The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke - Your Family History Show

This episode’s got a bit of holiday sparkle! Lisa Louise Cooke welcomes Genealogy Gems Book Club author and Victorian lifestyle expert Sarah Chrisman to the show to talk about Victorian holiday traditions, some of which may still live on in your own life. Following that conversation, Lisa shares a fun description of Victorian-era scrapbooking: how it’s different than today’s scrapbooking hobby but also how it reminds her of modern social media. More episode highlights: Three success stories from Genealogy Gems listeners: a Google search with great results, a brick-wall busting marriage record and yet another YouTube find for family history (people keep telling us about those!). Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard chimes in with what she likes so far about MyHeritage’s new DNA testing service. An internationally-themed German research conference and a makeover for the Scotland’s People website. NEWS: GERMAN-AMERICAN GENEALOGY PARTNERSHIP CONFERENCE First-ever German-American Genealogy Partnership Conference: Minneapolis, MN, July 28-30, 2017. 70 presentations over 3 full days on the theme,  “CONNECTIONS: International. Cultural. Personal” Topics will include major German-speaking regions; social networking opportunities each day for those with common interests in specific regions For the full scoop, at and click “2017 GAGP Conference”   by Jim Beidler. to purchase the book and use coupon code GENEALOGYGEMS15 to save an extra 15% through 12/31/ 16, which even works if the book is on sale. NEWS: SCOTLAND’S PEOPLE The newly-relaunched website has several exciting new features: Mobile-friendly web design and an enhanced search function; A  option for searching indexed records by name and an  for specific types of records; Free access to several records indexes; More than 150,000 baptism entries from Scottish Presbyterian churches (other than the Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland) have been added and more are coming, as well as marriages and burials; More types of records held by National Records of Scotland are coming, including records of kirk sessions and other church courts; Explore the site for free, including handy for using Scottish records such as statutory records, church registers and census returns. MAILBOX: GOOGLE SEARCH SUCCESS STORY From Joan: “I used one of the handy hints from your presentation at the South Orange County California Genealogical Society’s all day seminar in Mission Viejo, CA. I entered some of my common named ancestors, used the quotes, added a time frame and included some key words, like locations. Most of what I found were my own queries and posts. That shows it works!.... One thing I was amazed at was a multi-page article I found: ‘The Lincoln Kinsman,’ written in 1938. It included a lot of information on the Bush family [which is another of her family lines]. The article even included what I think is my ancestor Hannah Bush Radley.”  (Click or on the image above to see a copy of “The Lincoln Kinsman” at Internet Archive.) Listen to a free 2-part series on cold-calling distant relatives or others as part of your genealogy research: “ podcast, episodes 14 and 15.” BONUS CONTENT for Genealogy Gems App Users: A handy cheat sheet with 14 tips from that series on cold-contacting distant relatives. It’s updated with brand-new suggestions, including ways to find potential relatives’ names during the research process. The and is only $2.99 for . MAILBOX: VONDA BLOGS A MARRIAGE RECORD DISCOVERY that inspired her discovery Vonda’s blog post on her discovery: MAILBOX: YOUTUBE SUCCESS STORY Gay entered “Freeport Texas history” in YouTube and found historical newsreel footage of the opening ceremony of a local water treatment plant. She and the women in her family were seated on the front row. Here’s a screenshot from that footage: maybe this is a stylish young Gay in sunglasses? (.) Lisa’s book has an entire chapter on discovering family history gems such as these on YouTube. More tips and success stories on using YouTube to find your family history in moving pictures:   Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends . From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. By the end of 2016, RootsMagic expects to be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.     Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at .   INTERVIEW: VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS WITH SARAH CHRISMAN Sarah Chrisman lives her life every day as if it’s the Victorian era. Her clothing, household, pastimes, chores and more all reflect the time period. Listen as Lisa and Sarah talk about the Victorian Christmas tree; gift-giving, crafts, decorating and things that might surprise us about holiday celebrations during that time. Books by Sarah Chrisman: , a memoir Sarah’s everyday life. The Book Club interview in December will focus mainly on this book. ; ; : A Victorian Cycling Club Romance. This is from her series of light-hearted historical fiction set in an era she knows well! Sarah Chrisman joins me again later this month on to talk about what it’s like to live every day like it’s the late 1800s. Don’t miss it! Not a Premium member? to learn more about the perks of membership!   Legacy Tree Genealogists provides expert genealogy research service that works with your research goals, budget and schedule. The Legacy Tree Discovery package offers 3.5 hours of preliminary analysis and research recommendations: a great choice if you’ve hit a brick wall in your research and could use some expert guidance. to learn more. GENEALOGY GEMS EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Go to and use coupon code SAVE100 with your purchase of research services.     is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. : it’s free to get started.         GEM: VICTORIAN SCRAPBOOKING The Victorians coined the phrase “scrapbooking:” they literally pasted paper scraps into books. As an embellishment, those who could afford to bought “relief scraps,” such as the ones shown here. These were like the precursors of modern sticker sheets or die cuts, printed just for the scrapbooking hobby. You could buy colorful images of everything from flowers or children to animals, or angels or Father Christmas. These images were raised or embossed on the paper, which is why they called them reliefs. Relief scraps could be used as embellishments around other items on scrapbook pages, but sometimes they were the only decoration on a page, arranged in pretty patterns. This describes quote “a Sunday Scrap-book…as a source of almost unlimited pleasure and profit to children who can read and write.”   DNA WITH DIAHAN, Your DNA Guide I don’t think there is any dispute that the four major online resources for genealogy include Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Find My Past, and My Heritage. Of those four, only Ancestry.com has attempted any real integration of DNA test results into traditional genealogy. That is, until recently. On May 19, 2016 that they will be adding a DNA matching service to their offering, and then on November 7th announced they would be conducting DNA tests themselves. Now, MyHeritage has enjoyed partnerships with 23andMe and Family Tree DNA for quite some time now, but those partnerships have been woefully underutilized and are little more than an affiliate service, where MyHeritage provides a discounted rate to test at those companies. There is no question that the launch of DNA Heritage fully into the genetic genealogy market is exciting news. In fact, it is something I have been pushing for – we absolutely need someone to challenge AncestryDNA. Competition is good.  In September they began to provide matching results for individuals who had uploaded their results. As of today, uploading your results is still free, so if you have been thinking about it, you may want to take advantage sooner rather than later. As expected, the matches are only as good as the depth of the database, and it is early in the game, so their database is small, but even now we can get an idea of what to expect from MyHeritage as they take their first steps into genetic genealogy. One of the most exciting elements of their November 7th announcement is their development of a Founder Population project where they have handpicked individuals to represent their reference population for calculating ethnicities. They plan to launch with 25 population groups, but will likely increase to 100 in a fairly short amount of time. This is a far more advanced ethnicity report than is currently offered anywhere else. After you have figured out how to download your raw data from your testing company  (see my instructions here: ), and then managed to add it to My Heritage (you have to add a family tree to MyHeritage to do this, see further instructions in their May press release), and waited the requisite time to process, you will receive a notice that you have new DNA matches. For a full review of the features and ins and outs of where to click and what to look at, please refer to the . As for my favorite features, I like how they list all the possible relationships that make sense between you and your match taking into account multiple factors like your age, gender, and your genetics instead of a simple, generic range like 2nd-4th cousins. The accompanying chart that visually shows you all possible relationships is also very helpful. You can access it by clicking on the little question mark icon next to the relationship suggestions. I like that these suggestions remind us that our genetic relationships have different genealogical interpretations. Meaning that genetically, a 2nd cousin once removed, a first cousin twice removed, and a second cousin, all fall within a similar genetic range and it is impossible to determine your exact relationship based on the genetics alone. I also like that they are providing all three genetic descriptors of your relationship: total amount of shared DNA, how many segments are shared, and the size of the longest piece of shared DNA. While this more of an intermediate to advanced piece of your results, it can be important as your relationship analysis becomes more involved. One unique claim made by MyHeritage in their press release about their matching feature addresses a main concern that genetic genealogists have: the lack of pedigree information provided by their matches. MyHeritage claims that 95% of their DNA samples have pedigrees attached. That is remarkable! However, from my own quick calculation of my matches, the number with pedigrees is more like 60%. They also indicated that they will soon be doing a bit of pedigree analysis for you by providing a list of shared surnames and locations between you and your match based on the pedigrees you have both submitted. This will certainly be a welcome addition. According to the November 9th Q and A they haven’t decided yet if the ethnicity features will be available to those who only transfer, and they hint at many more features they have in the works that may only be offered to those who purchase their test. In short, the is currently functioning much like the top three genetic genealogy sites (Ancestry, Family Tree DNA, and 23andMe) and like the free tool Gedmatch, offers a meeting place for those who have been tested at one company to meet those who have tested at another, with the added bonus of a promise of new features on the horizon. PROFILE AMERICA: A DICKENSENIAN TALE PRODUCTION CREDITS Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer Sunny Morton, Editor Amie Tennant, Content Contributor Vienna Thomas, Audio Editor Lacey Cooke, Additional Production Support

