← The Genealogy Guys Podcast & Genealogy Connection
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Welcome to episode 433 of the Genealogy Guys Podcast, the longest running genealogy podcast on the planet. I'm your host Drew Smith, and together with co host George G. Morgan, we cover news, tips and solutions for the genealogist community. And in this episode we bring you the Latest news from MyHeritage. We share listener email with updates about research into Blaise Farnie of France and into the brick wall about the Reed family of Cayuga County, New York. We respond to other questions about immigration and naturalization records and the use of AI tools to assist with genealogical research. And we cover more about RootsTech and the ability to link to other RootsTech viewers and attendees. The Genealogy Guys Podcast is sponsored by MyHeritage and Roots Magic. And now on with the show. Welcome to another episode of the Genealogy Guys Podcast. I am joined by my co host, George G. Morgan. George, how you doing today?
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I'm doing great. Hello everyone. It's nice to have you with us.
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And so we've got a little bit of listener email, but a little bit of news. We got a lot of listener email and we're going to get to all that. We're going to start with a couple of items from MyHeritage. George, why don't you start the first one there and we'll take it from there.
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Sure. Well, as a regular listener to the podcast, you know that myheritage keeps adding things like it's going out of style. And in January they added 1.2 billion historical records. That's billion. So just to give you an idea of some of the things that are included here, and this isn't all the all of the list, but you can go to their blog and read the full announcement. But here, for instance, in there's an index of historical, national, regional and local newspapers, periodicals and gazette from France with images. And they have added 5329000 records for a total of, catch this, 57,650,000 records. There is an index of marriage and divorce certificate records from Israel dating from 1919. With the images OldNews.com which is part of MyHeritage experience, they have added an index of historical, national, regional and local newspapers and gazettes from Spain, as well as images. If you're doing Swedish research, you'll be thrilled to know that the indexes for the 1880 and 1890 census records from Sweden have been added with images. This is tremendous. And so the indexes are what you want to go after in England, Essex Parish, Marriages and bands. Drew, I know You've got some connections with the Mild May family and the body.
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Well, definitely. I've already looked. Yet not so much about the body family. But the Mild Mays were very involved in Essex and they are. They were descendant. They were. Sorry, they were ancestors of the late Queen Mother. She was descended from the Mild Maze. So, yeah, that's kind of. That'll be fun to kind of explore the Mildmay family in.
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And we still didn't get an invitation to tea.
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Yeah, that may be a thing of the past. But anyway.
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But these records for Essex date from 1535 to 1940. And there are 3.6 million records there. Old news again, an index of names, events and stories found in newspapers from United Kingdom. And they've added 302,000 more records for a total of just over 6 million records. Just amazing stuff. They're adding. They also added an. An index of United Kingdom newspapers that include an index of historical, local, regional and national British newspapers, periodicals and gazettes, including advanced OCR images of articles going back to 1665. With the images there.
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Nice.
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That's tremendous. I'll be digging in there, you can be sure. And here's an important collection. The 1885 New Jersey State census has just been added and that's 1.1 million records. And that dates back to the year seven. Excuse me, 1885 with the images. Michigan deaths from 1867 to 1947. There's a huge collection there. Old news again, from Ohio, Indiana and michigan on oldnews.com with the images. I'm telling you, as a MyHeritage member, I also have arranged to get oldnews.com and they send me an email about once a week with hints and connections to my family tree at MyHeritage. And this morning I was working on another one of those. I keep finding obituaries and announcements and news stories. It's just tremendous. An index of historical, national, regional and local newspapers, periodicals and gazettes from the US 2,526,000 new records were added, for a total of. Catch this. 78,975,000 records. This is huge. If you're doing newspaper research, you need to be working on that. And then an index of records extracted from obituaries published in the U.S. they've added another 247,000 records there. They just keep on churning with these. True.
