  Turley provided the actual clip for us today.  In it, he instructed the television audience on working with things found around the home as a basis to begin genealogy research.  Those included vital certificates, a driver’s license, photo, and postcard.   That TV segment spurred viewers to begin tracing their families.

Not long after this spike in interest, opposition reared its ugly head as a shooter entered the Family History Library on April 15, 1999, and shot several  people, killing two.

An upward climb of success came on May 24, 1999, with the launch of FamilySearch on the internet.  Staff workers geared up for 25 million hits.  Turley was asked to again appear on “The Today Show,” this time with Katie Couric on May 25, 1999.  Then came the opposition in his efforts to travel from Washington, D.C. to New York City for the show. After several flight delays and a harrowing taxi ride, Turley arrived at the studio just in time to appear on the show.  The day the show aired, FamilySearch received 100 million hits!   They had topped all expectations.

This was followed by opposition when a tornado hit Salt Lake City on August 11, 1999… and it wasn’t even in Kansas!  The winds clocked at gusts of over 100 miles per hour, leaving a path of devastation and destruction.  When Turley returned to the Family History offices, a large slab of concrete had smashed through the window!

With that low point, success appeared on the horizon when Barbara Walters’s staff invited Turley to appear on “The View” to air on July 31, 2001.   Turley’s staff had traced Walters’ genealogy and discovered her name was not Walters, a fact she didn’t know.

Turley wrapped up his address by reminding us that while we have great tools today to help advance our genealogy research, we must not forget that family history is about the individual, and that we need to discover the human dimension of our ancestors.

After Turley’s address, there were seven classes to choose from for each hour.  I won’t be able to write about all I attend, but I’ll try to give you some highlights.   “But She Died in Upstate New York in the 1850s – How Can I Identify Her Parents?”  He discussed common research challenges for New York, then advised, “The search for an individual is a search for a family.”  He recommended tracing descendants in order to go back in time, learn how family names are recorded, expand the circle of localities to search, and work in original records using the Genealogical Proof Standard.

Karen Clifford, AG, taught a class titled, “Concept to Conclusions – It’s Magical.”  She addressed things to do in the Pre-Research stage before beginning a Preliminary Survey.   Pre-Research should include tracing the locality through time as the jurisdiction changes and creating a historical timeline to compare with the ancestor’s timeline.

Ugo A. Perego, PhD, taught two classes on DNA:  “DNA- The Biological Tie that Binds Families,” and “DNA Research for Genealogists: Beyond the Basics.”  This class was most illuminating for me because I’m still trying to understand how to use DNA in genealogy research.  Perego addressed the differences between the tests for Y Chromosome, X Chromosome, Mitochondrial, Autosomal DNA, and which tests should be performed to achieve certain objectives.

That’s about all for today.  In another post I’ll blog about some of the vendors I’ve met and the products or services they offer.  Stay tuned, there’s more tomorrow!

Disclaimer:  As an official blogger, BYU has provided for my registration,  but I have not been influenced in any way in what I write about the conference.

It’s not too late, but as the saying goes, “If you snooze, you lose!”  This is one conference you won’t want to sleep through.   Presenters are among the top in the field offering high quality lectures.  It’s not so big that you get lost in the crowd, but not so small that you don’t get value for your investment in time and money. Parking is easy, free, and it’s just steps away from the conference center.

You may read about my experience at last year’s conference in my blog post titled, “BYU Family History Conference 2011 Recap.”  It was heaven!

Now, for this year, here’s the schedule and keynote presenters.

I’m going to be there.  I hope you go, too.  If you do, look me up, and introduce yourself.  I’d love to meet you!

Here’s the registration details:  http://ce.byu.edu/cw/cwgen/registration.cfm.

The snooze button will wait for another day.  Head over to BYU’s website and register!

What I like about BYU’s conference is that it’s big enough to satisfy all, but not so big that it’s overwhelming.   There are seven tracks to choose from each hour, almost as many as the national conferences.   Parking is free.  Access to the conference center is easy.

You’ll learn from some of the best.  Presenters include David Ouimette, George Ryscamp, Bruce Buzbee, Geoff Rasmussen, Diane Van Skiver Gagel, Claire Brisson-Banks, Apryl Cox, Kory Meyerink, Megan Smolenyak, Warren Bittner, Dan Lynch, Karen Clifford, Alan Mann, Barry Ewell, and many others.