Episode 197with Lisa Louise Cooke This episode celebrates the most recent family history there is—our own. A chat between host and producer Lisa Louise Cooke and Gems editor Sunny Morton explores the meaning and memories behind heirlooms in Lisa’s home. They comment on the larger value, for self and others, of recording our own memories in honor of Sunny’s new book, Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy. Also in this episode: A spotlight on new marriage records online for the U.S. and around the world. Lisa walks a listener through several tips for learning more about her immigrant ancestors (a mother and daughter). Lisa shows how to use today’s technology tools to help with traditional research skills such as locating passenger lists, immigrant society records and naturalization. Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard talks about organizing your DNA matches so you can get the most out of them. Genealogy Gems Book Club featured author and Victorian lifestyle expert Sarah Chrisman describes what it’s like in her home—which doesn’t use electricity—as the days grow shorter and the darkness comes earlier.   LISA SHARES HER RECENT DISCOVERIES The original photograph of her grandmother: The writing on the backside of the photo. Can you read he second line?   NEW RECORDS ONLINE: Marriage Records : a new index to more than 3 million marriage licenses for recent New York City marriages (1950-1995) Free FamilySearch marriage record collections recently added or updated include:       ;; ;  Learn more about marriage record research: Listen to : Episode 24 in Lisa Louise Cooke’s free step-by-step podcast, Genealogy: Family History Made Easy.   BONUS CONTENT for Genealogy Gems App Users: Finding Copies of Images Online with Google on Your Mobile Device If you’re listening through the Genealogy Gems app, your bonus content for this episode is an exclusive step-by-step tutorial PDF that shows you how to use your mobile device and Google to locate copies of images online. Remember, the and is only $2.99 for .   MAILBOX: Finding a Female Immigrant Ancestor Question from Jo: “I have been fortunate to find information about most of my great-grandparents.  I have hit a wall with my maternal great grandmother who immigrated from Switzerland to the US in the 1880's when she was 8 years old. I was hoping that by upgrading to International records on Ancestry that I could find the ship and where she and her mother came from. The curious thing for me is that she and her mother travelled solo to the US and went to Cincinnati, Ohio. I've been to Cincinnati and have searched there and have found directories with addresses but no profession is listed like other people. I didn't find any ship records either. Where might you suggest that I look or search to find more information?” Tips for searching passenger arrival lists: Consider what ports would have been the most logical point of arrival for an immigrant ancestor based on the time period and the U.S. location in which you find them. Cincinnati, Ohio, was reachable by rail by the 1880s from major ports, as well as by water via the Mississippi River for southern ports, so that doesn’t narrow things down much. According to an , more than 80% of immigrants arrived at the Port of New York by the 1890s, so Jo might scrutinize those New York passenger arrival lists for the 1880s again. Free New York City passenger arrival databases at (Ancestry.com) (FamilySearch.org; New York City, NARA M237) Search multiple NYC passenger lists simultaneously at For “deeper” searching at Ancestry.com or other sites with powerful, flexible search interfaces: do a “nameless search” (without any name) for girls around age 8 for arrivals in particular years. Try additional searches with various combinations of name, place of origin (Switzerland) or “Swiss” in the keyword field, which will bring up that word in the ethnicity or nationality column. That column doesn’t have its own search field in Ancestry.com but it is indexed, so use the keyword field to search it. Research Swiss immigration to Cincinnati during that time period. Who was coming, why they were coming and where they were coming from? for free tips about researching historical questions such as these. at Internet Archive and Tips for researching records of immigrant societies: In the U.S., the time between an immigrant’s arrival and naturalization is often documented in records of ethnic organizations such as fraternal benefit societies, immigrant aid and colonization societies. These kinds of community groups often existed in cities and towns where specific immigrant groups had a strong presence. (FamilySearch wiki) Become an expert Google searcher (for genealogy and everything else you want to find online) with , 2nd edition, by Lisa Louise Cooke. Or to get started with basic Google search strategies you can use now. Tips for researching naturalizations: Naturalization records from that time period won’t reliably tell you where an ancestor was from. But they’re still worth looking for, especially if census or other records indicated that the person naturalized. When looking for women’s and children’s naturalization records, remember that during this time period, they automatically became naturalized if their husband or father did, so individual records for married women and minor children won’t exist under their own names. But a woman could apply on her own, too. to read a free article on women’s naturalizations. Learn more in a free, 3-episode series on immigration and naturalization records: episodes 29-31 in the free, step-by-step . GET THE RIGHT GENEALOGY DATABASE: Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends . From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. And in the near future, RootsMagic will be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.   BACKUP YOUR GENEALOGY: Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at .   INTERVIEW: Sunny Morton on recording your own life stories    “Some people about writing their life stories like I do about going to the gym. I put off going, but once I do I remember how much I enjoy it—and how much good it does me.” -Sunny Sunny asks Lisa about this photo and her memories... Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy available as a or as a   GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB: Sarah Chrisman   Featured Genealogy Gems Book Club author Sarah Chrisman describes what it’s like when the days get shorter and the darkness comes early—in a house without electricity.         Legacy Tree Genealogists provides expert genealogy research service that works with your research goals, budget and schedule. The Legacy Tree Discovery package offers 3.5 hours of preliminary analysis and research recommendations: a great choice if you’ve hit a brick wall in your research and could use some expert guidance. to learn more. GENEALOGY GEMS EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Go to and use coupon code SAVE100 with your purchase of research services.   is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. : it’s free to get started.     DNA WITH DIAHAN SOUTHARD Parents spend a good portion of their parenting time ferreting out the real story from their children. One time when Henry was in Kindergarten he was playing outside with another little boy. I was in and out of the house watching him and checking on other things. Hours later I noticed that his bike had been spray-painted black. When confronted, he claimed he had no idea how such a thing could have happened. Unfortunately, I jumped to conclusions and blamed the other kid (you have to give me credit, at six Henry was such a good boy and had such an angelic face with his blue blue eyes and blonde blonde hair). But as I was on the phone with my husband telling him about the issue I looked over at Henry and I saw it- that guilty look and my stomach sank, recalling the things I had said to the other boy’s mom. “I’ll have to call you back,” I told my husband. As genealogists, we spend our time trying to ferret out the real story from our ancestors, or at least from the records they left behind, because they’re not sitting in front of us with guilty looks on their faces. We are constantly checking family stories against, say, the information on a census record, then comparing it to the family will, then making sure it all agrees with what’s in the military records. And even if we have total agreement, which isn’t always, more information often comes along, like in the form of DNA testing, and we may find even more apparent discrepancies. I recently read an about a reporter, Cameron McWhirter, who talks about finding just that kind of discrepancy between his family lore and his DNA. He even goes so far as to say, “I am descended, at least partially, from liars.” And he makes the point that “many immigrants reinvented themselves when they arrived here (the United States),” which could be a nice way of saying they had a chance to INVENT a new legacy, not just reinvent it. His assessments are certainly interesting, and worth reviewing, to help us see how DNA testing can affect the way we look at family stories and traditional research results. McWhirter may be the classic modern genealogist, never having set foot inside a courthouse or scanned through microfiche, relying instead entirely, he reports, on internet research. Now before you roll your eyes, just stop for a minute and appreciate how exciting this is. Here is a man who never gave his family history a second thought, yet because of the death of his parents started to tinker around a bit, and then due to the large volume of information online “was quickly pulled into the obsessive world of modern genealogical research.” I say, score one for the genealogy world! What he found was that while his dad was proudly and solidly a self-proclaimed Scot, the records and DNA revealed his heritage was actually from Ireland and eastern Europe. McWhirter says that his “father hated Notre Dame, but judging by my results he could have been one-quarter to one-half Irish. He spoke dismissively of people from Eastern Europe, but part of his genetic code likely came from that region.” McWhirter’s evaluation of his genetic report includes only his ethnicity results, which as you can hear, were meaningful to him in the way they flew in the face of his father’s prejudices and assertions of his own identity. But the ethnicity results fall short of the point of testing for most genealogists. He might even more powerfully transform his sense of family identity if he took a look at his match list and saw an actual living cousin, for example, a third cousin perhaps who was also descended from his German great-grandmother, who maybe never mentioned that she was also Jewish. Connecting with other cousins who also have paper trails to our ancestors serves to provide further confidence that we have put all of the pieces together and honored the right ancestor with a spot on our pedigree chart. It’s like we multiply our own research efforts by finding more people like us—literally—who are descended from the same people and interested in finding them. As long as they’re as diligent in their research as we are, of course. At a recent conference I met a 5th cousin. Even with a connection that distant it was exciting, and it made we want to look again at our connecting ancestors and pause for just a minute to marvel how my DNA verified my paper trail back to them, and that part of them was around, in me, and in my new cousin. To me, THAT’s a bigger picture I want to see—when the paper trail comes together with the DNA trail and turns into real live cousins, even if they turn out to be a little different than the stories and sense of identity that were handed to us when we were young. Maybe you’re something like Cameron McWhirter: you’ve taken a DNA test, been intrigued (or disappointed) by the ethnicity results, but haven’t yet fully explored all your matches on your list. I’m telling you, you may be seriously missing some opportunities. If that’s you, I may actually have written my new DNA quick guide just for you. It’s called “.” This guide will teach you how to leverage the power of known relatives who have tested. You’ll get an intro to chromosome browsers and their role in the search process, and access to a free bonus template for evaluating the genealogical relationship of a match in relationship to the predicted genetic relationship. This guide also gives you a methodology for converting UNknown relatives on your match list into known relatives, which is what we’re going for here. So check it out, either as a solo purchase or as part of my , which comes along with my new Gedmatch guide and a guide expressly for organizing your DNA matches.   PROFILE AMERICA:   PRODUCTION CREDITS Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer Sunny Morton, Editor Amie Tennant, Content Contributor Vienna Thomas, Audio Editor Lacey Cooke, Additional Production Support FREE NEWSLETTER: Enter your email & get my Google Research e-book as a thank you gift! to receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter, with tips, inspiration and money-saving deals.

