History Gets Personal in Family History

Everyone's family history is influenced by (and can influence) the course of history. That's what makes history so personal in our family's history.

I'm struck by this again and again as I transcribe letters written by Farkas cousins to the family tree association during WWII. These cousins were in the service (some in the US Army, some in Army Air Corps, some in Navy, some in WAC) and their letters home are filled with observations that bring history alive and illuminate how the war experiences affected them personally. The letters also reveal personality and, often, a dry sense of humor.

Above, the letterhead from a cousin's letter written in January, 1943. Notice the words running along the ribbon at bottom of the image--"Prepare for Combat."

Cousin G enlisted to fly but he couldn't land the way the Army Air Force wanted, he wrote home in a 1942 letter. At that point, he chose to train as a navigator/bombardier.

In this 1943 letter, written from an Army Air Field in Monroe, LA, cousin G is "waiting around for shipment to Advanced [training] which will be in Coral Gables, Florida." He mentions that the school is run by Pan-American (Airways) and he has to satisfy a tougher standard. Why does he care which school he attends?

"The main reason I decided upon the Gables was that most of the navigation is over water and from what I hear that is pretty important when you have to pick an island out of the whole Pacific."

Cousin G understands that he has a role to play in history and takes it seriously, even when his letters make the family smile. His role in history affects his family history too, and I'm proud to document what he wrote to the family during these critical years. Plus I'm learning more about historical details as I add explanatory endnotes to the letters, ensuring that future generations will get the full picture of our family's contributions to and experiences in World War II.

Three Sites Are Better Than One: Finding Uncle Joe in the Census?

Family Search, Heritage Quest, Ancestry each indexes federal and state Census records independently. If one site doesn't seem to turn up an ancestor in a Census, always--always!--try the other two. Between the three sites, I've learned where most of my ancestors were during a Census period.

This week, I was looking at the timeline gaps in my research into the early life of Uncle Joseph A. Markell (1895?-1975). For some reason, he didn't show up in Ancestry when searching the 1905 New York State Census, so I tried Family Search. Immediately, a Joseph Markell popped up. In a very unlikely setting, I might add. The name and the age are what I expected, not the place. Is this the right person?

As shown in the NY Census excerpt at top, a Joseph Markell was age 12 and living at boarding school in 1905, at the Weingart Institute.

What was this school all about? I located several references. Here's a reference from an 1893 handbook to NYC, explaining that this school was K-12, including college prep.



Another mention of this school was in a NY Times ad from 1908. In both of the references, the Weingart Institute's gymnasium was a selling point. One more online search turned up a piece about this school's summer camp in Highmount, NY--a camp attended by young Oscar Hammerstein, among other luminaries.

Where exactly the money came from to send Joseph to a posh private school is quite a mystery, which is why I have to dig deeper to be sure this is MY family's Joseph. So far, I haven't located the whereabouts of Joseph's parents in 1905. Very possibly they weren't living together; she could have been in PA while he was in NYC. I say this because I know Joseph's mother, Rosa Lebowitz Markell, died young in 1909 in Allegheny county, PA. I have her death cert and this is definitely the right Rosa.

That left his father, "Barney" Benjamin Isaac Enoch Markell (1874-1944), who was working as a "driver" in 1902 in NYC, according to his citizenship papers, responsible for Joseph. Both Barney and son Joseph were living in Rosa's mother's NYC apartment, according to the 1910 Census (found on all three sites).

Once Barney remarried in 1914, however, Joe didn't get along with his new step-mom and left as soon as he could. By the time of the US Census in 1920, Joe was in the Navy, a yeoman serving on the U.S.S. Niagara off Tampico, Mexico. In 1921, he was out of the service and married to Mary Mahler (1896-1979). The newlyweds first settled in New York City, later moving to New Rochelle, just north of the city.

Their neighbors around the corner in New Rochelle were Rose Farkas Freedman (1901-1993) and her husband, George M. Freedman (1900-1989). Rose, my mother's aunt, and her neighbor Mary Markell (my father's aunt) were BFFs . . . and they introduced my parents to each other. The rest is #familyhistory! Now to round out the stories, I'll be looking more closely at Uncle Joe and the possibility that he went to private school in 1905. And where his parents were at the time....?

