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RootsTech 2024 Synopsis – Plus the MyHeritage Keynote is Online Now

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RootsTech isn’t entirely over yet.

  1. Many vendor videos remain available
  2. FamilyTreeDNA show pricing specials are still in effect until March 29th. Don’t miss out.
  3. Relatives at RootsTech is still available through March 29th
  4. Recorded RootsTech speaker videos are available and will remain available indefinitely.
  5. Gilad Japhet is the founder and CEO of MyHeritage, and his wonderful keynote has only become available in the last day or so. I always attend his keynote, but unfortunately, I was presenting a session at exactly the same time, so I couldn’t this year. Gilad revealed an incredible discovery that every genealogist will both understand and enjoy. You can watch, here.

Relatives at RootsTech

People have continued to sign up to view the free sessions, so don’t neglect to check back. Here’s the link.

Don’t forget that Relatives at RootsTech is the perfect avenue to connect with cousins who descend from specific ancestors. Seldom do you know which ancestor you share before you know if you are a DNA match – so take advantage of this opportunity and ask your relatives if they have tested their DNA and, if so, at which company or companies. Then, take a look at that company, see if they match, and paint your segments at DNAPainter.

Relatives at RootsTech is also particularly useful for finding candidates for both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA candidates since you can tell immediately if your cousin descends from your common ancestor through all females (mitochondrial DNA) or if they are a male and descend from a male ancestor through all males. Generally, the surname tells that story.

Close cousins may well have photos, stories, or other information that didn’t make their way down to you, so do reach out.

I write about Relatives at RootsTech, including instructions, in the article Relatives at RootsTech Returns!!! Don’t forget to take advantage of this while you still can.

The RootsTech Travel Journal Articles

I really had no idea how many people look forward to travel journal stories, for lack of another description. I know not everyone can attend, and I really wanted to give you a true flavor, like you were walking along with me.

For those of you who would like to be sure you read all of the RootsTech 2024 articles, or if you simply want to read them in order or check out the comments, here they are:

RootsTech 2025

I always say I don’t know if I have another one in me. RootsTech, the presentation prep, planning, leadup, travel itself, the incredible show, and then returning home are both exhilarating and exhausting. I feel like I need to sleep for a week!

I tell my friends and my husband to remind me of this about mid-summer when I’ve forgotten the pain of childbirth, er, I mean RootsTech, and think this is a wonderful idea again.

They do, and then I sign up anyway.

Now they just roll their eyes at me. I don’t blame them one bit.

Did I mention that I don’t know if I have another one in me? 😊

I will say that RootsTech would be a WHOLE LOT MORE tempting if it didn’t take place in the winter.

I keep suggesting that FamilySearch purchase the hotel around the corner from the FamilySearch Library and rent rooms to researchers and conference attendees.

I sure hope you’ve enjoyed attending RootsTech with me this year!

_____________________________________________________________

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Marie Charlotte Bonnevie (c1703-after 1742): One Fourth Native & Not Her Sister Marie – 52 Ancestors #421

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Marie Charlotte Bonnevie was born about 1703 to Jacques Bonnevie and Françoise dit d’Azy Mius, probably in Port Royal, Acadia. However, the Port Royal parish records begin in 1702 and she’s not there, so it’s possible that Marie Charlotte was born elsewhere, probably Pobomcoup, an outpost, where her mother’s parents lived.

Marie Charlotte Bonnevie should not be confused with her slightly younger sister, Marie Bonnevie, who was born on May 12, 1706, in Port Royal, Acadia, to the same parents.

Yes, I know, it’s quite confusing. In this article, I’ll either call Marie Charlotte by that name or Charlotte, and her sister will always be Marie.

Given that these two females both survived, we can rest assured that Marie Charlotte was called Charlotte. In fact, in most records, including her marriage, she’s listed by the name of Charlotte Bonnevie.

Her sister, Marie, born in 1706, didn’t have a middle name, at least not that we know of. Marie married François Duguay around 1737, probably in Beaubassin, and was having children there by 1740.

In the 1703 Port Royal census, Marie Charlotte’s father, Jacques Bonnevie is listed with a wife, 2 daughters, and one arms bearer, which would be him.

One daughter would be Marie Charlotte’s older sister, Françoise, and the younger of the two daughters would be Marie Charlotte.

On May 31, 1704, Marie Charlotte’s younger brother, Jacques Bonnevie, was born. As an adult, he was a blacksmith and married the niece of Marie Charlotte’s husband.

In 1707, the Port Royal census showed Jacques Bonneur, his wife, 1 boy less than 14, 3 girls less than 12, 1 arpent of land, 2 cattle, and 6 hogs. This is probably the same family and the known children fit.

This man is very clearly not a farmer because you can’t support a family on 1 arpent of land, which is similar to an acre.

In the 1714 census, we find “Beaumont,” which is probably his dit name, with no first name, a wife, 1 son, and 3 daughters. Based on the location and number of children, this is probably him.

Now we have three “surnames,” Bonnevie, Bonneur, and Beaumont.

Marie Charlotte’s brother, Charles, was born and baptized on October 13, 1715, but we never find a record of him again, so he apparently died, and his death was not recorded.

Marie Charlotte’s oldest sibling, Françoise, married Pierre Olivier in Port Royal in 1718, so we know the family was still there at that time. By at least 1741, Françoise was in Beaubassin, where she remarried Jean Pierre Helie.

On August 25, 1719, Charlotte stood as godmother for her sister’s firstborn child, Marie Joseph Olivier, who had been born the day before. I can see the two sisters hugging joyfully after that solemn moment, promising to watch over each other’s children forever. Either her father, Jacques, or her brother, Jacques, stood with her. Her brother Jacques would only have been 15 at that time, so I suspect this was her father.

Where was Charlotte’s mother?

The church, which was located on a hill at far right, overlooked the bay and the fort. The cemetery was adjacent to the church, in the small rolling hills behind those trees. Perhaps Charlotte’s brother, Charles, and her mother were already there, although there is no death or burial record for either of them. Maybe after the baptism, Charlotte, Françoise, and Jacques took a walk in the cemetery and introduced the baby to family members who had already passed over. After all, this would have been Françoise Mius’s first grandchild.

There are only two baptisms for Charlotte’s sister Françoise’s children, in 1719 and 1722. We really don’t know where she and her husband, Pierre Olivier, a tailor, were through 1732 when their last child was born. We do know that by 1741, Françoise was in Beaubassin, where she married Jean Pierre Helie.

Marie Charlotte married on August 18, 1721 in that same church in Port Royal to Jacques Lord, and her brother, Jacques Bonnevie married Jacques Lord’s niece, Marguerite Lord about 1729. These families probably lived near one another.

Marie Charlotte’s Parents

There’s something of a mystery surrounding Marie Charlotte’s parents.

According to Stephen White, we know that in 1732, Charlotte’s father, Jacques Bonnevie, was living on Île Royale and was listed as a retired disabled veteran of the French army, having served 17 years. He suffered a wound to his thigh, which caused his disability. Île Royale is now Cape Breton Island.

Cape Breton Island is located at the furthest eastern point of Nova Scotia, then Acadia.

Based on that same record, Jacques’s birth year is estimated to be 1660. We know he is not found in records prior to his presumed marriage to Françoise Mius, whose father, Philippe, lived in Pobomcoup, now Pubnico, on the opposite end of Nova Scotia, some 450 miles distant.

Somehow, Jacques had to have met Françoise.

Was he somehow connected to Philippe Mius? Perhaps through his profession as a soldier? He would have been about 40 when he married.

Why did Jacques Bonnevie and his bride, whose family lived in Pobomcoup, settle in Port Royal, which was no place close to her parents? Was Jacques Bonnevie serving at or stationed at the fort there?

On the 1758 map above, the fort is shown along with the approximate location of Julien Lord/Lore’s home with the red star, just slightly upriver, 3 or 4 miles away.

If Jacques Bonnevie served 17 years, does that mean he was disabled sometime around, say, 1716 or 1717, which would be about the time no more children were baptized?

Based on Marie Charlotte’s mother’s estimated birth year between 1684 and 1687, this probably means that her mother died between 1715 and 1717 when she would have been expected to have born the next child.

Was Jacques Bonnevie’s wound somehow related to his wife’s death?

We have so many unanswered questions.

One thing we can say, fairly confidently, is that the Bonnevie family must have lived in relatively close proximity to the Lord/Lore family on what is now the Annapolis River for two of Jacque Bonnevie’s children to have married Julien Lord’s son and granddaughter.

Of course, they would all have attended the Catholic Church together.

Marie’s Maternal Grandmother

One thing we know for sure is that Marie Charlotte’s mother was half-Native, making Charlotte and her siblings one-fourth, and Charlotte’s maternal grandmother was Mi’kmaq.

Acadian history relates this story, but the mitochondrial DNA of Marie Charlotte’s descendants through all females confirms it.

Mitochondrial haplogroup X2a2 is unquestionably Native American, found primarily in Atlantic Maritime Canada, but with one sample found in New Mexico, based on my analysis in the book, DNA for Native American Genealogy.

Warfare

Marie Charlotte’s first memories may have been of warfare. After all, her father was a soldier, and conflict ebbed and flowed in Acadia, sometimes erupting in full-throated battle, but never ending.

The English attacked Acadia in 1704, and raids continued intermittently until 1707, when an attack by soldiers from New England failed.

The Acadians began beefing up the fort and built a store within the fort in 1708, expecting more of the same. Charlotte’s father was assuredly one of those soldiers.

Prisoners taken from English corsairs reported that the English were planning attacks in either 1708 or 1709.

In 1710, when Marie Charlotte would have been about 7 or 8 years old, the English routed the Acadians with 3400 English soldiers pitted against the 300 Acadian soldiers.

Marie Charlotte’s father was among those brave soldiers who managed to hold the fort for 19 days in spite of being outnumbered more than 100-fold. Surely they, and their families, expected them to die, but miraculously, they didn’t. Charlotte must have been terrified.

Beginning in 1710, the English ruled the land and initially “encouraged” the Acadians to leave. Then, the English changed their mind and didn’t want the Acadians to leave because they realized they needed the Acadians to feed them.

About the same time, the Acadians changed their minds too, and decided they WANTED to leave. They tried various methods of moving themselves and their households to Les Mines and Beaubassin, none of which succeeded.

In 1711, the local priest was kidnapped during a skirmish and taken to Boston, along with some other Acadian captives, where they were held for two years.

This means that anyone who was born during this time would have to be baptized later and burials would certainly have occurred, but not recorded in the parish register. Acadia had no priest during this time, so the records are incomplete.

In 1713, Acadia was officially passed to the English, along with her people.

In 1715, the Fort gates were shut, and no trade was allowed with anyone, including Native people.

By 1720, Port Royal had been renamed Annapolis Royal and the Acadians were again being pressured to take a loyalty oath to the British crown. Refusal meant they had to leave within 3 months and take nothing with them.

They still refused, and they also refused to leave.

Acadians were nothing if not stubborn, a trait that is clearly heritable!

Marriage and Children

The Bonnevie family lived near the Lord family. Marie Charlotte was godmother to Pierre Laure’s baby born in February 1720 when she was about 17 or 18.

By this time, Marie Charlotte’s mother had probably died, her father was disabled, and she married Jacques Lord/Lore/Lor/L’Or, Laur or Laure the following year on August 18, 1721.

Register – RG 1 volume 26 page 327
Priest – Charlemagne Cuvier
Registration Date – 18 August 1721
Event – Marriage
Groom – Jacques L’Or, widower of Angelique Comeau
Bride – Charlotte Bonnevie
Father – Jacques de Bonnevie
Mother – Françoise Mius

Marie Charlotte is referred to as Charlotte in her marriage record.

Jacques was a widower, and Marie inherited two stepchildren: Jacques Lore, born in 1709, and Angelique, born in 1711. They were just a few years younger than Charlotte.

Marie Charlotte’s children began arriving 15 months later and were all born and baptized in the Catholic church in Annapolis Royal:

  • Charles Lord/Lore, born November 23, 1722, married Marguerite Garceau on January 20, 1755, in Port Royal, and died on November 9, 1797, in Three Rivers, Quebec.
  • Joseph Lord/Lore, born February 19, 1725, married Marie-Josephe Garceaux on February 3, 1750, in Port Royal, and died sometime after 1752. His last known child was born in January 1753, but additional children could have been born during or after the Acadian Removal in 1755.
  • Pierre Benjamin Lord/Lore was born on January 25, 1728, married Marie-Josephe Blanchard on May 31, 1763, in L’Acadie, Quebec, and died on July 20, 1813, in St.-Gregoire-de-Nicolet, Canada.
  • Jean or Jean-Baptiste Lord/Lore was born August 9, 1730, married Marie-Josephe Garceau in 1765 in New York, and died on May 12, 1809, in St-Ours, Quebec, Canada.
  • Paul Lord/Lore was born on December 21, 1733. Marie Charlotte’s brother, Jacques Bonnevie, stood up as the Godfather. Nothing more is known of this child.
  • Claude-Poncy Lord/Lore was born on September 21, 1736, but nothing more is known of this child.
  • François Lord/Lore was born on August 10, 1739. Nothing more is known.
  • Honoré Lord/Lore, the youngest child, was born June 17, 1742, married Appoline dit Hippolite Garceau in 1765 in New York, and died on May 20, 1818, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada.

We do have parish records for Annapolis Royal fairly reliably up until the Expulsion, so it’s likely that we don’t know anything about Marie Charlotte’s children born in 1733, 1736, and 1739 because they had not yet married in 1755 when the expulsion occurred.

They could have died either during that horrific event or afterward in New England, assuming they were in exile with their siblings.

However, if they got separated, it’s hard to tell where they might have wound up or if they even survived.

They could also have survived, married in the colonies, and not followed their siblings to Quebec, meaning we have no record of them. Perhaps one day DNA testing of their descendants will reveal that someone survived.

1731, 1732 and 1733

Marie Charlotte’s siblings, who lived to adulthood, eventually wound up in the Northern Acadian settlements, specifically Beaubassin and Île Saint-Jean.

Charlotte’s brother, Jacques Bonnevie, stayed in Port Royal, where his children were baptized from 1730-1741. On September 21, 1731, Marie Charlotte, called Charlotte, was the Godmother for Jacques’ daughter, Marguerite Bonnevie who had been born on September 18th and was named after her mother, Marguerite Laure.

Marie Charlotte’s father, Jacques Bonnevie, is shown on Île Royal in 1732, aged 72, listed as a retired and disabled veteran of the French Army. He reportedly died there at Louisbourg on April 23, 1733.

Jacques’s adult children had not made their way to Île Royal, so why did he? Who would have been there to help him?

Or had they?

We know that Marie Bonnevie was born in 1706, and the first sighting of her after this was her marriage to François Duguay who was from Île Saint-Jean. They settled in Saint-Pierre-du-Nord and are listed in 1752 in Riviere du Nord-Est.

Still, Île Saint-Jean, Prince Edward Island today, isn’t Île Royal, today’s Cape Breton Island.

This map shows Acadia just before the expulsion and the locations where Acadians were deported to and from, beginning in 1755.

Life Deteriorates at Port Royal, ummm, I mean Annapolis Royal

By 1745, life in Acadia had deteriorated significantly and was getting worse. It’s no wonder so many had left for points North and East.

A 1745 report from Port Royal said the Acadian homes were “wretched wooden boxes, without conveniences, and without ornaments, and scarcely containing the most necessary furniture …” A visitor in the 1750s stated that “the houses of the village (Annapolis Royal) … are mean, and in general built of wood.”

The situation deteriorated significantly under Governor Charles Lawrence, who wanted to get rid of the Acadians. He used acts of individuals to make charges against the whole population. He revoked the former governor’s orders not to use military force if the Acadians refused to comply. One example was that if an Acadian was ordered to get firewood, and he didn’t do it promptly … his house would be used for fuel.

That’s horrifically brutal.

This explains why most of Marie Charlotte’s siblings had left before 1750.

The Last Record of Marie Charlotte Bonnevie

The last actual record we have for Marie Charlotte is the birth of her last child in 1742.

