Researching in a native country is hard. Researching in Germany? Even harder. When every family in town shares a surname and all the sons are Johann Christoph or Gerhard, and all the daughters are Maria or Margarethe, how do we distinguish among them? What are the tools we can use to figure out which Johann Christoph is mine?

The new profile page on MyHeritage serves as a one-stop hub for researching and enriching your information on any given individual in your family tree. Join Uri Gonen, SVP of Product at MyHeritage, for a detailed tour of the recently improved useful features on the profile page. Learn how to use the page to edit details, make new discoveries and extract them directly to your tree with Hints, check consistency and correct errors, and much more.

Did you know FamilySearch has a wealth of Quebec records that are not widely-known? These records have no search index so you would not be able to access them using the Search Records functionality and entering an ancestor’s name. FamilySearch has images of non-indexed Quebec non-Catholic parish registers from 1763 to 1967; images of Quebec non-indexed Catholic and non-Catholic church records from 1642 to 1902; images of Quebec guardianships from 1639 to 1930; images of Quebec notarial records from 1800 to 1920; plus many more hidden Quebec records. This session will show you step-by-step how to access these Quebec records on FamilySearch.

Why is what happened in Augsburg on September 25, 1555 one of the most important historical events in German history and of utmost importance to researchers? And why do we need to know about the French emperor Napoleon? Why does it make such a big difference if a birth took place in 1874 or 1876? Find out in this presentation why knowing the most important events in German history can be helpful for your research.

Is it logical that a woman born in 1752 gave birth to a son in 1848? Do I have enough evidence to conclude that Johan Kannon of Trondheim, Norway, was the same person as John Connell from Cut-and-Shoot, Texas? Why do I share 300 cM of DNA with three people I’ve never heard of? Genealogists make hundreds of decisions everyday based on thousands of pieces of information harvested from various sources. We automatically, and often unconsciously, use common sense, logic, and even intuition, to identify relevant evidence, problem-solve, and answer complex questions. Learning to harness the power of logic, syllogism, and our own “Spidey-senses,” can help scale brick-walls, solve DNA mysteries, and organize mountains of information. This talk focuses on how to incorporate logic, common sense, and critical thinking in a more deliberate way to create hypotheses, test theories, and support conclusions. Johnson will share exercises that can bulk up logic and critical thought muscles, as well as practical tips on how to apply common sense and sensibility to your family history research and writing.

Using several families that were enslaved on the same plantation as case studies, this presentation will demonstrate research that meets the Genealogical Proof Standard. Examples of reasonably exhaustive research, evidence analysis, correlation, and resolving conflicts will be presented. 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.

Genealogical research often presents conflicting information across records. This presentation will focus on four practical strategies for effectively resolving such conflicts. Using two case studies as examples, attendees will learn to identify conflicting information, search for additional records, assess the reliability of each source, and correlate information from various sources. The importance of documenting the rationale for conflict resolution will also be emphasized. 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.

The standards are not just for measuring our abilities, they are working tools to help us advance our research opportunities. This lecture will use case study examples to show how Standard 40, Evidence Mining, and Standards 12, 60, 64, 73, and 74 relating to context lead to more effective research methodology and success in our research goals. 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.