Easter Greetings in Family History

By following the addresses and dates on holiday postcards sent to young Wallis W. Wood (1905-1957) in Cleveland, Ohio, I can see where the family was living and when, and who was staying in touch. Above, a beautiful penny postcard sent to Wallis by his aunt Nellie (Rachel Ellen Wood Kirby) and uncle Arthur Kirby in Chicago for Easter in 1914. Wallis was my husband's uncle.

"Aunt Nellie" was, it seems, the favorite sister of Wallis's father, James Edgar Wood (1871-1939). They remained close as adults and his children received many postcards from this beloved aunt.

James Edgar Wood's oldest son, Edgar James Wood (1903-1986), grew up and married Marian Jane McClure (1909-1983) in Cleveland in 1935. Above, an Easter-time photo of Marian at age 4 (as inscribed on the back--let me thank the ancestors for captioning!).

As an only child, she was cherished by her parents, Floyda Steiner McClure (1878-1948) and Brice Larimer McClure (1878-1970). After Marian married Ed, he became close to her parents and they had a good relationship all of their lives.

Honoring the memory of my husband's ancestors as Easter approaches and writing down their family history for future generations to know and enjoy!

The "Write" Way to Write Family History

Thinking about writing your family's history? Here are the two most important words to remember: Start writing.

That's the "write" thing to do.

Maybe you feel you're not a writer or you haven't done enough research or you need more details or photos. Please keep in mind that as the keeper of the family history, you know more than your relatives. And your relatives and heirs don't expect Shakespeare--they will be delighted just to find out who their ancestors were!

Doing the "write" thing is, in fact, an excellent way to identify gaps in research and missing leaves on the tree. If something is wrong or incomplete (incorrect spelling, inaccurate dates, missing details), you can always fix it later. Really.

Case in point: In 2012, I printed a small photo book about my parents' wedding, which united the Burk and Schwartz families. The main purpose was to reprint the many family photos with captions, for the sake of future generations. Cousins helped me identify nearly everyone in every photo. But there were some "unknowns" and I simply called them that in the captions (see above). Better done than perfect. 

Fast-forward to 2017, when I smashed a brick wall and found second cousins who--wonder of wonders!--are descendants of the "unidentified cousins" in the photos. Needless to say, I immediately hand-wrote the new names into my printed photo book. Remember, the goal is to share family history with future generations, not to have an immaculate book. Earlier this year, when I saw a big sale, I reprinted the original photo book with corrections and additions.

So go ahead and do the "write" thing. Some ideas to get you in the "write" mood:

• Pick a person or a surname or an occasion, spread out your research, and jot notes you can then flesh out into sentences and paragraphs. I wrote about one set of grandparents at a time, since their lives were intertwined, but I had a separate page or two about birth/early childhood of each individual.
• Pick a photo and list the people in it. Then write a bit about each person and the relationships between some or all. Include what you know about where and when, or other details to "set the scene" for descendants who never knew these people. I found some photos so evocative that the words poured out almost faster than I could type.
• Ask your audience (children or nieces/nephews or any other readers) who or what they'd like to know about. My family asked for a booklet about Mom and her twin sister. I'm making notes already. My sis-in-law wants a book about her parents. I'm scanning photos in preparation.

Our ancestors had real lives, personalities, hopes, problems. It's up to us, the genealogists of our generation, to get the next generation interested in tales of the past and keep alive the memory of people no longer with us.

You don't have to start at the beginning as you write. Sometimes the best way to get yourself going is to begin with something dramatic or humorous or characteristic of the person. My blog posts often serve as a rough draft of a family history booklet.

There's no one "write" way to write family history. You can write one page about one person, or a pamphlet about a couple, or a book about a family. You might decide to tell the stories in photos with captions, rather than using a lot of text. The important thing, as I said at the beginning, is to start writing. Enjoy the journey, and your family will enjoy what you write.

