Today was the second of our Mission: Genealogy “Gatherings,” this month. This one was scheduled for the convenience of our friends along the Atlantic coasts and across the Americas. Last week, we gathered in our afternoon here in California at a time planned for the convenience of our friends along the Pacific Rim.
This post, the second of the two, will reflect the aggregation of notes about the Office Hours and Roundtable sections from both Pacific and Atlantic gatherings. As I post it, I’ll unpublish the Pacific version. I’ve planned for the same live presentation at both Pacific and Atlantic editions. In each case, I’ll pick the better of the two to include in the final post for the month. Let me know if you have any concerns about my doing it this way.
If you missed the announcement about our combining Office Hours and Roundtables into “Gatherings” starting this month, here’s the announcement:
About Programs
Our
programs are captured in our schedule at MissionGenealogy.org/events. We generally do not record the roundtable sessions to protect our members' privacy, though you’ll find notes here combined with the Office Hours recordings. Our 2024 episodes are in separate sections:This month’s demo focused on the relatively new feature, Substack Live. Below that are notes from our Roundtable discussions.
Office Hours Topic: Substack Live
Substack Live is one of the most significant new features Substack has introduced since Notes. It was released with some fanfare about 7 months ago, but access was restricted to the largest and most successful accounts. For example, you may have seen posts by the Substack founders Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie. For context, you might enjoy perusing…
Substack’s “Getting Started” post in the Support section
… the feature is tailored to direct engagement between publication “creators” and their subscribers. It requires:
Posting from mobile only
Videos only in portrait mode
Engagement with viewers in chat form, and only from mobile.
Audience members must all be subscribers. They will receive notice of new broadcasts via email and on their home page (also called the “current reading queue.”)
Audience members can interact with the broadcaster by typing (or pasting) chat messages into the chat interface or tapping ❤️s.
Currently, all comments made in the chat threads evaporate after the conclusion of the live session.
Every live session results in a high-quality recording that is naturally viewable from mobile. It feels personal, and that’s the key idea. I plan to use it for…
Projectkin Community Forum with weekly posts like this one about what’s ahead for the week.
I’m collaborating with my co-conspirator in Mission:Genealogy,
to prepare for a daily broadcast from RootsTech1, March 6–9, 2024. Stay tuned for details on that.
Roundtable Discussions
While we make a policy of not recording the roundtable discussions, I think it’s a good practice to share some insights to benefit others who couldn’t attend. In each of these, we used breakout rooms to create smaller groups to get to know each other. Topics across the two gatherings included:
Writing:
The challenges of transforming factual information into a family history narrative were discussed.
Using AI for writing feedback and gaining deeper insights into ancestors' historical contexts.
Resources: Carol Baxter's book "Writing Interesting Family Histories," and
's expertise in family history writing. Checking out her newsletter, Stories from the Tree was recommended.Voiceovers can be compelling. Is it worth the effort and multiple takes to get them right (or at least good enough)?
Research sites & tools:
We constantly strive to find quality, free research sites. The list in the footnotes, which we captured in our discussion, explains this2.
Research often benefits from local knowledge about distant lands. We discussed ways we might create a voluntary system to help each other. In the near term, I’m contacting the existing volunteer organization, Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK.org), to see if we might collaborate with them.3
From the start, we wanted Mission: Genealogy to welcome all comers and create a clubhouse for this family history journey in Substack. From our growth and the conversations it has sparked, we’re on our way. Feel free to share this and any articles from MissionGenealogy.org with your friends and family.
If you haven’t registered to participate either in person or “virtually,” you’re missing out. Please do it now at RootsTech.org. Onsite tickets are affordable, and virtual tickets are free. Either way, you’ll have access to Relatives at RootsTech and an extraordinary library of recordings and resources, most explicitly created for the event.
Following is a list of some of the research tools we discussed. Please drop a note into the comments if you think there’s a role for us to play as distinct from Cindi’s List or other aggregators. (UPDATED with notes that popped up in the comments below.)
Interesting Observations:
Passenger lists are often available at the destination, even when not at the embarkation point.
Cautions:
Some free sites still require registration. Though free, the platforms can hound you into paying for a subscription (e.g. MyHeritage.com).
Though convenient, repeated passwords increase your risk of having them compromised. Use a password manager or create a fake persona if you must reuse a password.
Australia:
Trove is free and a remarkable resource not only for Australian history and historical documents but also documents, including newspapers in the UK: trove.nla.gov.au
Passenger lists in Australia are available at prov.vic.gov.au
New Zealand:
Papers Past - paperspast.natlib.govt.nz This is provided by the National Library of New Zealand and includes information from newspapers, magazines and journals, diaries and letters, parliamentary papers, and electronic books.
NZ Ancestor Search Helper - ash.howison.co.nz This was developed in a private capacity by Luke Howison who has made it available publicly for anyone to use. He is progressively adding features to it.
Sweden:
The national archives of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway are all good and free. Hiski Finland, and FamilySearch. In many places, immigration and emigration archives are free. For example, in Sweden, the Police archives for those leaving Sweden are accessible. What to look out for is the required time delay before public records become accessible.
Germany
Surname mapping by German regions: legacy.stoepel.net/en
Great Britain
British Newspaper archives: britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (related resources mentioned in episodes of Emma Explores for Projectkin.)
United States
Extraordinary resources are from the US National Archive, nara.gov, and the Library of Congress: loc.gov, as well as many excellent manifest lists. Ellis Island records are available; however, the records at Angel Island were burned. This post from the History Hub can be a helpful cross-reference.
The History Hub itself has a special Genealogy section that’s almost like the Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) discussed below.
Internet Archives: Don’t overlook the archives of digital sites available through the WayBack Machine;
Genealogy on the Internet Archive:
The Archive's ever-expanding collection of genealogy resources includes items from the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Robarts Library at the University of Toronto; the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library; Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah; the National Library of Scotland, the Indianapolis City Library's Indianapolis City Directory and Yearbooks Collection, The Leo Baeck Institute Archives of German-speaking Jewry Leo Baeck Institute Archives, and the Boston Public Library.
Canada
Canadian Citizenship records: Personal Information Banks
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