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke In this episode, expert Kate Eakman from Legacy Tree Genealogists joins us with some tips for those starting to trace their Irish ancestors into Ireland. She shares some great websites for Irish research and places to look for that elusive Irish home county;and an exclusive coupon code for anyone who could use some expert help on a tough research problem. Additional episode highlights: Gems listeners respond with strong opinions on sharing gossip about our ancestors; Genealogy Gems Book Club surprises: a past featured author has a new book out—and something different for the new Book Club pick; Mark your calendars and make some plans for big conferences in 2017; Organize your DNA test results and matches to help you get the most out of them, now and in the future. Listen now - click the player below: NEWS: 2017 Conferences   BOOK CLUB NEWS: NEW FROM NATHAN DYLAN GOODWIN British author Nathan Dylan Goodwin, featured in the past on the Genealogy Gems Book Club with his novel has a NEW novel out in same forensic genealogy mystery series. : Hero Morton Farrier is back, and he’s on the trail of his client’s newly-discovered biological family. That trail leads to the fascinating story of a young woman who provides valuable but secret service during World War II—and who unknowingly became an entry in the mysterious Spyglass File. The connection is still so dangerous that Morton’s going to have bad guys after him again, and he may or may not be kidnapped right before he’s supposed to marry the lovely Juliette. Meanwhile, you’ll find him anguishing over the continuing mystery of his own biological roots—a story that unfolds just a little more in this new book.   MAILBOX: School Records Suggestion Responding to : “For those that have these old school records, consider donating them (even a digitized image) to the school from whence they originated. I shared class photos taken in the 1940s with my parents’ grade schools. The school was so appreciative! I hope another researcher down the road benefits from the pictures as well.” - Laura MAILBOX: Passing on the Gossip with Jennifer’s letter, my response, and several more comments to a post about the stamp pendant Jennifer sent me  Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends . From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. In the near future, RootsMagic will be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.   Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at .   INTERVIEW: Kate Eakman and Getting Started in Irish Genealogy GENEALOGY GEMS EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Go to and use coupon code SAVE100 to save $100 on your purchase of research services. Legacy Tree Genealogist specialist shares tips about getting started in Irish genealogy. Here are the highlights: Q: Where would you recommend the hobbyist start their Irish search?  A: Not a lot of Irish records are available online for free. Top sites for Irish records include: FamilySearch.org ( for their Ireland landing page), , and Findmypast.com ( for their Ireland page). Q: What does a researcher need to know before crossing the pond? A: Where the person was born in Ireland. The county. Find out if they were Protestant or Catholic. for an interactive map of Irish counties, including those of Northern Ireland. Q: Where do you recommend they look for that info in the U.S. crossing the pond? A: Death records, marriage records, church records (keep an eye on extended family), passenger lists, naturalization papers. Keep an eye out for extended family members who may have come from the same place. Be aware of and patterns. Q: At what point in the Irish research process do hobbyists usually get stuck? A: Common names regularly recycled, so it can be tough to sort out who is who. Also, a in 1922 destroyed the bulk of government records. for a description of what was lost and what surviving fragments are coming soon to Findmypast.com. Q: How does it work to work with a professional genealogist at Legacy Tree Genealogists? A: Here’s the process. A manager calls or emails the client to discuss their needs and parameters. They identify the goals and determine what the client already knows. A goal is settled on and then a researcher is assigned to the client. A written report of the research conducted is provided. GENEALOGY GEMS EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Go to and use coupon code SAVE100 to save $100 on your purchase of research services. The Legacy Tree Discovery package provides for 3.5 hours of preliminary analysis and research recommendations. It’s a great way to get started if you’ve hit a brick wall in your research and could use some expert guidance. to learn more. This episode is sponsored by MyHeritage.com. the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. Click here to see what MyHeritage can do for you: it’s free to get started.     DNA GEM with Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard: Organizing Your DNA I can tell whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher by the state of the silverware drawer. If either of the boys have done it (ages 13 and 11), the forks are haphazardly in a jumble and the spoon stack has overflowed into the knife section, and the measuring spoons are nowhere to be found. If, on the other hand, it was my daughter (age 8), everything is perfectly in order. Not only are all the forks where they belong, but the small forks and the large forks have been separated into their own piles and the measuring spoons are nestled neatly in size order. Regardless of the state of your own silverware drawer, it is clear that most of us need some sort of direction when it comes to organizing our DNA test results. Organizing your matches entails more than just lining them up into nice categories like Mom’s side vs. Dad’s side, or known connections vs. unknown connections. Organizing your results involves making a plan for their use. Good organization for your test results can help you reveal or refine your genealogical goals, and help determine your next steps. The very first step is to download your raw data from your testing company and store it somewhere on your own computer. I have instructions on my website if you need help. Once that is complete, we can get to the match list. One common situation for those of you who have several generations of ancestors in the United States, you may have some ancestors that seem to have produced a lot of descendants who have caught the DNA testing vision. This can be like your overflowing spoon stack, and it may be obscuring some valuable matches. But identifying and putting all of those known matches in their proper context can help you realize these abundant matches may lead to clues about the descendant lines of your known ancestral couple that you were not aware of. In my quick sheet I outline a process for drawing out the genetic and genealogical relationships of these known connections to better understand their relationship to each other and to you. It is then easier to verify that your genetic connection is aligned with your known genealogical paper trail and spot areas that might need more research. This same idea of plotting the relationships of your matches to each other can also be employed as you are looking to break down a brick wall in your family tree, or even in cases of adoption.  They key to identifying unknowns is determining the relationships of your matches to each other, so you can better see where you might fit in. Another helpful tool is a trick I learned from our very own Lisa Louise Cooke, and that is . Have you ever tried to use Google Earth to help you in your genetic genealogy? Remember that the common ancestor between you and your match has three things that connect you to them: their genetics, surnames, and locations. We know the genetics is working because they are showing up on your match list. But often times you cannot see a shared surname among your matches. However, by plotting their locations in the free Google Earth, kind of like separating the big forks from the little forks, you might be able to recognize a shared location that would identify which line you should investigate for a shared connection. So, what are you waiting for? Line up those spoons and separate the big forks from the little forks, your organizing efforts may just reveal a family of measuring Spoons, all lined up and waiting to be added to your family history.   GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB: Sarah A. Chrisman Author spotlight: Sarah A. Chrisman, living icon of the Victorian age. Sarah and her husband Gabriel live like it’s about 1889. They wear Victorian-style clothing and use a wood-burning stove and antique ice box. Sarah wears a corset day and night Gabriel wears 19th century glasses. No TV, no cell phones—and Sarah isn’t even a licensed driver. For this Book Club, you can take your pick of Sarah’s books! Which would you like to read? , a memoir Sarah’s everyday life. The Book Club interview in December will focus mainly on this book. ; ; : A Victorian Cycling Club Romance. This is from her series of light-hearted historical fiction set in an era she knows well! In honor of the Book Club theme, Genealogy Gems is going Victorian! From now through the end of the year, you’ll find Victorian-inspired crafts, recipes, décor, fashions and more on our Instagram and Pinterest sites, which of course we’ll link to regularly from the , newsletter, podcast show notes and . Nobody does sumptuous holiday traditions quite like the Victorians, and we look forward to celebrating that.   BONUS CONTENT for Genealogy Gems App Users If you’re listening through the Genealogy Gems app, your bonus content for this episode is a PDF with instructions on accessing the new free Guild of One-Name databases on FamilySearch.org. The and is only $2.99 for .   Receive our FREE Genealogy Gems Newsletter: Enter your email & get my Google Research e-bookas a thank you gift! to receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter, with tips, inspiration and money-saving deals.