We have absolutely nothing for either her or her husband, Jacques Lord/Lore, from that time forward other than this oral history for Jacques:

“He suffered the great disturbance that occurred in Acadia in 1755, when the oppressor forced the family to go into exile in New York, United States. He returned to Canada with his son Pierre-Benjamin and they settled in Kamouraska The three children of Angelique Comeau (Corriveau) did not have an heir.”

Note that we only know of two children from Jacques’ first marriage, but it’s certainly possible that there were three.

If this is accurate, and if this is the same Jacques Lord/Lore who was married to Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, then he would have been 108 in 1786.

The problem is that the burial record shows this man’s age to be 79, not 108. This would be Jacques son, Jacques, but that doesn’t mean that Jacques Sr. didn’t also die there, perhaps somewhat earlier. There is a record with both Jacques and Pierre Lore witnessing a marriage in L’Ile-Dupas in 1764.

If indeed this is the same man, he would have been deported from the Port Royal region along with the other Lore males, including son Honoré.

If Jacques and his youngest son, Honoré, were deported from Port Royal, there’s no reason to think that Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, Honoré’s mother, was living far away from her children on Île Royal during or after the deportation. In fact, that’s contra-indicated.

If this Jacques is Charlotte’s step-son, born in 1709, not her husband, which is the most likely scenario, this group of people together actually provides evidence that Charlotte was NOT on Île Royal and that she and her family were all deported from Port Royal.

There is absolutely no evidence that any of her children or step-children left the Port Royal area before the expulsion began.

The Deportation

Charlotte’s brother Jacques Bonnevie, who was found near Beaubassin but did not move to Île Royal, was deported to South Carolina in 1755. He was one of only five or six families who returned to Canada in 1756. That trickle was immediately stopped before it turned into a river. Jacques was at Ristigouche in 1760 and reportedly a prisoner at Fort Edward (Pisiguit) with his wife and five children in 1761, although I have been unable to verify that.

The deportation meant death for Charlotte’s sisters and their families.

Marie Charlotte’s Death

Everywhere I look, Marie Charlotte is reported to have died at sea on or about December 13, 1758. I know where this comes from, but I think it’s inaccurate.

There are two issues.

First, I think most people have conflated the two Maries, literally combining or at least confusing them. Our Marie Charlotte born about 1703, and her younger sister, Marie, born in 1706.

Let’s summarize what we know about where the children of Jacques Bonnevie and Françoise Mius were in the 1755 deportation era.

  • Françoise Bonnevie, born about 1701, lived in Beaubassin in 1741, where she remarried Jean Pierre Hélie dit Nouvelle. Her last child was born in Beaubassin in 1742. In 1752, she and her husband were in the La Roque census, age 50, in Rivière-du-Nord-Est, Île Saint-Jean, Prince Edward Island.
  • Marie Charlotte Bonnevie and her husband Jacques Lord/Lore have no records found after 1742. We do know that four of their children married Garceau children, one in Acadia and three in exile. I believe these families were on the Brigge Experiment together, which departed from Annapolis Royal and sailed for New York. We know positively that Honoré, born in 1742, fought at Albany, New York, in the Revolutionary War.
  • Jacques Bonnevie, born in 1704, was in Beaubassin by 1746 and at Petitcodiah in 1752. He married Anne Melanson about 1755 and was subsequently deported to South Carolina. Ships with Acadians that arrived in South Carolina departed from either Chignecto, which is near Beaubassin, or Annapolis Royal. The surname Bonnevie does appear on the roster of the ship Cornwallis, which left Chignecto on October 13, 1755.
  • Marie Bonnevie, born in 1706 and married François Duguay, was living in Riviere du Nord-Est, Isle Saint-Jean, in 1748 and 1752, probably near her sister. Today, that’s Hillsborough River or North East River, near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

So, given this information, where did this 1758 death date originate?

The information came from Stephen A. White, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes (Moncton, N.-B.: Centre d’études acadiennes, Université de Moncton, 1999) p. 178-179.

Françoise Bonnevie (Jacques Bonnevie dit Beaumont and Françoise Mius) born around 1702, (On 1752 La Roque census age 50). Married (1) Pierre Olivier (Pierre & Geneviève Roussel) on 18 Oct 1718 in Port-Royal. Married (2) at 39 years of age, Jean Hélie dit Nouvelle (Étienne & Marguerite Laporte), widower of Anne-Marie Lalande, on 16 Jan 1741 in Beaubassin. She died (according to S.A. White), around 13 Dec 1758 when the ship Violet sank during the crossing to France.

Note from S.A. White: Françoise Bonnevie and Marie Bonnevie, their husbands and many of their children are among the Acadian families from Île Saint-Jean [Prince Edward Island] who disappeared without a trace after 1758. We believe that they were among the unfortunate passengers aboard one of the two British ships that sank. (see SHA vol II, p. 286-299) Jan, Feb, Mar 1968

Click to access 18cahier_total.pdf

AHA!

Well, that explains that, but no place is Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, her husband, or her children mentioned.

Marie Charlotte Bonnevie is NOT Marie Bonnevie.

What About Marie Charlotte?

I do not believe that Marie Charlotte drowned when those two ships went down.

Why?

I don’t believe she was a passenger on those ships or ever on Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) or Île Royal (Cape Breton Island).

We have no evidence whatsoever that Marie Charlotte, her husband, nor any of her children were ever lived on Île Royal or in Louisbourg, where both the ship Violet, with 280-400 people, and Duke William, with more than 360 people, sailed from en route to France.

Her father was in Louisbourg in 1732 before his death, but that does not equate to any of his children being there then or two decades later.

By 1758, three years into the deportations, the English no longer deported Acadians to the colonies but shipped them directly back to France. The Île Saint-Jean Acadians may have thought they had escaped deportation.

Given that Marie Charlotte’s sisters were indeed on Île Saint-Jean just before the expulsion began, unless they died before those ships sailed following the Siege of Louisbourg, it stands to reason that they were on those ships. There’s no record that they ever made it to France, and we know the ships sank with hundreds of Acadians on board.

Louisbourg fell on July 26th, and over the next few weeks and months, the residents were rounded up and loaded onto overcrowded, poorly maintained transport ships. Floating death traps.

Families on Prince Edward Island were rounded up and deported as well. Only 30 families managed to remain hidden. The rest sank aboard those two cursed death ships.

Marie Charlotte’s sisters, husbands, children, and grandchildren were almost certainly among them, wiping entire families off the face of the earth.

Thankfully, Marie Charlotte was probably spared that horrific fate and may have been waiting to greet them on the other side. Perhaps this time, an early death was a blessing.

It’s also possible that Marie Charlotte had already been deported with her children back in 1755 and was living somewhere in New England. At least, I hope if she got deported, she was loaded onto a ship with her children, not separated.

Her six youngest children were unmarried, the 4 youngest were minors, and all but one of those is lost to us. Honoré, her youngest, was only 13. He would have been terrified regardless, but even more so if both of his parents were already deceased and he faced that alone.

If Charlotte was deported with them, she probably died sometime between 1755 and 1764, when her children began making their way north into Quebec, settling near Montreal.

Of course, Honoré married about that time in New York and had children baptized in 1768 in Yamachiche, Quebec, but there was no sign of Marie Charlotte.

One way or another, the record and circumstances of her death are lost to us. It seems she either died in the 13 years between Honoré’s birth and the 1755 deportation or was lost during the resulting exile.

Either way, she didn’t enjoy a long life and died someplace between the age of 40 and about 63. I hope her family was at least able to provide her with the Catholic sacraments, even if they couldn’t bury her in consecrated ground and erect a stone or wooden cross in her memory.

Maybe the “Indian quilt” found in her son Honoré’s 1818 estate was a tiny piece of her mother’s family line that she was able to salvage and pass down to her son. Perhaps it warmed and comforted them on that horrific voyage into the unknown and warmed their hearts as they remembered long-lost but much-loved family members.

RIP Marie Charlotte, wherever you lay.

_____________________________________________________________

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Rootstech 2024: Friends, Discover Tools, Highways of History and the Storm

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I didn’t want to open the curtains Saturday morning, given the blizzard warnings that were worsening all day Friday.

I finally screwed up my courage and peeked out.

Indeed, those skies look dark, grey, and foreboding.

Decision Time

I had a decision to make.

I originally planned to stay in Salt Lake City until Sunday, but I had already changed my flight to late Saturday afternoon following my session. I also changed my hotel reservation accordingly.

However, if I packed and checked out, got to the airport, and my flight was canceled, I was likely going to be stranded, potentially at the airport for at least two days. There aren’t any hotels in the Salt Lake City airport, but there are a few nearby. However, probably not enough rooms to accommodate an airport full of stranded people.

Would Uber even be available?

Could I get back into Salt Lake City to check back into the Marriott or any other hotel? Would they have space?

I was at the go-no-go decision point.

It was probably a 50-50 roll of the dice.

I packed and checked out.

It wasn’t snowing yet, but no one doubted that it would. The only questions were when the snow would begin, whether it would begin as rain and freeze into ice before the snow started falling, and how much snow would there be.

Maybe more important to the people at RootsTech – what about flights?

All day, you could see people obsessively checking their flight information on their phones.

I had two speaking engagements scheduled for the day: a morning Y-DNA “Ask Me Anything” panel and my afternoon session, “Highways of History – Flesh out Your Ancestors Using Discover Case Studies.”

The afternoon session was scheduled to end just half an hour before RootsTech closed for the year, so there really was no getting out early.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Friends in the Expo Hall

I was still trying to visit every booth on the show floor.

I’ll just admit right now that I failed miserably. Not only was I bone tired by this time, but I kept running into people I knew. I realized that this was my last opportunity to see them this year, so I never made it past the halfway point in the Expo Hall.

I did notice that the crowds were very thin. Saturday was Family Day, but apparently, not many people wanted to risk venturing out. Even the locals were concerned which is never a good sign.

The Heritage Theater had a full schedule of events, but there were very few people in the audience through no fault of the speakers or RootsTech.

For those hearty souls who did attend, they received up-close and personal sessions and information from the presenters.

It was nice to see the folks from Family Tree Magazine again. I’ve written for them off and on for years, but had never met the staff in person before.

Be sure to check out their Best Genetic Genealogy Websites and also their Genealogy Books Guide, listed by subject.

When you get there, check out their other “best of” categories and other topics.

Walking on down the aisle, I stopped to talk to the “One Kind Act a Day” people,

Being the skeptic that I am, I kept trying to find the hook, but I couldn’t. It’s a nonprofit that seems to do exactly what it says.

This is absolutely something I can sign up for, so I did and took the pledge.

Doing one kind act a day is easy, so let’s do two!

You can follow them on Facebook, too.

Reclaim the Records is another nonprofit that has successfully advocated and reclaimed more than 60 million records to date that were behind lock and key.

Take a look at their successes and their to-do list.

They style themselves as intellectual freedom fighters. Did you know so many records were still entirely unavailable?

Hey, isn’t that Myko Cleland sitting at the Reclaim booth, on the left? He’s the Director of Content in Europe for MyHeritage, nicknamed the DapperHistorian, and you just never know where you’re going to find him!

How cool is this? Wear What You Love uses sublimation dying to permanently print/infuse your photos on t-shirts or other materials.

This also works on fabric that can be used in quilts but more reliably on polyester fabrics, not cotton.

Hmmm, I have some ideas.

Y-DNA Ask Me Anything at FamilyTreeDNA

The Y-DNA “Ask Me Anything” session began at 10:30. I don’t think attendees realized that FamilyTreeDNA brought the R&D brain trust and you could literally ask them anything. What an opportunity!

Left to right, Michael Sager, FamilyTreeDNA’s well-known Y-DNA phylogeneticist, Dr. Paul Maier, seated, population geneticist, and Goran Runfeldt, standing at right, Head of R&D.

The team reviewed how to use Discover and what can be revealed.

Janine Cloud, Manager of Group Projects, is beside me in the black shirt, seated at far right. Group Projects are important tools for Y-DNA testing and testers.

In addition to the Discover Time Tree, shown on the screen above, a Group Time Tree shows Big Y project members as grouped by the volunteer administrators, along with their earliest known ancestors (EKA.)

Here’s an example from the Estes surname project that I administer. My grouping of participants is shown at left, the Time Tree in the center, and the locations with earliest known ancestors at right. Results are displayed in the order that they are phylogenetically related, helping genealogists immensely.

Here, the team is explaining the Block Tree which displays matches in a different format.

Men displayed together on the same Block Tree branch are more closely related to each other than to men displayed in other branches.

Michael Sager observes while Paul Maier demonstrates Globetrekker, an innovative interactive map that shows the path that one’s male ancestors took on their journey from Africa to where they are most recently found.

One of the attendees had a question and looks on as the team explains their results using Globetrekker.

We tried to get a team photo after the presentation and managed to corral some of the team. You’ve met several already, but Bennett Greenspan, Founder and President Emeritus of FamilyTreeDNA, is to my right as you look at the photo, with Sherman McRae standing between Bennett and Paul.

I particularly like this “generations” photo.

In the rear, Katherine Borges stands with Bennett Greenspan. Bennett obviously founded the company, and Katherine was one of the early administrators. Dr. Lior Rauchberger, CEO of myDNA, which includes FamilyTreeDNA, is seated at left, along with Alex Zawisza, CFO, at right. MyDNA purchased Gene by Gene, which includes FamilyTreeDNA, just over three years ago, and the team has continued to work together for the benefit of FamilyTreeDNA customers.

Lior traveled from Australia to attend RootsTech. He could be seen checking people out at the booth, so he had the opportunity to talk with customers. He said he heard the words “brick wall” more in those three days than ever before, as in, “Thanks to FamilyTreeDNA, I broke down my brick wall.”

We all owe Lior a huge debt of gratitude for his continued commitment to FamilyTreeDNA research, and in particular, the Big Y-700 tools, such as Discover, along with the Million Mito Project which will be released with a similar tool, MitoDiscover.

Thanks Lior!

I turned around to see Stephanie Gilbert, who gave the keynote at the FamilyTreeDNA conference.

Stephanie is an incredibly engaging speaker, and I’m going to recommend her to RootsTech for next year.

It was wonderful to see Schelly Talalay Dardashti, at left. She has worked for MyHeritage since 2006 and administers the Tracing the Tribe – Jewish Genealogy Facebook group, which has more than 73,000 members. Schelly is a wonderful ambassador, always helpful and incredibly knowledgeable.

Between us is Dana Stewart Leeds, creator of the Leeds Method, a technique that launched the autocluster craze by manually grouping matches. I wrote about the Leeds Method, here, in 2018. When you see AutoClusters at Genetic Affairs or the Collins-Leeds method at DNAGedcom, think of and thank Dana. They automated her process, with her permission, of course, creating some of the most useful tools available to genealogists. You can follow Dana here.

I swear, it was brainiac day at RootsTech!

Mags Gaulden, one of the founders of mitoYDNA and who writes at Grandma’s Genes, was working in the FamilyTreeDNA booth and was quite busy – so busy that I almost didn’t manage a picture with her. We never did get to have a meal together. We will have to do better in October when we are both scheduled to be at the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference in person. Oops, did I say that out loud???

Save the dates!

GEDmatch – New AutoCluster Endogamy Tool

I’ve emailed back and forth with Tom Osypian with GEDmatch many times now, but I’ve never met him in person, even though we’ve been in the same place before.

This time, I was determined. Although Tom was busy several times when I stopped by the booth, there were fewer people on Saturday, so I stood a fighting chance.

Tom explained that GEDmatch has a new AutoCluster tool developed by Evert-Jan Blom at Genetic Affairs and Jarret Ross from GeneaVlogger that helps with unraveling endogamy. I told him that I already knew because we used my Mom’s autosomal results during testing. Mom is partly endogamous through her grandfather’s Acadian line.

The Acadian cluster in the upper left quadrant looks like an orange blob with no differentiation, where everyone is related to everyone else – because that’s truly how Acadian descendants are connected. As my Acadian cousin once said, “If you’re related to one Acadian, you’re related to all Acadians,” and it’s true.

Evert-Jan needed to optimize clusters for a partially endogamous person without negatively affecting their non-endogamous clusters.

