Mike Mansfield, Director of Content Production at MyHeritage, will teach you everything you need to know about researching your Swedish ancestors on MyHeritage — from historical context to the many valuable collections MyHeritage offers to people researching their Swedish roots.

Every genealogist feels that digital filing is out of their control. It can be an overwhelming process to keep track of all of the documents, images, and files that end up on our computers and devices. How do we even start to tackle this virtual pile of filing? What tools and processes will work best for you? We will discuss all of this and how to maintain digital filing as we research.

If headstones could talk, they would have a lot of stories to tell. But they can’t, so BillionGraves is the next best thing. BillionGraves is the world’s largest GPS-linked cemetery data resource. As you take photos with the BillionGraves app on your phone, each gravestone is automatically marked with a GPS location. The data is then transcribed by volunteers, plotted on cemetery maps, and preserved on BillionGraves, FamilySearch, and MyHeritage websites for millions of families around the globe for generations to come.

The library holds the world’s largest collection of maps—over 5.2 million maps according to their website. This webinar will describe the collections most valuable for genealogical research. We are going to explore the online resources and how they can help our research. Exploring the phenomenal learning resources is also on the agenda. We will also talk about finding aids, research guides, reproduction capabilities, and alternative ways to access the map collections. Lastly, we will discuss the resources that are only available onsite, such as the cartographic library, cartographic exhibits, and other unique holdings.

Have you been researching for years and reached a brick wall? Have you just started and gathered all the easy information but aren’t sure where to go next? Discover new techniques and re-discover tried and true methods. Teri’s presentation takes a fresh look at research strategies that will get your research moving, whether you’ve been researching your family history for 30 years or 30 weeks.

Deed Records are one of the best records for researching family history, but their legal language can intimidate even seasoned researchers. In this session, Ms. Smith describes the various ways that land records can help our genealogical research not just on our ancestors, but also on the communities in which they lived. Land records can tie together multiple generations of a family and provide evidence for relationships. They can also shed light on the social history of a locale, which is important information to add context to the lives of our ancestors.

Many Swedes who immigrated to North America (United States and Canada) joined a Swedish American Church. While most of these congregations were Lutheran, there were also Swedish Covenant, Swedish Methodist, Swedish Baptist, Swedish Mission and other free churches. Many of these churches kept detailed records as they did in Sweden. These records are a wonderful source to discover where in Sweden the person came from and in some cases tracing internal migration within North America. This presentation will highlight the history of Swedish American churches, the various denominations and what types of records were kept and where you can find these records both online and offline. We will review a few records to show the immense detail that was kept by some of these churches.

Strategies and resources to document the earliest Jews in America 1654-1880. Learn how to navigate early American secular records and Jewish institutional materials to create a successful research plan. Land, military, languages used, and historical collections will be featured. A timeline will help identify when to look for Jewish synagogue, burial, or other Jewish community documentation, and when only government-generated records will fill the gap.

Ransomware is a form of malware (malicious software) that encrypts a victim’s files so they cannot be accessed. The attacker then demands that the victim pay a ransom in order to have access to their files restored. Maybe, you’ve heard about ransomware in the news and thought it was a business problem, but in truth over 75% of ransomware attacks are aimed at individuals and small businesses. Why, because you are easy targets. Learn more about ransomware and what you can do about before it strikes, and if you are attacked how you can recover.