Letters Home from My Aunt, the WAAC

My mother's twin sister, Dorothy H. Schwartz (1919-2001), joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on September 11, 1942. Her top-notch steno and typing skills earned her a spot in a cracker-jack admin company that supported Bomber Command. She became Sgt. Schwartz, honed her leadership skills, and won a Bronze Star in 1945.

Sgt. Schwartz

But Auntie Dorothy (as we always called her) never expected to be away from home for nearly three years. As World War II wore on, she felt pangs of separation from her parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, and many first cousins in the Farkas Family Tree.

Transcribing the wartime letters Dorothy wrote to the tree while in the service (see a sample V-Mail above), I learned that she loved her time stationed near London. She wrote home often about the historic places, beautiful landscape, and opportunities to meet people from other nations.

In fact, her January, 1944 letter written to her sister (living in the Bronx apartment building shown at left) states that celebrating the new year in England was a high point!

Yet Dorothy was acutely aware of what she was missing each month when the Farkas Family Tree gathered for its regular meetings and enjoyed holiday meals together.

Her letters mention being homesick a couple of times. Although family members apparently wrote optimistic letters about the war ending soon, Dorothy's answers indicate her realism, saying she didn't expect a quick end (no specifics, the censors were reading along).

Dorothy also made it clear that she felt remarkably "at home" in London, with its big-city atmosphere, subways, and theater--all familiar from her civilian life as an apartment-dweller in New York City.

This citified "Old Homestead" post is #13 of the 2018 #52Ancestors challenge by Amy Johnson Crow.

NOTE: Most of Dorothy's letters were handwritten, but those written at the end of 1943 and during 1944 were microfilmed and shrunk into the V-Mail format. To transcribe, I first had to photograph them and blow them on my screen, then print the enlargements so I could read them as I typed. Totally worth it! More soon on my plans for a Farkas Family Tree World War II letters booklet.

Researching "Misfortune" Mary Shehen Slatter

My husband's great-grandma, Mary Shehen Slatter (1837-1889), was in and out of London workhouses during the early to mid-1870s. She married John Slatter (1838-1901) in 1859. From 1860-1869, they had six children. But John had no steady work as the years went on. He was out of their lives as Mary and the children bounced in and out of workhouses, trying to stay afloat amid their poverty.

At top, Mary's workhouse discharge on January 17, 1874, indicating she had a bad leg, and was being sent to Newington workhouse. This time, she was without her children. Often, her children were also sent to the workhouse with Mary, to be sure they had meals and shelter.

In 1875, as shown above, Mary was still "destitute" and released from this workhouse "to Poplar" workhouse while her children were kept a couple more days (to be fed) and then discharged to Forest Gate School in the notoriously poor area of Whitechapel, London.

Thanks to my cousin Anna, who visited the London Metropolitan Archives last year, I know that Mary Shehen Slatter was diagnosed with "melancholia" when admitted to Colney Hatch Asylum and, later, sent to Banstead Asylum. The asylum's notes indicate that Mary's real problem was poverty and misfortune. She died in Banstead of tuberculosis.

Yet every one of her children grew up and had a good life. One was taken in by Grandma Slatter at an early age. The others muddled through the school/workhouse system, and then the boys joined the British military as young teens. Both girls came to America, married, and had families of their own.

Thanks to the many Rootstech sessions I attended on how to locate parish chest records, my plan is to flesh out the family's backstory by doing more research in their London parish. For background, see this Family Search wiki discussion of parish chest records, and another Fam Search article here. FindMyPast has some parish chest records here (not for "Misfortune Mary," however).

This is my post #12 in Amy Johnson Crow's #52Ancestors challenge for 2018.

Lucky Me, I Married Him For His Ancestors!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I married my wonderful husband for his ancestors! Lucky me.

Actually, for the first decade of our marriage, I paid absolutely no attention to our families' roots. But once I caught the genealogy bug, it was full speed ahead, starting with the bits and pieces in the family's possession.

As shown in the handwritten note passed down from his Granddaddy Brice Larimer McClure (1878-1970), there were clear clues to Irish ancestry on hubby's mother's side of the family. Following up on these and other clues, here's what I learned about his Irish ancestors:

• John Shehen and his wife, Mary, from somewhere in Ireland (possibly south) - Hubby's 2d great-grandparents. They were born around 1800 in Ireland but were in London by the 1830s. John and Mary’s daughter, Mary Shehen, married John Slatter in England. Their youngest daughter Mary Slatter grew up, married James Edgar Wood, and became hubby's grandma. [Too many Marys and Johns, don't ya think?]