He did a great job separating my Mom’s big orange blob endogamous cluster into these nice, neat mini-clusters.

To take a look, choose AutoCluster Endogamy on GEDmatch and make your preset selection.

There’s a YouTube video about this tool by GeneaVlogger, here.

Next I ran into Patricia Coleman, a fellow genealogist scientist, who wrote an excellent article about finding segment links to the opposite parent using AutoSegment AutoClusters, here. Check out her blog and published papers, here.

We are incredibly fortunate to have such dedicated researchers and scientists in our community.

Unfortunately, I was running out of time on the show floor.

Sisters of Heart

OK, now, I’m going to say something really sappy. Consider yourself warned.

By this time, I needed to find food and quickly eat before my session, which was scheduled to start at 1:15. This meant I needed to be in the room by 12:45.

Janine was doing consultations in the FamilyTreeDNA booth and couldn’t get away for food either.

Thankfully, with the storm approaching, there weren’t long lines at the food vendors. I peeked outside as I walked down the hallway looking for a food booth that wasn’t very busy.

It was ominously dark and gloomy outside, and had begun to snow.

I found the food stand that looked least bad and got in line. Neither Janine nor I knew what was available at the food vendors, but we’ve known each other for enough years and attended enough conferences that we kind of know what the other likes.

I was standing in line taking pictures of the menu and the pre-made foods in the cooler and messaging them to Janine. People must have wondered if I couldn’t find something better to take pictures of. I just chuckled. I’ll spare you the food pictures because they were unremarkable,

They were out of everything Janine thought looked good. Apparently, everyone else thought those items looked good, too. When it was my turn to order, and I had to choose, I messaged Janine that we were sharing a turkey wrap and asked if she wanted fruit.

“YES! Fruit sounds wonderful.”

Great!

I got both items and paid.

“So do chips. Chips sound great, too.”

Perfect.

I paid again.

Then I saw the muffins. Chocolate sour cream swirl muffins with large shiny sugar crystals baked on top.

No need to message Janine about this one.

Yep, I paid for the third time.

Then, I apologized to the people behind me, hoped they didn’t recognize me, and hurried back to the FamilyTreeDNA booth.

Janine’s customer had just finished up, so I sat down in that seat and spread out our goodies on the table between us. The turkey wrap was cut in half, and we shared half of everything.

I love breaking bread and sharing food with my favorite people. There’s something about feeding the body that nourishes the soul and bonds the heart. I can’t explain it, and I really wasn’t thinking about it just then. Both of us just needed a minute to relax and eat before rushing off to do something else.

I asked Janine if she wanted the last part of my half of the turkey wrap. She told me to take the turkey out and eat it because I needed the protein.

Bless her heart. She was right.

I grabbed two forks in the food booth, and we both ate out of the fruit box positioned halfway between us.

Then, after discussing and laughing that the muffin looked like a geode, I cut it into four sections. We ate them on the cupcake paper with forks, like cake. It tasted wonderful. If you’re thinking that I couldn’t finish my turkey wrap, but had plenty of room for chocolate cake, you’d be exactly right!

Someplace in the midst of our impromptu picnic meal, I realized that four years ago at RootsTech 2020, was the last time we would see each other – for years. A week after RootsTech, everything shut down. People died. Both of us had family members who perished in the Covid epidemic.

Everyone was traumatized.

Neither of us knew if we’d ever see each other again, but neither of us verbalized that because – well – we just couldn’t. Some days during that time, it was all any of us could do to simply hold it together.

I realized just how important these very relaxed impromptu moments, built on years of shared space and breaking bread together, really are. It’s exactly why we don’t have any old photos of “normal” things, just special occasions. Normal isn’t special, until it is – when someone is suddenly gone. Then, “normal” is everything.

None of us know which meal together will be the last. We never know when our number will be called, or how. We really only ever have today.

I wish someone had taken a picture of us smiling and eating, sharing our meal with each other, something we’ve done countless times before. Something so normal that we don’t even think about it. I never thought about taking a picture of something so routine, and neither did anyone else. Why would they?

Regardless, that moment is burned into my memory, along with just how precious our time together is.

Then, the moment of quiet respite, eating chocolate muffins and sharing more than food, was over, and the fragile thought bubble was broken by the ticking of the clock. I had to jump up and run off to my next presentation, and a customer approached and asked Janine a question.

Thank Goodness we were both able to return to RootsTech and relish something so absolutely normal once again.

Highways of History – Flesh Out Your Ancestors Using Discover Case Studies

My class on Friday, “DNA Academy,” was full, and sadly, people were being turned away at the door. Saturday’s “Highways of History” class was held in a larger room, but many people stayed home, so the room was only about three-quarters full. I forgot to ask someone to take a picture, so I’ll just share a few slides.

I really enjoy using AI occasionally for images. This was ChatGPTs idea of Highways of History.

Using Big Y DNA results, I provided examples of using the Discover tools to reveal the stories of my ancestors. Not every Discover tool reveals something amazing about each ancestor, but together, they tell a story we can’t unravel any other way.

I seek out men who descend from every male ancestor paternally through all males and offer a scholarship for Big Y-700 testing.

Here are just a few examples of what I’ve found and documented:

  • A descendant of Etienne Hebert (c1626-c1670), my Acadian ancestor, matches an ancient DNA burial found in Metz, France. Etienne and his brother’s children cluster in a group with a common ancestor about 1650, and the ancient burial dates to about the year 500 CE during the time that Metz was a Gallo Celtic Village. Among other things, we learn that their common ancestors were Celtic.

  • An adopted male matches several Estes men. Based on his Big Y-700 mutations, I can place him in the Estes family tree within two generations. His position in the tree is confirmed by autosomal matches to the ancestors of the wife of Joseph Frank Estes. Autosomal matches confirmed the Big Y-700.

  • Germain Doucet, born in France in the late 1500s, had two sons. One was born in France about 1621, and the second in Acadia (now Nova Scotia) was born to either a second or third wife in 1641 and named after Germain. Based on Big Y-700 tests, the son born in 1621 has a European haplogroup, but Germain, born in 1641, has a Native American father, suggesting the possibility that he may have been adopted by the older Germain Doucet. This was quite an unexpected surprise.

  • A Bowling descendant of Hugh Bowling (1591-1651) born in Chorley, Lancashire, England, had almost no English matches. STR matches are from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Cyprus, Germany, and Portugal, but the highest percentage are from Spain. Furthermore, his ancient Connections are from Hungary, Israel (4), Armenia, Rome, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon, Lincolnshire, and Norwich, England. Local history reveals a Roman Fort just 19 miles away from where Hugh Bowling lived, and the location, now excavated, was a settlement location for Roman Sarmatian soldiers.

  • Thomas Speak was born about 1634 in Downham, Lancashire, near Chorley, England where the family attended church. Big Y-700 testing shows that he and other English Speak men still living in the area share an ancestor about 1300 CE. When we visited in 2012, we discovered that Myles Standish’s family also attended the same church. Saxon Crosses are found in the graveyard outside, dating to circa 800-900 CE. A Standish male’s Big Y-700 test matches the Speak men, with their common ancestor dating to 850 CE, the same time that the Saxons were settling the region.

  • Bennett Greenspan’s Jewish ancestors were found in Ukraine in the mid-1700s, but he wanted to know more about where they came from originally. Were they Ashkenazi or Sephardic, or something else? By upgrading both close and distant matches to the Big Y-700, Bennett discovered that their common ancestors were in Spain in the year 296 when the two lines diverged and his line left. You can read Bennett’s story in more detail, here.

None of these mysteries or brick walls could have been solved without Big Y-700 tests and without the Discover tools.

This session was so much fun, and I can hardly wait to find more male ancestors and test their direct male-line descendants.

Goodbyes

By the time questions were answered, and I packed up my equipment, there were only about 15 minutes left until the Expo Hall closed at 3. Furthermore, I needed to retrieve my coat from the FamilyTreeDNA booth, retrieve my suitcase from the Marriott bellman, and order an Uber. My flight was only about two and a half hours away, assuming it left.

So far, it hadn’t been cancelled or delayed.

I mentioned my flight concerns to a colleague that I ran into on the way to the booth. He happens to live in Salt Lake City and gave me his phone number, with instructions to call if I got stranded.

My first (unspoken) thought was, “Thank you, but I’d never impose like that.” But then, I realized that was crazy and I really should call him if I needed help. What was wrong with me? I didn’t know him well, but I had known him and the company where he works for many years and felt completely safe. We are Facebook friends too, so I’ve joyfully watched him marry and start a family. I would have done exactly the same for him, and yes, I absolutely WOULD have wanted him to call. Plus, if I actually did wind up staying on his couch for a day or so, I would get time to “Grandma” his children, so HUGE BONUS!

You know who you are, and THANK YOU. I felt so much better after that. Genealogists are just the most amazing people!

Then, I ran into Lisa Rhea Baker who very generously gifted me with bracelets made by her veteran daughter as she healed from surgery. The bracelets around my wrist are beaded, and the one joining our hands is knotted in German colors. I’m wearing that one today. What a very talented and generous young lady.

I was very touched and so grateful. I asked her to thank her daughter on my behalf.

I saw Katherine Borges again in the booth as I was retrieving my coat and we quickly took a selfie. Neither of us realized we hadn’t gotten one earlier, although we did manage to have dinner with a small group where we all chattered like magpies.

Last, Goran, Paul and I took a quick selfie as I was preparing to run out the door. It was 3, closing time, and almost no one was left in the Expo Hall. I knew if I missed this flight, I’d not get another one. Everything was full.

I surely miss seeing these guys. Hopefully, I’ll see them again before the next RootsTech!

The Blizzard Strikes

I stepped outside.

The blizzard had begun in earnest. I could see a couple blocks down the street, but huge flakes of snow were pouring down. The wind was blowing viciously, whipping everything, making it difficult to hang onto my laptop rolling bag. The snow was sticking to everything.

At least it wasn’t slick yet, at least not where I was walking. If the wind hadn’t been so strong, it would have been pretty.

Would the plane be able to take off in this wind? The snow was blowing directly sideways now.

The only distance I had to walk was across the street. This is how much snow accumulated on my coat in just a minute or so.

A little later, Goran took this picture.

Ubers were becoming somewhat scarce, so two of us shared and made it to the airport in time for long TSA lines.

The plane was about 45 minutes late, which didn’t surprise me. I heaved a huge sigh of relief when it pulled up to the gate. At least it arrived, and as soon as it was cleaned a bit, we began to board.

Eventually, we pulled out of the gate and began waiting on the tarmac for the plane to be de-iced.

An hour later, we weren’t even halfway to the front of the line. The pilot estimated it would be another 90 minutes or so.

The snow continued to accumulate.

Would the pilot and crew time out and be unable to fly?

If we had to go back, there would be no prayer of getting another crew. Flights were already being canceled.

The woman beside me was ill. I felt awful for her, and it occurred to me that this might also be a reason to return to the gate.

At least the pilot allowed us to unbuckle our seatbelts and go to the restroom as we waited.

My flight had been scheduled to arrive just after midnight. But now, we were more than four hours late. What time would we get in? My poor husband. I told him to go to sleep and I’d just stay in the hotel in the airport. He said no, nothing doing.

I begged him to at least take a nap and recheck the flights at 3 or 4 AM.

The flight was extremely rough. We couldn’t get above or around the storm, and the seatbelt sign was only off for about 10 minutes during the entire flight.

I tried to sleep, but that wasn’t happening, even though I was beyond exhausted.

This is what love looks like. One single car in the cell lot at around 5 AM, as Jim waited patiently for me.

On the way home, in fact, all of the way home, we drove through the most incredible lightning storm I’ve ever seen.

It was someplace between worrisome/terrifying, and fascinating.

This lightning wasn’t reaching toward the earth in bolts. Instead, the entire sky lit up like daylight, horizon to horizon, flashing like an extremely bright strobe. It was so bright that, at times, it was nearly blinding, and the clouds looked like rainbows as the lightning flashed behind and through them. I had never seen anything like this.

This type of “sheet lightning” is crazy rare. Thankfully, it kept us awake and was stunningly beautiful in a very strange, ethereal way. We worried that we would be caught in a hellacious storm and unable to see in the downpour.

Florida is notorious for vicious storms and torrential downpours. It’s also the lightning strike capital of the US and ranks fourth in the world. This area, in particular, is known as Lightning Alley. Our house was struck last year.

As we exited the expressway, just a couple miles from home, the sky unzipped, and torrential rains began. Thankfully, we were spared for most of the drive.

I was incredibly glad to finally be home and hoped that others had been able to either escape the Utah storm or find a room in a hotel that did not lose power on Sunday. Reports said wind gusts in the Utah mountains were measured at 165 miles an hour, but Salt Lake City, tucked into a valley, was spared most of that.

What an incredible week in so very many ways.

I hope you enjoyed coming along with me. Dates have already been announced for RootsTech 2025.

_____________________________________________________________

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RootsTech 2024: DNA Academy and Ancestry Announcements

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12

March the 1st. Remember that old saying about March? If it enters like a lamb, it will leave like a lion, and vice versa.

Look what greeted us on the morning of the second day of RootsTech.

Whoo boy.

The good news, if there was any, was that this was Friday’s forecast for Saturday, and of course, it might, just might, be wrong. Fingers crossed!

The second day of RootsTech was jam-packed, as you can see in the MyHeritage booth below. I wondered if one reason for the extra-large Friday crowd was the weather forecast for Saturday.

I had just finished my booth talk for MyHeritage titled “Leveraging Triangulation – From 3 to Many” and stepped aside to take a picture.

This half-hour presentation defined triangulation as a three-legged stool and discussed when and how to use triangulation at MyHeritage.

I covered:

  • How to use close relatives, including parents, to determine which side your matches are on.
  • Why you can’t use immediate family members for triangulation.
  • How to use triangulation with Shared Matches and the Chromosome Browser
  • How to use and verify Theories of Family Relativity with triangulation
  • AutoClusters as a triangulation roadmap
  • Using AutoClusters and triangulation to determine which DNA descends from whom
  • Bonus hints

Maybe I should turn this presentation into a blog article. What do you think?

DNA Academy aka An Afternoon in the Life of a Presenter

I only had about 45 minutes between the end of the MyHeritage session and the beginning of my class, “DNA Academy: Pulling it All Together – Tests, Vendors, Tools & You.”

I’m very grateful that RootsTech provided the opportunity for this experimental full-afternoon session, which provided the underpinnings for other DNA classes and sessions.

I had practiced and practiced to ensure the slide and topic pacing was fast enough to get through all the slides but not so fast that I would lose people.

Losing someone in a class of this duration means that they miss everything thereafter – and that could be a lot more than your normal 45 to 50-minute class.

Therefore, I needed to be prepared to take questions during the class. That’s always a bit risky because some questions are more like a short story, and you don’t want to run out of time at the end for your slides.

So, yes, I was a bit nervous. I was also concerned about technology gremlins named Murphy that seem to be ever-present. I absolutely did NOT need gremlins attending too.

There was no time between sessions for any kind of a proper lunch. No time to stand in line for food. However, I had to eat since I would have no break until after the class ended at 4, and then only after all of the attendees had left. On Sunday, I had purchased Lunchables at the local grocery store, so I bought a container of fruit and a bag of Doritos at one of those quick grab-it places on the way to my classroom and had a picnic in the back of the room as attendees began filtering in.

I headed for the front of the room with my laptop bag just as the tech person arrived to assist with setup. RootsTech encourages speakers to use RootsTech-provided equipment since they know it’s set up correctly to work with the AV equipment. That makes sense, but I always bring mine, just in case.

RootsTech also generously provided a stool so I wouldn’t have to stand for the entire afternoon.

Our first challenge was that the audio wasn’t working correctly, and never really did. We worked on it until the session started, and I even sent for the tech after the session began.

Eventually, after much fiddling around, I gave up and took the lavalier off. I held it near my mouth for the entire afternoon after finding that “sweet spot” with the assistance of everyone in attendance. We needed to find the mic position where people in the back of the room could hear me, it wasn’t so close it sounded like I was spitting, and we weren’t getting feedback. That seemed to be about a quarter-inch window. It was not ideal, but it worked, and I was very grateful for the audience’s help and patience. Teamwork!