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Yeah. The other thing that MyHeritage is known for, in addition to records is DNA. And of course, George and I think both tested with them as well. And I do get matches there. But the thing that, that all the companies, the major companies, so we're talking myheritage as well as ancestry and, and 23andMe and some others, is the ethnicity estimates. And I again, I want to be very clear about ethnicity estimates. Again, they are estimates. They may be correct, they may represent your populations, your ancestral populations, they may have errors in them. And that's why there's constant change by companies like MyHeritage to improve them. And they improve them in mainly two ways. They try to acquire more data to base the estimates on. So as they find people who have tested or they have populations that they arrange for testing for people in different parts of the world. So they can assign, you know, for their models and they also tweak their algorithms to kind of do a better job of doing ethnicity estimates. So this is something we were given info at the beginning of February. I'm going to share bits of it. This is the long awaited and highly anticipated release of ethnicity estimates version 2.5. And compared to the previous model, which wasn't Even exactly version 1, it was version 0.95. This nearly doubles the number of ethnicities that are identified by MyHeritage from 42 to 79. So yeah, there is almost 80 different ethnicities identified. They've been working on this since last year. They didn't like what they were doing last year. They didn't give them the results they wanted, particularly based on feedback. So they kept finding, they kept playing with it, went back and so they feel that this is a better algorithm and they released it to lots of people surveyed them, better feedback and so they're getting better results. So this is, as I said, announced at the beginning of February of 2025, they've released Ethnicity Estimate version 2.5 and the new DNA users will receive it from the first day, the existing DNA users will, who had previously had the older version, what they call 0.95. People can opt in. It's not automatic. So if you want to go out there and see version 2.5 and you can switch back and forth for those of you who are with the older version. So you know, but it's free. If you've tested with your DNA with MyHeritage, it is a free feature. And just to give you some idea, for example, because they have done this being specific work over the last two years with their science team, for example, if you had previously had a Scandinavian ethnicity, now it's going to give you split out Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. So it's not Just you know, one big, one big ethnic group but it's more detailed. 24 percentage based European ethnicities. Some of them are new such as Armenian. And as myheritage says, you are not going to find other tests that specify Armenian. So if that's something you're interested in, you may want to do your DNA test with myheritage. And this one is certainly for those of you who have Jewish ancestry or believe you have Jewish ancestry. They now distinguish between 15 different Jewish ethnicities and that is more than anybody else on it. Now I want to share, George, if you don't mind, I want to share my own results with myheritage just to give you all some ideas there. Again, most of my ethnicity or a lot of it is from Ireland and also Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. So I have almost 40%. The most of the Irish is from my father and I have some the England and, and so forth from my mother. Another 23% probably also from my mother is Scottish and Welsh. But that's when and 7.8% English. So things that are very specifically English or Scottish and Welsh, they have that as well as smaller percentages for Breton and Dutch and Germanic. But I just want to share that again with the Jewish ancestry I have, which I know should add up to about approximately 20, I would say 23%. I think my father gave me more from his father who was 100% Irish than he did from his mother who was 100% Jewish, Ashkenazi Jewish. So I expected to see numbers around 22, 23% Jewish. And in fact I do see 12% Ashkenazi Jewish from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Czechia. Mine I expected to be in Poland and 9.3% Ashkenazi Jewish from the USSR which that name suggests to you that maybe my some of my ancestors were from neighboring parts of Poland, such as Belarus and other countries that were part of the USSR at that time. So it seems to be very accurate for that for me. And again it would be interesting if you have 100% Jewish ancestry to take a look at your numbers now and see do they correspond to what you know about your own family. But even if you don't have Jewish, take a look at it either, you know, by testing with myheritage, if you'd previously tested, you can opt in to look at these if you don't like them for any reason, you can go back to the originals or you can, you, you can stay with the new stuff. And you know, if you did, if you're testing now you will get the new versions. So be aware of that. So that is those of us who find those things interesting and very often useful. Some people in the past have pooh, poohed ethnicity estimates. They have thought they, because they can be wrong, that they aren't worth looking at. But yes, they can often be right. And again, nothing I'm seeing here worries me too much. There's a lot of it seems to go with my traditional research and there are people such as adoptees and others that this is a great way to determine maybe who their biological parents were by their ethnic backgrounds. So be aware of that, that this is very useful as a tool. So again, congratulations to myheritage on releasing their new ethnicity estimate. But I'm going to say this, and this is true of all the companies, George. They're all going to improve them. They're all going to change them. They're all continuing to do the research by adding more data, tweaking their algorithms, trying to make them more reliable. And again, it's an estimate. It may not be correct, but it's probably more likely correct than not. And it's going to vary from person to person. I will know there are going to be people that said this is exactly the same as my traditional research, and there will be some people that said this doesn't work for me. This doesn't seem to represent my, my traditional research. There will always be a number of folks that will have that result. So any, any comments on that, George? Because we're going to be actually going to our commercial break now with myheritage, but any anything further at this point, George, before we get into our break and then our listener email?