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke In this episode, I’m celebrating the 100th episode of another podcast I host: the Family Tree Magazine podcast. So I’ll flashback to one of my favorite interviews from that show, an inspiring get-in-shape conversation for your research skills: how you can strengthen your research muscles and tone those technology skills to find and share your family history. More episode highlights: News on Chronicling America and Scotland’s People; Comments from guest expert Lisa Alzo on millions of Czech records that have recently come online; A YouTube-for-genealogy success story from a woman I met at a conference; An excerpt from the Genealogy Gems Book Club interview with Chris Cleave, author of Everyone Brave is Forgiven; Diahan Southard shares a DNA gem: the free website GEDmatch, which you might be ready for if you’ve done some DNA testing. Listen now - click the player below: NEWS: Genealogy.coach NEWS: GENEALOGY WEBSITE UPDATES NEW RECORDS ONLINE: FREE CZECH RECORDS AT FAMILYSEARCH.ORG On browse-only records: Though not fully indexed, the new Czech browse-only records number over 4 million. learn how to use browse-only collections on FamilySearch.org. Lisa Alzo, Eastern European genealogy expert and author of the new book comments on the significance of these records coming online: “These records are a real boon for Czech researchers because at one time the only to get records such as these was to write to an archive and taking a chance on getting a response or spending a lot of money to hire someone to find the records or to travel there yourself to do research in the archives.   The church records contain Images and some indexes of baptisms/births, marriages, and deaths that occurred in the Roman Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and Reformed Church parishes, as well as entries in those registers for Jews.  Land transactions containing significant genealogical detail for a time period that predates parish registers. The collection includes records from regional archives in Opava and Třeboň and from the district archive in Trutnov. School registers contain the full name for a child, birth date, place of birth, country, religion and father's full name, and place of residence. While researchers should keep in mind that not everything is yet online,and FamilySearch will likely add to its collection,  having these records from FS is an amazing resource for anyone whose ancestors may have come from these areas. And hopefully there are more records to come!” GENEALOGY GEMS NEWS Story of My Life by Sunny Morton, life story-writing journal available as a and as a Diahan Southard will be at the in Dublin, Ireland, October 21 to 23, 2016   Genealogy Gems app users:  For those of you who listen to this show through the Genealogy Gems app, your bonus handout is a PDF document with step-by-step instructions and helpful screenshots for Google image search on mobile devices. The and is only $2.99 for   Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends . From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. And in the near future, RootsMagic will be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.   Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at . Review your search results—especially those that pop up in the Images category.   MAILBOX: Robin’s YouTube Success Story YouTube video with Robyn’s father: has an entire chapter on using YouTube to find family history in historical videos   MAILBOX: FEEDBACK ON THE PODCASTS Free, step-by-step podcast for beginners and a “refresher” course:   SHAPING UP WITH SUNNY MORTON celebrates 100th episode   Sunny Morton has get-in-shape advice for us—from strengthening research skills to toning tech muscles--from the article "Shaping Up" featured in the  More resources for genealogy education: GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB: , the best-selling novel by British author Chris Cleave. A love story set in World War II London and Malta. This story is intense, eye-opening and full of insights into the human experience of living and loving in a war zone—and afterward. is inspired by love letters exchanged between the author’s grandparents during World War II. Video: for more Genealogy Gems Book Club titles is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. : it’s free to get started.     GEDMATCH WITH DIAHAN SOUTHARD, YOUR DNA GUIDEThe genetic genealogy community has a crush. A big one.  Everyone is talking about it. “It has such great features.” says one. “It has a chromosome browser!” exclaims another. “It’s FREE!” they all shout. What are they talking about? GEDmatch is a mostly free online tool where anyone with autosomal DNA test results from 23andMe, FTDNA, and AncestryDNA can meet and share information. All you need to do is download your data from your testing company and upload it into your newly created GEDmatch account. GEDmatch is set up just like your testing company in that it provides two kinds of reports: ethnicity results, and a match list. Remember that ethnicity results, meaning those pie charts that report you are 15% Italian and 32% Irish, are based on two factors: a reference population and fancy math. GEDmatch has gathered data from multiple academic sources to provide you with several different iterations of ethnicity reports. This is like getting a second (and third and fourth, etc) opinion on a science that is still emerging. It is a fun exercise, but will likely not impact your genealogy research very much. The more important match list does allow you to see genetic cousins who have tested at other companies. Of course, only those who have downloaded their results and entered them into GEDmatch will show up on your list. This means GEDmatch has the potential to expand your pool of genetic cousins, increasing your chances of finding someone to help you track down that missing ancestor. Many also flock to GEDmatch because they were tested at AncestryDNA and thus do not have access to a chromosome browser. A chromosome browser allows you to visualize the physical locations that you share with someone else. Some find this to be a helpful tool when analyzing their DNA matches (though in my opinion it is not essential). GEDmatch also has some great genealogy features that let you analyze your pedigree against someone else’s, as well as the ability to search all the pedigree charts in their system so you can look specifically for a descendant of a particular relative. However, even with all of these great features, GEDmatch is still yet another website you have to navigate, and with that will be a learning curve, and certainly some frustration. So, is it worth it? If you are fairly comfortable with the website where you were tested, and you are feeling both curious and patient, I say go for it. It’s too much to try to tell you right this minute how to download your data from your testing site and upload it to GEDmatch. BUT you’re in luck, I’ve put step-by-step instructions for getting started in a FREE tutorial on my website at . After you’ve done the upload, you may need a little bit more help to navigate the GEDmatch site because there are so many great tools on it. I recently published a , where I have condensed into four pages the most essential features of GEDmatch to get you started and help you make use of this tool for genetic genealogy. Using my guide is an inexpensive and easy way to get a lot more out of a free online resource. I will also be adding more GEDmatch tutorials to my online tutorial series later this fall, which Genealogy Gems fans get a nice discount on ( for that discount). By the way, have you tried GEDmatch? I would love to hear about your experiences. You can email me at .   DNA QUICK GUIDE BUNDLES: NEW AND ON SALE by Diahan Southard: GEDmatch: A Next Step for your Autosomal DNA Test Organizing Your DNA Matches: A Companion Guide Next Steps: Working with Your Autosomal DNA Matches   by Diahan Southard with ALL 10 Guides Getting Started: Genetics for the Genealogist Autosomal DNA for the Genealogist Mitochondrial DNA for the Genealogist Y Chromosome DNA for the Genealogist and Testing Companies: Understanding Ancestry: A Companion Guide to Autosomal DNA for the Genealogist Understanding Family Tree DNA: A Companion Guide to Autosomal DNA for the Genealogist Understanding 23 and Me: A Companion Guide to Autosomal DNA for the Genealogist and Advanced Tools Next Steps: Working With Your Autosomal DNA Matches Organzing Your DNA Matches GEDmatch: A Next Step for Your Autosomal DNA Test   Genealogy Gems Podcast turns 200: Tell me what you think?As we count down to the 200th episode of the free Genealogy Gems Podcast, what have been YOUR favorite things about the podcast? Any particular topics, interviews or segments of the show? What keeps you coming back? What would you like to hear more of? Email me at genealogygemspodcast@gmail.com, or leave a voicemail at (925) 272-4021, or send mail to: P.O. Box 531, Rhome, TX 76078. FREE NEWSLETTER:

The Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke Did you know you can use Google to help identify images, to find more images like them online, and even to track down images that have been moved to a different place online? Find these great Google tech tips in this episode, along with 10 tech-savvy tricks for finding an ancestor's school records. You will also hear how to create a family history photo decoupage plate: a perfect craft to give as a gift or create with children. This blast from the past episode comes from the digitally remastered Genealogy Gems Podcast episodes 11 and 12 (originally recorded in 2007). They are now interwoven with fresh narration; below you’ll find all-new show notes. Google Image searches: Updated tips to watch a short new tutorial video on using Google Images to find images for your genealogy research. Conduct an initial search using the search terms you want. The Image category (along with other categories) will appear on the screen along with your search results. For images of people: enter name as search term in quotes: “Mark Twain.” If you have an unusual name or if you have extra time to scroll through results, enter the name without quotation marks. Other search terms to try: ancestral place names, tombstone, name of a building (school, church, etc.), the make and model of Grandpa’s car, etc. Click on one of the image thumbnails to get to a highlight page (shown here) where you can visit the full webpage or view the image. If you click View images, you’ll get the web address. To retrieve images that no longer appear at the expected URL: Click on View image to get the image URL. Copy the image’s URL (Ctrl+C in Windows) and paste it (Ctrl+V) into your web browser to go to that image’s page. When you click through, you’re back in Web view. The first few search results should be from the website with the image you want. Click on a link that says “cache.” A cached version is an older version of the website (hopefully a version dated before the image was moved or removed). Browse that version of the site to find the image. NEW Tip: Use Google Chrome to identify an image and find additional images showing the same subject, such as a place, person or subject. From the Google home page, click Images. In the Google search box, you’ll see a little camera icon. Click on it. If you have an image from a website, insert the URL for that image. If you have an image on your computer, click Upload an image. Choose the file you want. Google will identify the image as best it can, whether a location, person, or object, and it will show you image search results that seem comparable. to watch a free video tutorial on this topic.   