Another Kind of Navigation: GPS for Genealogy

Beginner genealogists often research their surname origins first, and get stuck at a certain point. The skills needed to surmount these early brick walls come in time, with study and practice, and the increasing availability of DNA and online resources. In this webinar, Shellee describes her brick wall ancestor, Samuel...

Who was Capt Thomas Hamilton? Y-DNA solves a 300 year old mystery of his origins. Using the Genealogical Proof Standard as well as DNA evidence, Shellee describes solving a 300 year old mystery: Who was Captain Thomas Hamilton? This talk briefly describes the genealogical proof standard, the question relating to…

Correlation of facts, along with explaining conflicting evidence is part of the genealogical proof standard. Learn tools and see examples of how to do it. Correlation and analysis, as well as explaining inconsistencies in our research, are critical in the application of the Genealogical Proof Standard.

Unique, unpublished materials can be valuable resources for solving those pesky genealogical problems and adding insight and flavor to our family histories. Research is not complete without looking through unusual and one-of-a-kind materials that may be available for the time and place our ancestors lived. Diaries, letters, journals, scrapbooks, and…

It’s hard to do genealogy well without studying your ancestors’ Friends & Family, Associates, and Neighbors - their FAN club. If your ancestors are Irish, you might have no luck at all without those FAN principles. But if you combine FAN club research with DNA, you might have just the winning ticket to get you back to your Irish ancestor’s origins. In this case study presentation, learn how focused research pointed the way from Ohio to townlands in County Mayo for an 1850s-era Irish immigrant.

Research reports are not just for professionals, but are a great tool for anyone who wants to answer their research questions. Write a research report to yourself to organize your thoughts, analyze the evidence, document your findings, and solve your puzzles. Using an example from the Netherlands, this presentation demonstrates how you can organize a research report to spot more clues in records, discover and resolve discrepancies, and build reliable conclusions.

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.

In the summer of 2023 American Ancestors/New England Historic Genealogical Society announced the collaborative 10 Million Names project, an undertaking to recover the names of people of African descent who were enslaved in the area of the United States. This monumental task of centralizing datasets about African Americans is likely to take years to accomplish; in the interim, this webinar provides a useful survey of the many existing databases that serve a similar purpose though limited in scope.