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I don't think so. That's. And that's a great recap.
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All right, so again we going to take our break, go to our commercial, and then we will return with some listener email over the past month or so. And so stay with us. The best way to do successful genealogical research is to have a research plan. But part of that plan may be to acquire new skills in using methodologies, records, or locations that you're currently unfamiliar with. If that's the case, it makes sense to acquire education. And one great way to do that is to subscribe to Legacy Family Tree Webinars, which hosts over 2,300 recorded webinars presented by over 450 speakers. With over 9,000 pages of related handout material, you're bound to find topics that you can put to use in your research, no matter where it takes you to learn more go to familytreewebinars.com how can you be more organized with the genealogical research you've already done? One of the best ways is to have reliable genealogy software that you can use on your own desktop or laptop computer, whether you're a Windows user or a Mac OS user. And the software I've counted on for more than 20 years is RootsMagic. RootsMagic 10 adds such features as letting you keep track of your DNA matches to documenting your family's health issues and saving the searches you've done. Personally, I like the fact that I can easily create a free website with my family on it that I can share with relatives so they can see the progress I've made so far. And if you aren't already a RootsMagic user, why not download and install the free version RootsMagic Essentials? You can see what you've been missing by going to rootsmagic.com welcome back. You're listening to the Genealogy Guys podcast. And so we're going to get into our listener email, starting with Tom, who has sent us a number of questions, but I'm going to focus on just one of them in this episode. Tom is obviously interested in artificial intelligence and how it applies to genealogy. One of his first emails to us said AI is becoming more prevalent in researching, at least for me. I have found many good responses to questions about historical locations during my research of the crew of the Trigger that's a submarine. In another of his questions he mentioned that was a submarine during World War II. So far I've used ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude AI, all of which have given me good responses. I usually check with the local library or historical society for accuracy. Those that have responded come up with much the same information. For your listeners out there, I would encourage them to use any of these artificial intelligence services. I should also add that I footnote any entries that are AI generated because others will be reading my research. But Tom's question that came along actually just within the last week is this. He says, got any recommended reference materials? Not YouTube for using AI in genealogy historical research? I use perplexity AI extensively in adding, quote, color commentary, unquote historical events or locations in my genealogy research, and it's been pretty spot on. Perplexity gives its reference sources too, which are not just Wikipedia. So Tom's asking about reference material for using AI for genealogy. Tom, the issue here, of course, is that you're not going to find much in the way of published material because this is such a brand new topic There won't be probably books that are focused on this, although they may be coming out and I'm not aware of all of them just yet. I am aware that there are people that blog about this for genealogy. There are people that, as you've already mentioned, YouTube, and there are people who do presentations about this. You are bound to find, if you were to go to, let's say, the Legacy Family Tree webinars, which are going to be all about genealogies, and they have over, you know, 2,000 webinars there, well over 400 speakers. You're going to find, if you search for artificial intelligence, you're going to find a number of webinars that are specifically about that. You will also, and this is something I encourage you to do, is make a list of the people who are coming up again and again to do presentations. These are the people that have devoting their time to learning as much about AI as possible. They have a lot more time than I do. Although I plan to focus on the very basics of these tools, such as Perplexity. You mentioned that it's a great search engine. Yep, because it does, unlike some of the others, it does cited sources. But to basically, again answer your question, you're not going to find a lot of reference material that isn't already in the form of either blogs or YouTube videos that you mention. But your best bet is probably to spend a little time in these webinars. Now, they also might cite some sources, but this isn't. This is new stuff. This is still a very new stuff. There's even things still coming out, such as what are the guidelines? What are the ethical guidelines for making use? And I'll talk about more of that in the next few weeks, but just be aware of that. So if I learn anything@rootstech, Tom, I will certainly share it in a future episode. We will definitely have some. And I'll be interviewing some people for Genealogy Connection in the future who are experts in AI, so be aware of that. So, Tom, thanks for your AI comments. Thanks for your questions on that particular subject.
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Drew. Yeah, I'd like to go back just a moment to myheritage to the ethnicity estimate.
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Okay.
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I did initially have some problems with the graphic of the map and the areas that were highlighted for ethnicity using Google Chrome. And I just logged into Safari and tried it again and it works just fine. So if you experience any difficulties, you might want to take a look at those.
