On 16 May 1890, Arthur Bell bought a keg of beer from a saloon in Yorkville, Illinois. What happened next would forever change the fate of two families. This case study will demonstrate how to bring your family legends to life by adding historical, social, and cultural context. Numerous examples will help prove that researching your ancestors' friends, associates and neighbors (the FAN club) can reveal new clues and bring fresh points-of-view to old stories. Helpful and unique reference materials, including books and websites, will also be discussed.

Personal records and manuscripts about families which moved around, along with their neighbors are often elusive, but may hold hidden treasure for the persistent researcher. Discover the people with whom they worked, prayed, fought and married.

Our ancestral hometowns oftentimes house individuals with the same name. Whether you’re hunting for Elizabeth Warren in South Carolina or Hans Jensen in Norway, there are methods and techniques for flushing out the records and learning which prospective ancestor actually belongs in your tree.

How badly do you want to solve a research problem? How many hours and strategies do you consider reasonable? How wide a geographic swath do you consider doable? William Mills “just appeared” in Franklin County, Virginia, in 1816, signing a bond for his planned marriage. At no point in his life did he associate with any person of the surname Mills, except his wife and children. He died 1860–64, leaving no probate. Death registrations were mandatory, but none exists for him. Others have plugged him into an unconnected family by merging him with a totally different, same-named man. Triangulated Y-DNA tests by descendants of three separate sons place him in no Mills line anywhere on the globe. Instead, his Y-DNA is that of a totally different surname found widely across Virginia but not in the county where he emerged as a grown man. How can we break through this kind of brick wall?

Migration between Canada and the United States was far more complex than a one-way journey north or south. Families crossed the border repeatedly, motivated by opportunities, community, and survival. This webinar explores four lesser-known migration pathways that genealogists often overlook.We begin with the New England Planters, who settled in Nova Scotia after the Acadian expulsion, with some later returning to New England or moving elsewhere in the Maritimes. Next, we trace Black migration, from Loyalists and Underground Railroad refugees to 20th-century workers commuting daily between Windsor and Detroit. The session then turns to industrial labourers who worked seasonally in lumber, mining, fishing, or in factories, leaving behind valuable records in both countries. Finally, we examine Depression-era relocations, when Prairie families sought survival in the U.S. Midwest and Americans looked north to Canadian farmland. Throughout, case studies illustrate research strategies and highlight the records that capture these movements. Attendees will learn how to: recognize overlooked migration patterns across the border; identify the key records generated by each pathway; utilize maps, timelines, and the FAN methodology to trace family histories; correlate records across Canada and the U.S. to prove identity; overcome challenges such as surname variations, missing records, and changes in boundaries.

One of the best ways to sort DNA matches into paternal and maternal categories, is to test a close known relative (parent, half-sibling, aunt, uncle or first cousin) and identify shared matches and unshared matches, but what if that is not an option for you? No worries! The underlying inheritance pattern for autosomal DNA and the underlying technology used to test it means that even you can distinguish paternal from maternal relatives. Join us in this webinar to learn how.

Restoring old and/or damaged photos was out of reach for most of us, but not anymore. With A.I. advancements, it's easier than ever before to restore these priceless possessions. This presentation will show examples of photos with different problems and different solutions using a variety of tools, some free, some paid. Learn how to evaluate what tool to use on the photo and begin restoring!

Family pictures were originally portraits created in a studio by a professional photographer. Taken by professionals in their studios, the sessions were grand events! Imagine the excitement – spending the whole day getting dressed up for the one and only time in your life you were likely to have your picture taken. With the advent of the Kodak camera amateur photographers were able to record the family in any location. In these photographs we see how our ancestors lived. We see their friends and extended families over for a game or a picnic, the gang for a party, their homes inside and out. We might see them at work. They took pictures of prized possessions and events in their lives. There was an explosion in the number of family pictures recording every occasion. I have a collection of antique cameras owned by my ancestors. The very ones they held as they captured the moments in their lives. I also inherited the negative collection from my mother. To be useful in genealogy we need to be able to identify the people and places in the images and fix a date to them. The process of scanning them and then trying to identify who was in them is helped in part by being able to identify which camera was used. Cameras and film became available at a fixed date and later fell out of common usage. Each camera used either a different type of film or created an image of different ratios on the film. We will look at sorting the images by these different film stock and size ratios using this information to add to the knowledge we have about each photograph. Each piece of information we gather about the image helps us to identify the subject. The most important clue is to be able to fix the date that the photo was taken. This helps us narrow who the subject might be. No single clue can provide a date, but the sum of the evidence provides a good estimate. Clothing, hair styles, poses locations and backgrounds help us in our quest to identify the people and places. I was lucky to inherit the family negative collection. If people do not write on the beck of photographs, they definitely don’t identify who is captured on the negative and what was the date as well as the occasion. The process is like a great detective mystery. We just need to learn how to read the clues and follow them! Our family story is made richer with the addition of photographs. Names become individuals we can recognize and relate to.

This webinar explores how modern families can reconnect across generations by building a shared digital archive of memories without chaos. Learn how to clean up scattered photo collections across phones, computers, and cloud services and create a private, organized family space where everyone can contribute safely and effortlessly. Perfect for families looking to preserve their legacy together without sacrificing time, control, or privacy.

African American research can be especially challenging for many reasons. This class will demonstrate sound methodology for tracing your African American ancestors by following the Todd family in a case study.

To follow on from my pre-1855 Scots research webinar, here I'll talk about what to expect when researching in the post-1855 civil registration records of Scotland, with detailed explanations about the contents of birth, marriage & death records. I'll also demonstrate how to search the ScotlandsPeople website for these records, and show you where else to find them.

Turn structured research into stories, images, presentations, and shareable formats with AI. Advanced application of AI for publishing and presenting; includes image generation, storytelling prompts, visual outputs; activities include drafting, editing, and building presentations.