Day 2 - RootsTech - Thur March 5 - Online Expo is open!

 

Browse the multitude of offers now live on:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/expohall/

(1) Search by Company or Category (such as Charts, DNA, Storytelling, Records, Preservation, Technology, Association, Society, Library).

(2) You also can browse "All Offers". This is an excellent time of year for a discounted price for something new (or perhaps lower a rate if close to a renewal). 

(3) Try this vendor as an example - FamilyTreeDNA

https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/expohall/familytreedna

Here you'll find that you can upload DNA data for free (along with other promotions).

Plus, this link takes you to:

CLASSES

PRODUCT DEMOS

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (downloadable)

(4) Don't forget to check the Sponsors links since they usually announce "What's News?"

e.g., https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/expohall/familysearch

https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/expohall/ancestry

https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/expohall/myheritage

https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/expohall/findmypast

Genealogy News

Enjoy FREE ACCESS to 96 million+ Civil War records through April 14, 2025, at Fold3. To see a full list of the records in the featured collections, please click here.

The 6th Annual 24-Hour Genealogy Webinar Marathon is April 3-4, 2025. This FREE event is hosted by Legacy Family Trees and My Heritage. Click here to explore the full schedule and register for free.

Tales & Trails, the 2025 NGS Family History Conference, is being held May 23-26, 2025, in Louisville, KY. Visit the National Genealogical Society website for registration and event information.

Registration is still open for most of the virtual (June 22-27) and in-person (July 13-18) courses being offered during the GRIP Genealogy Institute. Check the webpage for more details. 

Genealogy News

⬥ For those conducting New York City research, 1949 death certificates have been transferred to the New York City Municipal Archives. They are currently being processed, so stay tuned for an availability update. And more than 40,000 marriage licenses (1914–1924) for the Bronx are digitized and now online at Historical Vital Records site. However, that site does not name index the licenses. Use the NYC Marriage Index site or Ancestry index to obtain license numbers.  

⬥  MyHeritage has just launched a major and groundbreaking new DNA product: Ancient Origins, a feature that complements their DNA ethnicity reports and traces your origins up to 10,000 years into the past. Ancient Origins allows MyHeritage DNA customers to discover the ancient populations they descend from, such as Imperial Romans, Norse Vikings, Phoenicians, and Ancient Egyptians. Read more about Ancient Origins on the MyHeritage blog.

⬥  The National Genealogical Society (NGS) is now shipping orders of its groundbreaking textbook, Forensic Genealogy: Theory & Practice. With 575 pages, it is the first comprehensive primer for professional genealogists who are interested in exploring the specialty areas and skills required to build a career in this emerging field. Meet the authors and purchase Forensic Genealogy: Theory & Practice at the NGS booth at RootsTech in Salt Lake City 6-8 March 2025. Or order your copy through the NGS Store.

⬥  Celebrate Black History Month with some free webinars from Legacy Family Tree. They are offering these 5 webinars for free during the month of February 2025.

⬥  The topic of the next Mondays with Myrt will be AI and photo analysis. Mark Thompson, from the Family History AI Show podcast, will be the special guest. Join this free LIVE streaming virtual meeting where attendees may participate in the LIVE chat on February 3^rd starting at 11am at YouTube.

⬥  Registration will open February 4^th for the GRIP Genealogy Institute. Nine virtual courses will be offered from 22-27 June 2025, and eight in-person courses offered from 13-18 July 2025. More information here.

⬥  Fold3 announces a new collection of Virginia military records. The Virginia Department of Military Affairs Records Collection contains information on Virginia military personnel who served between 1876 and 1947, including veterans from the Spanish-American War, WWI, and WWII. Learn more in this recent Fold3 blogpost or go straight to the collection Search. Reminder that Fold3 is available through many libraries. Also Fold3 related – Genealogy Friends of Plano Libraries will present Using Fold3 to Your Advantage, featuring Craig R. Scott, at the next Saturday Seminar, February 15, 2025.

⬥  Genealogy Bank recently added new content from 169 titles including 134 newspapers added for the first time. View the newspaper title, location, and date range in this list to see if the newly added content is relevant to your research.

⬥  Storied has acquired the AI company “Memory Lane,” which will leverage AI to “make building family trees more easily, storytelling more seamless, and help you to make new discoveries.” Their new pricing structure, with plans as low as $20 per year, provides access to over 1 billion historical records in addition to platforms for building a family tree and creating Storied Books.

