Family Historian Survey

and a little bit about RootsTech

Deborah Carl’s Family Historian Survey

I’d love to get to know you better! I have a question for you — Why aren't you writing your family's stories? Please take a moment to take the survey or share your answer in the comments below.

Know someone who might enjoy participating? Feel free to restack this post and @mention them!

The Survey is Now Closed

I enjoyed RootsTech but it was a busy week and I didn’t get to view all the sessions live that I wanted to. The recorded sessions are available for free at RootsTech On-Demand Library.

So far my favorite has been “Best Practices for Working in FamilySearch’s Shared Family Tree,” by Kathryn Grant. Being frustrated by other researchers messing up a carefully researched and documented person is a common complaint and FamilySearch is still working to solve that problem as we all work (think crowd source) the Tree. If everyone adhered to the Best Practices, it would go a long way to solving that problem. So I recommend experienced users view the presentation and then share it with everyone they know, especially Newbies.

My next favorite was “Finding Aids, Inventories, and Record Group Descriptions: Why Should I Care?” by Michael D. Lacopo. I’ve found some treasures when I’ve explored outside FamilySearch and Ancestry.

I’ve gotten copies of newspaper articles and obituaries from public libraries. If you can give them the page number or a good description of where it’s at, the reference librarian usually will send you a copy within a day. They will not do research for you.

I got a copy of the land grant for the town of Campton, New Hampshire from the New Hampshire Archives. All I did was email and ask if they had a copy or knew where I could look. The Campton Historical Society didn’t have it and I was able to forward a copy to them.

I was going to draw a platt map of Campton when it occured to me that one might already exist. I emailed The Campton Historical Society. Sure enough, they had not one, but two. I was able to visit and photograph them.

I wanted to know why my relative would have moved from Wales which had lots of coal mines to Durham, England to work in the coal mines there. I emailed the Mining Museums in my relative’s area of Wales and Durham. Durham replied (see Hannah Jones Williams).

And finally, I was working on a project about the orphan train that left Boston headed to the midwest. I called the orphanage for about a month before I finally got in touch with a person who told me that any records that might still exist had been sent to the University of Massachusetts - Boston. I checked the catalog, found the records, made an appointment so the boxes could be pulled from storage, and had a lovely day looking at 100-year-old+ records including letters from the orphans.

I still have presentations about researching Canadian and French ancestors, using AI, and others that will increase my knowlege. No matter what I watch, it seems I eventually use what I learned.