Today was the final day of RootsTech, and once again another outstanding day full of good speakers and information about what is happening in the world of genealogy.
At the opening session, Tim Sullivan from Ancestry discussed a new feature coming over the next few months, Genetic Communities. This looks like an interesting timeline of genetic clusters based on their ever-expanding database. Will be interested to see what it shows about my genetic migration. I still would like them to give us a chromosome browser.
Next up was CeCe Moore talking about her experiences helping solve DNA mysteries and speculating on what the future will hold with DNA genetics. Things such as recreating the images of your ancestors based on DNA of their descendants and genetic memory might sound like science fiction today - but a lot of what we are doing with genetic genealogy now was not even imagined just a few years ago. She shared a DNA story about her brother-in-laws discovery of his connection to Thomas Jefferson and Hemings family. DNA research is blurring the color lines and also bringing healing and forgiveness as people find their biological relatives through DNA research. CeCe is supposed to be coming to Fort Wayne in the next few months and I want to catch her talks.
The celebrity guest speaker today was the Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro. I've enjoyed watching his shows on TLC and in person he is just as he appears on television. He is an energetic speaker who told the story of his success, which has come through drive and hard work. He was inspired by his family and his Italian-American grandfathers and parents are true American stories. Hearing him talk about how his father taught him the value of hard work and how Buddy started out cleaning toilets in the bakery explains why he is so driven and successful today. I was a little surprised that they didn't have any family history finds for Buddy today.
After the opening session, I went into the Expo Hall and ran into Dear Myrtle and had to snap a selfie with her. You meet so many nice people at these genealogy conferences and it's especially nice to meet someone whose blog you follow.
I did see the Cake Boss being interviewed as well at the media hub and managed to snap a couple of semi-close pictures of him.
My first session to attend today was to be Continuing Your Genealogy Education at Home, taught by Crista Cowan. Unfortunately, I didn't make it early enough to get a good seat and the session was full! Hopefully, I can catch it online. That's one downside to these conferences, sometimes the classes fill up early.
I spent some more time in the Expo Hall, purchased a copy of RootsMagic for my son-in-law for his birthday and grabbed some lunch. I ate the best darn plate of nachos I'd ever had. Seriously. They were so good I had to take a picture.
While having lunch, I struck up a couple of conversations with some nice folks from Idaho and a gentleman from Utah. It's nice to be in a place where everyone there is interested in family history and sharing stories of our ancestors. None of them had any ancestry from Indiana, though.
Because today was Saturday, it was the most packed day and there were a lot of families here with young children. A couple of them stopped and asked to take a picture with me - they were completing a scavenger hunt for MyHeritage - must have been a contest. So I'm out there on someone's phone.
After lunch, while charging my phone at one of the nice charging stations in the convention center, I was even asked to complete a survey by a nice young lady from BYU regarding the economic impact of the convention. I hope my answers helped - I can say I definitely have enjoyed my time here.
My next session was entitled What is Your Revolutionary War Ancestor's Story by Ken Nelson of FamilySearch. This talk gave me a lot of good sources to look into more of my Revolutionary War ancestry. Helping mom work up a DAR line this past year, I have discovered that we have quite a few different lines that could be researched and proven for her, as well as for me through the SAR. One piece of advise that stuck with me was that we should check local court records for pension application information, as those records had to start at the local level. Ken's handout will be one that I'm sure I refer back to again and again.
My final session was Helping Your Grandparents Share their Story by Janet Hovorka and Amy Slade. Their presentation focused on some interesting ways that they have leveraged social media applications to get their family members collaborating and creating family history content. Their handout highlighted ten apps that could be used - many that were familiar to me, but a few that I hadn't utilized. Though they had a couple of technical issues due to internet connectivity in the room, they gave everyone some good options for bringing the generations together and preserving their memories. The bottom line is that we all need to begin to save and share the memories before they are gone.
After that session, I decided to head back to the hotel without staying for the closing ceremony. On the way out, cake was being served from the cake decorating contest that was held earlier in the day. How can you go wrong with an event that ends with cake ?
Today was another outstanding day at RootsTech, from the opening sessions to the breakout sessions, I've had a wonderful experience.
The opening session today was focused on the African-American experience and their struggles. The Friday morning panel featured Nkoyo Lyamba, Kenyetta Berry, Sherri Camp, and Melvin Collier.