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Yeah, let me mention that for just a minute, George. I ran into something similar with weather maps, where you have things that lay on top. And I was using Chrome and I was trying to look at weather maps for this area and I was not getting the underlying layer, but I could switch to a different browser and I did so sometimes depending on the settings. And I think I figured out there were some settings in Chrome. George, I'll have to look into to see what did I do to make it happen to fix it.
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Thank you, but.
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You're welcome. All right, now I think you're going to talk to us about immigration and maybe and naturalization type stuff.
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I am. I am.
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All right.
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First of all, I have. I've got two emails here. One of them, the first one is from Pam and she says, first of all, I listened to your recent interview of Brian Reinhart. I followed up with a request for help in locating records on a Civil War vet. The records came quickly and I'm sure that the cost was less than I'd have paid to the National Archives and Records Administration's National Personnel Records Center. But thanks for having him on the show. On a slightly related matter, I'm looking for immigration records for a couple who arrived around 1893 and then were living in Kent County, Michigan in 1910. And what was when papers is written in the naturalization column and then in 1920 when it says he is naturalized. This makes me think the application process was underway in 1910, completed by 1920, but I can't find them in the index on Ancestry or FamilySearch. Is there another place I should be looking? Is there a service similar to what Brian offers that can find immigration records at nara? I think I read that they haven't all been digitized yet. Thanks for your help. Well, first of all, let me. Let me say that the couple who arrived in 1890 theory or thereabouts, he would have been eligible to naturalize after five years here. So in the late 1890s. But you are correct, when you're looking at the 1910 census and it shows the word papers in the naturalization column, that means that the application has been started and so that's now. And that could take some time, but certainly within a decade in 1920, it would have been naturalized by then. And depending on the laws that were in place at the time, his wife may have had to have naturalized separately or she may have naturalized with her husband in his application. A great place to learn all about that is a book called they Became Americans by Loretto D. Zooks S Z U C S. That's pretty much the guidebook that I always use to go back to see what laws were in effect at the time, what the requirements were at the time and the details concerning the types of records that were created. I will tell you there is another place to look and there is a fellow by the name of Steve Morse. And Steve is just a fantastic statistician and genealogist and he's put together one step. Web pages for finding immigration records, census records, vital records and for dealing with calendars, maps and so forth. Some of the tools he uses fetch data from other websites but do so in more versatile ways and maybe the search tools provided on those websites. And so the website is HTTPs steves t e v e morse m o R-S-E.org and you'll find all the different categories here. Now what I would suggest for you Pam is to is to go to that site and see what you could you can find there. That's an important direction to take and so you may have more success there. In the meantime, I suggest you go to FamilySearch and at FamilySearch click on the item in the tab at the top says Search and the dropdown menu will show Research Wiki. Click on that, that'll bring up a page that has a map of the world and click on the United States there. And then in the search box at the top you can type Naturalization and Citizenship. Excuse me, let me back up. Type Immigration and under the page that you get there you'll see Naturalization and Citizenship. You'll see online resources for both United States and Canadian immigration and different countries links. There's an area called Naturalization and Citizenship and it's an index to all kinds of different countries. England, Barbados, France, Indonesia, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Scotland, Wales and Australia. So that's, that's one place to go. But you can certainly learn more about naturalization and citizenship records there. The next email I have here is from Tom and he says hi guys. I've had no luck finding my ancestors in passenger lists. I know they came over in 17 in 1879 and 1880 time period from Northern Ireland, but not sure if they came to Canada or the U.S. is it worthwhile to search the list periodically to see if additional records have been added or are all known records already out there and index my go to places for searching are ancestry and family search and thanks and I'm looking forward to seeing Drew at Rootstech. So Tom, you've asked a really great question. In the last one I gave a reference to the Familysearch wiki and talked about how to go after that if you were looking for Canadian citizenship records, you're going to find the library and archives canada@www.lac.gc ca and don't worry, I'll put these in the show notes. If you, if you go there, the you'll find two different groups of inbound Canadian passenger list arrivals and the earliest one, however look for it is 1865 to 1922. You might look in there and, and check that out. You, you also may want to look at the sources at Ancestry, Myheritage and family search for border crossings from Canada to the U.S. and you might locate something there that, that might give you information about when they might have moved across the border, if indeed they did. And that might give you a link back to where they where they were when they made that move. So those are all good resources for you, Drew.