The second challenge was that the RootsTech laptop defaulted to “Presenter View,” which means that your Powerpoint slide is in the upper left quadrant of the laptop screen, the next slide is shown at right, and “speaker notes,” if you’ve created any, appear at the bottom.

I don’t use speaker notes because I don’t want to sound like I’m reading aloud. Therefore, I never use Presenter View. I use the slides to remind me of what to say, and I know what’s coming next.

I initially thought, “Fine, so long as the slide advance works.” It wasn’t until after I began, and after the AV tech was long gone that I realized how small the RootsTech laptop screen was, meaning how SMALL my current slide was. To my horror, I realized that I couldn’t clearly see some portions of my slides.

OH NO!!!

I couldn’t exactly take my glasses off, lean over the podium, and squint. No, that would never do. I also couldn’t move the laptop closer without disrupting the setup and cables.

I also couldn’t see the movie screen to my left that attendees were viewing because I was positioned directly beside the screen and only slightly forward. I could see that the image was showing on the screen, but I couldn’t read anything on the image from that angle.

Crumb!

Therefore, I really had no good or detailed view of my own presentation – for 2.5 hours.

All I can say is that it’s a VERY good thing that I obsessively practice ahead of time, because that’s the ONLY thing that got me through.

I asked for the tech again to assist with the audio issues after trying multiple ways to adjust things myself, and he sent a message back to just move the lavalier up on my clothing. It was already as high as it could be placed, so not helpful.

Why am I telling you this? Often, people often don’t realize how much is beyond the speakers’ control and how much we just roll with the punches as best we can. Attendees are acutely aware of their experience, especially when it’s sub-optimum, and often blame the speaker.

One attendee asked if I could raise the image projection on the screen towards the top. I couldn’t control the image location at all. I knew that if one person couldn’t see because the image was too low on the screen, other people probably couldn’t either, and I felt awful.

Speakers are used to overcoming challenges, but no one wants to attempt to simultaneously overcome and compensate for several issues in the same presentation.

I wound up apologizing more than once to the class. These people had been kind enough to choose this long class and I wanted their experience to be the best possible.

I was very grateful for the people who said something positive afterward and for this person who left feedback on my blog.

A number of people were unhappy because the session wasn’t either live-streamed or recorded. Speakers have no way of knowing or influencing which sessions RootsTech selects for broader consumption. I’m sure they want to livestream a mixture of topics that would interest a variety of people.

I’ve reached out to Legacy Family Tree Webinars to see if they are interested in this class, although I would need to divide it into thirds. I want to leverage this effort and make it available to others who can benefit.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars are free to everyone for the first week, then available in the subscription library.

Does this sound like a good idea?

Ancestry Announcements

After DNA Academy ended, I headed back to the show floor. The second day of RootsTech is always the “late night” with activities until about 7:30. They close earlier, around 5, on the first day, and at 3 on the final day.

I was interested in Ancestry’s announcements and if I had missed anything from the earlier recorded session.

Of course, Ancestry was selling DNA tests. At RootsTech, Ancestry announced that it now has 25 million testers in its database.

Sitting inside the booth, I saw Crista Cowan, the Barefoot Genealogist who is also Ancestry’s corporate genealogist. I noticed the cast on her wrist and felt terrible for her, trying to navigate RootsTech and minor other activities, like, say, eating and presenting and the basic activities of daily living. Been there, done that, and it’s no fun. Crista said that she had discovered that one cannot create PowerPoint slides in a cast, especially when it’s your dominant hand. And I thought I had challenges.

Like I was saying about speakers compensating and making it happen, one way or another…

I’m not going to steal Crista’s thunder about how she became “The Barefoot Genealogist,” but if you don’t know, you can watch her RootsTech presentation here.

So, what else is in Crista’s presentation? What has Ancestry announced?

  • Family Groups. Ancestry announced the ability to create a group of people in a family who are working on a common goal, facilitating collaboration.
  • The Family Groups feature will be available to all accounts, LDS, paid, free, library, whatever.
  • You will be able to assign tasks to people in the group. For example, Mom could be assigned to scan the family photos, upload them, note who they are and other relevant information
  • A “Memories” feature will support either recording or uploading audio which can tell the story of a picture.
  • A new Family Plan, currently only available in the US, allows you to pay for one subscription and add four people. I have seen pricing, but Ancestry has many different plans, and I’m unclear what is and is not included in the Family Plan. So if you’re interested, I’d suggest reaching out to Ancestry.
  • Ancestry continues to add historical records at a rapid pace.

  • Ancestry was indexing 2-3 million records per day. With the launch of the 1950 census, which utilized handwriting recognition and AI, they are now indexing millions more each month, according to Crista’s slide.
  • Ancestry is re-imaging Newspapers.com pages using the same technology, which provides much more than OCR, which is plagued by issues such as image quality and lack of intelligence.
  • One example of new features is that previously, some people were mentioned only by association, such as Mrs. John Doe. Now, Mrs. John Doe can potentially be recognized as Susan Doe or even Susan Jones Doe, based on other articles and information.
  • Ancestry has created a new Stories and Events Index, which indexes the records by category, such as marriages or law and order.
  • However, and this is important, these new re-imaged records are NOT found when you do a global search through Ancestry because, in layman’s terms, there are so many that they crash the system.
  • Ancestry added 16 billion records from newspaper collections last year. You can find a hint or go directly to the newspaper database. Check the specific collection because you may not find the information searching generally.

You can find the Historical Newspapers Collection under the Search tab.

Crista was also being plagued by technical gremlins to this point. It’s obvious that she was well-practiced too, as she barely missed a beat.

Crista encourages people to use the Card Catalog to view the new newspaper record collections.

Here’s what’s showing in my Card Catalog Records Collection view.

  • Moving to DNA announcements, Crista stated that with 25 million people in the database, Ancestry has 88 ethnicity regions and now more than 2500 DNA Communities.

  • The 88 ethnicity regions represent ancestors 500-1000 years ago, while the 2500 communities are formed by a genetic network of people related within approximately 200 years.
  • Ancestry now has 120 million family trees that are mined for location information.
  • Ancestry introduced 203 Communities in Ireland this past year. Crista mentioned that this means that those communities are as granular as counties and that now she knows where to search for her Irish ancestor. I hope she has only one Irish ancestor, and he’s close enough in time. I’m also hoping that the granularity of Communities provides very specific hints.
  • Ancestry added 413 African American Communities in the southern US and Caribbean – some to within a 10-mile radius.
  • Ancestry added 352 Mexico Communities.
  • More Communities are planned to be released every 3-4 months or so during this next year. In other words, you’ll need to check from time to time, as there won’t be a specific large update for everyone.
  • Traits and Communities, by parent, will be added within SideView

If you recall, SideView features now require either a full subscription, or a Plus subscription for DNA features. You can read about that here and here.

Pro Tools

Crista shifted gears here to discuss Pro Tools, which she described as tools that aren’t necessarily for pros, but are new ways to view family history.

Pro Tools is NOT the same as the DNA SideView features that are behind the regular Ancestry subscription or the Plus paywall.

Pro Tools was recently introduced. Crista didn’t mention this in the video, but Pro Tools costs an ADDITIONAL $10 per month, regardless of whether or not you have a full, World, or Plus subscription. In other words, you’ll pay another $120 per year to access Pro Tools

There are two schools of thought about this.

  1. Some people are furious that Ancestry added an entirely new subscription instead of adding these functions to the full or Plus subscription level.
  2. Some people are glad that Ancestry didn’t raise the cost of the full subscription by $120 per year, allowing people NOT to subscribe to these new Pro-Tools features if they don’t want them.

New features will be added under Pro Tools soon.

New shared matches view:

  • The predicted relationship and how many cMs your shared matches share with any other shared match will be available in the first half of 2024.
  • If shared matches triangulate.

Future Enhancements

  • Ability to group shared matches into custom groups with one click using “select all”
  • Ability to sort by your matches’ closest matches
  • Highlight matches that have triangulated shared segments

Nope – No Chromosome Browser

People have been speculating for some time that Ancestry might have been going to add a Chromosome Browser. Nope, they didn’t.

Crista didn’t mention this, but discussion elsewhere revealed that the triangulated segment information will NOT include:

  • The number of triangulated segments
  • The size of triangulated segments
  • Segment location information
  • A chromosome browser

At this point, I have no plan to subscribe to Pro Tools. I feel like Ancestry is essentially teasing us. “Yes, you have a triangulated segment with two other people, but, sorry, we’re not going to tell you where it is.” It’s like they get us right up to the edge of something useful, within sight and sniffing distance, then, boom, dropped like a hot potato. To add insult to injury, we have to pay separately for the teaser, even with a full subscription. The best we could do, I think, is hope that one or some of the triangulated people have a tree so we can determine who the common ancestor or ancestral line might be. If we’re really lucky, there might be a ThruLine formed.

I’ll leave it at that, but I am not one bit happy about the features that are still excluded, and that the included features require yet another subscription.

I realize that after years of saying that segment information violates Ancestry’s perception of privacy, it would be difficult for Ancestry to reverse its position at this point.

Standing in the booth later, someone commented that they were surprised that Ancestry is going to provide estimated relationships between shared matches and shared cM amounts to each other. Crista said that Ancestry had needed to “work out some privacy stuff” first.

Perhaps this is the furthest Ancestry feels that they can move without entirely reversing their long-standing chromosome browser privacy position.

For those who want to work with segment information and a chromosome browser, you can upload your Ancestry DNA file to FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, and GEDmatch. You’ll find step-by-step instructions here.

After visiting the Ancestry booth, I moved on to other vendors on the show floor.

Goldie May

I hadn’t heard of Goldie May until Drew Smith introduced me recently. Thanks Drew!

You can take a look at their genealogy organizational tools, but their best feature for genealogists who give presentations is the ability to blur names in screenshots.

This feature, available under Goldie May Pro for $24 per month, senses names and blurs them along with associated profile photos for you. The lack of blurring is one reason I never do anything live or make “how-to” videos.

Right now, this feature only works for Ancestry pages, but hopefully, it will soon work for pages of other DNA vendors and DNAPainter.

DNAPainter

Speaking of DNAPainter, they are one of my favorite third-party vendors. And just in case you’re wondering, I’m not related to Jonny, and I pay full price for my subscription, just like all of you.

I mention this only because DNAPainter appears in just about every presentation I create about autosomal DNA and matches, regardless of the vendor – except Ancestry, of course.

I saw Jonny sitting at a table, showing someone how to paint their matching segments.

One person who attended the conference agreed to a 10-minute DNAPainter lesson after dinner with a friend – only 10 minutes, though, because he was tired! Although his friend was long asleep, he was still painting at 4 AM  and had surpassed the 50% mark of his painted chromosomes assigned to known ancestors. I think we have a new convert!

You can find DNAPainter instructions here.

On the corner of the table was a shared cM relationship map, one of the free tools that Jonny offers in collaboration with others in the community.

I couldn’t resist taking this picture of Jonny in his very cool striped tennis shoes that look amazingly like painted chromosomes.

I remember the first time I saw Jonny in 2018, looking very nervous at RootsTech, standing by himself in a small booth the first year he introduced DNApainter. I had never heard of DNAPainter.

In 2018, Jonny was a candidate in the new tech innovation contest, which he won. This motivated me to try DNAPainter myself, leading to another award at the beginning of 2019.

How things have changed in six years. Now, EVERYONE knows Jonny Perl. He was included in the 25-year genetic genealogy celebration as someone who has shaped the industry, and he’s no longer standing nervously alone in his booth. Also, he has way cool shoes now!!

In fact, it’s hard to find Jonny alone at any time to take a picture.

I just love success stories!

More Friends on the Show Floor

I knew Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist, was at RootsTech and presenting, but I hadn’t actually seen her yet. By now, I’m sure almost everyone has had the opportunity to hear Judy speak, but I’ve often said that if Judy were talking about dirt, I’d attend because it would be funny, witty, and educational.

I found Judy, in her second-generation signature pink jacket, hanging out with Janine Cloud in the FamilyTreeDNA booth.

Friday was the late evening at RootsTech. People were getting tired and hungry, and most attendees had already left by 7:30 when the Expo Hall officially closed.

In the center of the hall, near the front, FamilySearch had a “garden” or “park” area with park benches and fun games like chess.

As I was walking out, I noticed Bennett Greenspan, at left, playing park chess with Katherine Borges, Director of ISOGG, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, at right.

I had a good chuckle as I realized that assembling the DNA of our ancestors and applying it meaningfully to our genealogy is like playing chess.

Warning

We had been hoping all day that the weather forecast would change for the better.

Maybe it wouldn’t snow at all.

Maybe it wouldn’t snow much.

Uh-oh!!

It was cold, and the wind was blowing hard as we exited the Salt Palace, whipping our hair into our faces and eyes.

Everything felt ominous. Even the locals were worried.

Attendees were heading home early, and even those who had to stay and work on Saturday were trying to change their flights to Saturday afternoon in the hope that they could escape before the brunt of the storm hit.

Airlines were contacting passengers with weather advisories, saying they could change their flights without charge. They were hoping to get people out ahead of the storm.

The various weather services showed different scenarios. One reported that it would be 33 degrees and rain until just after lunch, when it would turn to snow.

Another predicted that it would be 31 and blizzard conditions with 4-6 inches of snow and whiteout conditions by noon.

What? “Hurricane-force gusts”? You’re kidding, right? But they weren’t. This was no joke.

No one knew what to expect, and local people were bidding us adieu, saying they weren’t planning to be back on Saturday.

What would we wake up to on Saturday morning? What about flights? And hotel rooms? What would we be facing?

_____________________________________________________________

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RootsTech 2024 – Celebrating 25 Years of Genetic Genealogy

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On the first day of RootsTech, we celebrated the milestone anniversary of 25 years of genetic genealogy. Right now, we are at the intersection of two incredibly powerful tools: genetics and AI. Both technologies are revolutionary and have changed and are changing the genealogical world overnight. What an amazing time to be alive!

Day 1 is Just Beginning

Day 1 is just the beginning, although pre-show activities have been occurring for a day or two. Everyone is excited. The energy on the show floor and as attendees talk is palpable – a form of human electricity.

I’m going to share some of RootsTech’s flavor with you, so come along with me as I attend a few sessions, give my dozen sessions, and meet people.

First, I need to provide some caveats.

  • I wasn’t able to attend very many sessions
  • I didn’t get to half the expo floor booths
  • I was only at one keynote, but fortunately, most were recorded

I managed to overcommit myself “just a bit,” and I just couldn’t be in two places at once. Thankfully, recorded sessions are available here.

One of the reasons that I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped is because I kept running into people. There was more hugging at RootsTech than at a bear-hug festival. The fun of taking selfies is a thing – a modern-day bonding experience and lots of group selfies are floating around on social media.

I truly love my fellow genealogists, many of whom I’ve discovered are cousins, and some of whom have become lifelong friends. They are brothers and sisters of heart -people who I can’t imagine NOT having in my family. This group of troublemakers is the perfect example of that, with Lianne Krüger, Mags Gaulden, and me in the back and Janine Cloud in front. I think we look like a girl band. Perhaps we’ll call ourselves The Chromosomes. 😊

The first thing on my agenda for Thursday was a book signing for my book, DNA for Native American Genealogy.

Penny Walters wandered by while I was signing and said hello.

Penny, the queen of selfies, constantly has to instruct me on how to do this successfully. It seems I either shut my eyes or I’m smiling so hard I’m laughing. One day, Penny, one day!

Thanks, Penny, for taking this picture of me with my book.

Following the book signing, Janine Could, Groups and Events Manager at FamilyTreeDNA, and I had an AMA, Ask Me Anything session in the FamilyTreeDNA booth about determining if you have Native American ancestors. Our stories are so complementary.

I was raised with and participated in Native cultural traditions. Janine wasn’t, but she is an enrolled Cherokee tribal member. After we had known each other for several years, we discovered that we’re related, but not through that line – at least not that we know of.

The great thing about AMA sessions is that the speakers are literally there to answer your questions. During the conference, lots of people took advantage of the expertise of speakers and their fellow attendees.

