September Genealogy News

Citations

 "The Main Citation Types" video by Lisa Stokes is available on  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1lNAFj_jWU She also offers a free Master Citation Template Starter Kit on her website https://lisa-stokes-heritage-research.kit.com/master-citation-template

New York State Death Index

NYB&G has a image browse-only collection of official Department of Health death index records for every county in New York State (excluding New York City, Albany, Buffalo, and Yonkers until around 1915), covering the years 1880-1956. https://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org/online-records/collection/new-york-state-death-index

For more recent deaths, researchers should use New York State's Interactive Ancestry/Genealogical Research Death Index, which begins in 1957 and contains deaths up to 1974. https://health.data.ny.gov/stories/s/Interactive-Ancestry-Genealogical-Research-Death-I/x83h-k5ey

Railroad Maps, 1828 to 1900

The Library of Congress has images of  635 railroad maps on its website. Our ancestors traveled on railroads and possibly settled near the railroad. https://www.loc.gov/collections/railroad-maps-1828-to-1900

RootsMagic 11

RootsMagic 11 is available and on sale until September 30th. New Users $29.95 and Upgrades $19.95 - that's $10 off. Improvements include a clearer, more comfortable workspace, a life story at a glance, better editing and a new sources view, better searching, and an AI prompt builder. https://www.rootsmagic.com/rootsmagic/buy

Dallas Genealogical Society Fall Seminar

DGS presents "Strategies for DNA Breakthroughs" with Kelli Bergheimer on October 25, 2025.  Information is available on their website https://dallasgenealogy.org/meetings-events/2025-fall-seminar/

TxSGS Live

Texas State Genealogical Society presents "Deep In The Heart" on Friday and Saturday, November 7-8, 2025. Ten live sessions featuring nationally recognized speakers on the two live days are paired with 20+ recorded lectures that you can watch at your convenience through February 6, 2026.

Speakers and Topics https://www.txsgs.org/2025-txsgs-conference-speakers-and-topics/

Registration https://www.txsgs.org/2025-conference-registration/

DAR Annual Reports to the Smithsonian Institution

When the Daughters of the American Revolution was incorporated in 1896, it was required to submit an annual report to the Smithsonian Institution. The reports are available on the DAR website. Records for female ancestors are often hard to find. If you have an ancestor who was an officer of the DAR they will be listed. These reports also include projects the group worked on.   https://www.dar.org/collections/archives/smithsonian-report

John Grenham - Griffiths Valuation New Features

When you choose a surname you see the results for all of Ireland. You can add a county and or parish, and you can now drill down in Griffith's Valuation to the townland level. This might help locate your ancestors in Ireland. https://www.johngrenham.com/blog/2025/09/17/the-greatest-thing-since-sliced-bread/

RootsMagic Genealogy Database Software

What is the best genealogy program to use? The one that you are comfortable using. I switched to RootsMagic a few years ago after trying out a few other programs. RootsMagic runs on window or mac and they have a free version that can be downloaded to try out the software.

RootsMagic communicates with both FamilySearch and Ancestry. 

Resources

Help File - There is an extensive help file that walks through all the functions in the software. 

Community - A place to ask questions.

Genealogy Forum of Oregon Roots Magic Special Interest Group - meets on the 1st Monday of each month at noon central time. The moderator has created a document to supplement the RootsMagic help file. He is very knowledgeable and you don't have to be a society member to attend the meetings. 

YouTube Channel - Lots of videos to help with using the software. 

  

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.