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Yeah. So one of the stories that we have been following on the podcast for some time now involves our friend Jean Daniel from Metz, France, who has been listening to us and asking about his four times grandfather, Blaise Farney. That's F A R N Y. So yeah, we've heard from him again at the end of last year and I just wanted to update everybody on what Jean Daniel has learned and he says, I wanted to share some news about my research. About a year ago I shared with you a brick wall in my genealogy. My four times grandfather, Blaise Farney went to the US in 1882. In 1887 he was born in Dahlarin, France. That's D O L L E R e N. In 1851 he died in Tavi, France. T a V E Y. If I'm pronouncing that correct, I apologize if I'm not. In 1899, he left his village in 1882, leaving behind a wife he had married in 1875 and three kids. It seems quite mysterious to me, but so far I have no explanation. I got some new elements from an American friend I met during a medical congress in Boulder in September of 2024. During a dinner we discussed about hobbies and we came to speak about genealogy. It appears that she's working on her family tree, which has some roots in France on her husband's side. So once returned home, we began to help each other in our own country and with our own tools and knowledge. She found an article of a French journal called the Galinagi and I know I'm mispronouncing that you're so good at French. Well, I'm a little out of practice. And then G a L L I G N A G N I and again, I know that one is, you know, not close to the original messenger in which a certain Blaze Farney arrived on October 16, 1894 at Le Havre on a ship called Britannia. So the B R E T A G N E that could be him. It's an interesting information given the fact that we cannot find yet the passenger lists online in France as the ones you have in New York. Some more digging to do on this side of the pond. Another information she found was in the 1890 New York City police census and before.
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People don't think about these, these police censuses and school censuses and other things.
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Well, New York City is interesting as to what it did. And because we've lost the New York City, we've lost the federal census for the vast majority of people in the US from 1890 because of what happened to the records, this is extraordinarily valuable for the police census. And by the way, I think I just saw an item that said that the entire New York City police census for 1890 has been digitized. Now, this does not mean it's been indexed or transcribed or whatever. Not all of it. Some of it, yes. Be aware of that. That's something that you can expect will happen in the future, but it has been digitized. Well, anyway, that was a hint you gave me in the podcast. She went to a family search center to access the image and a certain Blaise Fernee, F E R N A Y is registered, living at number 215 on 33rd Street. She told me that it was at that time a garment district where many immigrants were employed. So again, it could be him. Regarding the age noted on the list, I now know that he was probably in the US until 1894 and he died in 1899 in France. I may have to explore his in quotation marks fan club unquote, as you often suggest in your podcast to continue my search. If you have any other suggestions, I would be happy to listen to them. I treated myself for Christmas with an ancestry account which should improve my capacity to find things in addition to the accounts I already have with Jeanne, Annette and Philae. Thanks guys for your work and podcasts which I listen each time with great pleasure. Take care. Happy 2025 New Year. Thank you, John. Danielle, we appreciate always the updates on your Farney research and it is just to see how that you know, because again, when we think about ancestors who may have traveled and not lived very only a few years in another country and then returned home that's fascinating stuff, and it's not easy work, as you said. Yes, the fan club, for those of our listeners who are not entirely clear on that term, this is the people that surround our ancestors, associated with them. Now, I include the family, all members of the family, including in laws and step relatives and so forth. But this can include all kinds of friends and acquaintances, people that they were interacting with, that whether commercially, whether they were witnesses on records, whether they were informants on records, all this thing, and neighbors, people that did live near them. Because if we can't do much more research on our actual ancestors or the relatives that we're trying to research, we may be able to do successful research on their fan club and that may lead us to the records we need. And so that's again, John Daniel yes, that is certainly something worth looking into. And now that you've got an item from the 1890 New York City Police Census that's really interesting for a Blaise Fernee that suggests something there. So good luck on your research. Keep us posted, everybody. Our listeners love this stuff and, and we want to hear it, too, whatever success you make, because people can model their research on what you have done. Part of which, by the way, before we move on, George, I would just want to say one of the things that genealogists need to learn, need to do is to collaborate. This is not a hobby where you should just be by yourself and never talk to another genealogist, never talk to a librarian, an archivist, anyone else, because other people, the adding their brains to your brain is a plus here. And they may have experiences, they may have good suggestions and you can help them and they can help you.