Remember

Last year, I met Charis, in the middle between me and Janine. Charis made my day when she told me that she was driving by the Salt Palace a week or so before RootsTech, saw that I was giving a Native American session, and knew she had to attend.

We talked for a long time, and I wondered if I would see her again this year.

Sure enough!

I saw her walking down an aisle, so I knew she was attending. I wanted to give her a hug but I couldn’t at that moment.

She stopped by the FamilyTreeDNA booth and asked Janine if she thought I’d remember her.

You remember people that make you feel good, and she really did.

Someone once told me that people often remember you for how you make them feel.

This year, Charis attended my sessions, and it felt good to see a friendly, smiling face in the audience.

After one class, she waited for me until everyone’s questions were answered. I asked if we could sit down in the quiet at a vacant table in the back of that hall for a few minutes to visit.

Charis pulled out a bag with a card and gave it to me, saying she hoped I didn’t think it was weird or anything. I was stunned and quite moved.

Her name is Remember, the theme of Rootstech this year.

I cried. Charis’s gift was so thoughtful in so many ways, as was the card – and she had no idea how personally this touched me.

We talked for a long time, and while I’m not going to share details, I remembered how it felt to be young and have your life’s trajectory shifted in ways you can’t control.

I remembered what it was like to have hopes dashed.

I remembered when I was “just doing what I was doing” every day, not realizing that I was making memories – not just for me but for others as well.

I remember when Douglas explained the concept of GodMothers to me – and I wasn’t young.

Douglas told me that I had GodMothered people through our combined educational ministry (and I’m not talking about church here) and through my own individual work. Of course, the first thing I thought when Douglas said that was, “No, no, not me,” but then I remembered my mother’s “simple” ministry to others. I remembered how my step-father changed my life both with his actions and a few simple, well-placed words. I remembered the kindness of others when I desperately needed it – and still do.

I remembered.

I remembered that we all have a mission, a ministry, even if we don’t realize it. Even if we don’t understand it. Even if “all we do” is a simple kindness every day.

I remembered that some people’s lives are meant to intersect.

Charis is doing GodMother work, or maybe God’s Mother’s work, every day of her life.

Charis gives me hope for the future.

Thank you Charis, for Remember, and for helping me remember. And for being the next generation of GodMothers and shining your light for others to follow in generations of GodMother footsteps.

Remember.

Genetic Genealogy Turns 25

A few weeks before RootsTech, Diahan Southard emailed and asked me if I’d be interested in and willing to write a short, roughly 3-page “chapter” for a book she was preparing for RootsTech, celebrating the 25th anniversary of genetic genealogy.

Additionally, Diahan would be hosting a panel where some of the contributors would share our remembrances, beginning with the earliest days and ending with more recent innovations.

You can watch the session here.

It’s not hyperbole to say that genetic genealogy changed my life. It also changed the trajectory of my career.

I was very proud to be included on this panel with Diahan and Bennett Greenspan, both of whom I have known since the beginning. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined an event like this – let alone being on this stage on this incredibly memorable day.

Diahan shared her story about beginning her career at Sorenson Molecular Institute with Scott Woodward, who joined us and told his story via video.

Bennett Greenspan spoke about his inspiration as a genealogist, and how and why he founded FamilyTreeDNA in 1999.

Bennett introduced Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA to the consuming public, planting the seeds of an industry that would flourish and ultimately become a household word in the genealogy community.

Tim Janzen spoke about the role of Y-DNA from the first 12-marker panels to the Big Y-700 today. The landmark discovery that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with Sally Hemmings occurred as a result of Y-DNA testing and drew attention to the possibilities for solving long-standing mysteries – known or unknown.

Leah Larkin discussed the tipping point of autosomal DNA in the genetic genealogy industry.

Aimee Haynes with DNA Angels, an adoption search organization, explained how autosomal DNA, in particular, answers questions for adoptees, giving identities and histories to millions of people who “don’t know who they are.”

Diahan asked me to speak about ethnicity and genetic genealogy, and I actually managed to find my original ethnicity test from 2003. That image in the middle with the red dot and “parenthesis” bands was the extent of the information returned, in addition to the percentages. By the way, those percentages weren’t accurate either, but it was a beginning.

However, ethnicity, with associated segment information at FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe, has paved the way for painting both ethnicity and match segments with Jonny Perl’s DNAPainter.

Jonny spoke about his inspiration for DNAPainter and how he initially developed it for his own use. Now, just a few years later, everyone loves it!

Lori Napolitano spoke about the evolution of Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG), also known as IGG, including a collage of people whose remains have been identified and a separate collage of perpetrators of violent crime who are now off the streets. She addressed the successes along with the challenges.

Lori’s 3 or 4 minutes were extremely balanced, presenting both sides of the coin, and I strongly encourage you to listen beginning at about minute 36.

Diahan has compiled these people’s contributions along others for a total of 34 vignettes in the book So Far: Genetic Genealogy – The First 25 Years 1999-2024.

  • Megan Smolenyak-Smolenyak
  • Scott Woodward
  • Bennett Greenspan
  • Ann Turner
  • Ugo Perego
  • Diahan Southard
  • Scott Fisher
  • Roberta Estes
  • Tim Janzen
  • Jim Bartlett
  • Blaine Bettinger
  • Daniel Horowitz
  • Debbie Kennett
  • Kitty Cooper
  • Angie Bush
  • Michelle Leonard
  • Paul Woodbury
  • Kelli Bergheimer
  • Judy Russell
  • Dana Leeds
  • Drew Smith
  • Diana Elder
  • Nicole Dyer
  • Leah Larkin
  • Nathan Dylan Goodwin
  • Mary Eberle
  • Mags Gaulden
  • Aimee-Rose-Haynes
  • Jonny Perl
  • Brianne Kirkpatrick
  • Laura Olmsted
  • Cheryi Hudson-Passey
  • Margaret Press
  • Penny Walters

The stories and visions of these pioneers and industry influencers are fascinating.

The eBook is free by scanning the QR code below or click here.

The following day, I found Diahan’s booth and was able to thank her for this labor of love.

Printed copies of Diahan’s book were available for sale in her booth, Your DNA Guide, and I was surprised how many people sought out attendees who wrote mini-chapters and asked us to sign our pages. What fun!

Diahan and I go back a long way. In the greatest of ironies, in the very early days, the Skidmore Family Association retained Diahan to “tell them what she could” about early Y-DNA tests of 51 Skidmore men. Initially, I was very concerned that the family association might have gotten themselves aligned with someone who was less than competent – but then thrilled when I discovered that consultant was Diahan. Better yet, my own line was one of 8 individual Skidmore lines that Diahan identified and was represented by several testers. Back then, Diahan was working with only a few STR markers and of course, today, we have Big Y-700 tests.

Sunny Morton, another author, joined us for a lovely photo in Diahan’s booth.

I’ve always been incredibly grateful to Sunny for taking me under her wing during my first year speaking at RootsTech, where I had 4 or 5 days to prepare a presentation to cover for another speaker who was unexpectedly unable to attend. Baptism by fire, for sure.

Another reminder that people remember you for how you make them feel.

Expo Hall Show Floor

In between sessions and events, I wandered around the show floor to see the booths, their offerings, and my friends. Many of these people are probably your friends, too, or you have seen their names in the community.

Near Diahan’s booth, I found Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer, pictured above, a lovely mother-daughter professional genealogist pair who founded Family Locket. Should I say this? I especially love the baby genealogist peeking at us from behind. I’m thinking in another year or so, it will be a three-generation endeavor.😊

I was excited to run into Marian Pierre-Louis, who facilitates the smooth running of Legacy Family Tree Webinars and slays technology gremlins left and right! Another person I’m grateful to!

Geoff Rasmussen, founder of Legacy Family Tree, both the Legacy Family Tree Software and the webinars, was staffing the booth. If you haven’t tried these amazing genealogy webinars, all webinars are free initially and for 7 days and are then available by subscription in the webinar library.

Here, Geoff and Marian appear together. What a wonderful team. I’ll have a new webinar in the library before year-end.

Further down the row, I found Geneanet. If you’re not familiar with Geneanet, they are the last totally free resource that I’m aware of that allows the free uploading of your tree, regardless of size.

I use Geneanet often, especially when searching for Europeans. One of my favorite trees at Geneanet belongs to professional genealogist Karen Theriot Reader, and it documents more than 166,000 Acadians and their descendants—along with sources.

Yes, there was food, although not as much as in earlier years. However, these lovely mini-bundt cakes were TO DIE FOR. Unfortunately, I never did manage to purchase a chocolate one.

Maybe I’ll just have to cross my fingers for next year.

_____________________________________________________________

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RootsTech 2024: Paradigm Shift – FamilySearch Knocks It Out of the Ballpark With Full Text AI Search, Transcription & Indexing

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RootsTech 2024 kicked off on Leap Day, offering a wealth of sessions with remarkable depth and diversity.

All of the RootsTech keynotes and some of the sessions are available, here, for free. You’ll find them on the RootsTech YouTube channel as well.

This year’s RootsTech theme was “Remember.” I really encourage everyone to view Steve Rockwood’s keynote welcome, which, as always, is incredible and made me cry. Steve always makes me cry, but this time, he made himself cry too. Trust me when I tell you that, as a speaker, there’s nothing more difficult than trying to regain your composure on stage in front of thousands of people.

You’ll love this, though, so watch, please.

Well, now that you’re all blubbery, too, let’s move to tech.

FamilySearch Tech Forum

I was eagerly awaiting the FamilySearch Tech Forum, but I never expected what was in store. This knocked my socks off.

The panel discussed, among other topics, how they are utilizing generative AI, artificial intelligence, to preserve and reveal the records that we need to access.

Don’t let the word “AI” scare you. FamilySearch has been working on this project for more than a year and it’s working quite well in the way that they’ve implemented it.

They introduced us to the new technology roadmap and told us to buckle up for an innovative journey. I’m all strapped in and can hardly wait. Fortunately, we don’t have to.

The new FamilySearch AI tools provide more than a roadmap. It’s more like the galaxy just opened up.

The AI field is marked by explosive growth with the ability for Deep Learning. FamilySearch is harnessing this energy for genealogists.

FamilySearch has implemented a full-text search AND transcription capability in its lab sandbox. Additionally, every handwritten document that it transcribes is also indexed and, in some cases, translated.

They are using LLMs (large language models) and GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) systems to enable this technology.

In a nutshell, these AI systems are trained to recognize both words and script and to predict which words are most likely to come next.

This incredibly powerful mixture is only the beginning, though.

FamilySearch envisions creating family trees for entire cities and countries.

Be still my heart.

Can you imagine the power of a combination of probate records, wills, property records, census, vital records and the trees that can be created and verified FROM those records?

This technology will also facilitate comprehensive views of ancestry across entire regions with the capability of uniting people across the globe.

Holy COW.

I sat in stunned silence, unable to believe what I was hearing.

But they weren’t finished.

They’ve also built new search tools.

There are two types of searching. Let’s look at the second type first.

FamilySearch Helper

FamilySearch built a prototype, FamilySearch Helper, to help you. 

The new search tool includes the 100,000 FamilySearch wiki pages, the FamilySearch blog, and the resources at over 5000 Family History Centers.

To begin using the new tools, go to FamilySearch.org and sign in. Then scroll down until you see the FamilySearch Labs box on the right.

Click on “View Experiments,” and voila!

Next, click on the Find Help box.

This new search tool provides links across knowledge articles on multiple platforms.

Just type something in and try it.

I’m sure you noticed the other options. In fact, by now I’ve probably lost most of my readers because they clicked on that Full Text Search button.

Let’s go there next.

Full-Text Search

The Full-Text Search is a tool created for working with unindexed images, many of which are plagued by a variety of issues, including:

  • Poor quality image
  • Horrible handwriting
  • Lack of structure
  • Dense text
  • Just too many

Now, full text transcripts, searches and indexing are available with the click of a button. This is truly a genealogist’s dream come true. The results aren’t 100% yet, but WOW.

Just type what you want to know. I typed, “Joel Cook in Russell County, Virginia” to see if there’s anything more about this ancestor.

Look at this awful image quality. On the right is part of the transcription. The AI tool did amazingly well, certainly enough for me to determine that this is indeed the Joel Cook for whom I was searching. These documents, especially in deeds, not only index the grantee and grantor, but every name in the document.

Game-changer is an understatement.

Their example utilized Thomas Colson.

You’ll be presented with options. The presenter knew that Thomas Colson was from Massachusetts, so she clicked on that deed, which was, in fact, her ancestor.

100 million records are now available for full-text search, and that number grows every single day.

Collections available to be indexed include:

  • US Land and Probate

  • Mexican Notarial records
  • Plantation Records

Plantation, land, and probate records often include the names and locations of enslaved individuals. I’m helping my cousin track his enslaved ancestors, and this is an incredible boon to that research. I think I’ve found his ancestors in a probate record.

FamilySearch will take every unindexed image and run it through their full-text search AI tool over the next several years. I hope they’ll do this with records that are only partially indexed as well.

This process pairs the power of human volunteers and AI. Humans still need to adjust things a bit, and you can volunteer to help with that as well.

Please click the feedback link and be helpful and KIND!!

Speaking of AI

I took a series of classes in the fall from Steve Little who is teaching AI through the National Genealogical Society.

You can watch one of Steve’s instructional videos in the NGS RootsTech booth, here.

I remember that he mentioned that if a transcript is available for a video, one could copy and paste the transcript into AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude and prompt the model for a bulletized summary.

I was disappointed that RootsTech did not provide transcriptions for their videos. Considering their announcement, I find that to be highly ironic, and it made me laugh.

How do you know if a transcript is available?

Here’s a great 1-minute video about how to find a transcript on a YouTube video. If a transcript were present, I could use AI to summarize and not have to watch the parts of videos that I don’t want/need. Of course, if you use the transcript tool, you’ll miss out on the accompanying slides, so beware. However, transcripts come with a timestamp, so you can scan the transcript and then view the slides at the time marker in the video.

The RootsTech videos don’t have an included transcript, but FamilySearch has posted the videos on YouTube too, so I have a second chance. I didn’t find any transcripts there either, so I asked Steve if I was missing something.

Indeed, I was. Steve provided a wonderful little summary for me showing how to generate a transcript if there isn’t one.

Normally, if transcripts exist, they will be found under the little three dots (…) at far right, beneath the image.

It never occurred to me to look for a generate transcript option under the video’s description. I think I clicked literally everywhere else hunting for this.

Thanks, Steve!

Steve follows AI passionately, and you can subscribe to Steve’s free blog, here.

I encourage everyone to take Steve’s AI classes.

Your Turn

If I haven’t lost you already to the FamilySearch full-text search feature, try it now. What fun things are you finding? This new tool is more than a game-changer; it’s a paradigm shift.

Which record types would you like to see next?

I’d like to see court record transcripts, which are almost never transcribed and indexed. There are nuggets of gold there, too. One of my ancestors’ probate and estate information is missing, but by reading every entry page by page, I found his death month and year in the court records. Soon, reading page by page will be like viewing census records on an old hand-cranked microfilm machine. I can hardly wait!

I’m planning to search for each of my ancestors’ names to see if they are mentioned in records that I don’t know about. So far, I’ve found unknown entries for every person I’ve entered. Maybe I can finally unravel some of those mystery wives. Maybe you can too!

_____________________________________________________________

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Honoré Lore’s Land and His Neighbor’s Farm – 52 Ancestors #420

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My friend, Suzanne Lesage, successfully located the land of Honoré Lore mentioned in his estate in 1818.

In essence, she has achieved what I believed to be impossible and, in doing so, has brought Honoré back to life through his land. Thank you, thank you, Suzanne!!

I had emailed Suzanne about something else when I received this reply.

Your personal e-mail gives me the opportunity to give you information regarding where the Lord [family] lived. One link is the list of concessions of la Baronnie de Longueuil – Honoré Laure at the bottom of the page – no lot number of course, but we know it is the second concession. The second link is an image of the village of Ste-Marguerite de Blairfindie in 1917 – from the picture I vote for number 114. Why? Second one on the list – no frontage (lot is pie shaped) and half the area of his neighbour.

