Travel Tuesday - Root Cellar SGS Members Sited at Ancestry Day in San Francisco

Editor's note: Today's post was written by Sandra Gardner-Benward

                               Vicki Contente, Chris Highsmith and Sandra Gardner-Benward
   Siting of Root Cellar SGS members attending Ancestry Day in San Francisco November 9, 2013

This year, unlike last year, the conference was all held in one room with all paricipants attending.
Conference again at Hyatt Regency Hotel. Check in started at 7:30am and the first session started at 8:30am. Chris and I started our day at 5am (so that means I got up around 3:15am and don't know about Chris),  driving down to Walnut Creek and catching the BART into San Francisco. The exit is right below the Hyatt Regency Hotel. YEA!! Now Vicki was the smart one and drove down the day before and stayed overnight - smart girl)

WOW, the weather was beautiful - imagine - it is November in San Francisco AND we ate lunch outside. Yes outside in November in San Francisco! The sun was out and it was very comfortable. The street faire was also going on so we had lots to do and see during the lunch bhreak.

This was a sold out event. 1200 tickets sold about 1150 attended.  Well organized, and well staffed. Both Ancestry and California Genealogical Society partnered again and both were winners.

BEFORE

 

                                                                      AND DURING

The presenters were Crista Cowan (Barefoot Genealogist Blog) employed with Ancestry;       
Anne Gillespie Mitchell (Finding Forgotten Stories Blog)also writes the Ancestry Anne column for member monthly newsletter/ Senior Product Mamger at Ancestry and Tim Cox (California Genealogical Society  member volunteer, speaker, teacher and all around good guy).

We listened to

ANCESTRY 101 - New & Review. Start with yourseld and work back one generation at a time. (hummm where have I heard that before and yet alot of people insist on starting with a "famous ancestor" and working forward to connect. It is so much more difficult to do that, why, start with yourself and work back. Collect all the records you can about a person or family before moving to the next generation. Use the Card Catalogue. Start an online tree. My favorite is visit the Learning Center to watch webinars, read articles, and learn more about their programs, wiki etc. GVisit Ancestry.com YouTube channel for hours of tutorials on many different topics.

SMART SEARCH TIPS & TRICKS-  Make sure you are using the Advanced search form.  Do not mark anything exact the first time you search. (I really want to emphasize this- how do you know how something is listed on any document- don't loose out by only doing an exact search of name or dates or any other)

SEARCHING & WRITING YOUR FAMILY HISTORY- Build a framework - start with census, create a timeline, think about historical events, analyze as you go. Publish as you go. Storing your story in your tree and/or blogging your stories, use social media to get your stories out there. Preserve and share the stories for your younger generations.

FIVE NEW THINGS TO TRY ON ANCESTRY.COM - 1-FAMILY TREES/ build a puplic tree on Ancestry.com IT IS FREE --- 2-Use the LEARNING CENTER, hundreds of hours of video tutorials, research guides and more.  3-COLLABORATE  update you public profile, use member directory to find others researching the same surnames & locations. 4 &5-DNA there is ethnicity & cousin matching. They are two different processes.  ok  there is ydna/.males only; mtdna./ everyone has it but only passed on by women; AncestryDNA (autosomalDNA) anyone can take this test and benefit. --- have a public tree on Ancestry.com, attach your DNA results to your tree, have multiple family members tested, send messages to matches, and respond to messages received.

GET TO KNOW OUR FAMILY TO DISCOVER EVEN MORE ABOUT YOUR OWN-  Did you know that the parent company is ANCESTRY.COM and under their umbrella is Ancestry.com; AncestryDNA; FOLD3; Family Tree Maker Genealogical Family Software; MyCanvas (preserve & share family stories)' Archives.com; RootsWeb  (free, run by volunteers & hosted by Ancestry.com); Pro Genealogist; Newspaper.com; MyFamily.com; 1000 Memories; Shoebox for Ancestry (free- app for scanning); Mundia; Genealogy.com; & Find-a-Grave  just purchased (mobile app coming)

PUTTING YOUR ANCESTORS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: EXTRACTING STORIES FROM MILITARY RECORDS ON ANCESTRY.COM & FOLD3 --determine who in your family might have served. Create your research plan

THE INTERNET IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG-- most research is done in libraries, archives, courthouses, cemeteries and other places. GOOD side of Internet is that it is a huge resource & it is open 24 hours. The BAD side is transcription errors, incomplete record sets. The UGLY side is the integrity of the information, name collectors, making it fit.

LIVE Q&A PANEL...... lots of questions came in with registration, and some more from the floor.

There were prize drawings all day long with the grand prize drawn at the end of the day. You didn't hear any hooping and hollaring from me, Vicki or Chris, but there were winners AND great prizes.

A personal thought: There are lots of great advantages of using Family Tree Maker if you use Ancestry.com and create a family tree online. I used FTM years ago and enjoyed it. Then along came Legacy and I switched. I am very happy with Legacy but am a little jealous of how FTM & Ancestry Trees sync.


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