The choice of a genealogical software program may be one of the more personal decisions in genealogy. This lecture reviews the essential features of a smorgasbord of programs currently available to the family historian.  Programs differ in how they handle names, dates, places, sources and merging duplicates. The talk highlights key features of each with a focus on data entry, importing data, ability to tailor citations, reporting capabilities, chart generation, and reliability checks. By the end of the program, the attendee should have a good sense of which program might suit their needs and research habits. 

Today there are an estimated 7.6 million Jewish Americans living in the country, the majority of whom descend from diaspora Jewish populations from Central and Eastern Europe. Learning how to trace your Jewish ancestry is not without its challenges: changing surnames, locating your ancestor's home village or shtetl, and access to overseas records are just the tip of the iceberg. This webinar will discuss the historical context of your ancestor's arrival in the United States, review American records that can be helpful in your research, and provide basic strategies for uncovering your ancestor's exact origins in the old country.

In researching your family history, you quickly become inundated with physical copies, email and other electronic files, handwritten notes, photographs, research logs, and more. We will discuss various systems on how to organize your files, so you can easily return to your work, find what you need on a particular person or family, and not duplicate your efforts. 

Whether your ancestors lived in New England in the 17th century or the 21st century, this presentation will give you the basic information to begin—and advance—your research into New England records. In preparation for the release of the Sixth Edition of Genealogist’s Handbook for New England Research, this presentation will give you the basic historical context, general organization of records, go-to resources, and unique strategies that will give you a good foundation to succeed in tracing your New England ancestors. NOTE: New England includes the present-day states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Financial records can help fill in the timeline of your ancestor’s movements and explain motivations behind migrations. Deeds, pension, town, probate, tax, and employment records may exist when vital records do not. This class will demonstrate why financial records should be your go-to for tracing ancestors on the move, discuss what information is included in each, and where to find them. 

When most family historians think about the census, we think of the population schedule—the enumeration of individuals living within a household. But there is so much more to the Federal Census that many researchers overlook! We will discuss how mortality, agriculture, manufacturing, business, and other social statistics schedules can be used in your genealogical research. We’ll review what data was collected for what years, how to access these non-population schedules, and how to leverage this information in your own family history.

New York has been called “the first West for New England” because so many New Englanders settled there before continuing westward. Understanding patterns of settlement, expansion, and migration can help identify your ancestor’s deep New England roots. In this online lecture, we will discuss the historical context, records, and research strategies for tracing ancestors on the move in the Northeast.

Cemetery transcriptions are a valuable resource for all family historians, especially when you’re unable to visit a cemetery or when the stones have worn away and are no longer legible. In this presentation, we will discuss the importance of cemetery transcripts and point you toward online and published collections at AmericanAncestors.org, the Digital Library and Archives at AmericanAncestors.org, FamilySearch.org, local historical societies, and more.

Cemetery records can offer important clues to understanding the lives of those who came before us. Learn how headstones, family plots, and burial documents can shed new light on your ancestor’s life.

While we might wish all our ancestors’ records were typed in a standard format and perfectly legible, that simply isn’t the case. Many of the records family historians turn to are handwritten and may be faded, use archaic terminology, unfamiliar abbreviations, or are just plain illegible. This lecture will provide practical strategies for approaching handwritten documents, understanding and deciphering hard-to-read handwriting from different time periods, so that you can make the most of these important resources in your family history research.