What path led Suzanne to Honoré?

The Path to Honoré

Suzanne discovered two critical documents at the Quebec Archives, here and the corresponding map, here.

The first document is the land register of the Barony of Longueuil in 1857.

Honoré’s entry is noted as being in the second concession on the south side of La Rivière Montréal.

This map, created much later, shows all of the lots.

Click to enlarge images

On this 1917 map, you can see the River in the center, running left to right. The second concession is located in the bottom center, with the road running left to right, transecting the lots. That’s often how farms were laid out initially for convenience. Roads didn’t try to avoid farms but ran through them. This map is NOT oriented with the north at the top.

Grande Ligne, a landmark, is at left.

Based on the land descriptions, Suzanne pinpointed lot 114, which fortuitously just happens to be just to the right of a distinctive divot in the road.

Can we find it today?

Indeed we can, and here’s the divot.

Indeed, we find the divot and align the map with Grande Ligne, which becomes important to Honoré’s wife’s story for another reason.

Let’s take a virtual drive.

Driving Around

With this divot as our landmark, we can see the triangle-shaped lots that correlate to the hand-drawn map.

I’ve drawn arrows pointing to the borders of the land we believe to be Honoré’s.to the right (east side) of the road. It looks like he owned a few feet on the left side of the road as well.

Honoré bought his land in July of 1789 and must have been overjoyed! After 47 years, he finally had a place called home. He may have eventually owned more than this one parcel.

Corn graces Honoré’s field, now as it did then.

This house stands on his land, but it’s very unlikely that it dates from the late 1700s or early 1800s unless some portion of an older structure is buried underneath. What is likely is that his house stood here.

We know that Honoré had at least one barn on the property along with livestock. His 1818 estate inventory showed that he had 200 sheaves of oats, 1000 sheaves of corn, and 600 bales of hay. That’s a lot!

Today, the address is 461 Chem des Ormes, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, but when Honoré lived here, everyone knew where everyone else lived and who the neighbors were. No one needed addresses.

Many Acadians who settled in L’Acadie in Quebec had been brutally expelled from Acadia, Nova Scotia, in 1755 during Le Grand Derangement, so they were bonded, if not by blood, then by a shared experience. Even half a century later, no one had forgotten any part of that history, nor would they, their children or grandchildren. Many didn’t survive. Honoring their shared heritage was to honor their memories. They wanted to stay together, so they settled with other Acadians.

Honore and his wife, Appoline Garceau, had settled here by 1787, but she died shortly thereafter, and in May of 1788, he remarried to Suzanne Lafaille, the younger sister of his eldest son’s wife.

Those families lived on the same road.

On the Way to Church

Various records show Honoré and his family across the generations attending both Sainte-Marguerite-de-Blairfindie in the L’Acadie/Blairfindie community and St. Luc Catholic Church in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu beginning in 1801. A document detailing the area’s history can be found here.

Honoré and his family would have either walked or climbed into a wagon or maybe a buggy if they were lucky, and traversed the 5 miles or so to church every Sunday and on special occasions such as funerals.

On their way to Ste. Marguerite, they would have passed the Joseph Roy farm, with its stone home and matching barn across the road. Barns were generally larger than their owners’ homes.

Thirsty travelers and their steeds would have been welcome to drink from the well that still exists beside the road. Today, there’s a hand pump.

Ste. Marguerite was closer than St. Luc, so the family attended Ste. Marguerite from 1787 when they arrived until St. Luc was built in 1801. Family members are buried in both cemeteries.

I still wonder what prompted that shift, especially given that Honore Sr.’s adult children and grandchildren were still attending Ste. Marguerite.

You can drive down that same road today, tracing Honoré’s path through the countryside to Ste. Marguerite which was located near the river in L’Acadie. Of course, the roads were dirt paths then, just wide enough for a wagon.

The Bourassa Farm

Down the road a bit, very near if not adjacent Honoré’s land, this quaint old home and barn has a sign outside saying #56 and 1812, which dates this house to that time.

Acadian families were quite large, but their homes were small by today’s standards.

You can read about the Bourassa home, here, along with other landmarks on the Circuit of Heritage Homes, beginning at the Saint-Marguerite-de-Blairfindie church, where the family attended before 1801.

Life in L’Acadie

Honoré’s home probably looked a lot like this one, which is known to have been built prior to 1812. His estate revealed that despite having at least 23 children over a span of 48 years with three wives, there were only two feather beds, a hutch, a chest, and a wardrobe, along with 11 dishes. His wives would have cooked on the “small cast iron stove,” which may have provided additional heat during the cold Quebec winters. He had both a table and an old table, but only four chairs.

Based on the furnishings, Honoré’s house was small, too, but it would have been a mansion for a man born before the Acadians were evicted from Nova Scotia in 1755. He and his family wandered the colonies for two decades he fought in New York in the Revolutionary War. A decade later, the family arrived in Quebec. Any home,no matter how small, would be a Godsend when you’ve had nothing for so long.

In Honoré’s 1818 estate settlement, we find the following information, using Google Translate:

Only an undivided sixth part [marginal addition: in the equally undivided half] of a land of 3 acres of frontage out of 30 acres [arpents] of depth, located in the lordship de la Prairie La Madeleine, holding from the front to the path which leads to St Jean, in depth by representing Pierre Noël Terrien, on one side to the widow François Brosseau and on the other hand to Victor Girouard, and a similar part of the buildings built on it.

Is Francois Brosseau in this document actually Francois Bourassa? It’s possible, but based on these families at WikiTree, I don’t think so. A misspelling is always possible, though, especially since we know the Bourassa family lived in very close proximity.

Honoré Lore began traveling to Saint Luc in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu after that church was built in 1801, but his son, also named Honoré Lore/Lord, continued attending Ste. Marguerite.

My mother’s great-grandfather, Antoine Lore, was born to Honoré Jr. and Marie Lafay/Lafaille and was baptized at Ste. Marguerite, above, in 1805. Antoine would have spent his childhood visiting his grandparents, working and playing in these beautiful fields. He assuredly visited the Bourassa home and knew their children and grandchildren well.

I can’t help but wonder if Honoré Lore Sr.’s son, Honoré Lore Jr., lived on the same land that his father owned. Honore Jr. would have been 50 years old when his father died in 1818. I don’t know if Honore Jr. actually lived here, but I do know he purchased his siblings’ shares of his father’s land.

This location is also confirmed by a secondary indirect source. Honore Jr’s wife, Marie Lafaille, regularly walked to the Protestant Mission at Grande Ligne, reportedly a distance of 2 leagues, or about 6 miles.

If they did not live on the exact same farm as Honore Sr., their home would have been somewhere between Honore’s land and Menard, in the red box above, which would be about 6 miles as described in the Grand Ligne Mission’s documents.  

The Bourassa land is just up and across the road. Are Bourassa and Francois Brosseau in Honoré Lore’s estate settlement one and the same individual?

The Bourassa family is shown in the first entries on the following page in the land register, immediately following Honoré’s name.

Notice that Jean-Baptiste Laure is listed, too, so at least some of this land, apparently down the road a bit, is indeed still in the family. Victor Dussault was married to Honoré Sr.’s daughter, Charlotte Marguerite Lore. J. B. Laure is probably Jean-Baptiste Laure, Charlotte’s brother.

Several members of the Lafaille family are recorded, beginning 11 properties further down the list. Both Honoré Lore Jr. and Honoré Sr. married Lafaille daughters, Honoré Sr. as his second wife. This tells us that their father, Francois Lafaille/Lafay, who died in 1824, probably lived on this same road somewhere between the Bourassa home and the church. Based on that property list, the Lafaille home was probably between the Bourassa home and present-day Menard, which grew up at the crossroads.

All of these families would have been in and out of each other’s homes. No one would have knocked, and there were no locks. In many places, especially rural locations, these customs remain to this day.

Within a generation or two, these neighbors up and down the road were all related if they weren’t already when they settled there after more than a century in Acadia and more than two decades in exile.

Finding Honoré’s land and the neighboring Bourassa home allows my mind to drift back more than two hundred years when surrounding trees were being felled for teams of French-speaking men to build cabins and barns as the fields were cleared for planting. Well-manicured orchards replaced old-growth forest.

Honoré’s neighborly arrival would have been heralded by the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and a friendly “Bonjour, Mon Ami” greeting shouted from horseback as he stopped out front to see if his neighbor needed a hand with something.

Honoré’s barn probably looked something like this initially, or maybe he eventually built a stone structure like the Roy barn. It needed to be rather large, sheltering his 18 hens, 9 pairs of turkeys, and 6 young pigs that were the offspring of three old pigs. He was fattening one pig. He also had 8 old sheep and 5 young ones, along with three horses and an old carriage. We don’t know their names, which would have been French, of course, but he had one white horse, one black horse, and one grey horse.

A cow with a broken horn lived in Honoré’s barn, too, along with a red cow with a black nose, a red cow, a brown cow, and one that was red and white. He also had 4 heifers which are cows that have yet to give birth. They probably were the offspring of the other cows.

His two oxen would have been trained to work together as a team and pull the plow in the field.

When Honoré was done helping or visiting with his neighbor, he would have mounted his horse and headed for home, just over the horizon, his house perhaps sheltered behind a few protective trees as a windbreak.

Old trees still stand sentry and line the path along the road in front of the old Acadian homesteads or where they stood.

If you close your eyes, you can still hear Honoré’s galloping horse as he disappears in the distance around the curve in a cloud of dust.

_____________________________________________________________

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RootsTech 2024 Happy Dance – FamilySearch Library and RootsTech Setup

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Monday, February 26th, dawned in Salt Lake City with beautiful blue skies. I was excited to walk the couple blocks to the FamilySearch Library. Come along with me!

I was planning to chase a few ancestors and had created a research list.

The iconic “salt shaker” of the Salt Palace with its “Point of View” unity signs, which is a permanent art exhibit, greeted me as I exited the hotel.

Fittingly, the Art Museum is next door in an attached building.

It was chilly and windy, but we’ll term it “refreshing,” especially since it became much colder later in the week.

Five minutes or so later, I was outside of my home-away-from-home, genealogy Mecca, the FamilySearch Library. I love this place!

Library Research – A Strategy List Pays Off

I always create a research list using the FamilySearch wiki and catalog. I only include items I can’t access from home. I don’t want to waste valuable time in Salt Lake City working on things I can do elsewhere.

This time, I was planning to work on a few stragglers who have proven incredibly difficult, and then a line that I had hardly touched.

I quickly found the land grant survey of my Joel Cook in Russell County, Virginia, then moved on to the Hill line out of New Hampshire.

I know that my Joseph Hill was born in Barrington, Strafford County, New Hampshire on September 2, 1791. Of course, like many families, several people were named the same name and often lived at the same time in the same place. They have to be sorted, one from another.

Joseph’s father, John Hill, was born about 1737 in Durham, Strafford County, New Hampshire, and died in 1804 in Barrington, New Hampshire.

John’s father, Henry Hill, was born about 1700, in Black River, near Dover, also in Strafford County.

The line continued, at least ostensibly, through William and his father, William, in Durham and Dover, both in Strafford County.

Was there evidence of this?

I met my cousin, Audrey, at the library in the morning.

She had previously recruited two Hill men, and we ordered Big Y-700 DNA tests for them. Their results were back, so I explained how to use the Big Y-700 and Discover tools and what we could discern. Fortunately, we confirmed our lineage.

We have more work ahead of us, but we do have two English matches, in different locations in England. I’m hoping that additional research and perhaps upgrading these men to Big Y tests will provide us with a location in England that might yield birth or other records for our Hill line.

By this time, we were ready for lunch.

Audrey and I made our way to the main floor of the library from the third floor, where we had been working.

It was still three days before RootsTech, and the place was already packed.

It did my heart good to see all those genealogists working hard and helping each other. I noticed several young people too.

During Covid-time, the library renovated and installed a very nice lunch or break area with several tables and vending machines. Nice vending machines. There’s a selection of frozen and cold food items, plus a microwave and complimentary paper plates and silverware. They also provide a clean refrigerator so you can bring your own lunch.

There’s no place nearby to eat anymore, and it’s a cold walk anyplace.

Plus, you really have to pack everything up, including your laptop, which disrupts your research. It’s much better to just grab food in the convenient snack area and chat for a few minutes.

Back upstairs, I began sifting through books and other wonderful resources. However, what I initially thought was a book turned out to be the most exciting revelation of my research.

The great irony is that I almost bypassed this item because I didn’t think that “Dover Neck Village” was the right location for my families. Fortunately, I always at least take a cursory look at everything because I learned long ago that it’s better to waste a little time than miss something critical.

One resource available only in the library is a map of Dover Neck Village, which was reconstructed in 1912 (for some reason) by local officials. The map shows the locations of the landmarks and residences of citizens between 1623 and 1723.

The library has a special map room that is AMAZING!

You can take the map to scan various stations on other floors.

The challenge was that this map was huge – probably at least 18X36. I wish I had taken a picture of myself holding it.

None of the scan stations could accommodate a map of that size.

However, this lovely young man who is serving his mission at the library knew of a way to help me. I’m INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL.

Joseph Gongaware had just finished some advanced training in the library’s “Memory” area, where patrons can bring their family photos and other memorabilia to scan and preserve.

You can see the scanner behind him, with the map partially hanging off of one side.

Joseph scanned the map in portions and digitally stitched the pieces back together.

It took him several tries, but when he was finished, it was perfect – as in, you really can’t tell that it was “stitched” back together other than the slight color variation. The text and lines are perfect.

Click to enlarge map

I am over the moon ecstatic.

Of course, I wouldn’t be quite that happy if my ancestors weren’t on the map.

BOTH John Drew, the father of Hannah Drew, and William Roberts, the father of Hannah Roberts, are shown on this map. Oh, happy day!!!

There’s one more hint too.

William Hill’s father, John Hill, was reported to have died in Kittery, Maine. Could this be the right parent for William, who was clearly in Dover, NH, given that he married Hannah Roberts?

Look, the location of the ferry to “Old Kittery” is marked, so this does in fact make sense, even though they are two different states.

This map is a goldmine in so many ways. The old Quaker Meeting House is marked too, as are other landmarks my family would have frequented, like the tannery, the old road, the ox pasture, the sheep pasture, the physician, the training ground, the old log meeting house, and ultimately, the “Oldest buring (sic) ground.”.

I literally wanted to jump up and do the happy dance right there in the library.

And you know what, every single person would have understood.

If you have a thumb drive, you can save the files to the drive. If you don’t have a thumb drive, they give you one!!

Seriously!

You might notice that I didn’t know the identity of Hannah Roberts’ parents before this trip, but I do now.

I was super excited, but I was also tired after a day of research, and this seemed like a good stopping point.

On the way back to the hotel, I noticed that there was still ice on those poor Pansys that had been planted a bit too early.

The Nordstrom’s window made me laugh out loud. I do believe this is a Florida man.

The Blue Iguana

I dropped my laptop bag off at the hotel and decided to eat at one of my favorite restaurants, the legendary Blue Iguana.

I knew if I didn’t visit before RootsTech, we would never get in. It’s very popular because it’s close and has excellent food.

The Blue Iguana is about a block away and quite unique. The restaurant is down a flight of steep blue steps enclosed by glass. The great news is that there’s a sturdy banister. The bad news is that it’s not handicapped-friendly.

I took this photo from above, looking down into the patio.

Looking off the other side of the steps here. You can see their reflection in the window.

The flowers are plastic, of course, but they are bright and cheery.

Color always warms my heart and makes me happy.

The inside is warm and inviting.

And the food is AWESOME. Who would think you’d find great Tex-Mex in Utah, of all places? I think these are my second-favorite tacos ever – and the first place doesn’t exist anymore.

Audrey and I enjoyed ourselves immensely. It’s a lot of fun having a research partner who is also interested in genetic genealogy.

Fine-Tuning Presentations

Arriving back at the hotel, I saw something I’ve never seen before.

You’ve heard of that mythical money tree? This is a donut tree. The chocolate donuts were to die for. Unfortunately, there were no chocolate donuts for the rest of the week.

Beginning now, evenings would be consumed with fine-tuning my presentations.

