Family History Hunt

Day 21-we've made it!  This last day encourages us to share and teach.  That is the point of this blog. I won't stop here and I am going to highlight family members and have tutorials about how I conduct my family history research.  I hope that you find value from what I post and I encourage you to share below what your favorite activity for this experiment was!  Remember to do your final survey.

Day 20 for the Connections Experiment is all about collaboration.  Facebook groups can be really beneficial in both receiving and giving help to those in the group.  If you know where most of your family is from or where those that you are currently researching live, you can most likely find a Facebook group with more information and seasoned genealogists that can give advice.   FamilySearch has a list by area here. This is one that I am part of.  Most of my family (and chances are yours too) are from NY and PA. A lot of family history can be done through collaboration and these groups are a great place to start.

Day 19-Let's learn something new!  I was able to go to RootsTech this year and it was so much fun but so overwhelming with lots of information.  They luckily have the option to go and rewatch some sessions even if you didn't attend.   Check them out here. FamilySearch also has live and recorded webinars that you can watch here.

For day 18 let's give back!  Did you know you can send a message to the people who made a record available on FamilySearch through indexing?  I'll show you how! First you have to search for a record for a family member.  Not all records have this thank an indexer option so you may have to look through a few records to find one where you can thank an indexer. This first record helped me update.a mistake in this great grandfather's death date so I want to see if I can thank that person who made this record searchable.  Click on the record and scroll to the bottom. If there is a thank an indexer button, it will be under citing this record and above similar historical records. Under the orange icon, click on Thank the Volunteer.  It has an automatic message that includes you first name.  All you have to do is hit send!

Day 17 may be my favorite so far!  I find decency research to be so helpful, especially for people with full trees, or those looking for people that need temple ordinances.   This is from the "My Tree is Done" plan for the Connections Experiment. Here's how to do it: Sign in to FamilySearch and go to the family tree in fan view. Choose an ancestor at least 3-4 generations back and click on the fan in their tile.  This will make them the person in the middle circle and you will see that person's ancestors only. Click on the down arrow in the upper left hand corner and switch the view to descendancy. This shows where to change the fan chart to a descendancy view. Descendancy view shows just one generation automatically.  You can change to see more generations by choosing the number in the top left.  I suggest going through all of generation 1, refreshing the page, changing to 2 generations, then doing it all over again.  This is a great way to...

Day 16 of the Connections Experiment.  Today I am doing a Build Your Own plan idea-searching for new records.   I am going to use the same ancestor that I worked on with the source hints.  This time we will search for other records. Steps: Sign in to FamilySearch. Choose a family member to research. Click on FamilySearch under Search Records on sidebar. See if any of the records could be about your ancestor. Review and Attach. When I click on FamilySearch records this is what I found.  It looks like the top record isn't attached to anyone and could be about Frederick.   If you click on the name on the source that looks promising it will show up like the picture below. You may be thinking, but he died in 1898?  This was a mistake on the tree.  He was in the 1900 census and this death index has his death in that same year.  I went ahead and attached this record and updated his death year so it was based on the most relevant inf...

Here's a fun one from the teen plan on day 15 of the Connections Experiment.   Head over to the BYU Family History Technology Lab page and check out their games that include Wheel of Family Fortune, Geneopardy, and others!   They also have a lot of other cool activities on that same site. You will need to click through and log in to FamilySearch for this to work.  Here's what the game looks like in action!  Have fun!

I love when we can make family history research easier for everyone!  FamilySearch has done a great job of this along with the help of indexers.   Welcome to day 14 of the Connections Experiment. Today's activity is from the "My tree is done" plan. Here's the steps for today: Sign in to FamilySearch and go to your tree in fan chart view. Choose the research helps fan chart view. Choose an ancestor that is blue. See if any of the record hints are about them! You can see on this view of the fan chart, the colors correspond to different things.  The red is a data problem, or something that doesn't really make sense.  The purple is a research suggestion, saying there may be something missing (vital event, child, etc).  The blue is what we are looking for: these are people that have a record that FamilySearch is pretty sure should actually be attached to that person. When I clicked on one of my ancestors whose tile was blue, you can see what record h...

Day 13!  Let's do a fun activity from FamilySearch.   This is called Ancestor Quiz and is you can get to it from the activities tab on Family Search.  Click here to see it with your family!   Here is what it looks like for my family. See if you can recognize your ancestors!   This is a great one for kids.

We are over halfway done with this awesome experience!   Welcome to day 12 of the Connections Experiment .  Let's interview a family member, but in in the way you may think. This is going to be an audit of sorts.  I want to make sure there is a source attached to the following life events: Birth Date Birth Place Marriage(s) Children Death Date  Death Place I chose to "audit" one of my great grandmothers, Jennie Margaret Myers .  There are two ways to do this. The first is to click on edit next to each fact.  This could work for all the facts except children.  The second way is to go into sources and match the sources up that way. Here is a look at the first method if I click edit on her birth information. I can already see a discrepancy that I need to look into further by looking at the sources.  Her birth date listed is 3 January 1892.  I see the first census may support that but I also see that Find A Grave says...

