How to help others is a live question on my mind, because my daughter's mother-in-law is in town, and is interested to learn more about her family. A few years back, I created a tree (in my own tree) for her son Jason, my son-in-law. We'll soon be meeting so she can see what I've found so far. Also, we had a very fun time at the Genealogy Help Desk last Thursday at the Auburn KCLS Library. If you would like to practice helping others and live close to Auburn, Federal Way or Renton,  please write to Outreach@skcgs.org to volunteer.  Libraries in those locations are asking for us to come help!! All Together Or Separate? Common question -- why make someone else's tree part of your own, as I did? Isn't it better to have separate trees? There are advantages either way, in my opinion. The most important factor I think of, is this from Family Tree Magazine,  " keep in mind that the further back in time you start splitting your files, the more likely it is that you’ll ...

Backup icon by ByLUTFI GANI AL ACHMAD You can find articles everywhere that computer users might read, urging us all to back up our trees, our files, our DNA matches, etc.  One of our members recently brought this up in our Genealogy Chat after discussing the future of the genealogy DNA industry, which is slowing, thus making  less money for  the companies offering these services.   Back Up Your Tree If they did not back them up, Ancestry.com Y and mtDNA testers lost access to their test results and matches  as of September 30, 2014 . So there are examples of this happening before.  All of the genealogy tree-building sites offer a way to back up your bare-bones tree via a GEDCOM, which is a simple text file. If you also want to download your images and other records, you will need instead to"sync" your files using a desktop genealogy application which uploads to and downloads from the online trees. Your DNA Guide has an article comparing what is o...

One of the wonderful aspects of RootsTech each spring is the new features from many of the major genealogy and family history companies which they announce there, and of course the sales! Be sure to visit the Expo Hall to connect with the vendors and get those discounts, some of which last all month. One of the new features rolled out by MyHeritage is the cM Explainer™ which promises to "Predict Relationships Between DNA Matches With Greater Accuracy." Read about it in their blog .  The first session I watched this year was  What's New at FamilySearch in 2023 . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ From me! The feature I'm waiting for has not rolled out yet, but the new family groups tree views should cut down immensely on the proliferation of private still-living people in the FSFamily Tree. It will enhance collaboration with close family and more distant family as well, I hope. The first implementations are showing up now - see more at the new home page . In addition, they are adding more options...

Courtesy of Pixabay Let your family story sparkle! Tell the Story Why do we do all this family history research? My answer is, to tell the story. If we do good research, the family legends are supported by records we find, and we make the story interesting with maps, newspaper articles, photos and other artifacts, and whatever else we can find. While telling the story, we cite our sources in a way that helps other researchers retrace our steps, whether to a book, records in archives, or online site. DNA Evidence But what if there are no legends? And few records, or we're looking for an unknown ancestor? These challenges can often be overcome with the use of DNA testing and matching. It can be challenging to use this data in a way that is interesting and in a way that allows others to follow our footsteps.  Fortunately, there are some companies working hard to make DNA testing painless, and using the data much easier than it was years ago. There are also wonderful tools helping us i...

Courtesy of Pixabay Mystery Match - What To Do Next You've checked your DNA results, possibly at a new test company, and you find an unfamiliar match sharing a large segment of DNA. While some of the companies assign a relationship, "1C,2R", that may not be accurate due to variables such as "half" siblings or cousins.  There are several tools available to help calculate relationships; one we have seen in presentations and online is the Shared cM Project 4.0 Tool v4.  https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4 You can locate yourself in the white square marked "Self" just off the center.  Relationships that share, or are descendants of one or both of your parents are in light or blue gray.  Relationships with which the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) is one or both grandparents are in green, great-grandparents are in orange. The numbers in the squares represent the average shared cMs for that relationship as well as the low and high range.  Notice that ...

 In a recent email conversation with a new member, I was reminded of the wealth of information and assistance that is available to genealogists of all levels of experience; if we only knew where to look.  And, with the usual websites constantly adding new material, even the most veteran researcher may miss some information. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter help spread new discoveries as well respected leaders post information.  Blogs and newsletters are a great source as well.   This weekly newsletter arrives in my inbox every Saturday morning.  Among its regular features are updates from their favorite bloggers and "What's New at the Big 4", a review of Ancestry, My Heritage, FamilySearch and Find My Past.   This is just one example of what is available.   My Heritage Recently I received an email from the MyHeritage Knowledge Base suggesting a video I might watch, " How to Use the 4 Family Tree Views on MyHeritage".  Inter...

Attention: Canadian Space Aliens! Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay  Did your 19th century Canadian immigrants arrive via UFO?  Did they, by any chance, mention if Katherine/Katy/Kittie unknown maiden name was with them?   I've been searching for Kittie Kinney for twenty years with no success.  I won't go into the facts and assumptions in this particular ancestor; this blog has a different purpose. While it is easy to treat searches at Ancestry or Family Search as if we were doing routine U S research, we are probably overlooking much available material at those sites and definitely missing other sites that focus on Canada. It is always easier to filter your search by location thus eliminating the hundreds/thousands of results you might get.  Ancestry At Ancestry you can select only the Canadian records by going to the regular search dialogue box, choose "Collection Focus" and then "Canada".  You can further choose Census or Birth, Marriage, Death ...