GEM: Decoupage a Family Photo Plate Supply List: Clear glass plate with a smooth finish (available at kitchen outlet and craft stores) Sponge craft brush Decoupage glue Fine paper-cutting scissors (Cuticle scissors work well) Small bottle of acrylic craft paint in a color you would like for the back A flat paintbrush Painter’s tape Brush-on clear acrylic varnish for a glossy finish on the back of the plate A selection of photos (including other images that complement the photos)  Assembling your plate: Lay out your design to fit the plate Add words if desired. You can draw directly on the copy or print it out and cut it to fit. Put an even coat of glue on the front of each photo. Don't worry about brush strokes, but be careful not to go over it too many times which could cause the ink to run.  Apply the photos to the back of the plate, working in reverse order (the first images placed on the plate will be in the foreground of the design). Glue the edges firmly. Turn the plate over to check the placement of images. Smooth using craft brush. Brush glue over the back of each photo. Turn the plate around so you can see the image from the front and work out the air bubbles. Continue to place the images until the entire plate is covered. Let it dry 24 hours. Use painters’ tape to tape off the edges before you apply the acrylic paint to the back of the plate. Paint the back and let dry. Apply a second coat. Let dry. Apply an acrylic varnish for a glossy finish on the back. Let dry. Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends . From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. And soon, RootsMagic will be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site. Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with , the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems.   GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB Our current book is by Chris Cleave. Follow the story of Mary North, a wealthy young Londoner who signs up for the war effort when the Great War reaches England. Originally assigned as a schoolteacher, she turns to other tasks after her students evacuate to the countryside, but not before beginning a relationship that leads to a love triangle and long-distance war-time romance. As her love interest dodges air raids on Malta, she dodges danger in London driving ambulances during air raids in the Blitz. This story is intense, eye-opening and full of insights into the human experience of living and loving in a war zone—and afterward. is inspired by love letters exchanged between the author’s grandparents during World War II. Video: for more Genealogy Gems Book Club titles   GEM: Top 10 Tips for finding Graduation Gems in your family history Establish a timeline. Check your genealogy database to figure out when your ancestor would have attended high school or college. Consult family papers and books. Go through old family papers & books looking for senior calling cards, high school autograph books, journals and diaries, senior portraits, fraternity or sorority memorabilia and yearbooks. Search newspapers. Look for school announcements, honor rolls, sports coverage, end-of-year activities and related articles. Updated tips and online resources: Ancestry.com has moved the bulk of its historical newspaper collection to its sister subscription website, . Search your browser for the public library website in the town where your ancestor attended school. Check the online card catalogue, look for a local history or genealogy webpage, or contact them to see what newspapers they have, and whether any can be loaned (on microfilm) through interlibrary loan. Search the Library of Congress’ newspaper website, Chronicling America, for digitized newspaper content relating your ancestor’s school years. Also, search its for the names and library holdings of local newspapers. online catalog Contact local historical and genealogical societies for newspaper holdings. Consult the websites of U.S. state archives and libraries: to find a directory of state libraries State historical and genealogical societies. In addition to newspapers, state historical and genealogical societies might have old yearbooks or school photograph collections. For example, the has a large (and growing) collection of Ohio school yearbooks. Local historical and genealogical societies may also have school memorabilia collections. RootsWeb, now at . Check the message board for the county and state you’re looking for. Post a message asking if anyone has access to yearbooks or other school info. TIP: Use Google site search operator to find mentions of yearbooks on the county page you’re looking at. Add site: to the front of the Rootsweb page for the locale, then the word yearbook after it. For example: Search for online yearbooks at websites such as: Ancestry.com now has a large yearbook collection Yearbookgenealogy.com and the National Yearbook Project, mentioned in the show, no longer exist as such US GenWeb at . Search on the county website where the school was located. Is there anyone willing to do a lookup? Is there a place to post which yearbooks you’re looking for? Call the school, if it’s still open. If they don’t have old yearbooks, they may be able to put you in touch with a local librarian or historian who does. TIP: Go to and type the school name in “Business Name.” Call around 4:00 pm local time, when the kids are gone but the school office is still open.  : Do a search on the school or town you’re looking for to see if anyone out there is selling a yearbook that you need. Also search for old photographs or postcards of the school. Here’s my extra trick: From the results page, check the box to include completed listings and email potential sellers to inquire about the books you are looking for. TIP: Don’t be afraid to ask – ebay sellers want to sell!  And if all else fails, set up an ebay Favorite Search to keep a look out for you. Go to and check out Episode #3 for instructions on how to do this. MyHeritage.com is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. Click here to see what MyHeritage can do for you: it’s free to get started.   FREE NEWSLETTER: Enter your email & get my Google Research e-bookas a thank you gift! to receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter, with tips, inspiration and money-saving deals.

The Genealogy Gems Podcast by Lisa Louise Cooke Episode highlights: Genealogy milestones, anniversaries, new records, upcoming conferences and new free video tutorials; Email response to The Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode #192: another tip on the U.S. Public Records Index, a family adoption story and his own research on the changing coastline of Sussex; More response to the “Where I’m From” poetry initiative; Announcement: the NEW Genealogy Gems Book Club title; A key principle in genetic genealogy from Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard. NEWS: FOIA Turns 50What is the FOIA? The Freedom of Information Act opens federal records to the public. The FOIA applies to certain kinds of information about the federal government and certain information created by the federal government. It DOESN’T apply to documents that relate to national security, privacy and trade secrets, or to documents created by state or local governments. FOIA for genealogy research: Use the FOIA to request: : draft registrations and SS-102 forms (with more draft/military information on them), through the end of 1959;  from 1906 to 1956;  from 1940 to 1944;  from 1924 to1944;  for 1929 to 1944 (these document the arrival of an immigrant whose passenger or other arrival record could not be found for whatever reason); , alien case files for 1944 to 1951; Certain  and certain  (to the slides from a National Archives presentation on using FBI files for family history. to read an article on the 50th anniversary of the FOIA and more on FOIA for genealogy   NEWS: NEW RECORD COLLECTIONS ONLINE Peggy Lauritzen on “Gretna Greens,” quickie wedding destinations ( required to access) ; In September 2016 you can access the full Freedmen’s Bureau Project at .   NEWS: AncestryDNA Hits 2 Million Samples Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard talks about these AncestryDNA features in: NEWS: UPCOMING CONFERENCES , July 15-16, 2016 CeCe Moore talks genetic genealogy on genealogy TV shows , July 30, 2016 3rd Annual Northwest Genealogy Conference, Arlington, Hosted by the Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society, north of Seattle in Arlington, WA  on August 17-20, 2016 Theme: "Family Secrets Uncovered -- Lost History Found” Keynote speakers include Blaine Bettinger, Claudia Breland and Lisa Louise Cooke Free Day Wednesday afternoon: Beth Foulk will address beginner's issues -- which is also a good refresher for the more seasoned genealogists Other features: Meet a distant cousin with the “Cousin Wall;” participate in the genealogy-related scavenger hunt on Free Day Wednesday, and enjoy the free taco bar at the evening reception. Wear a costume from your ancestors’ homeland on the Friday dress-up day.           GEMS NEWS: NEW VIDEOS ONLINE ( required to access)   MAILBOX: CHRIS WITH US PUBLIC RECORDS INDEX TIP AND MORE Follow-up email regarding from Chris, who blogs at about a compelling story of an adopted child in his family about the changing coastline in Sussex MAILBOX: “WHERE I’M FROM” : Interview with George Ella Lyon Santa Clara County Historical and Genealogical Society “Where I'm From” contest: “Anyone near and far may join our Contest. Each entry receives a gift from the. We will have a drawing from all entries of cash or a nice prize.  Deadline for entries is Aug. 31, 2016. More information on .”   