As the celebrity speaker, LeVar Burton, of Star Trek and Roots fame, told the stories of his family, including the stories of the help that his mother had provided to make sure his dreams were possible. As he spoke about the vision Gene Roddenberry had for the future and how seeing Nichelle Nichols on the screen affected his life, he gave a though provoking speech about our human journey. As he stated, we all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before.
In an emotionally moment, Thom King from FamilySearch presented LeVar with a copy of the marriage certificate of his grandparents and information about his great-grandparents, which he hadn't known previously. He became so emotional and asked the crowd "So this is what you'all do all day?" He was obviously touched by the gesture.
The crowd was treated to a spiritually uplifting performance by the Calvary Baptist Church choir as well before the session ended.
As the session ended, I reached out via text to my distant cousin from Canada, Yvonne Demoskoff, who I'd previously been in touch with through genealogy blogging. Our ancestors haven't been together since 1704, when her 8th-great grandmother was captured in an Indiana raid in Deerfield, Masasschusetts. It was so nice to meet Yvonne and her husband, Mike. It's nice that a genealogy conference was able to bring us together.
I spent some time in the early morning hours in the Expo Hall, checking out all of the various booths and signing up for more information.
I purchased at DNA test from LivingDNA and can't wait to see the results - that will be another blog post, I'm sure. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to take another test, and the fact that this test can pinpoint where in the U.K. my British ancestry might come from really sounded interesting to me. Will let you know what I find out.
I was able to visit with Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, and have her give her expert opinion on an old photograph. Thanks to Dropbox, I was able to pull up a copy of the photo on my phone. The person who had given it to me thought it was my 2nd-great grandmother. Utilizing the hairstyle and dress, Maureen theorized that it was likely taken in the mid-1870s, which would make it too old to be my 2nd-great grandmother, but could likely be my 3rd-great grandmother. Though I don't have a positive identification, I at least know a likely time period, and will pursue other evidence to make sure it was my 3rd-great grandmother. I also picked up one of her books on identifying photos.
I stopped by FamilySearch's Discovery Center and pulled up these interesting infographics on my maternal and paternal grandfathers:
It was interesting to see that there are only 256 individuals with the name Ord in the United States, though it didn't look like they had Indiana marked.
According to FamilySearch, there are 20,328 people in the United States with the last name of LeMaster:
For my first break-out session, I attended Preparing For Research Trips to Your Ancestral Homes by Dirk Weissleder. He gave an excellent talk on how to plan a visit to Germany by first preparing here at home.
One of the interesting things he mentioned was that the smaller the town in Germany, the deeper the ancestry will go as there was little immigration from Germany prior to the 1800-1850 time period. So if your ancestors were from a smaller town, as opposed to say Berlin, they likely were living there for several generations and would have many decades of records. He stated you should never underestimate the importance of small archives and museums in helping you discover more about your ancestral home. You should find out as much as you can before going overseas and take time for the trip - in both an emotional as well as detailed preparation. Time will be the most valuable thing during your trip.
My next session was entitled The Ethical Genealogist with Judy Russell. Judy gave an outstanding lecture on some of the ethical debates and dilemmas that genealogists face. She suggested we all check out and abide by the standards set out on the National Genealogical Society's website. DNA testing has also given rise to a whole new set of issues, but ethical dilemmas are nothing new to the genealogy world. To be an ethical genealogist you have to tell the truth; you don't want to hurt someone unnecessarily, and you don't want to take something that isn't yours. After hearing her speak, I can see why her lectures are always so popular, just as her blog is.
The final session I attended was Discovering Your Ancestor's War Story by Anne Mitchell. She gave an overview of the various types of records that were created during America's wars and suggested methods and sources for finding the records. I did like her method of creating a spreadsheet timeline of an ancestors life to chart out all the facts. She also suggested that when you find a source to be sure to check out the other facts that it might lead to - for example, people aren't buried in a family cemetery by accident. While I was pretty familiar with the sources she mentioned, I felt that the talk was informative and encouraged researchers to cite their sources and explore everything found before just attaching the record to a family tree.
Overall, this was another good day of discovery and I'm fired up to do more research with some of the tools and methods I've learned so far here at RootsTech.
Today was my first full day at RootsTech2017 and even though I'm wiped out, it has been a good experience. From the opening sessions to the break-outs to the exhibitors - this conference has lived up to its billing. The fact that the weather has been unusually warm for Salt Lake has been a bonus as well.