• William Smith and his wife, Jean, were from Limerick – His 5th great-grandparents. Their son Brice Smith was the first Brice in the family and was the first son born to these ancestors in America. There have been several other men named Brice since then, including hubby's Granddaddy.

• Robert Larimer and his wife, Mary O’Gallagher, both from the North of Ireland - Hubby's 5th great-grandparents. Robert was shipwrecked while sailing from No. Ireland to America and then served as an indentured servant to work off the cost of his rescue. He finally ran away, married Mary, and settled down to farming. McKibbin and Short cousins from the North of Ireland were known to intermarry with the Larimer branch in America.

• Halbert McClure and his wife, Agnes, were born in County Donegal, in the North of Ireland (although the McClure family is originally from Isle of Skye in Scotland) - Hubby’s 5th great-grandparents. This family sailed to Philadelphia as a group and then walked 200 miles to Virginia to buy land for farming in the 1730s.

Every year, I write my grandchildren to share the latest info about their Irish roots. There's always something new to investigate, someone new to discover among these branches of the tree. Lucky me, I married him for his ancestors.

Thanks to Amy Johnson Crow for the "lucky" prompt in Week 11 of her #52Ancestors series.

Free or Fee Genealogy: Click on Cyndi's List

One of the oldest and most comprehensive free sources of genealogy links is Cyndi's List. As shown above, Cyndi's page organizes U.S. genealogy links both geographically and by categories (such as African-American genealogy, Ellis Island, Mayflower/Pilgrims, etc.). It has international gen links, as well.

Usually, I begin with the geographic category index, browsing all those links in search of a specific region, county, city, or township. Many of the genealogy categories are quite useful for focusing on specific regions or aspects of family history, such as how to use Ancestry or links to research about specific occupations. Since hubby's family includes four Mayflower ancestors, I've also checked out Cyndi's Mayflower category.

Remember that although Cyndi's List is free, it does include links to pay sites as well as free sources. For instance, below is an entry from the Connecticut--maps & geography page, clickable to the Ancestry map collections that would help anyone researching the Nutmeg State. Note the "fee-based subscription" comment.

Cyndi began collecting genealogy links in 1996, and after 22 years, she has a wealth of links ready for researchers to click. Because her site focuses on links, it loads quickly and processes clicks quickly, too. Go ahead, click on Cyndi's List and see what you can find.

This is the latest entry in my ongoing Genealogy: Free or Fee? series. For more, click HERE!

Have You Seen Shamrocks for New Year's?

My husband's Wood family includes a few Irish ancestors (which I'll write about later this week). But his Wood relatives also liked to send New Year's greeting cards with shamrocks*--oooooops, four-leaf clovers for luck on New Year's. The cards had nothing to do with Irish connections, only with warm wishes for luck in the coming year.

Here are four of the colorful postcards sent to hubby's uncle, Wallis Walter Wood, during the 1910s. Isn't the little piglet above adorable? What a pig has to do with clover, I don't know, but the illustration is cute for a young recipient.

One card sent good wishes for luck in finding that pot of gold...a prosperous new year.

Another card featured a new-fangled flying machine (today it would be called "steampunk") equipped with a four-leaf clover propeller. Bet this aviation theme captured the imagination of the young boy who received the card!

*Thanks to Dara for correcting me on shamrocks vs. four-leaf clovers! Much appreciated. I'm horticulturally challenged, it seems.

Leni Kunstler Farkas, Immigrant Woman in the Land of Dollars

My great-grandma Leni Kunstler Farkas (1865-1938) was the prototypical strong immigrant woman. Just look at her, posing for a photo in the mid-1930s, and you can see her determination.

Until I read Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars, I didn't realize that Leni's strong-willed matriarchal tactics were typical of immigrant women running households in the Lower East Side of New York City.