NEW GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB SELECTION   by Chris Cleave It’s a story inspired by love letters exchanged between his grandparents during World War II, when they were each in dangerous places: he on the island of Malta and she in London, both of which suffered some of the worst sustained bombing campaigns of the war. is a fast-paced book. It begins in London in 1939 with Mary North, a wealthy young lady from a privileged family who, on finding out that war has been declared, immediately leaves her finishing school and signs on for the war effort without telling her parents. She fulfills an assignment as a school teacher long enough to make a meaningful connection with a school official and one of her students. Then her students (along with the rest of London’s children) are evacuated to the countryside, leaving her to figure out what to do next. The plot gets a lot more involved from here. There’s a love triangle, a long-distance romance, a series of scenes that take place on the heavily-bombarded island of Malta, harrowing descriptions of the London Blitz, homeless children who return from the evacuation only to find themselves parentless, homeless and in constant danger. It’s intense and eye-opening, but it’s compassionate and it’s still very readable for those who have less of a stomach for blood and guts but still want to understand some of the human experience of living and loving in a war zone, and then picking up the pieces afterward and figuring out how to keep living. Video: for more Genealogy Gems Book Club titles   DNA GEM: GENETIC PEDIGREE V GENEALOGICAL PEDIGREE A key concept in genetic genealogy is that your genetic pedigree is different than your genealogical pedigree. Let me explain. Your genealogical pedigree, if you are diligent or lucky (or both!) can contain hundreds, even thousands of names and can go back countless generations. You can include as many collateral lines as you want. You can add several sources to your findings, and these days you can even add media, including pictures and copies of the actual documents. Every time someone gets married or welcomes a new baby, you can add that to your chart. In short, there is no end to the amount of information that can make up your pedigree chart. Not so for your genetic pedigree. Your genetic pedigree contains only those ancestors for whom you have received some of their DNA. You do not have DNA from all of your ancestors. Using some fancy math we can calculate that the average generation in which you start to see that you have inherited zero blocks of DNA from an ancestor is about seven. But of course, most of us aren’t trying to figure out how much of our DNA we received from great great great grandma Sarah. Most of us just have a list of DNA matches and we are trying to figure out if we are all related to 3X great grandma Sarah. So how does that work? Well, the first thing we need to recognize is that living descendants of Sarah’s would be our fourth cousins (though not always, but that is a topic for another post!). Again, bring in the fancy math and we can learn that living, documented fourth cousins who have this autosomal DNA test completed will only share DNA with each other 50% of the time. Yes, only half. Only half of the time your DNA will tell you what your paper trail might have already figured out: That you and cousin Jim are fourth cousins, related through sweet 3X great grandma Sarah.  But here’s where the numbers are in our favor. You have, on average, 940 fourth cousins. So if you are only sharing DNA with 470 of them, that’s not quite so bad, is it? And it only takes one or two of them to be tested and show up on your match list. Their presence there, and their documentation back to sweet Sarah, helps to verify the genealogy you have completed and allows you to gather others who might share this connection so you can learn even more about Sarah and her family. Plus, if you find Jim, then Jim will have 470 4th cousins as well, some of which will not be on your list, giving you access to even more of the 940. This genetic family tree not matching up exactly with your traditional family tree also manifests itself in your ethnicity results, though there are other reasons for discrepancies there as well.  In short, this DNA stuff is not perfect, or even complete, but if you combine it with your traditional resources, it can be a very powerful tool for verifying and extending your family history. Additional readings:   PROFILE AMERICA:

Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode #192 with Lisa Louise Cooke Highlights from this episode: How to use Animoto, my favorite new tech tool for creating professional-looking slide shows and videos New Genealogy Gems team member Amie Tennant shares insights as she prepares for professional certification A listener shares a favorite genealogy database for finding recent relatives A listener uses DNA to connect adoptive and biological relatives—who were closer than she thought A segment from the Genealogy Gems Book Club interview with author Helen Simonson on The Summer Before the War News from Dropbox and a new initiative to capture the family histories of remote, indigenous populations   NEWS: Dropbox Improvement New on Dropbox: Now when you share Dropbox content with someone, shared links will stay active even if you move or rename the file or folder. Dropbox file-sharing tip: “If you ever want to unshare something you’ve already sent out (like to remove access to a sensitive document), it’s easy to disable an active link.” Just sign in to . “Click the link icon next to the file or folder, and click ‘remove link’ in the top right corner of the box that appears. You can also remove the link by visiting and clicking ‘x’ next to the file or folder.”   NEWS: MyHeritage and Tribal Quest (on FamilySearch.org)   NEWS: New Premium Video : a new video available to by Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard Genealogy Gems Premium website membership: to learn more to watch a free video preview   MAILBOX: Russ Recommends the U.S. Public Records Index Russ blogs at : What to use while waiting for the 1950 census Russ recommends the “U.S., Public Record Index, 1950-1993, Volume 1 and 2.” “Volume 1 is far more interesting with more data. A search will return a Name AND Birth date, along with more than one ADDRESS, Zip Code and sometimes phone numbers.” Ancestry’s description of its online database for Volume 1 says original data comes from public records spanning all 50 states, such as voter registration lists, public record filings, historical residential records and other household database listings. U.S. Public Records Index on Ancestry.com:  and Free partial version (1970-2009) at Another partial version (1970-2010) at Thoughts about using the U.S. Public Records Index (some of these points come from the ): Not everyone who lived in the U.S. appears in the index, and you’re more likely to find birth information for those born between 1900 and 1990. What you’ll find is primarily where someone lived, and often when they lived there. It’s rarely possible to positively identify a relative in this index, since there’s limited information and it spans the entire country for up to a half century, and you can’t follow up on the record it comes from because the index doesn’t say where individual records come from. As Russ says, this is a great resource to use in combination with other records. It’s a similar concept to the way you might consult uncited family trees: great hints to go on and follow up with further research into verifiable sources. When you find more recent listings, you can sometimes find telephone numbers for living distant relatives. The Family History Made Easy podcast has a 2-episode series (episodes and ) about cold-calling techniques for reaching out to distant relatives you don’t know.   MAILBOX: Katie on Cold-calling and Adoption and DNA Katie blogs her family history adventures at . to read a blog post with her story and see more pictures that go with it.   INTERVIEW: Amie Tennant Amie Tennant is the newest member of the Genealogy Gems team. She contributes to the blog at . She is also preparing to become a certified genealogist, which is a professional credential offered by the (BCG). What have you learned in the process of preparing for certification? “I think the biggest thing I have learned is the meaning of true exhaustive research. We talk a lot about that in our genealogy standards, but essentially, it is looking EVERYWHERE for EVERYTHING that might shed light on your research question.” Why do you want to become certified? I want a way to determine how well I am doing. A measuring stick of sorts. What is the process like? The process is the same for everyone. Once you have decided to become certified, you apply to the BCG. They send you a packet of information and you are “on the clock.” The clock is up in one year, unless you ask for an extension. The portfolio you create consists of: Signing the Code of Ethics Listing your development activities (like formal coursework or enrichment activities); Transcribe, abstract, create a genealogy research question, analyze the data, and the write the research plan for a document that is supplied to you; Do those same 5 things for a document of your choosing; A research report prepared for another person. A case study with conflicting, indirect or negative evidence; A kinship determination project (a narrative genealogy that covers at least 3 generations) There is a lot of great free content on the : articles, examples, and skill building activities.   GEM: How to Create Family History Videos Quickly and Easily which includes video tutorials and inspirational examples. Genealogy Gems App users can watch Episode #1 of the video tutorial in the Bonus content area.    BOOK CLUB: Interview excerpt with Helen Simonson, author of  The Summer Before the War Beatrice Nash is a bright, cosmopolitan young lady who has grown up traveling the world with her father. Now he’s gone, and she’s landed in the small village of East Sussex, England, where the locals aren’t entirely thrilled about engaging her as a female Latin instructor for their schoolchildren. She spends a summer fighting for her job, meeting a local cast of engaging eccentric characters (both gentry and gypsy) and trying not to fall for handsome Hugh. Then the Great War breaks out. This novel follows Helen’s popular debut novel, , which became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 21 languages.  can join us in June to hear our exclusive and fun interview with Helen Simonson.   GENEALOGY GEMS PODCAST PRODUCTION CREDITS: Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer Sunny Morton, Contributing Editor Vienna Thomas, Audio Editor Additional content by Lacey Cooke, Amie Tennant

Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode #191 with Lisa Louise Cooke   NEWS: Upcoming Live-Streaming from FGS from Periscope Free Periscope app in or  Lisa’s Twitter handle: @LisaCooke   New German Records with James Beidler His new book: Trace Your German Roots Online: A Complete Guide to German Genealogy Websites. Jim mentioned this new website for Protestant church records: Links to new German genealogy databases: CHURCH. An enormous collection of  is now searchable on Ancestry.com. You’ll find over 24 million records from “parish registers from numerous Protestant communities in Baden, today part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg…[and] some communities to the north, such as Wiesbaden in adjacent Hessen.” Another new Ancestry.com collection contains over a million birth, marriage and death records taken from  for 1685-1879. CIVIL REGISTRATIONS. Nearly 300,000 indexed names have been added to a free online collection of , Hesse, Germany (1811-1814, 1833-1928). IMMIGRATION TO U.S. A new database on Ancestry.com catalogs . MILITARY. Over 400,000 records are part of a new Ancestry.com collection of  (1712-1914). According to the collection description, “The core of the collection are the muster rolls created by recruiting commmissions including actual musters from 1894-1917 for men born between 1874 and 1899. These records are arranged in chronological-alphabetical order and contain detailed information about male military personnel in the city.” Get the book on sale at Shop Family Tree by clicking the link below and then save an additional 15% with our coupon code: $13.99 (Retail $21.99)   MyHeritage Book Matching Sunny's result:   Canadian Conferences Coming Up Lisa Louise Cooke at the , June 3-5, 2016 at the International Plaza Hotel, Toronto (CANGEN), October 21-23, 2016 at the Courtyard by Marriott in Brampton, Ontario   MAILBOX: Thom’s Google Success Story with Google Earth and Google Books to read a blog post to see Thom’s full story with his map overlay and the Google Book search result he found Learn more about Google Earth for genealogy: (Get started!) 2nd edition, by Lisa Louise Cooke (fully revised and updated in 2015) Google Earth for Genealogy video tutorial series: available as a or a   Donna’s Evernote Question Q: What’s the best way to move Evernote notes into notebooks? A: Sometimes getting organized can gobble up all your research time. So one approach I often recommend is just to move Evernote notes as you use them. That way you can keep researching, while getting more organized each day. As you create new notes you'll be putting them directly where they belong, and as you use existing notes, you can tidy them up as you go. If you feel more comfortable getting everything moved in one fell swoop, that's good too. One way to save time is with a simple trick: decide what you have more of (genealogy or personal) and then move ALL your notes into that notebook. Now you only have less than 1/2 of your notes that need to be moved. You can move the rest to the other notebook by selecting multiple notes at once. Here's a step-by-step breakdown: Click the Genealogy notebook in the left column.  2. In the center column are all of your notes. Click the first note in your list to be moved. 3. Hold down the Control key on your keyboard. 4. Now click to select each additional note. (Use the wheel on your mouse to scroll down as you need to. Your notes will be collecting in the right-hand window pane, and a dialog box will appear. 5. In that dialog box, click the Move to Notebook button and click to select the desired notebook from your list. 6. For good measure, click the Sync button to manually synchronize all of your notes. to find more great resources for using Evernote for genealogy, including free tips, step-by-step helps, a unique Evernote cheat sheet and free and Premium videos to learn more about Genealogy Gems Premium membership INTERVIEW: Amy Crow and 4 Apps for Local History (and Tips for Using Them) : “like Pinterest for history.” Especially strong for local history in England, Ireland, Scotland, but also wonderful for the U.S. A lot of organizations have added photos and curated them into collections, like Pinterest boards.  Follow libraries, archives and historical societies that are in towns where your ancestors lived. They may post historic photos from their collections. Instagram now has a feature where you can share photos with those you follow on Instagram. Use it to share a cool old picture that relates to your family history with a young relative. . This website and local history app (available through  and on  for iPhone/iPad) shows you historic sites around you when you turn on your location services. The resources, descriptions and bibliographic entries on this site are great to follow up with for your research.  At this site (or with the ) you can view historic photos plotted on a map near your current location. Use it to look around and ask the question, “What happened here?” if you’re on a walk or visiting somewhere. The site is integrated with Google Street View. You can also upload your own old photos if you know where they were taken and do an overlay in Google Maps, in much the same way Lisa teaches about doing in .   GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB: The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson From Sunny: This novel takes place in a small English town just before and then right into the events of World War I. The heroine, Beatrice Nash, is trying to find her footing as an independent, educated woman. She’s got a romance on the horizon, and she’s getting to know some fantastic characters, gypsies and gentry when—bam, here comes WWI, first as rumors and dinner conversation, then as a trickle of refugees into town and finally as a horrible pull on their local young men into combat. Lisa always asks me when we’re talking about possible titles for the Book Club, “What does this book mean to us as genealogists?” For me, The Summer Before the War does a couple of things. First, I think it can be difficult to imagine our ancestors in living color with a full range of human emotions. When we can find photos, they’re black and white (or brown and white). When we find them in print, they’re often more reserved in what they say than we like. Times were stricter then, and we may make assumptions about their passions and how they lived them out. What a novel like The Summer Before the War does for me is remind me that people at that times had just as many feelings as I do. They lived and breathed and loved and hurt and were tempted and frightened and everything else.  Yes, a novel is not a historically accurate re-creation of my ancestor’s character (or anyone else’s ancestor’s characters, for that matter), but it places the human spirit in a certain time and place, perhaps a time and place that was also inhabited by my relatives. It helps me imagine their lives from a fuller perspective. The other thing I love about this book is that it reminds me that history didn’t happen in neat intervals. Sometimes I separate out in my mind certain events in an ancestor’s timeline. During these years they went to school, or got married and started a family, or worked as a teacher. But then you dump a war on top of that timeline. You realize that for some people, the war snuck in the back door of their lives and stayed there while they were trying to get married and start a family or work as a teacher, or all of the above. Of course, for those who went to the front or to whom the fight came, the story is more dramatic, but even then, the war happened to them within the context of other things that were already happening. The Summer Before the War is really good at showing how the conflict just gradually dawned on this English village, before becoming an everyday and grim reality for many of its residents, and the final chapter for a few of them. The book is The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson. Helen joins us for a fantastic conversation about the book in next month’s Genealogy Gems Premium podcast (Lisa will put an excerpt from the interview into this free podcast, too). So use the link in the show notes to grab your copy of The Summer Before the War and enjoy it. It’s a fun, easy read but with plenty of meat on its bones for those who love history---and re-imagining the lives of their ancestors.   DNA WITH DIAHAN: Changes at AncestryDNA Change is afoot at AncestryDNA. Again. While stability and predictability seem like honorable qualities in a company or product, when it comes to tech tools, in the ears of tech companies, those words sound more like dated and old. Of course, we are used to this by now. I had a client tell me recently that he wanted to be in touch sooner, but his grandson “upgraded” his computer to Windows 10 and then promptly left for college the next day, leaving him fighting with a new interface and operating system. The good news is, you won’t have this problem with Ancestry’s new update. There aren’t any changes to the interface or the layout of the information. In fact, many of you will not even notice at first that your match list has changed. But in fact, there likely have been some adjustments made, as we see below: Some of your third cousins have been demoted to fourth cousins. Some of your fourth cousins have been demoted to 5th-8th cousins. Some of your Distant Cousins have disappeared off your match list You have new cousins on your Distant Cousin match list. In general, from what Ancestry has showed us, you gain more than you lose. Changes in the dregs of your match list may not seem like that big of a deal, so why am I telling you about it? Probably because I am a nerd, and I like cool science stuff, so I think you should too. You see, Ancestry has made some big changes in the way that they are calculating matches. They are getting better at it. Which means you match list is now more representative of your ancestral connections, even at the very distant level. There are two big pieces to this matching puzzle that Ancestry has tinkered with in this latest update: phasing and matching. You will remember our discussion on DNA phasing (link) and how it can impact your matching. Ancestry has developed a robust reference database of phased DNA in order to better phase our samples. Basically, they have looked through their database at parent child duos and trios and noted that certain strings of DNA values often travel together. Its like they have noticed that our DNA says “A black cat scared the mouse” instead of  “The brown cat ate the mouse” and they can then recognize that phrase in our DNA, which in turn helps our DNA tell the true story of our heritage. In addition to updating the phasing, Ancestry has revamped their matching method. In the past they viewed our DNA in small windows of information, and then stitched those windows together to try to get a better picture of what our DNA looked like. Now instead they have turned to a point by point analysis of our DNA. Again to use a sentence example, with the window analysis we may have the following sentence windows: ack and J ill went t he hill t etch a pai l of water. Of those windows you may share the “etch a pai” with another individual in the database, earning that cousin a spot on your match page. However, the truth is, that bit could say “sketch a painting” or “stretch a painful leg” or “fetch a pail.” With Ancestry’s new method, they are able to see farther on either side of the matching segment, making this clearly “fetch a pail.” That means better matching, which means more confidence in your cousin matches. The downside to this update is going to come in the reorganization of some of your relationships. Ancestry has tightened their genetic definition of your third and fourth cousins. Basically, that means that some of your true 3rd cousins are going to show up as 4th cousins, and some of your true 4th cousins are going to be shifted down into the abyss of 5th-8th cousins. What is really upsetting about this is what this does to the Shared Matches tool (link). The shared matches tool allows you to gather matches in the database that are related to you and one other person, provided you are all related at the 4th cousin level or higher. This tightening of the belt on 4th cousins means that some of them are going to drop through the cracks of that tool, really limiting its ability. Grr. Hopefully Ancestry will fix that, and expand this tool to include all of your matches. They have their fairly good reasons for this, but still… So, as the winds of change blow yet another iteration of the AncestryDNA match page, I think we can see this as an overall win for doing genealogy with our genetics at Ancestry. Resources: Get Diahan's . Let Diahan Southard be Your DNA Guide. on her personal DNA consulting services.      PROFILE AMERICA: The First High School to their post