 Genealogy News

Celebrate 18 years of Fold3 with a 40% discount! Buy now. Offer ends 27 January 2025.

The Names & Stories project at MyHeritage has been completed, adding 11.6 billion new records! These records were extracted from historical newspapers spanning all 50 U.S. states, as well as Canada, Australia, and the U.K. Read more about this historic achievement at the MyHeritage Blog.

The Genealogy Do-Over Workbook, by Thomas MacEntee, is available for free with Kindle Unlimited. Amazon link here.

Registration for Applied Genealogy Institute's Spring 2025 Session will open from January 15th - January 22nd, 2025! There will be five exciting classes held this session. You can review the dates, cost, and class outlines on the website: https://appliedgen.institute/spring-2025-classes/

American Ancestors is hosting a Virtual Open House Webinar on Wednesday, January 29th, from 3:00-4:00pm. During the open house you will learn how the databases, genealogists, and millions of unique collections at American Ancestors can help! This discussion will highlight the many benefits and services available to members. This will be a great way to find out if American Ancestors would be useful to your research. Learn More and Register.

Registration is open for the Mastering Genealogical Proof Study Group with Cyndi Ingle. Saturdays, 4pm, Feb 15-March 29, 2025. $95. These Zoom sessions will be a beginner/low-intermediate level class to study the book “Mastering Genealogical Proof” by Thomas W. Jones. Click here for more information.

The Roundtable Recap - Land Records blog post in November shares information and links we discussed during the November Roundtable meeting. If you are interested in an additional live presentation concerning land records, The Mesquite Historical and Genealogical Society is hosting a seminar on the subject January 9, 2025. Genealogist Sara Cochran will be speaking about the value of State and Federal land records and the many ways they can be helpful in research. Click here to register for this Zoom meeting.

Find the Generation of Connection with Your Mystery DNA Matches is a free webinar being presented by YourDNAGuide on January 16, 2025. Register here to learn these helpful steps.

The National Genealogical Society is offering its Foundations in Family History course. Details can be found here. Also, if you purchase a new NGS gift membership through January 31, 2025, you will be entered into a drawing to win one of five valuable prizes to be given away on February 3, 2025. More information is available in the Upfront with NGS blog.

Registration is now open for more than 170 upcoming live webinars in 2025 at Legacy Family Tree Webinars. Many of these are free to view live and for the following 7 days.

FamilySearch celebrated its 130^th anniversary as an organization in 2024 along with the 25^th anniversary of their popular website, FamilySearch.org. Highlights of their year can be found in the FamilySearch Year in Review 2024 blog post.

MyHeritage celebrated their 20^th anniversary in 2024. The blog post, Wrapping Up 2024: MyHeritage Year in Review, has a month by month recap of their year and also includes interesting statistics such as 13 billion historical records added.

RootsTech will be held March 6^th – 8^th. Information about speakers, registration, in-person and online classes, and more can be found here.

Just in case you missed the holiday sale at Ancestry, they are currently offering 50% off 6-month memberships. The sales ends January 16^th.

Genealogy News

The Texas Czech Genealogical Society (TCGS) invites you to attend the January 25, 2025 in person event “From the Czech Lands to Texas” at the Caldwell Civic and Visitor Center. You do not have to be a TCGS member or of Czech heritage to attend. Everyone is welcome. Detailed information and registration forms are on the TCGS website https://www.txczgs.org under “Events”  https://txczgs.org/eventListings.php?nm=38. 

NARA has announced some new features in the Advanced Search. Researchers can now search the Catalog for all contributions: Tags, Comments, Extracted Text, and Transcriptions, and the page where the contribution is found is highlighted with a green box around the thumbnail and a link to the page. These improvements should make it easier to search the NARA catalog.

FamilySearch recently added 49.8 million new records from 49 countries including over 22 million additions to the United States City and Business Directories. This FamilySearch Blog article has more information and links.

Save up to 50% through December 2024 with the RootsMagic Holiday Special! Check out their sale here. Be sure to use the code HOLIDAY2024.