I’ve never given a RootsTech session that’s 2.5 hours long before, and I wanted it to be perfect. Pacing 1 hour is hard enough. You want to move fast enough but not too fast.

Plus, vendors are well known to modify their products or webpages just before RootsTech – so I had to check everything.

And there’s always that elusive spelling error just lurking.

I fell into a fitful sleep, worrying about PowerPoints that didn’t work and hotel doors that wouldn’t open. I woke up at 4:25 a.m.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???

At least as the sun came up, it was another beautiful blue-sky day!

Cold Tuesday 

Tuesday morning was downright cold and windy. Icy gusts swept through the valley.

I had to stop at the light, and I looked across the street to see someone riding one of those “lime” rental scooters.

I shivered thinking how cold they must be, then thought to myself that I’d surely fall off. Based on their bag, I surmised that they were probably a genealogist heading for the FamilySearch Library, which would be opening in a minute or two.

Wait!!!

Isn’t that Audrey???

It sure is! I’m impressed. She is one brave lady! She said she went about 3 blocks in 3 minutes and it cost her $3.

You pay via Paypal and just drop the scooter off out of the way when you’re finished.

On Tuesday, the library was jam-packed. In the front, the staff had set up folding tables and chairs in any open space.

Tuesday is always the day for broadcasts, podcasts, and, previously, the bloggers’ lunch.

However, the Blue Lemon, where we used to gather, closed, and the blogger group walked back to the mall. I was really torn. I was heads-down in New Hampshire, and I wanted to go to the lunch, but I didn’t want to go.

New Hampshire won, but I missed my friends.

Everyone loves those great MyHeritage bags. They are sturdy, lightweight and fold up easily for travel. This year’s bag didn’t have DNA on the outside.

Do you have any old discs with known or unknown files but no way to read them? Audrey brought these and the library retrieved the files off of the old, years-obsolete diskettes.

Keep that in mind!

Lunch took place in the snack room again, catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a least a year.

I wish I could share the energy with you. The utter joy at spotting someone you know.

And even if it isn’t “you,” just watching other people joyfully greet each other.

Once again, the library stayed open late, but I was at a good stopping place and decided to return to the hotel and finalize my presentations.

I noticed the signs had been placed on the sidewalk between the library and the Salt Palace. Early festivities began the following day, Wednesday. During RootsTech, FamilySearch provides a free shuttle golf cart between the facilities.

I had planned to go back to the library on Wednesday, but I never made it.

Walking back from the library, the wind had begun to blow, and snow was in the air. We were just hoping for not-too-much snow.

The new silver high-rise Hyatt dwarfs the salt shaker now. I wanted to stay there until I saw the $450 per night price. Wow!

Setup and Speaker’s Dinner

On Wednesday, I had lunch with a friend and then headed over to the Salt Palace to pick up my lanyard and nametag.

In the past, the registration lines have been hours long, and I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t stranded in a line with more than 200 speakers later that evening.

The staff was putting the final touches on the hall as the speakers arrived for the Speaker’s Dinner.

Steve Rockwood, the FamilySearch CEO, welcomed us and spoke briefly.

Seldom is one person skilled in both leadership and speaking, but Steve definitely is that person. He’s one of the most inspirational speakers I’ve had the privilege of hearing.

This year, his message was about RootsTECH, with TECH emphasized. He talked about the inspiration for a technology-focused conference. The first RootsTech was held in 2011, and has technology ever morphed since then.

Of course, genetic genealogy has become increasingly important and prevalent. It went from a novelty to a comprehensive and critical tool in the genealogist’s toolbox. Today, AI for genealogy is bursting onto the scenes, too, and holds incredible promise.

New technologies and new tools!

It’s hard for me to believe I’ve been to exactly half of the RootsTech conferences.

After the dinner concluded, I joined another speaker who had access to the Expo Hall which wouldn’t be open until RootsTech officially opened its doors the following morning, welcoming genealogists by the thousands from around the world.

My first commitment on Thursday morning was a book signing in the My Genealogy Books booth for my DNA for Native American Genealogy book.

Unfortunately, there were some glitches with the Expo Hall vendor map, and their booth was not shown, so I definitely wanted to be sure I knew where I was going ahead of time. I hoped other people could find it the next day, in spite of being omitted from the map.

The hall was eerily quiet.

The vendors’ booths were, for the most part, all ready for the crowds who would begin streaming in at 8 AM and fill the space with their excited, happy voices.

Final touches were being applied to some booths, and the Salt Palace staff was still rolling out the carpets that would attempt to soften the concrete floors. One of the FamilyTreeDNA staff told me that she walked 60 miles in three days last year. I didn’t walk nearly that far, but 20 wouldn’t surprise me, and I felt every step of it!

By morning, everything would be pristine.

I didn’t manage to get a photo of the many RootsTech helpers, but hundreds of FamilySearch volunteers made navigating this huge conference center much less confusing. Donning shirts that asked, “How can I help you?”, they directed many confounded genealogists in the direction they needed to go.

The RootsTech staff and volunteers really do go out of their way to help everyone and make RootsTech a world-class experience.

Tomorrow would be here before I knew it.

And yes, as all speakers do, I reviewed my slides – again.

I had two book signings, two presentations and two ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions on opening day. I also hoped to attend a couple of classes.

Was I nervous? Of course – this conference is huge. It’s the granddaddy of them all. No one wants to mess up or make a mistake, or, heaven forbid, have a technology issue.

And we know, for a fact, that Murphy takes up residence here during RootsTech week.

We also know that our fellow genealogists have our back.

We know that other speakers will help as much as possible. Every single one of us has been on both ends of that.

We know that the RootsTech staff and our room ushers are there for us. They are amazing!

We know that we can go to the Speaker Ready Room and have a moment if we need to, or take a Tylenol, grab a water, or a quick snack.

Most importantly, we know that everyone else at RootsTech is as excited as we are, and everything will be just fine. Just keep repeating that to yourself!

What no one does is sleep well the night before RootsTech opens. We are all just too excited!

_____________________________________________________________

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RootsTech 2024 – MyHeritage is ON FIRE with 13 Announcements

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I’ve got to tell you, MyHeritage has outdone themselves.

I had a hard time just keeping track of their announcements, which totaled 13 – a baker’s dozen.

You can watch the MyHeritage RootsTech keynote by Aaron Godfrey, here.

However, there are a few things not in the video, so let’s take a look at a quick summary of what’s new.

DNA Uploads with Free Advanced Tools Forever Extended Until March 10th

MyHeritage just extended their DNA upload that includes ALL ADVANCED TOOLS FOR FREE, forever, to March 10th so click here now to upload every kit you manage. This is a great deal. Hint – new ethnicity results are coming soon and you’ll be saving $29 on each kit you upload.

20+ Billion Records

MyHeritage has just passed the 20 billion record mark and is continuing to add. That’s billion, with a B. These records are available to customers with a MyHeritage subscription. If you don’t have a subscription, you can try a MyHeritage Subscription with a Free Trial, here.,

Additionally, right now, subscriptions are 50% off, but I don’t know how long that price lasts.

I love my MyHeritage subscription, and if you try it and don’t like yours, you can cancel and be charged nothing during the 14-day trial period.

I particularly like that the local newspaper where my grandparents lived is available on MyHeritage, and no place else. In addition, MyHeritage has integrated with FamilySearch, which is digitizing and indexing records like wildfire. That collaboration has provided me with information from European sources, including archives.

MyHeritage Wiki

MyHeritage has been working on their new Wiki, a community encyclopedia for genealogy and DNA, for almost a year now, although it was only recently released.

Photo courtesy of MyHeritage

I’ve been honored to write several articles for the newly announced MyHeritage Wiki, including the definition of DNA itself:

Take a look at the new Wiki, here.

You can filter in a number of ways, and you can even sign up to be a contributor.

Check out their blog article, here.

AI Record Finder

The AI Record Finder is the world’s first AI chat-based search engine for historical records.

I should probably tell you that, at this point in time, I do use AI, such as ChatGPT, very cautiously, and I’m inherently suspicious because AI tools sometimes hallucinate. It’s a new technology with lots of glitches and unknowns, so let’s see how MyHeritage is using this tool. It should be much more reliable since it’s in a controlled environment. I need to be convinced. 😊

The AI Record Finder is under the Research Menu. Just type your question about your ancestor.

I’m cheating and giving MyHeritage a tough one. I typed, “Please tell me about Solomon Ferwerda, who died in 1768 in Groningen, the Netherlands.”

MyHeritage returned three possibilities in their database, including their affiliated databases. One is a MyHeritage tree and two are records from FamilySearch.

Don’t limit yourself at this point.

I happen to know “my” Solomon is the first person, but I played around a bit before selecting the “right” Solomon. Why? Because there’s a lot that I don’t know about his life. It’s possible that the second and third records are ALSO the right person, so be sure to review everything.

Clicking on the middle or right record for Solomon shows that, indeed, this record from FamilySearch comes from the Dutch Archival Indexes, so it’s not “just someone’s tree.”

We do know the Ferwerda family is from Leeuwarden, but we don’t know when Solomon was born, nor if he was married twice. I only have the name of his second wife and one child, Jan, who was born the year he died.

The two FamilySearch Dutch archive records are from Leeuwarden, so maybe, just maybe, I’ve discovered something new about Solomon. How exciting!

I need to click through and check this out further.

I didn’t expect to like this tool, but so far, I really do. But wait – there’s more.

AI Ancestor Bio

You can click to have MyHeritage generate an AI bio of an ancestor for you.

The bio takes a few minutes to generate and will be available for download in the chat and will also be emailed to you. You can easily share with others. Getting other people interested in genealogy often encourages them to take a DNA test. DNA tests are still on sale for $39, here.

Solomon Ferwerda’s AI bio was completed quickly and arrived in pdf format. We know so little about him, I knew it would be short. I must say, I really enjoyed the “Historical Context” section that discussed the surrounding events that would have affected his life. That’s incredibly important and would have or could have influenced the decisions he made. Maybe the warfare and political unrest caused him to move from Leeuwarden to Groningen for some reason, where he died the year his son was born.

Here’s Solomon’s bio.

Here’s a link to the RootsTech lecture about the MyHeritage AI tools by Ran Snir, the VP of Product.

MyHeritage blog links for AI Record finder are here and here.

You can watch Telling Your Family’s Story with MyHeritage’s AI Features by Janna Helshtein at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, here.

I can’t wait to play with the MyHeritage AI tools more.

Updated Ethnicity Coming Soon

This is going to make a lot of people happy!

MyHeritage is in the process of updating their ethnicity results, increasing their regions from 42 to 80, with significantly optimized granularity in Europe. I initially misunderstood and thought the new results were available now, but they won’t arrive until summer.

I understand from talking to a Jewish friend involved in MyHeritage’s R&D effort that their own results are substantially improved and that they have now been placed in Armenia where their ancestors are from. They are no longer generically “Jewish.”

New Profile Pages with Hints

Daniel Horowitz said that everyone calls Smart Matches and Record Matches hints, so now MyHeritage has updated profile pages and is adding them to the profile page and officially calling them Hints.

You can still find Smart Matches and Record Matches listed separately under Discoveries, but on everyone’s profile, they are called Hints.

On Solomon’s profile page, scroll down to view his journey based on the information you’ve entered or accepted into your tree.

I did not yet add Leeuwarden, because I’m yet positive those records in Leewarden are his, but if I had, Leeuwarden would also be shown on his journey map. I’ll be incorporating these into my 52 Ancestors stories. I love maps! Maybe I can find old maps to include too,

You can read more about the new profiles and hints, here.

Tree Collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA

Aaron Godfrey announced tree collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA who pre-announced this at their conference in November.

I don’t have specific details about how it works, as this won’t happen for a few months yet, but FamilyTreeDNA customers will port their trees to MyHeritage which allows them to take advantage of MyHeritage’s record collections and such. Existing MyHeritage customers will simply connect their FamilyTreeDNA test to their MyHeritage tree.

FamilyTreeDNA has never been a “tree” company, so this means that users will have one less tree to maintain independently, and they can augment their research with records from MyHeritage.

I talked to Katy Rowe-Schurwanz, the Product Manager at FamilyTreeDNA to confirm that this is NOT a DNA transfer. FamilyTreeDNA matches still occur in the FamilyTreeDNA database, just like always, and MyHeritage matches still occur in the MyHeritage database. If you want matching in both databases, you still have to upload to or test at both. Only the trees are integrated, meaning when you click on a tree at  FamilyTreeDNA, you’ll see the tree displayed on MyHeritage.

The great news is that FamilyTreeDNA features such as Family Matching (bucketing) where you link your DNA matches at FamilyTreeDNA to their profile cards so that maternal/paternal bucketing occurs will still work the same way. The only difference will be that your tree will actually reside at MyHeritage and not at FamilyTreeDNA.

You’ll be able to enjoy the best of both worlds.

We will know more in a few months, and I’ll provide more details when I have them.

Invite Another MyHeritage User to View Your DNA Results

Aaron Godfrey said in the keynote that 2FA (two-factor authentication) at MyHeritage will become mandatory later this month, and with it, MyHeritage is adding the feature of being able to invite another MyHeritage user to view your DNA results. This allows people to collaborate more easily, especially if a different person is managing someone else’s DNA test.

Reimagine Multi-Photo Scanner App

This photo-scanning innovation is for your phone and allows you to scan photos and entire photo album pages – automatically separating and improving the photos. Then, of course, you just tag them to the proper person in your tree like any other photo.

Oh, and did I mention that Reimagine is free? I expected to have to pay when I downloaded the app, but I didn’t, probably because I have a full subscription.

Based on this article, Reimagine is not meant for other types of images, like pages of text or albums of clipped newspaper articles. But guess what? I downloaded the app, and it works just fine for those items! Hallelujah. How I wish I had this last week at the FamilySearch Library when I was finding pages in books I wanted to associate with a specific ancestor.

If you have album pages of photos to scan, this is golden and integrates with the profiles of people into your MyHeritage tree.

I really, really like the idea of having the ability to scan in the palm of my hand. That way if someone has a photo, you don’t have to try to take a photo of it. Gone are the days of literally dragging a laptop and scanner around with me when I’m traveling – just in case. Yes, I actually did and now I don’t have to anymore.

I cringe to think how many opportunities were lost to me before the days of laptops – but not now.

Thank you – THANK YOU, MyHeritage. What a great gift!

You can find the QR code to download the app, here.

OldNews is New News

MyHeritage has introduced a new website for old newspapers called OldNews which you can find here.

This addition doubles the number of newspapers previously available on MyHeritage.

Users can also subscribe separately to Old News for about $99/year.

MyHeritage customers use their normal credentials to sign in to either site, but accessing newspapers not previously integrated into MyHeritage will require an OldNews subscription too.

I had to try it. I entered my mother’s name.

Look, my Mom had a tonsillectomy. I never knew that. It was just a couple of months after she graduated from high school.

I didn’t know Mom spent the summer in Philadelphia, either. She was 19 at that time, and I had heard rumblings that she studied with a “prima ballerina” at the School of American Ballet. Guess where that is? Yep, Philly.

My Mom was a professional tap and ballet dancer before she became my Mom.

Understanding that Mom spent the summer of 1942 on the east coast sheds new light on this and a few other photos in Mom’s photo album, which I can now scan.

Ok, I can’t help myself. I have to enhance this photo at MyHeritage.

Much better. Another tiny piece of Mom’s life brought into focus.

I wonder what else is in OldNews that I don’t know about. Hmmmm…

You can read about OldNews here.

New All-Inclusive Omni Subscription

MyHeritage is launching a new Omni all-inclusive subscription plan that includes most of the MyHeritage products and tools, except for Filae, unless I’m missing something. Omni reportedly costs less than half the price if you were to subscribe to all of these individually. I’ve asked for a comparison chart which I don’t have yet, but I’m told will be coming soon.

Here’s what’s included:

Additionally, I asked MyHeritage about whether or not the advanced DNA tools are included with Omni, and they are. So, add advanced DNA tools to that list.

The following information about the Omni Plan is a screenshot from the MyHeritage blog article, here.