Leni (Americanized as Lena) married Moritz Farkas (1857-1936) in Hungary. They raised a family of 8 children while he leased land and supervised farming. When Moritz's crops were destroyed by hail in 1899--the one year he failed to buy insurance--he escaped his creditors by sailing on the S. S. Spaarndam to New York City, leaving wife and children behind with her mother.

After a year, Leni sailed alone to New York to be with Moritz. Four of their children joined them a year later, and the remaining four were finally reunited with their family 18 months after that--having been forced to wait for forged documents so the boys could avoid conscription in Hungary.

In America, Leni and Moritz had three more children, making a grand total of 13 mouths to feed. Finding herself in a dollar economy rather than a farming community where barter was common, Leni had to find a new way forward for the family.

Leni was a strict disciplinarian, giving orders, assigning chores, and tolerating no backtalk. She sent the older children out to find work and made sure they went to night school to learn English; the youngest attended P.S. 188 on Lewis and Houston streets. On payday, she demanded the pay packets from all her working children and handed back some nickels for carfare (bus or subway) plus a bite of lunch. The older boys got some carefare but had to walk home many days.

Leni's husband, Moritz, had weak lungs; he found work intermittently as an apple peddler and a presser. As a result, the children's wages were needed to cover household expenses. Still, there were some years when Leni put aside enough cash to vacation by herself in the Catskills for two or three weeks during the stiflingly hot New York City summers!

The family thrived under Leni's control and as the children grew up, married, and had children of their own, all returned to Leni and Moritz's on a regular basis. The children formed the Farkas Family Tree to continue their close-knit relationships. The patriarch and matriarch were honorary members. Every March after Leni and Moritz died, the family tree would hold a moment of silence in their memory--a tradition started by my grandpa Tivador Schwartz, who married Leni and Moritz's oldest daughter.

This post honors my great-grandma as a strong woman, the focus of week 10 in Amy Johnson Crow's #52Ancestors series. And a big thank you to my Cousin B, who began collecting family stories and cranking microfilmed Census records more than 20 years ago! She saved the memories of her mother's generation and now I'm passing them along to the next generation via my blog and in many other ways.

Where There's a Will, There's a Family Reunion (in Venice)

Last week's #52Ancestors challenge (#9 in the series by Amy Johnson Crow) was "Where there's a will..." Since I was at RootsTech then, I'm catching up on my regular genealogy blogging now. My husband suggested today's post, about the wonderful way that a will turned into a family reunion.

Hubby's granddaddy, Brice Larimer McCLURE, was born on Dec. 29, 1878 (in Little Traverse, Michigan) and died on Dec. 15, 1970 (in Cleveland, Ohio). He passed away just shy of his 92nd birthday.

Brice's will left his only child, my late mother-in-law, Marian McClure WOOD (1909-1983), a bank account with a modest four-digit balance.

Marian decided to take that money and treat her three children (and spouses) and three grandchildren to a trip to Venice. Her favorite city in the world!

Since the three children were scattered across the country, this trip was both a family reunion and an opportunity to experience Venice together, paid for by Brice's legacy.

Marian and her husband, Edgar James WOOD (1903-1986) were also big fans of trans-Atlantic cruises. The photo above is one of many cruise photos that Marian and Ed took during their yearly travels to Europe after he retired.

For the reunion trip, they booked passage on the S.S. France, Cabin P252, from New York to Southampton. (Ed was a prodigious diarist, writing a few lines every day for more than 30 years--that's how I know who/what/when/where.)

Ed and Marian and their children arrived in Venice starting on September 6, 1972, and did some sightseeing together for a week. Afterward, everyone scattered to visit other European destinations on their own, their flights home also paid for by Brice's legacy.

This year, I'm creating a family memory booklet with photos from that delightful Venice trip and comments from hubby, his siblings, and the youngsters who played with pigeons in Saint Marks Square (now grown with children of their own). That's one of the many ways* I'm helping to keep the family's history alive for future generations to enjoy!

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*For more ideas, please check out my genealogy book, Planning a Future for Your Family's Past, available in paperback or Kindle.