UPDATE - RootsMagic issued an update today, December 9th, to fix the Relationship Chart issue. For RootsMagic 10 users -  According to a reply from the @rootsmagician to a post in the RootsMagic Users Facebook Group, do not run the Relationship Chart report or else you will lose data you subsequently add or edit in that session. An update with a fix will be released soon.

My Heritage announces the publication of four huge new collections of names and stories extracted from newspaper pages on OldNews.com. The new collections, containing more than 3.4 billion records, are searchable on MyHeritage, with the full images of the newspaper pages available on OldNews.com via direct links from MyHeritage. Additional collections still to be published in December 2024 will collectively add more than 10 billion records to MyHeritage’s historical database, expanding it by 50%!

Registration is now open for the Research Like A Pro With DNA Study Group facilitated by Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer with Family Locket Genealogists. Click here for more information and early bird registration. The Spring 2025 sessions start February 5th.

Sale extended through Dec 7th! American Ancestors Cyber Monday Sale ends December 2, 2024. Enjoy $30 off a new membership.

Sale extended through Dec 8th! Get 50% off a full year’s webinar membership (new memberships only) at Legacy Family Tree Webinars. Learn more here. Offer expires December 6, 2024.

Newspaper.com is offering 40% off new Publisher Extra subscriptions now through December 8, 2024. Click here for details.

Fold3 Cyber Week Sale – 40% off now through December 8^th for new memberships. View offer here.

Learn new skills with virtual on-demand Encore sessions from the 2024 TxSGS Family History Conference! Conference access is available for purchase through December 31, 2024 for access through February 2, 2025. Click here for details and to register.

FreeBMD is an ongoing project, the aim of which is to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales, and to provide free Internet access to the transcribed records at https://www.freebmd.org.uk/. The database was last updated on Wed 27 Nov 2024 and currently contains 295,385,672 distinct records (397,999,729 total records). On Tue 26 Nov 2024 FreeBMD users did 206,777 searches. (More information)

The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA: Y-DA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA by Roberta Estes is now available in full color. More information is available at the FamilyTreeDNA Blog.

Genealogy News

Fold3 Cyber Week Sale – 40% off now through December 8^th for new memberships. View offer here.

Newspaper.com is offering 40% off new Publisher Extra subscriptions now through December 8, 2024. Click here for details.

NARA has partnered with FamilySearch to have AI extract the text from all 2,322,137 pages of the Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, ca. 1800 - ca. 1912! These records are available in the National Archives Catalog, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/300022?utm_campaign=AIandRevWarPensions&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

Korean War era draft cards from Alaska and Wyoming are now available on Fold3. More states to follow in 2025. The Fold3 Blog has information here https://blog.fold3.com/korean-war-era-draft-registration-cards-now-available-on-fold3/

Top Ten AI Genealogy Breakthroughs of 2024 webinar by Steve Little is free through November 27th at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/top-ten-ai-genealogy-breakthroughs-of-2024/  Steve is the AI Program manager for the National Genealogical Society. Learn more about him at https://aigenealogyinsights.com/author/digitalarchivst/

My Heritage is introducing LiveMemory: Bring Your Photos to Life in Video. It's free for a limited number of videos. https://blog.myheritage.com/2024/11/introducing-livememory-bring-your-photos-to-life-in-video/

Want to learn more about the history of Thanksgiving? The Mayflower Society has information about the history and customs here https://themayflowersociety.org/learn/thanksgiving/  You can also learn more about the Mayflower passengers at  https://themayflowersociety.org/passenger-profiles/

What's New In Genealogy

Genealogy News

Issues at 23 and Me— The Independent Board Directors at 23 and Me resigned en masse. Here is a link to the article https://www.axios.com/2024/09/18/23andme-resignations-anne-wojcicki. Diahan Southard of YourDNAGuide is advising that we take screen prints of important information and matches https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h6pX2mbLnAY

The St. Louis County Library has a great article about Norwegian Bygdeboker in their latest newsletter. https://www.slcl.org/sites/default/files/2024-09/pastports-09-2024.pdf

MyHeritage acquired MesAieus.com a site that specializes in French Canadian genealogy. https://www.mesaieux.com/

October is German American Heritage Month. Germanology Unlocked is offering a free seminar on October 1—From Germany to America: How German Immigration Impacts Your Genealogy. https://mailchi.mp/germanologyunlocked/from-germany-to-america-webinar