The opening session focused on Family Traditions and featured Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch International. He put us in the mood to share our stories of family and shared an example from his own family of how a food tradition memory has been passed down from one generation to the next in his family. At one point, he even had the audience participating in this memory sharing by getting us to turn to one another and share a favorite food memory of our grandmothers. This was all tied into FamilySearch's push to get people to share their memories and recipes on the site so they will be preserved forever - as well as the family trees.
The Scott Brothers, hosts of HGTV's Property Brothers, were the featured celebrity speakers and they didn't fail to keep the crowd entertained with their stories of their family background. They really knew quite a bit about their Scottish heritage, and I enjoyed hearing about and seeing the photos from their trips as kids to Scotland to visit castles and other sites associated with their families. They seemed to have a good understanding of their family history, knowing about certain ancestors and how they lived - which the brothers then tried to associate as to why they each acted and lived the way they do.
I didn't have too bad of a seat to see them, but I didn't get a really good picture of them. My wife and I enjoy watching their show and now I can say I was in the same zip code with them. During the opening session, I sat next to an attorney from Wisconsin who had friends in Kokomo, Indiana - so we had a bit to talk about, as well as fellow blogger, Genealogy Jen on my other side. It was nice to meet new friends.
After the opening session, I followed the crowd over to the Expo Hall to see where all the exhibitors were - all I can say is "wow" - there were quite a few of them. I wandered around briefly, and caught a glimpse of some Geneablogger royalty at the media row.
Right after this, I caught another glimpse of the Property Brothers, right after they had been interviewed. These are my best 'celebrity stalking' photos - you can almost make out who they are.
Shortly after these photos, I headed over to the first break out session at 11 a.m. I chose to attend Kitty Cooper's talk - How to use DNA Triangulation to Confirm Ancestors. I enjoy reading her blog and since I'm working with my DNA matches at the various sites, this was a good choice for me. Kitty did not disappoint. She gave a good talk and pointed the class to how to tell when you have triangulation. She promised to have her slides available to look at, and I will be referring to them in the future. She was excited about the Double Match Triangulation Tool that is one of the Innovator Showdown finalists as well. The class assumed that those in attendance had already done DNA testing and knew the basics.
After her talk, I grabbed a quick sandwich in the Expo Hall and continued to browse and shop with the various vendors. I skimmed through a lot of them, expecting to go back later for further details. There was literally something for everyone there - all the major DNA testing companies, software vendors, new tools for scanning and preserving your research, tools for displaying your research, genealogical societies, etc. - you name it, they were there. When I stopped at the RootsMagic booth, I met a gentleman with the last name of Mendenhall, and I had to ask if he was related to the Quaker Mendenhall line. Turns out he was, and I gave him my contact card and told him I'd like to share information with him on that line.
My first afternoon session was Dr. Thomas Jones' talk on Writing About and Documenting DNA Test Results. This was an informative talk that really applied to any written research report. One of the key take-aways for me on this topic was that when he said that writing genealogically means that you must document everything. That made me think about some of what I'm putting together on this blog and how I need to better cite my sources.
My next afternoon session was with Jen Baldwin on Digging for Details : Getting the Full Story. I had seen Jen speak before at the Indiana Genealogical Society Conference in Ft. Wayne, and like there, she didn't disappoint with this topic. She has some interesting family stories and evidence to examine. The main take-away from her talk was that we should treat each document we examine as if it is the only piece of evidence we have on an ancestor - and to really look at every detail to see what other avenues of research that could lead to for a fuller picture. She also encouraged us to utilize sources such as PERSI and JSTOR, which I definitely need to utilize more. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of Jen while she was speaking.
After that, I decided I would head over to the Family History Library and spend a little time there. I enjoyed the Discovery Center there, and downloaded some information on family trees through FamilySearch that they said connected me to several famous people, some Presidents and others with the LDS church. Some of the family lines looked correct, while others might need to be tweaked just a bit.
I browsed upstairs through some of the county books, though I didn't have a real research plan for a trip to the Family History Center. When I do this again, I will make sure that I have scheduled more time in Salt Lake City so I can research at the library and have an orderly plan of attack.
Overall, I think I learned something from each session, which is the goal of furthering my genealogy education. In addition, I met a lot of great people today and introduced myself to them, handing them my contact cards and encouraging them to check out my blog and see if we are related. At the end of the day, I'm tired but excited to further my research and feel that today has energized me and given me some good tips and tools to succeed.