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George, don't overlook the fact that let's say you're online someplace and you find, let's say a family tree is a good example, and you see that it was submitted to whatever site, let's say MyHeritage or FamilySearch, you see the email of the person or contact information, don't be afraid to reach out. If you see something in there that looks like it might be a really good fact that might fit into your research, don't be afraid to click on on the link to send them a message and ask them specifically about the the thing you're interested in and maybe where they found that, what sources they might have for that, so that you can personally check those and go on from there.
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Right.
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Drew, just one more thing about the fan club.
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Yep.
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Here's an example. If you're doing research and I've used this any number of times over all these years is on a census record. Look for the people who lived on either side of your ancestor and look for several residents on above and several below. And then if you've lost your ancestor, then the next the right thing to do is to make sure in the next subsequent census that you're looking in the right place. Find them again. So do a search for those people, those people's names in the subsequent census, and you may very well be able to find that exact same or similar configuration of people. And the people who were in your that you're searching for may have moved elsewhere.
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Right, let's talk okay, so let's talk for now about RootsTech, because I didn't end the news segment at the beginning.
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I've got.
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Oh, you got one more.
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I have one more.
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Oh, I'm sorry, I missed that off my list. Go ahead, George.
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Okay, we have an email from Ann who is writing about Cayuga County, New York. Oh, and she says, I'm writing with in regard to podcast 432 and the query about Calvin and Rhoda. R H O D A read R E E D the suggestion about contacting the county historian is a very good one. From my own research in upstate New York, I've learned that county and township boundaries changed over time, sometimes frequently. So the current Cayuga county boundaries might not be the same as those in the first half of the 1800s. The historian can help with that and with other research suggestions. I also have have some other suggestions for you. I'm fairly certain that the Internet archive has posted copies of histories about most of the upstate and central New York counties available. Most were written in the mid to late 1800s, and many of them include bio sketches of prominent families. I found the histories for Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties to be very useful in my own research. Definitely worth taking a look. In addition, it is possible that Calvin Reed or some of his relatives were part of the New York State Militia during the War of 1812. There are records of the militia units and their payments available on ancestry and probably in other places too. Finally, the New York State Historical Newspaper site has a lot of old newspapers and may be helpful. The current county seat for Cayuga county is Auburn, New York. You may be familiar with the Auburn Theological College, which was founded in the early 1800s and I believe was very involved in the abolitionist movement. Some of the newspapers from Auburn in the 1830s and 40s are available on the site and might have obituaries or other articles about Reed relatives from the way that this query was framed and it sounded as if the family spent a significant amount of time in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at least until 1838. Since the university of Michigan is located in Ann Arbor, its library may have an extensive local history collection and could also be a source of info. Perhaps Calvin's year of death and burial place, since Rhoda is described as a widow when she and her daughters moved to Iowa. As always, enjoy the podcast and the research tips and queries you mentioned the Ann Arbor, Michigan the University of Michigan and their library collection don't overlook the the the county and their library system. Their main library may have a genealogical collection that may have indexed items, or it may have vertical files that include information. And maybe, just maybe, you'll get lucky and find Calvin and Rhoda. Thanks, Drew.
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Yep. So yeah, As I said, FamilySearch, the news out of there is mostly going to be about RootsTech. Because RootsTech at the time of recording, this is barely just a week away, a little bit over a week away. And I'm going to be heading out in about a week. But let's talk about it in general because first of all, there's things you can do. Even if you don't go to Salt Lake City in the in a week and a half, there are things you can do at home. Number one, you can see RootsTech. You can register for it for free. That's important because you there's a lot of presentations that are going to be have been recorded and submitted to RootsTech by all kinds of speakers who for whatever reason could not go physically to RootsTech. And so there's going to be a bunch of those and they are going to be released during the week of RootsTech. So you want to go to RootsTech and take a look. You can set up a schedule as to when you want to watch things, but they will be there for a while. So this isn't just stuff if you're going to miss if you don't see it now. There's also going to be some keynotes and some very special programs that will be live streamed. And again you would. If you want to see those live, you can make sure to put those in your schedule.
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A
George Roostech even has its own theme song this year.