Genealogy Gems PodcastEpisode #190Lisa Louise Cooke Highlights from this episode: Extreme Genes radio show Scott Fisher talks about his role in helping to solve a 30-year old missing persons case; Lisa advises a listener on a pesky Gmail problem; A whirlwind world tour of new genealogy records online; Searching out military service details with Google Books; One RootsTech attendee's Google search success story the new  title, a brand-new, much-anticipated second novel by a breakout British novelist. Click the player below to listen: NEWS: NGS Streaming Sessions National Genealogical Society: NGS 2016 is offering registration packages for the following live-streaming lecture series: Thurs, May 5, 2016: Land Records, Maps and Google Earth How to Follow and Envision Your Ancestor’s Footprints Through Time with Google Earth by Lisa Louise Cooke    More Conference Streaming Sessions by Lisa Louise Cooke: RootsTech 2016 (these are free!)       NEWS: New Genealogy Records Online , ,  and records for Western Australia on Findmypast.com; on FamilySearch.org; and  on Ancestry.com; on Findmypast.com; records on FamilySearch.org; at FamilySearch.org at FamilySearch.org; updated on Ancestry.com;  at FamilySearch.org on FamilySearch.org; at Findmypast  Illinois marriage records on FamilySearch.org in 3 collections: (hosted by the Red River Genealogical Society) at Ancestry.com--search for free;  at Ancestry.com updated    NEWS: Family Tree Maker Direct Import into RootsMagic .   MAILBOX: Carol and the Coast Guard in Google Books Google Books search on "USCG Beale:" Google.com search "coast guard history" 1920..1935 "Beale:”   MAIL: Gail’s Trouble with Gmail If you’re not receiving the Genealogy Gems free weekly email newsletter, consider these possibilities: Newsletters are going to Gmail spam. Click "Spam" in the left column and see if there are emails from . When you find one, mark it as "not spam" and move it to your inbox. Then add our email address to your Contacts Newsletter emails may be going to "Promotions" or "Updates" tab in Gmail. By default you are viewing only emails in the Inbox tab. Click the other tabs to look for ours. Click on an email and drag it onto the Inbox tab to try and get them to go to Inbox. If you search our email address in Gmail it should bring up any emails you have received in other tabs.    Gmail is a powerful, free tool for using and archiving email. That’s why there’s an entire chapter on Gmail in . Gmail can help you sort and even keyword-search your past email, and this book will show you how. MAILBOX: Neik from The Netherlands with Research Tips CONVERSATION GEM: Celeste’s Google Search Success Story and Google Search Methodology Tips For Genealogy Gems Premium members (See all Premium videos at ): Common Surname Search Secrets Ultimate Google Search Strategies Digging Deeper into Web Sites with Google Site Search CONVERSATION GEM: Jillian on Irish adoption law   INTERVIEW: Scott from Extreme Genes Helps Solve a 30-Year Old Missing Persons Case   More “Cold Case” Inspiration: Premium Video: Genealogical Cold Cases (To learn about Premium membership )   BOOK CLUB: by Helen Simonson British author Helen Simonson’s debut novel, , became a NYT best-seller and has been translated into 21 languages. Her newest book, The Summer Before the War, is another great read: light and charming, with a dash of romance and humor. It’s so easy to read and love. It’s the early 1900s, and main character Beatrice Nash has recently lost her father. The estate settlement lost her control over her own funds and freedom. She comes to a small English town as a Latin teacher and must mind her manners and local politics to keep her job. Beatrice meets a man and the appeal appears mutual, but he’s already engaged. This isn’t just Beatrice’s story. You’ll meet an entire village full of charming and irascible and expatriate and unconventional and way-too-conventional and mysterious characters, including the local gentry and the local gypsies. They all have their own stories, which unfold as they begin to experience the first great shock of the 20th century close-up: World War I. First it’s the stunned refugees who they enter the quiet village in which the story is set, and the drama that unfolds as the village tries to rally and care for them. Eventually you’ll see the battlefront through the eyes of a few characters who enlist, not all of whom are going to make it back home. Despite the realities they face, this is somehow still an easy and charming read, one into which it’s easy to disappear. Helen Simonson will join us in June to talk about The Summer Before the War.

Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 189 NEWS: Relative Race BYUtv’s new reality series Relative Race () premiered on February 28, 2016. The show “features four married couples as they travel across the US in search of long lost relatives, armed with only paper maps, a rental car, a $25 per diem and a flip phone.” (Interview with two contestants later in the show.)   Databases of Runaway Slave Notices on new websites that will launch databases of runaway slave notices: Irish Collections and Tips from Findmypast for 1670-1900 at Findmypast.com (FREE FOREVER to search), with links to free     , head of Irish Data and Development at Findmypast on getting started in Irish research   MyHeritage Updates Its Search Technologies from the MyHeritage blog.   MAILBOX: Marquise’ new blog:   Kim recommends my for beginners and those who want a “genealogy do-over.” She particularly mentions a three-part series on immigration and naturalization records in Episode 29, Episode 30 and . Matt’s suggestion for : leave virtual flowers on the “tombstones” of deceased relatives so other relatives can find you: Create a free individual log-in from the home page of the website After logging in, go into an individual record, where it shows your ancestor’s tombstone information. Click on the button that says, “Leave flowers and a note.” Select among several different images of flowers. Choose whether to leave a note and your name. Others who view this tombstone profile can click on your screen name and contact you through the site.                     INTERVIEW: Janice and Patrick Wright from Relative Race host Dan J. Debenham described how BYUtv’s original competition reality show came into being: “What could we create that would be very different from what’s currently out there and that would show people discovering family all across the country?" Four teams race from San Francisco to New York in 10 days. Their goal?  Find unknown relatives, complete challenges, and don't get eliminated. In this episode you will hear from Team Black: Patrick Wright is an executive at Alpha Media, a growing radio broadcast media company based in Portland, OR; Janice is a freelance Media Consultant. They joined the Relative Race show because they love travel and adventure.    BOOK CLUB: Interview excerpt with Tara Austen Weaver on Orchard House Author Tara Austen Weaver talks about gardening and family, and how tending a garden isn’t so different from nourishing family relationships.   DNA GEM: 3 Reasons to Test with Diahan Southard My youngest child, Eleanor, is nearly 8, so it was fun to have a 2 year old over the other day. She loved following Eleanor around, and Eleanor was equally thrilled to have someone to mentor in the ways of big girl play. I took special delight in listening to my daughter’s patient and surprisingly complete answers to our guest’s constant inquiries of “Why?” It got me thinking about the Whys of genealogy, and especially of genetic genealogy. I decided that there are three main reasons to have your DNA tested for genealogical purposes. It is primary information. In genealogy, primary information is given by a source with firsthand knowledge of an event, with the best primary information being created at or around the time of the event. I think we can safely say that DNA falls into that category on both counts. Therefore, it is an excellent source of genealogical information and should be obtained as part of a thorough genealogical search. It is a unique record. DNA possesses several qualities that make this record type stand out from the rest. First and foremost, it cannot be falsified in any way. No name change, no deception, no miscommunication or misspelling can tarnish this record. Even if it is not a complete record of our family history, the story that it does tell is accurate. It is a physical link to our past. So much of genealogy work, especially in today’s digital world, is intangible. We add ancestors to our pedigree charts with a click of our mouse, having no idea of their physical characteristics, never once setting foot in the same places that they did, or if they preferred bread and butter or toast and jam. But with the advent of DNA testing, I am able to see a physical connection between me and my ancestor. The first time I saw it seems unremarkable. It was just a blue line on top of a grey line, representing the location in the DNA where I had the same information as my cousin. But that line meant that we had both inherited a physical piece of DNA from our common ancestor, Lucy J. Claunch. That realization didn’t add names or dates to my pedigree chart- Lucy had been on my chart since the beginning. But it did add a sense of purpose and reality to my genealogical work. In short, it inspired me to know more about Lucy and to tell her story because I felt inextricably tied to it. Perhaps many of you don’t need a DNA test to feel similarly motivated, you already understand what I learned: Her story is my story. But because I have her DNA in me, I am able to take that idea one step further. Because she lives on in me, my story is her story. So I better make it a good one. Has your DNA motivated you to find out more about your story? Genealogy Gems readers and listeners get a special price on Diahan Southard's DNA Video Training    PROFILE AMERICA: