February Plans

February will be a busy month for our club with a field trip and additional educational opportunities available. Let's take a look.

February 6 - We'll hear about the Photo Angel project from Kate Kelly via Zoom.

February 13 - Maureen E. and Annie will do a "tag team" of naturalization information. Annie will provide an overview of early naturalization regulations followed by Maureen's take on women's difficulties with naturalization laws.

February 20 - Annie will cover a favorite topic: County Histories. Did you know that many of your ancestors wrote their autobiographies?

February 21 - Field trip to the local FamilySearch Center.

February 27 - Maureen S. will be introducing us to AI and genealogy.

February 29-March 2 - RootsTech 2024, a free online opportunity for classes on many facets of genealogy research. 

NGS Family History Conference

The 2024 National Genealogical Society Conference will be entirely virtual this year. There is a discount for registering by January 31--only a few days from now. Use the link below for more information. Under the "Program" tab you can see descriptions of the classes offered. You can attend virtually in May and your registration allows you to view all presentations until August 15, 2024.

Member Registration

$225     LOWEST PRICE Registration (through 31 January 2024)

$250     Regular Registration (starting 1 February 2024)

Non-Member Registration

$285     Early Registration (through 31 January 2024)

$310     Regular Registration (starting 1 February 2024)

 https://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/registration-and-information/ 

FindAGrave

Diane gave us a comprehensive look at FindAGrave during this week's meeting. She first reminded us of its origin and mentioned a few pros and cons about the site.

The remainder of the hour was a demonstration of how to use the website. She showed how to search for memorials by name and by cemetery. Diane also suggested that we make use of the site's ability to locate one particular surname in the same cemetery, town, county, state, etc. We learned how to add and edit memorials. If you were unable to attend the meeting, the handout is extremely useful; ask for a copy at a future meeting!

Thanks, Diane!

Peel's Prairie Provinces

Maureen Salter shared news about the move of the Peel's Prairie Provinces resource from the University of Alberta's Library to Internet Archive. This should ease access to the information, as our Canadian members often state that searching seems to be difficult on many of their websites. The move is currently in progress and the information can be accessed in either place.

Peel's Prairie Provinces is a collection of digitized materials relating to the history and culture of Western Canada. Books, newspapers, images and maps are featured selections on the site. 

To reach the original site   --  http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/index.html  

To learn about the resource -- https://www.library.ualberta.ca/peel/how-to-use-this-collection

To reach Peel on Internet Archive -- https://archive.org/details/peel/

The biggest plus about the move is that Internet Archive generally allows searching within the specific resource. In other words, if you select a book you can generate a surname search in that particular book.

January 16 Workshop

In "Mining the Census" we covered census quirks of all kinds, including spelling problems, age discrepancies and birthplace confusion. Census takers and indexers also cause difficulties for researchers. 

Our focus, however, was on the information included on many censuses that could send us to other sources. This would include number of years married, number of children and those still alive, year of immigration and/or naturalization and military service. Researchers should pay attention to all columns in every census.

Census records are available on FamilySearch and Ancestry, as well as other websites. 

Common mistakes in census research include:

    Looking at only one or two years

    Searching only by given name

    Thinking that spelling counts

    Not paying attention to column headings

    Not considering neighbors

    Forgetting to search adjoining pages

Club Expo

We had some interesting conversations with Palm Creek residents Saturday. Thanks to the volunteers who were encouraging folks to join our club: Mary Anne and Diane, Dave and Beth, Nancy and Cindy, Maureen and Annie.

FamilySearch Memories

Pam Ingermanson

Pam Ingermanson spoke to us this week about the Memories section of FamilySearch. She and her husband have worked for FamilySearch in various capacities for many years, and she has unique knowledge of the website.

We looked at the Gallery, where you can add photos and documents and which is your private collection. Pam demonstrated the process for adding photos, stories and audio memories of your ancestors. She stressed adding titles and tagging each person in the photo. We can also share photos and record a memory about a photo.

There are two apps for FamilySearch: FamilySearch Memories and FamilySearch Tree. Both provide the ability to add information and photos when you are away from your computer.

The final icing on the cake was the "Find Relatives Around Me" option on the FamilyTree mobile app. Many of us who attended the meeting found that we were related!

Cousins!

January 2 Workshop

We began 2024 by welcoming several new members. Annie presented a few suggestions for goals for the coming season and concluded the workshop with a demonstration of sections of the FamilySearch website where we could locate information. Under the "Search" tab we looked at Records, Images, Catalog and the Wiki.

Records 

1. Use the name field and incorporate filters such as name, date range and location; continue to change the "type" of records to locate all databases for your ancestor.

2. Select "browse all collections" and then choose ancestor's name, type, location and date ranges.

Images

1. Begin with locations.

2. Always look for an index before browsing the microfilm pages.

Catalog

1. Start with a location: town and country for US; village and country for international.

2. Note symbols that indicate whether you can access the records at home.

Wiki

1. Select a location and browse to find available records.

2. Be sure to use the blue online records tab if available.