- [46:37]
B
Yeah, it has a theme song. We're not going to sing it or hum it or anything, don't worry. But you can go look for it online. That rootstech, the Small Tree? No, it's not that. Yes, no. But that's worth looking into. So again, think about it seriously. Is making sure you're registered for it. That way you can watch things from home and real and do them later. Again, this is not something you'll necessarily have to do at Salt Lake City. Now are there things you'd have to do in Salt Lake City? Yes, if you go charisma. I'm giving three talks and I'm giving them at Rootstech. They are not going to be recorded. They will be in person. So for those of you who are planning to go, nothing wrong with that. It's a great city is, you know, please say hi to me either before or after the sessions or if you catch me in the exhibit hall. Speaking of the exhibit hall, I'm going to be doing some book signings. So if you do find yourself there, a book signing I assume for my probably generation by generation book. And it's going to be at the Genealogy bank booth. So look for me at the Genealogy bank booth. I have two scheduled times. I will be there and if you're interested, drop me a note. I'll let you know when those are. I'd have to look them up. I think one is right after my first talk on Thursday, which is at 8 o' clock in the morning. I think my first signing is right after that, probably for about 30 minutes. So there's you'll need to as I said, they're kind of short signing times. But come see me. You'll be able to order the book and probably get some a signature from me that you can stick in the book when you get it because I don't think they'll have the book and you know, you'll order it kind of virtually. So that's one thing is, you know, see me there for those kinds of things. Of course you may also see me. I'm going to go over earlier in the week, so probably either late Monday or late or Tuesday afternoon or all day Wednesday. We'll see. I'll be at the Family Search library working on stuff and seeing friends because I know many of them will be there. The other thing I want to mention, and this is going to involve making sure you have a FamilySearch account which is free. So make sure that if you haven't already done this, go to familysearch.org and if you haven't signed up for a free account, you can and you're going to probably want to put your tree out there up to a point make sure you have a part of the FamilySearch family tree. The reason you're going to want to do this is because what happens now, they've actually had it out there a few weeks and they're going to continue it usually about a month after RootsTech is, you're going to be able to go to RootsTech relatives or relatives at RootsTech, all the people who are signing up and who have a tree, they're going to use their computer power to figure out how you are connected to all of them. Now, this could be a lot of people. One of my friends just posted online that he is seeing 30,000 relatives on RootsTech relatives. That's by the way, @familysearch.org en as in English connect. I have just over 6,000. So. So of my 6,000 plus relatives, the closest I have is a third cousin twice removed and in fact this gentleman, his grandfather, his paternal grandfather I already had in my files. So these are correct, as are many of my other third cousins, as well as a number of my fourth cousins. I trust that the record, the research has been done that far back. Now I also have, of these 6,000 plus, I obviously have people who are much more distantly related in the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th or more cousins. Yeah, that's probably a little questionable. So I would say that's all right. That just gives you ideas of where to do research. The, the, the mistakes, if there are mistakes, could be on your side, it could be on their side. And I'm not saying it's some mistake you made, I'm just saying you were linked to someone that you really shouldn't be linked to. But the neat thing about doing RootsTech relatives or relatives at RootsTech, as I said, is collaboration. You can reach out to these people. Some will go to roots, some will be at home, but you can communicate with them if you have questions and say, oh, I see that, you know, we seem to be connected via this couple. Let's share information about them and let's see if we can verify this. So this is good stuff for finding those cousins. And again, start at the top, work your way down. It'll get more difficult as you work your way down, but that's all right. But there's so much to do, you know, as I said, you can do this from anywhere in the world. You can do the RootsTech relatives. You just have to have your free FamilySearch account. You have to have your tree connecting you back far enough so you can link to all these people. So that's fun, lots of fun stuff. I'm just looking forward to seeing friends that I only get to see about once a year. I'm looking forward to doing a little board game, card game playing in the late evenings. I'm looking forward to great restaurants and so it's gonna be great. George, any of your thoughts about RootsTech?
- [52:31]
A
Yeah, I'm gonna take you to the airport and pick you up.
- [52:34]
B
Well, I hope somebody will.
- [52:37]
A
And I'm staying here to hold down the whole the home front.
- [52:41]
B
Well, the cats will appreciate that. So, yeah, they're happier that way. So we will be doing quite a few after Rootstech. We will be doing episodes to talk about how things went, what we learned, and we hope you will join us for those too. And keep sending us email@genealogyguysmail.com we don't get to everything because we get enough email and sometimes we can't fit it in. But we do our best and we want to hear from you. So on that note, George, I would say to our listeners, please join us again for another episode in the future. Thanks for listening everybody and take care.
- [53:26]
A
Happy searching.