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 offered to sync with Ancestry,

Greetings family history researchers, near and far, especially Members of the South King County Genealogical Society. Thank you for reelecting both Michele Mattoon as your Treasurer and me as your President. This past two years have been a challenge, but together with the Membership we have accomplished a lot.  New SKCGS.org One thing everyone has noticed is the new website , which is much less costly than our older site, and much easier to keep up-to-date. In addition, by building Zoom registration into our public calendar there, we've improved the security of our Zoom meetings. Each team now updates their part of the new site as needed. Thank you Tina! Tina has also streamlined much of the back end of SKCGS, making it easier to bring in new volunteers, and to share handouts and video to both Members and visitors alike.  To stay up-to-date, check https://www.skcgs.org/home/announcements .  Planning Our Five-Year Planning committee has finished its work, which involved conducting a

Courtesy of Brett Jordan, via Flikr WiredAlexandria, CC BY-SA 4.0 Have you ever heard that "if you really want to learn something, teach it to someone else"? I have, and have found it true.  Mothering taught me that, for sure!  I was lucky enough to attend the University of Washington for a year, and while there the most valuable concept I adopted was joining some study groups. This has lots of advantages, the biggest being that all participants want to be there, are pushing themselves to learn difficult concepts, ideas or skills, and are willing to both study and help others.  I've found our special interest groups and study groups inspirational for the same reason. People attend because they want to learn more about how to use DNA in their family history research, or how to use new website features or applications, how to write useful citations, how to research like the professionals do, and more! But most valuable of all, I see participants stepping up to demonstrate b

Vectors by Vecteezy We've mentioned Genealogical Crime Mysteries, a genre of fiction that is becoming very popular. We have introduced several of our favorite authors and even talk about our favorite protagonists and anxiously await their newest exploits. It is in this same genre that I have recently read two non-fiction genealogy mysteries and the arduous tasks of sorting out the facts among the brick walls the authors had to overcome. Buried Secrets: Looking for Frank and Ida  by Anne Hanson, New England Books, LLC; Copyright 2022 addresses the brick walls caused by half truths, omissions and deliberate misinformation. Coupled with research prior to online indexes and records, the author and other family researchers were faced with a nearly insurmountable task in finding Frank and Ida Hanson. "After so many years of flailing in the genealogical wilderness, . . " Anne hardly dared believe when she finally made a breakthrough. She had become so accustomed to failure.  Eve

Courtesy of https://clipartix.com As Mother's Day approaches, many of us wonder how best to honor our moms, especially those of us whose mothers have passed. We want to more fully know their lives, and tell stories about them to our families. We have some great examples of such stories in past years here on the SKCGS Blog: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History Thank You Mothers and Aunties An Unusual Story Brick Wall -- Dissolved? Wonderful Women: Grandma Lolas Brick Wall broken! A WOMAN AHEAD OF HER TIME Westward Expansion--Women Shape the West Women in Our History--Revolutionary War Celebrating March--Women's History Month Recently Wikitree offered a creative way to honor our whole maternal line, the  2023 WikiTree Challenge 8 .  Registration has started to help research for mitoYDNA: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1572660/wikitree-challenge-registration-started-research-mitoydna . To participate, answer this post and say you want to be part of it. And then list your mitochond

  All images from the Vectezy Library Vectors There’s More to the Story. . . is the theme of National Library Week, April 23-29 Genealogists care deeply about the health and well-being of libraries. We care not only about the public library down the street or across town, but also specialty libraries such as Heritage Quest Library in Sumner, or the Fiske Genealogy Library in Seattle. We care about the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, the largest collection of books, images and digitized genealogical resources in the world and we care about the small collections such as the books held by the South King County Genealogical Society at the FamilySearch Center in Kent and those at the Kent Historical Society . Why do we care about libraries? As genealogists, it is our responsibility to preserve the history of our families. Those stories are more than just, “Justice Jerome was born in Jamestown in 1666, married Jerusha James in July 1690, and died in 1706.” Who cares?  Would our 

  Sometimes I focus on a single person or family, and lose the larger context. A recent discussion in our Tech User Group opened my eyes to this, and shows me that our focus must remain on finding the stories of our families, and then passing along those stories so that our history lives on. SKCGS is here to help you use whatever you need to find those stories, and to help you tell them. Tree Completeness One way to begin to do this is to look at your overall tree, and one way to do that is with a fan chart. As I look at my tree, I'm a bit behind filling in some of the lines here on FamilySearch Family Tree! I need to fill in my Swedish great-grandmother's grandfather, at least. That's the big gap on the upper left. I believe I can do that soon. The gap to the upper right is in my focus family for the next few years, in Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, aided by DNA evidence, so these women are not forgotten.  Who Were Your People? To pull back even further, who wer