Keynote Speakers include: 

• Richard E. Turley Jr., assistant Church historian and recorder for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and president of the Genealogical Society of Utah
• John Titford, writer for Family Tree Magazine, also broadcaster, researcher, and genealogical bookseller
• Rod DeGuilio director of FamilySearch Data Operations

BYU is hosting a wide variety of lecture tracks which include:

• Hands-On Workshops (you’ll want to pre-register for those early as they will fill up fast!)
• Methodology
• U.S. Research
• International Research
• Immigration to America
• FamilySearch Compatible
• Family History Consultants
• Online Family Trees
• British Isles Research
• German Research
• Sharing Family History
• Internet Research
• Scandinavian Research
• LDS Church History Library
• Family Search
• Online Sources
• Computers and Technology
• International (small):  French, Italian, and Latin American research)
• Youth and Genealogy

You can get all the info you need at BYU’s Continuing Education website for the Conference on Family History & Genealogy.

I’m marking my calendar for this conference as a highlight of the summer.  Hope to see you there!

In other words, life has been hectic and crazy and I’m ready for a little R&R (Rest and Relaxation).

Bruce found a really sweet (i.e. affordable) cruise in the Caribbean, so we’ll be spending seventeen days on the water.  Factor in a couple of days for travel, etc., and I’ll be otherwise occupied for about three weeks.

I had great plans to write and pre-post blogs for each day we’d be gone, but life got in the way and I never did it.

Since I seriously doubt I’ll drag my laptop to the beach to post a blog, I hope you’ll forgive my lapse and return to my blog when I return to posting.

Thank you!

I’ve seen this product at other conferences, but more recently I attended Laura Prescotts’ RootsTech lecture, “Publish Your Genealogy Online.” Laura demonstrated TNG’s features and how she used them to create a family history webpage.

Features include:

• Ability to import or export GEDCOM
• Easy to read
• Pre-build templates or design your own
• Privacy protection
• Collaborate with others
• Central menu to manage pages
• Host more than one tree
• Technical support

I was so impressed by what I saw, I decided to give it a try.

I picked up a copy of the just released version 9 from creator Darrin Lythgoe.

I found TNG easy to install, easy to navigate, and offered help along the way.  There are eleven pre-designed templates to choose from.  I picked Template 2, set it up, and imported my GEDCOM, but then changed my mind because I wanted more words on the main page, so I switched to Template 9.  All of my GEDCOM followed into the new template.  Then, I wanted to change the names of the tabs from “His Side” and “Her Side,” to “Descendants” and “His Story.”  I haven’t included the text of his story yet, but plan to do it.   I also imported a photo from my computer.

As I worked with the program, I hit a road block because of my own tech ignorance.  I phoned Darrin and he kindly walked me through my problem.

My opinion:  I like it.  I really like it.  Here I am, Miss Non-Tech of the Universe, and I created the webpage and I know how to make additions, changes, etc.  If I could do it, you can too!

Note:  This product helps you design your website but you will still need a place (or host) to put your website and a domain name.  I use Bluehost for my blog and for my website.   TNG’s website offers some other hosting options for you as well.

Here’s my webpage so far:  Farrell Family History: Descendants of Thomas Francis Farrell.  I plan to add a distant cousin as an administrator, so she can upload her own photos, stories, etc., to the site.  We’ll be working on this over the next couple of months, so I’ll let you know when I have more to show you.

Disclosure:  Darrin Lythgoe gave me a complimentary copy of this product to use and review, but I received no compensation for it.  The opinions expressed herein are my own.

If you find a family member in this index, you may order the copy of the record directly through this site, or note the volume and page number and look it up yourself, either in person, or sometimes through the Family History Library microfilms.

Now, that I’ve whetted your appetite, let me take you there! 

Sampubco.com is  a great tool to tap into courthouse indexes.  Sampubco hosts indexes for Will Testators, Letters Testamentary, Guardianships, Surrogate’s Records/Probate Files, Census, Naturalizations, and Letters of Administration.   Organized by record type, then state, then county, you may search these indexes for free!  Be sure to click on the “More Counties/States” in each section. 

I do need to caution you however:  You know the drill.  Just because you don’t find your family in the index, doesn’t mean they are not there.  Sometimes indexes are incomplete, or the extraction is incorrect.  Also,  whether you find your family in the index or not, you should consult ALL probate records for an area.