Day 11 and we will be doing something that I love to do-Indexing!  Indexing is so important because any hint that you get on FamilySearch comes from someone indexing that record.  That was you don't have to search and search for information that can help you build your tree.   Click here to go to the FamilySearch indexing page. So this is your homepage.  It has your stats, messages, and charts of your progress.  To find something to work on, click on find batches. This screen gives you the option to choose difficulty and language and narrow down the results.  I have it sorting by difficulty (if you are brand new choose a beginner project) and I have the language set to English.  If you have any foreign language skills feel free to index in that language! Please make sure you review the project instructions!  This can save you a lot of headache.  This is what an indexing page looks like when you click on a project to begin. ...

Day 10!   This activity comes from the Teen Plan from the Connections Experiment .  You can see all the happenings from your ancestors lives and even get notifications to your phone!   Click here to see you family's important dates.

Day 9-Let's find out where our family is from!   This Maps activity is from the Family Plan for the Connections Experiment. 1. Go to FamilySearch . 2. Use the link above or go to Activities, then Where Am I From? 3. You will get a map that looks like this (your numbers and locations will be different). 4. Choose any of the links at the top to find out different things about where your ancestors came from.  This image below is a breakdown of where my family has come from in the last 8 generations. Clearly you can see we've been in America a long time!  Click on any of the countries to learn more about your heritage. . 

Day 8!  Today I am using the Build Your Own plan from the Connections Experiment.   I have been really into reading newspapers lately as they have so much detail about some of my family members. Today I shared this article with my dad to see if he would remember it.  It was great to talk to my dad about this and hear other stories from his childhood, especially about trips to visit other family members. Lanny Clark Lightning Strike Thu, Sep 27, 1973 – 14 · Springville Journal (Springville, New York) · Newspapers.com

Day 7!  How awesome that we have been at this for a week!  Today were are using the Compare-a-Face feature from FamilySearch.  This is on the Family Plan of the Connections Experiment. Here's the steps for today's activity: 1. Login to FamilySearch. 2. Click on Activities at the top, then Compare-a-Face from the list that pops down. 3. Upload a picture of yourself. 4. FamilySearch populates your results with direct line ancestors who have photos. 5.  Click through each one to see how much you look like your ancestors!

Day 6 is coming from the Family Plan!  Today we are going to search through our trees and see what pictures of family we can find.  Remember you can then take them and colorize them.  Heres your steps: 1. Login to FamilySearch and go to your tree. 2. Click on photos and your tree will change colors. 3. Click on any of the people who are colored in. 4. Go to Memories and enjoy! Family photos are one of those things that can really make family history more real and more interesting to the whole family.

Day 5-All About Me from FamilySearch.  This is taken off of the teen plan.  All you need to do is click the link , sign in, and it will give you this awesome page full of info and trivia about your name and the year you were born. Click on any of the colored tiles and it gives you a quiz!  It gives you the option to pick any year you want, but the default is the year you were born.

Today is a super fun one!  I was able to use MyHeritage's free colorizer and upload some old black and white photos.  They magically turn them into color photos!   Click here to try.   You do need to set up an account to download the colorized photos.  Here are some of mine!

Welcome to day 3 of the experiment!  If you are just joining, check it out here .  This is an activity I chose on my own.  FamilySearch has put out a new way to see your family history data in a quick snapshot.  This is my new infographic! Go see what yours looks like-click here!

Here's to day 2 of the 21 day family connections experiment.   Today we get yo use a really cool tool from BYU: Relative Finder !  There are two parts to this tool-see how you are related to famous people and see how you are related to others using groups. This is the screen you see when you head over to RelativeFinder.org . Sign in with your Family Search login.  Automatically it will pop up with a list of famous people you are related to!  Here is what mine looks like.  I have the results sorted in order so the closest relation comes first. If you want to see how you are related to others that are doing the experiment go to groups in the upper right corner, click join, search Connections-Experiement, and enter the password h3ycuz the see how you are related to even more people!  Go make some connections!

Day 1 of the 21 day family connections experiment!  If you haven't signed up yet make sure you visit here.   I will be doing a combination of all the plans with some of the activities from the Build your own plan.  Today is one of those days where I am choosing from the build your own plan-look for a relative in a newspaper.  This is also a sneak peak into my first ancestor story.  There are many placesyou can find newspapers but today I will be using the Old Fulton New York Post Cards .   All I had to do was type my ancestors name, Willis G Clark, and look through newspaper that matched him.  There is a famous poet by the same name so I had to sort through all of those to find some about my great grandfather.  Here you can see a story about how he was nominated to be on the Assembly to represent the 8th district.  Feel free to read the excerpt from the Buffalo Courier about his nomination.  See if you can find one of your ances...