Found: Farkas Family WWII Letters

In 2013, I first learned about the existence of written records covering most meetings of my mother's Farkas Family Tree stretching from 1933 through 1964. This family-tree association, which met 10 times a year, consisted of all the adult children (and their spouses) of patriarch Moritz FARKAS and matriarch Lena KUNSTLER Farkas. I remember attending meetings when I was a tiny tyke, but of course I had no idea of the elaborate administrative framework created by the family.*

Once a cousin kindly let me borrow the meeting minutes and annual historian's reports, I scanned all 500 pages. Then I indexed and identified each person as a relative/in-law (by relationship) or as a family friend. Indexing helped me solve several family mysteries!

However, the World War II meeting notes were mostly missing, as were letters written by family members who were in the service during the war. Five years I've tried to find these missing documents, with no luck. I feared they were lost forever.

Until a lucky break last month. I reconnected with a 2d cousin, who mentioned his search for some of the minutes and records I'd scanned. And lo and behold, he has in his possession the missing family-tree minutes and letters from the war years!

We swapped. Now I'm scanning (and indexing) all the new-found minutes and letters from the 1940s. At top, the title page of the scrapbook he lent me. At right, a letter written by my Auntie Dorothy Schwartz exactly 75 years ago this month--when she was a WAC in training, prior to being posted overseas for World War II service.

Lucky, lucky me to be able to assemble a complete set of minutes and letters for the Farkas Family Tree and keep them safe for the next generation (and beyond).

Thanks to Elizabeth O'Neal for the Genealogy Blog Party prompt "As luck would have it" for March.

*One of Mom's first cousins had bound books of meeting minutes and documents and when he and I got together for the first time in decades, and I began to ask him about the family, he casually mentioned having those books. I then volunteered to scan and produce a spiral-bound book. He thought it would take me years. It took less than 3 months, including indexing, because another cousin volunteered to retype anything that was illegible. So remember: Always reach out to cousins and let them know of your interest in anything even vaguely related to family history!

RootsTech Day 3: Scott Hamilton, British Gen, Jurisdictions, and Blogging Connections

Well, it's a few minutes after my figure skating hero, Scott Hamilton, concluded his emotional talk about family and connections. Here he is with a photo of the parents who adopted him, and a brother and sister. No dry eyes in the audience as he told of his life's journey so far. He received a preview of what genealogical research revealed about his birth parents. Can't wait to learn more later.

Maybe there were a few empty seats in the ballroom but I didn't see 'em. Above, a small part of the massive crowd streaming out after Scott's inspiring talk.

After Scott, my first session was the ever-dapper Myko Clelland, offering tips for finding "Hidden Gems in FindMyPast's British & Irish Collections." Despite a technical glitch with his slides, the talk was practical and informative, of course. He just happened to show a record set that might help me break a brickwall on hubby's Slatter side! Top takeaways: Use the A-Z Catalog to locate records, filter by country, use the unique search screens to find record sets by entering as little as possible and then adding more info (dates, for instance, or address) to narrow.

During the break, I caught up with David Allen Lambert, chief genealogist of American Ancestors.

Then the lunchtime Geneabloggers Tribe group photo was a hoot and a fun opportunity to see so many blogging buddies in one place at one time. Above, with permission, is the "composite" photo with a few Geneabloggers magically added via technology. I'm the small sardine in the middle of the front row, a few shoulders away from Thomas MacEntee.

My afternoon sessions began with Laurie Castillo's "Search All the Jurisdictions" presentation. She knows so much about shifting state/county/township jurisdictions and how to figure out where our ancestors lived when they were alive. That's where we need to look for the records. Her advice: Don't assume anything. Do the research and use maps, gazetteers, whatever it takes to figure out what a place was when our ancestors lived there and then look for the repository holding those records.

Alas, I was crowded out of Amy Johnson Crow & Curt Witcher's talk, as well as shut out of Shannon Christmas's DNA talk. Happily, I squeezed into "What's Next? Turning British Clues into Answers" taught by the terrific Amy Harris.

This was pure methodology at its best. Her case study for finding Mr. Freak (his name, really!) was a perfect way to see the Genealogical Proof Standard in action. Oh, and in the next few days, BYU will be launching its redesigned site for British genealogy.

