RootsTech Day 2 Roundup
My brain is overflowing with information from amazing presentations
Today is Day 2 of the RootsTech Genealogy Conference. I am attending virtually.
I had a little frustration with the online schedule today. Early in the day, one session that had already aired wouldn’t let me passed the timer screen. That timer seemed to think the session was on Saturday.
Then when I went to watch the 3:30 and 5:00 pm sessions live I had the same issue only the timer claimed they were 3 hours in the future. I was finally able to view 1 of them in the evening.
The little technical glitches shifted what I intended to watch live today. I’m sure glad these sessions will be available to watch after the conference.
These are the sessions I watched on day 2:
Canadian Immigration, Naturalization, and Citizenship with Kaye Prince Hollenberg
This was an overview of different records one might find for their immigrant ancestors to Canada. I knew that Canada was challenging to research, but this really opened my eyes. For instance, country level ship manifests prior to the early 1900s were destroyed. Some records are restricted as to who can access them or by when they can be released to the public. I’m kind of glad only relatives migrated to Canada and not ancestors.
Finding Your Pre-Revolution French Ancestors Webinar with Sean Daly
This was an overview of the types of records one might find for people before the French Revolution. I learned that Geneanet has a wiki where you can look up villages and what records they hold. If you are interested in the Huguenots who went to Canada, there’s a section on researching them.
FamilySearch Full-Text Search—Your Golden Path to Ancestral Discovery with David Ouimette
I am a big fan of FamilySearch’s full-text search. I’ve been using it ever since it was introduced in Labs. I’ve made many discoveries that would have been impossible to find otherwise. It was really interesting to see how they go about indexing records. And the search tips were really useful. Even though I’ve been using this for a couple of years, I realized that I wasn’t making use of all the different ways to search. I can’t wait to test them out.
More Recent but More Difficult? The Challenges of Family History for Japanese War Brides with Martinus E. Wolf
I have Portuguese relatives who married Japanese people in Hawaii. Although that’s a different situation, you never know when information might come in handy. This went over the challenges one faces researching Japanese War Brides. Unfortunately there was a technical glitch towards the end and the session ended while Wolf was speaking.
The Records of the Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam with Jarrett Ross
I do not have Jewish ancestors, but I do have Portuguese ancestors from the Azores Islands. I try to watch webinars on the Portuguese for historical background. This presentation was engrossing. I knew that during the Portuguese Inquisition that Jewish people were forced to convert to Catholicism. I did not know that in the 16th and 17th century some of them left Portugal and set up a Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. If your Portuguese Jewish ancestors ended up in Amsterdam, they have amazing records (the majority were written in Portuguese).
Unveiling Hidden Branches: A Genetic Study of George Washington’s Extended Family Tree with Sherman McRae
This was a presentation on how DNA is being used to identify the descendants of George Washington. McRae used the story of the Mitchel family and how genetic genealogy proved a connection to Washington. If you interested in case studies on how DNA solves family mysteries, you’ll enjoy this.
My Relatives at RootsTech grew a little bit overnight. I now have 621 relatives. No responses from my cousin matches yet, but hope springs eternal. I have started doing some research to see if I can confirm some matches.
This ends my Day 2 roundup. One more day to go and then a bunch of catch up as I have watched only about half the sessions that I have on my schedule.
Are you attending RootsTech? What’s your favorite presentation so far?
I also watched Kaye’s talk and was impressed with the range of resources. I’ll be looking out for the readmission of Britons records. They seem very useful.