Church record research is a must for any genealogist. Many of our archives have church records available to researchers. There are also independent church archives for specific religions or denominations that can help you discover your ancestor. Learn from a seasoned genealogist and archivist how to find church records in archives.

Learn the 10 top tips and tricks for deciphering the old German script! With tips on how to easily recognize certain letters, how to tell tricky letters apart, abbreviations, spelling variations, names, and more, you’ll be amazed at what you can do after only an hour of learning!

Prior to the 20th century, the vast majority of Irish people lived in rural areas, leasing land and property from the landowners who owned large estates, some of which were thousands of acres in size. These estates, often managed by land agents, generated large amounts of records, a number of which are particularly useful for expanding the knowledge of your ancestors. If you have exhausted the civil registration and church records, these records could be very useful in providing further information about earlier generations who lived on an estate and where exactly they lived through records such as rentals, leases and estate maps. Other valuable documents within estate records include military muster rolls, correspondence, land agent notebooks, wage books, account books and emigration records, all of which have the potential to provide information about your ancestors. Following the Great Famine, many landlords fell into financial difficulty and the government established the Encumbered Estates Court which allowed for the sale of their estates. The records generated include information about tenants and their leases that often contain really valuable information to expand your family tree.

In this lecture, Daniel will recount how MyHeritage was able to utilize a few surviving clues, MyHeritage’s research tools, and some logical deduction to reunite a pair of sisters who hadn’t known of each other’s existence for 70 years due to the tragic events of World War II and the Holocaust.

The most important path an ancestor blazed along the way from his place of birth to where we first find him is usually not a trail that cartographers have conveniently charted for us. Successful researchers learn to recognize and analyze the elements of an ancestor’s life and times, as well as people, that serve as pointers to his path. This session examines the nature and causes of stalemates in our research; ten common traps and ways to avoid them; and innovative methodologies for working smarter, not harder!

Divorce in Queensland Australia was very difficult to obtain. Some couples then just lived together and some underwent a bigamous marriage. What were the penalties? The records? Follow these ten bigamy case studies.

As with its predecessor webinars, which all focus on 50 “Hot off the Press” and “Overlooked” genealogically relevant websites from around the world, we’ll continue to explore new or recently stumbled across online resources genealogists WILL want to check out. Some of these weren’t even developed with genealogists in mind. With the explosion of online content from individuals, societies, and repositories from many diverse perspectives, it can be overwhelming to identify what websites are genealogically leverageable and which may just bust your “brick wall.” This webinar will help you focus on these off-the-beaten-track online platforms where many “names are named,” hopefully including those of your ancestors.

Thomas Terrell was a lawyer born in Louisa County, Virginia in 1761. His plantation in Greene County, Georgia and the people he enslaved there have connections to a Civil War battlefield, the University of Georgia, Wells Fargo, a United States Congressman, and northern enslavers from Connecticut and New Jersey. Thomas’ death in 1822 created the only comprehensive list of his enslaved population, requiring the use of unconventional sources to gather more information about them. Many were separated due to devastating slave sales, but 200 years later, their descendants have been reunited by DNA testing.

What will happen to your family stories when you turn the corner from being a researcher to being an ancestor? Will the children and youth in your family love genealogy like you do? Will they help keep your family stories alive? Learn about 5 ways you can use artificial intelligence to get children and youth involved in family history: 1) MyHeritage AI Time Machine 2) BillionGraves AI Gravestone Transcriptions 3) AI-Generated Family Stories with Storied 4) Canva’s AI Storybook Illustrations 5) MyHeritage AI DeepStory Photos. Do the math: 5 ways to use AI + family History = children & youth having fun!

Have you ever wondered how a child, whose parents were married on 10 April 1603, could be baptized on 13 March 1603 and yet that child was born after his parents married? Or how someone who died 11 January 1740 had made a will on 28 December 1740? Understanding the complexities and quirks of the Julian and Gregorian Calendars will shed light on these things, and more. This talk will also delve into such things as Regnal Years, Dating by Saints Days, Quaker Dates, The Hebrew Calendar and French Republican Calendar. While researching your family history you might come across any of these forms of dates, and having watched this presentation you will be able to understand them and perhaps clear up a family mystery like the examples above.

We all accumulate family data and perhaps organize it into pedigree charts and family group sheets. By looking at the data differently and giving it a new “twist,” we can see patterns and holes emerge. Lineage applications may point out weaknesses in our proof of descent from a certain ancestor. By writing the family narrative, whether for a book or a short article for a newsletter, new questions requiring further research are made evident. Even formulating a query for an Internet list will cause us to take a new look at our data. By sifting through old data collected years ago with our more mature genealogical eyes we can see things and relationships we would not have recognized earlier. Placing our ancestors in history through timelines can point out reasons why the records are in the jurisdictions they are found and give suggestions on where to look further. Using land platting techniques will point out relationships previously hidden from the casual observer. Many ideas are presented to help the attendee think about how the data they have already accumulated may give the next clue to continued successful results. This class is presented live at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City as part of the Joy Reisinger Memorial Lecture Series and is being broadcasted by Legacy Family Tree Webinars.

This case study demonstrates reasonably exhaustive and whole-family research linking three generations of the Burkhart family. Successive generations lived in Maryland, Ohio, and Missouri. Missing or unavailable church, vital, and census records veil relationships. This story begins in eighteenth century Maryland and ends in the late nineteenth century in Missouri. Through the years, probate, court, and land records connect people to their families of origin. This class is presented live at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City as part of the Joy Reisinger Memorial Lecture Series and is being broadcasted by Legacy Family Tree Webinars.