Try this URL early next week: Englishancestors.byu.edu. I can't make it a hotlink because it's not yet live. Just copy and paste into your browser for lots of goodies.

PS If you're at #RootsTech, don't forget to click on the clipboard to rate each speaker and session. They really want our feedback! Bye-bye from SLC. It's been quite a memorable week.

RootsTech Day 2: DNA Again, Photo Clues, Parish Chest, Expo Encore

On Day two of my very first-ever RootsTech, a real highlight was catching up with Devon Noel Lee and Randy Seaver just before his guest appearance at her Family History Fanatics booth. I read their blogs all the time for ideas and inspiration.

My first breakout session was Tim Janzen's excellent and timely "Update to 3rd Party Autosomal DNA Analysis Tools." Lots of new news. He recommends that we try Gedmatch Genesis for more detailed matching/analysis tools and compatibility with key testing companies. Also he noted DNA Painter won an innovation here at RootsTech (I haven't used it yet but I liked what he showed as a sample). So many good tips, I haven't got room here. Just know that our genetic genealogy toolkits are expanding every week!

Next, I walked out of a session that I won't name, because the speaker spent loads of time on background and didn't get to the point even after 12 minutes. This is something I really don't like doing, but RootsTech time is valuable and scarce. I did use the feedback tool on the app to express my opinion. Enough said.

After lots of fun in the Expo Hall (buying RootsTech sox, a sparkly gen T-shirt and of course DNA kits), my afternoon began with Maureen Taylor's interactive session, "No Language Barrier: Immigrant Clues in Photos." I always like her talks, and this was enjoyable and motivating. She reminds us to look carefully at fashions and hairstyles, also see what ancestors are holding (a photo or a book for instance), see what clues are in the background, think about why the photo was taken, and research the photographer. We had a good time guessing on many photos, and helped Maureen with a few new interpretations/translations, too.

The final session of the day for me was "Finding Your Way Around the Parish Chest" with not one, not two, but three expert speakers: Kirsty Gray, Sylvia Valentine, and Patricia Whatley. Learned a lot at this talk--starting with how much info is available if ancestors were paupers (yes, I'm talking about hubby's Slatter ancestors). Often the parishes would try to hand paupers off to other parishes rather than bear the expense of keeping them going. Will have to look for more paperwork in the parish chests!

RootsTech Day 1: England, Deeds, Maps, DNA, and More

Day 1 of RootsTech! Photos now, story later (after Expo opening). Above, "Making the Most of English & Welsh Parish Records" featuring the dapper expert Myko Clelland. Myko explained the different types of parish records and the potential info awaiting researchers who can locate and read the records. "Read" is a key word here--the handwriting can be difficult for ordinary mortals like me. But I'm now encouraged to delve deeper into hubby's Slatter and Shehen lines in England!

Next session on my list was Amie Bowser Tennant's practical and entertaining "Deed You Hear About These Underutilized Records?" One of the top takeaways is to be sure to look up "grantor" records as well as "grantee" records, to see who bought and who sold. In many (but not all) cases, the buyer's previous town will be listed. That's just the clue I need for hubby's Steiner and Rinehart ancestors who bought land in OH!

After a fun lunch break with blogging friends, I refreshed my skills with the hands-on lab "Custom Google Maps" taught by Kyle Clements. Created a sample map showing the travel route taken by my Burk/Birk/Berk/Berg ancestors, leaving Lithuania and going first to Manchester, England. From there, one brother went to Montreal and the other went to Canada just long enough to stop feeling seasick and get on a train to NYC. Yes, that means you, Grandpa Isaac Burk.

Next was DNA superstar Diahan Southard's engaging and motivating "Direct Line DNA Testing for Genealogical Research." I asked Diahan whether mtDNA and YDNA would be helpful in endogamous populations like my ancestral Eastern European Jewish roots. She said yes! So you know what kind of tests I'm bringing home from the Expo.

So many top-notch speakers, so little time . . . but now the Expo Hall is opening and bargains await! Hint: If you're a mystery fan, go see Nathan Dylan Goodwin. I bought 4 of his books at the Expo.