Sunday, February 28, 2021

Celebrating 10 Year Blogiversary/ The Best of RootsTech 2021

 


I began this blog on March 1, 2011 so this is the 10th Anniversary of this blog. During the past 10 years I've shared the agony of waiting for DNA test results, and long waits for something in the mail. I've also shared the thrill of the ancestor chase and the satisfaction that came with breaking down brickwalls. 

What have I accomplished and shared over this decade? First of all I've added some branches to my tree. 

Below you can see just a few of the ancestors I've added since 2011 highlighted (couldn't get them all on a 6 generation chart):


With such a mixed heritage my genealogy research has led me to many different places through this decade. 

Some accomplishments and sources I've blogged about in the past decade include:

  1. Photos of my Kappel/Kurta Great-Grandparents were shared with me in 2019, I had never seen photos of them. Had no idea what they looked like before 2019.
  2. Owens family brickwall came down in 2015 with a lawsuit and resulting deed documents surfacing.
  3. Granada Nicaragua Church and Civil Registration digitized records became available online at Familysearch allowing me to extend by Nicaraguan lines and collect family documents.
  4. Irish land records became available online such as the revision books for County Galway which extended my knowledge of my Irish families.
  5. Irish Civil Registration records online is another online source I've blogged about.
  6. Styria, Austria and Burgenland, Austria Church records have come online in the past few years helping me extend more family lines.
  7. Civil Registration records for Burgenland helped fill in blanks in my family history 
  8. 1851Census Search Forms came online for Ireland allowing me to add mothers of my Irish great-great grandparents to my tree. 
  9. In the past decade Findmypast Ireland has allowed me to extend my Irish families to include new dog family members using the dog license records. Court records have added new stories for my family history. 
  10. Newspapers online have helped me confirm family lines and added new stories. A newspaper article provided me with the only photo I have of a great-uncle who was killed by a sniper in Germany at the end of WWII.
  11. Deed books coming online at Familysearch and other sites have helped add names to my family tree in the past decade. The James Trigg Campbell deed I located in Jackson County, Indiana may eventually break down my Campbell brickwall? 
  12. We confirmed many lines through DNA testing. I started a Forgey family DNA project and a Kappel family project at FTDNA. 
  13. IDing photos unmarked photos has also been a project I've been working on often using photo recognition websites. 
  14. Naturalization certificate files with photos helped ID photos. 
  15. I've blogged about information I've found on death certificates available online at sites such as Ancestry.com where old death certificates are available to view for free. Indiana death certificates are available online at Ancestry for instance. Other vital records now online have also been helpful.
  16. Virginia Memory Chancery records online has also been an invaluable resource which I've blogged about.
  17. I visited a courthouse in person for the first time in 2018 where I found documents not available online. I shared this experience in my blog. 
  18. Luckily I was able to get to all of my ancestral related countries and states in the past few years before COVID shut travel down. I've shared those experiences in this blog. 
Blogging about my family history has helped me focus my research and writing down my findings has helped me formulate proof arguments. I often refer back to old blog posts to review previous findings. 

Rootstech 2021

I always enjoy watching streamed RootsTech  sessions. This year all of the sessions are being streamed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Videos of the sessions will be available to watch even after the event is over so if you missed them during the event you can watch later. 

I found the animation of photos at MyHeritage one of the most interesting announcements this year. At the bottom of the page you can see one of the best animations produced for my photos which was of my Great-Grandmother Mary Kurta-Kappel. 

Connecting with cousins through the "Relatives at RootsTech" app was also fun.  The app used Familysearch trees to match up cousins who were also streaming the sessions. Since the shared trees at Familysearch contain errors these matches weren't always correct. I did find that 4th cousins and closer were generally correct. 



From "When Your Tree Is a Banyan: Untangling Endogamy" I learned about different sites where you can upload your family tree or have your DNA results analyzed so you can evaluate how much endogamy you might have. I have a little bit of endogamy as you can see in my French Canadian lines as demonstrated by the sideways sweep of lines. Endogamy makes figuring out how you relate to DNA matches difficult. 


 

Also I learned some tips for getting more out of MyHeritage DNA. 

Clicking on the question mark near the predicted DNA relationship brings up a chart showing how you might be related to a match. Below you can see it correctly outlines my relationship to my mother. 



Ancestry has a similar feature if you click on the shared DNA link. Below you see AncestryDNA is nearly 100% positive this match is my first cousin and she definitely is. I like the chart format however because I like charts for easy visualization. 


Another tip presented was if you click on your communities at MyHeritage DNA more information about the location is brought up which includes the number of people in the community, and first and last names common to families in a particular community. Also there is an animation of migrations through time you can play.


 Aside from the DNA information a session on new features at Familysearch and another on tips for using the site were presented. I watched the sessions "Demo: Getting the Most from FamilySearch Search" and "What's New On FamilySearch". 

I heard about the hints at the Familysearch tree before but didn't know how to see them. After the presentation I  played with the tree features and discovered you can't see the hints in the fan chart view when I changed views I could see them. 

Ancestor pages at Familysearch have been updated to include more features and a different layout. This is the page for my Grandfather Rudolph Kapple. 


The session "Hidden Treasures: Discovering Local Sources in Your Irish Research" pointed out a website that led me to a family history society I hadn't heard of called the "Western Family History Association" which I will join. 

Other sessions I found interesting:

Many of the sessions are short so it doesn't take a long investment of time to watch them. I've enjoyed watching the sessions over the last few days and learned some new things. Right now I'm working on my Sarah Campbell Jackson County, Indiana brickwall. I've selected sessions based on this particular brickwall. I'll use some of the tips I've learned to continue trying to breakdown this wall down.  





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