Great news! FamilyTreeDNA is now using the MyHeritage tree platform. You can easily transfer your existing FamilyTreeDNA tree, create a new tree, or link to your existing MyHeritage tree. Each option has benefits. A handy decision guide is included in the syllabus. This webinar provides step-by-step instructions on both platforms, plus a problem-solving section, aka, “things I wish I had known…sooner.” We close with a 10-point summary.

As researchers, family historians, compilers, bloggers, or writers of other ilk, genealogists face legal and ethical perils they often do not anticipate. This crash course offers practical guidance to enhance your skills and keep you safe as you explore history, reconstruct lives, and “write up” your findings. While the issues are serious—from the legal issue of copyright to the ethical issue of plagiarism—the lessons are taught with a light heart and humor.

Learn how to use Transkribus, ChatGPT and other AI tools to translate German church records, and other records, into English. Learn about cautions and practical uses.

What are reasonable testing goals for Y-DNA, and why do we want to take Y-DNA tests anyway? What can we discover when we test, and when we encourage our cousins to test? Where and how do we find those cousin? I’m “collecting” Y-DNA testers from each of my ancestral lines to reveal their history that has been forgotten to time – and to assure my recent genealogy is accurate. Who were my ancestors? Where did they come from? How are they related to other people, including ancient burials and notable people who lived more recently? I’m sharing several fun case studies from my own genealogy. Come join me on my journey as I discover that my ancestor is related to a burial along the old Roman Road in France, who lived there before the Romans, and what that means to me today. I’ll also share with you how I solved an adoption case within a generation with JUST Y-DNA, and how I then used autosomal DNA matches to augment and refine that information. In another case, we learned something VERY interesting!!! Oh, and I almost forgot, another of my ancestors appears to have been a retired Roman soldier in England. My Jewish friend provided that his ancestors settled in Spain and exactly when they migrated to Eastern Europe, and another tester discovered that he and a famous lineage match. Their ancestors are found in the baptismal records of the same church in England, but their common ancestor reaches back to the peoples buried beneath the Saxon tombstones outside. How did we Discover all of this??? Once you adopt Y-DNA testing, you’ll have fascinating success stories of your own too.

The Oregon Trail extended approximately 2,000 miles from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon from 1840 to 1869. More than 50,000 people traveled to Oregon and a great number died on the journey. This talk will cover resources for conducting research on the people and their lives along the trail.

Familiarity with church and civil jurisdictions helps us make better sense of records we find for our Mexican ancestors, helps us know where to look for records that pertain to a particular place and time, and helps us trace evolving jurisdictional borders through time. Knowing where and how to find historical and background information about different Mexican localities helps you dig deeper into the lives of your ancestors. Learn about essential reference tools and strategies that will help you identify and learn more about the localities in which your ancestors lived and worked.

The HathiTrust Digital Library has undergone some big design changes since Colleen’s 2020 webinar. Find out how to navigate these changes while taking a tour of more invaluable types of genealogical sources you can find there.

The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution has been collecting research material since its beginning in 1889. Not many people know that their national headquarters and award winning genealogical research library is located in Downtown Louisville Kentucky. Join us on a tour of the research facility and take a deep dive into the rare and expansive collection that awaits national researchers of all skill levels and timeline needs.

Oral genealogies celebrate ancestral connections in indigenous cultures across Asia-Pacific. As one paramount chief in Samoa declared, “The most important thing for children to understand is their family connections. The knowledge of history is their treasure—not gold and silver, but genealogy.” Learn about the significance and richness of oral genealogies and current efforts to preserve them in Asia and the Pacific.