I have not been able to determine the price of an Omni subscription. At RootsTech, you were interested in the Omni plan, you submitted a Google form and a day or so later, you received this email.

I suspect MyHeritage needs to talk to you because how much it costs initially depends on your existing subscriptions, and how much time is left on those.

I reached out to MyHeritage and asked when Omni will be available to purchase, and the answer is “soon.” You can’t sign up just yet.

I have never subscribed to Legacy Family Tree Webinars, even though I’m a webinar presenter and have several webinars available there. My gift to myself is going to be Omni when it’s available because I want Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and I’d love a subscription to OldNews. I already have a full subscription to MyHeritage, and I’d probably use Geni more than I do as a casual user if I had the Omni subscription.

Artifact Testing – Maybe

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend CEO Gilad Japhet’s RootsTech session because his session and mine were at exactly the same time.

However, I asked Aaron Godfrey after Gilad’s session what I had missed that was not in Aaron’s keynote, other than Gilad’s wonderful stories.

Aaron and others told me that Gilad stated that he was personally submitting personal artifacts, such as stamps, to a third-party lab once again, to test the waters to see if DNA can now be extracted from artifacts successfully.

MyHeritage tried this a few years ago, ultimately unsuccessfully. Perhaps this time will be different, but I would not hold my breath, truthfully. Degraded DNA has quality issues, not to mention that the DNA extracted might not be the DNA of the person expected.

I would personally love this, but I am also skeptical at this point. Kudos to Gilad for trying again with his own personal items.

MyHeritage Online RootsTech Booth

MyHeritage has provided several educational videos in their online RootsTech booth, at this link. Be sure to take advantage of this free resource.

Whew, I’m finally done! I told you that MyHeritage had been very, very busy, and I wasn’t kidding. I hope I didn’t miss anything.

_____________________________________________________________

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RootsTech 2024 – Panic in the Cavern of Doom

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RootsTech is one of those events that speakers, vendors, RootsTech staff, and volunteers prepare for in an ever-increasing whirlwind for the 6 months before RootsTech actually takes place. I’m sure that the RootsTech staff starts next week for next year. At least, I sure hope they get a week or two of rest.

I can’t see behind the scenes of course, but I know that speakers begin submissions in about June and by the late fall, webinars have been recorded, syllabus documents are complete, and Powerpoint slides are well underway.

Vendors have been preparing for months too – planning their booths, videos and feature announcements.

RootsTech is the largest and most far-reaching genealogy conference in the world, offering hundreds of classes in a variety of formats. It’s one huge family reunion.

2024 was the best RootsTech ever. I think the years we missed in-person events due to Covid have made attendees incredibly grateful to see one another.

I know that not everyone can make the journey to Salt Lake City, so I’m going to take you along with me.

Including the misadventures😊

Sunday

The FamilySearch Library (FSL) is open Monday through Saturday with extended hours during RootsTech week. Many genealogists extend their RootsTech trip and visit the library! It’s like old-home week, with people hugging and then teaming up to collaborate.

That makes Sunday a travel day if you’re planning to research in the library on Monday through Wednesday. RootsTech opened on Thursday, February 29th, but for speakers, events began on Wednesday afternoon.

Saturday is packing day. Every single technology item needs to be checked and checked again. Trust me on this – Murphy LIVES at RootsTech, and he has been cloned because every speaker has some kind of issue that needs to be resolved.

The camaraderie is amazing as everyone helps everyone.

Kitters, one of our now-elderly rescue cats, wasn’t fond of me leaving and tried to pack herself in my suitcase. She missed slightly, but I clearly got the idea. She figured that if she didn’t look at me, I wouldn’t notice, and maybe she could go along!

I was excited and laid out my new chromosome leggings for the trip.

Jim made me a peanut butter English Muffin for breakfast on the way in the car. Trust me, I did not want to be awake.

My flight left hours before dawn, as in 5-something. I figured that my trip through the airport would be made at record speed. No one in their right mind would be there.

I still allowed almost 2 hours, as the airlines suggest – and guess what – I needed every minute of it.

I have never seen my home airport so jammed, with incredibly long lines both to check luggage and at the TSA. Everyone was grouchy, to say the least, passengers and staff alike.

I was afraid I’d miss my flight, but thankfully I didn’t. I even had five minutes or so to chat with another genealogist who was on the same flight.

I figured my “close call” for the week was over at this point.

Salt Lake City

I arrived in Salt Lake City and called an Uber. I’m not fond of snow, but snow on the mountains is beautiful, especially if it’s not in the city.

The ride from the airport into the city isn’t long – maybe 15-20 minutes.

Salt Lake City isn’t terribly large – tucked into a valley. You can see the mountains everyplace you look in SLC.

As we entered the city, I could see the familiar buildings on the left and right. The conference center is beside that tall silver building on the left.

I was getting excited!

It was only about 10 AM mountain time and I had been trying to arrange for early checking at the Marriott City Creek which is across the street from the convention center and a block or so away from the library where I would be spending the next two or three days.

I like that hotel because it has a Starbucks in the lobby, and the hotel’s location is super convenient, especially in inclement weather.

Because the RootsTech speaker rooms were reserved in a block, I could not change my reservation personally and had not actually been able to get ahold of a human who could alter my reservation – but I was lucky, and they did have a room that I could get into early.

I’ve developed a pattern, as have most repeat RootsTech attendees. Many of us walk to Harmons, the local grocery store, and grab snacks for the week. The food locally is quite expensive. The Salt Stone restaurant in the hotel is adequate, but I wanted snacks and something like Lunchables for the for the FSL. Nearby restaurants closed during Covid and never reopened. No one wants to take time away from research to walk to a restaurant for food.

It was cold and slightly windy, as it often is in SLC, but it was actually rather pleasant, considering that it’s still winter, so walking was no inconvenience.

I headed down the elevator and was looking forward to a sunny walk to the store.

Trapped in the Cavern of Doom

I stepped off the elevator and headed for the front doors of the hotel when I realized that this side exit would cut off about half a block each way. There was no need to walk to the front door to circle back again past this exit.

Wonderful!

Since all of SLC is built on the side of a mountain and in the valley, I wanted to check and be sure this actually did exit to the street.

Yes, indeed, I could see the street out the shutters and I was pleased for the shortcut.

I opened the door and stepped down the two steps to street level. The door automatically closed behind me.

I pushed on the outer door and it would not open. I tried again, thinking it was just sticky. Still wouldn’t budge, but it felt like it should.

The area looked very unkempt. Maybe it really wasn’t an exit? But lighted exit signs pointed the way. Right?

I thought that was strange since there was no sign on the door I had just come through saying anything like “emergency exit only,” and even if it had been an emergency exit, the door is still supposed to open.

I tried again, but the door simply would not open.

Ok, so I turned around to go back inside.

Only to see this.

There WAS NO WAY BACK INSIDE.

I swear, it looks like people have been scratching and digging at that that door.

And, there was no way to get outside.

I was trapped in a small concrete Cavern of Doom.

Did I mention that I’m claustrophobic?

I refuse to even consider an escape room, but suddenly, I’m in a very small one – alone – with no way out.

I could feel the anxiety surging through my blood.

I had to control this, because I had to be able to think.

There was no way to get my fingers in that gap to pry the door open. Nothing in my purse that might work either. So I decided to try to see if the outer door was just stuck. I threw my whole body weight against it.

Nothing.

The handle depressed, kind of askew, but the door would not open.

I remembered that the entire hallway was just conference rooms, so no one was going to be using them on a Sunday.

I decided to pound on the inner door, just in case someone could hear me.

Dead silence.

OK, what next?

I decided to call the front desk.

Yes, call the front desk. That’s it! Hopefully I would get a human and not that blasted “select this option” menu that I had kept getting when I was trying to modify my reservation.

The front desk would send someone to retrieve me.

I tried calling, but got the reservation center that is not the local number.

By now, I was shaking.

Thank Heavens I had my phone. I remembered that if you enter a location in a Google maps, they often give you the local phone number of the business you’re trying to reach.

I typed in Marriott, and the location popped up, with a local number.

THANK GOD!!!!

I called, and an actual human answered. What a relief!

I explained that I was trapped and explained exactly where.

“Enter the front door. The front desk is on your left. The Salt Stone Restaurant is straight ahead. The hallway by the restaurant is the elevators. Not that hallway. The hallway just before that – the only other hallway on that side. Turn right, the only way you can go, towards the street. Walk down the hallway towards the exit sign. Turn left. Double doors on the left. Not those. Exit door straight in front to the street. That door. Please come open it. I’m trapped.

Please hurry!”

The female who answered sounded confused.

I repeat myself again.

She hesitantly says OK and hangs up.

I wait.

Nothing.

No footsteps.

No voice.

I’m pounding on the door and calling.

Silence.

I call the number again.

The same woman answers.

I ask, none too politely, where she is.

She tells me she’s confused.

I give her my phone number and tell her NOT TO HANG UP.

She says she won’t, but she can’t figure out where I am.

I explain this over again.

She says OK, she’s coming.

I implore her not to hang up.

Click – she hangs up.

I pound and call and wait again.

Nothing.

I’m increasingly panicked.

I tell myself there’s no reason to panic. It’s just a small space, and I will eventually get out.

I won’t freeze to death anytime soon.

I MUST MAINTAIN MY COMPOSURE to be able to get myself out of this.

I wish this were a nightmare, and I could just wake up. It feels like a night terror.

I call again. The woman says she has to get her manager.

This time, she laid the phone down.

I hear two women talking.

A different woman comes to the phone.

I’m explaining all over again.

She says she’s coming.

DO NOT HANG UP!!!

Click.

More pounding and yelling on the door so they will hear me.

Nothing.

Ok, T-H-I-N-K calmly. Plan D because so far plans A-C have not worked.

I am going to give this 5 more minutes of pounding, and then I’m going to call 911.

They WILL FIND ME, and THEY WILL RELEASE ME from this concrete hell.

Yes, it’s going to be incredibly embarrassing, especially if the door does work with jiggling it a bit or something like that. Maybe I’m just not strong enough.

  • One minute

How can minutes possibly be this long?

  • Two minutes

Try the outer door again. Repeatedly. Push everyplace.

  • Three minutes

Yell even more loudly. Maybe someone outside on the street will hear you and get help. The voices outside drift away.

  • Four minutes

Distantly, I hear two women’s voices in the hotel.

They are getting closer. Approaching in the hallway.

THANK GOD!!!

FINALLY!

This seemed like an eternity but had only actually been about 20 minutes.

What took them so long??

My heart was pounding its way out of my chest. Good thing I don’t have a heart condition. I think this counts as a stress test.

The door begins to open, and the landing is so small that the door pushes me down the two steps. I don’t care. To steady myself but mostly to be sure it doesn’t close again, leaving me trapped, I grab ahold of the edge of that open door and hold on for dear life.

Once inside, I angrily demanded of the two females what took them so long.

Where were they?

They both looked entirely stunned.

They just stared at me incredulously.

I said, “I called the front desk three times. You hung up. Where were you?”

They told me they were Starbucks employees who just happened to hear me and had nothing to do with the front desk. They were headed into the two double doors where the food supplies were stored.

I suddenly realized I was yelling at the wrong people. I apologized profusely and headed for the front desk.

A man was working the front desk.

I was furious.

I explained what had just happened, and he told me that there were no women working the front desk. He gave me what I term “the side-eye,” which essentially expressed disbelief.

On my phone, I showed him the number I had called. There’s another Marriott, the City Center, just a couple blocks away. Apparently that’s the number that popped up on my phone and I called their front desk. Still, they did not call me back. Someone was obviously in distress.

The man seemed to think the issue was resolved now that I had been freed, but it clearly was NOT.

I insisted that he come with me NOW so I could show him the problem. I did not want that to happen to anyone else.

I took him into the Cavern of Doom, while I stood with the door open into the hallway. Trust me, I was under no circumstances going back in there. He could not open the door either. He said that it appeared that a screw was loose. The handle depressed unevenly, and the screw certainly could have been loose.

I don’t care what was wrong. It should never have been in that dilapidated condition, and it needed to be fixed ASAP. He said he would put a sign on the door not to use it and notify engineering. What if someone did not have their phone and was trapped there overnight, or worse? You could freeze to death.

I was still shaking badly and could feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. I really, really needed that walk to Harmons.

I went into the Starbucks to apologize to the ladies, my rescuers, again, and they made me a cup of decaf coffee. Bless their hearts. They showed more compassion than anyone else other than the Fire Marshall’s office.

I left a message for the hotel general manager, and I called the Fire Marshall’s office on Monday morning. The Fire Marshall’s office was very concerned and compassionate. I had taken photos. I took two photos inside when I was trapped in the Cavern of Doom thinking I could send them to the front desk or the firefighters if I had to call 911 and it might be a clue as to where to find me. I went back and took pictures of the hallway with the exit signs for the Fire Marshall’s office.

I wanted them to see the exit signs directing the unsuspecting to said Cavern.

They requested the photos.

Furthermore, on my Facebook page, Sunday afternoon, another well-known genealogist told me that she had been trapped IN THAT EXACT SAME LOCATION IN THE SAME HOTEL 4 years prior. Yes, four years.

That infuriated me.

She said she would vouch for me, so I sent that screenshot to the Fire Marshall too.

This is not a new problem, and the general manager surely should have known about it, which made me even angrier.

This isn’t a neglected maintenance issue – it’s worse. It’s a huge, chronic, safety issue – potentially life and death in the event of an emergency.

There’s no excuse for management NOT to know about it.

If it’s repeatedly problematic, it should be checked daily. It should be permanently remedied.

What if someone froze to death in there?

What if there was a fire?

Or an earthquake that required evacuation? They had a 5.7 magnitude earthquake in 2021 that toppled Angel Moroni from the Salt Lake City Temple and the church buildings are still under repair/renovation with scaffolding and cranes visible across the skyline.

The fire Marshal visited on Monday, and I verified with the manager that the door worked after their visit. However, the handle still depressed unevenly, so will it continue to work? The entire handle/door needs to be replaced. Minimally, there needs to be an emergency phone or an emergency call button in the Cavern of Doom, just like in elevators.

I hope the hotel was cited and fined, and I hope the Fire Marshall inspected the other emergency egresses too.

I don’t know what the final resolution is/was, but the general manager said he would have engineering “remedy the situation” when I talked to him the following day.

The general manager was pleasant enough and acted professionally. I informed him very directly that the buck stops with him and that there is absolutely no excuse or justification.

Full stop.

None.

Nada.

He mentioned that there are a lot of doors in the hotel, and he can’t really check them all.

PLEASE!!!

In retrospect, this Marriott is in a prime location for the Salt Palace conference venue across the street, along with the FSL, and they don’t need to do better. They just need to be there.

I had an extremely difficult time sleeping. If that ground-floor exit, which would be used more often than other emergency exits, is in that condition and has been at least twice in four years, what do the rest of the egresses look like? For example, what about the stairs from the upper floors in case of a fire? Do those doors open?

This had/has disaster written all over it.

I will be following up with the local Fire Marshall’s office and probably with Marriott Corporate as well.

I know that the FamilySearch folks would never knowingly put their speakers and guests at risk, so I think I’m going to suggest that perhaps they could schedule a pair of their missionary elders to test this door episodically – one elder staying outside the door, of course.

Maybe not a bad idea for the Fire Marshall too.

I’m hoping that next year, perhaps the Hyatt that is attached to the Salt Palace can be the conference hotel and would be willing to match the Marriott pricing.

Harmons, Finally

Yes, I did make it to Harmons grocery store. After all that, Harmons seemed downright boring and anticlimactic, which is exactly what I needed.

I saw a beautiful display of orchids. My soul needed some calming peace, and if I had been at home, I would have purchased one.

Instead, I took a photo that soothed my frayed nerves with their beauty.

I purchased my goodies, including chocolate, and returned to the hotel to unpack. Inside my suitcase, I discovered a treasure. It seems that Kitters and my other cat kids, Chai and Mandy, had packed something in my suitcase since Kitters couldn’t pack herself.

Kitters is not doing well. This made me sob like a baby.

You have no idea how much I needed this. Not the Peeps, but the letter.

I smiled and settled in to prepare a research list for the FSL the next day.

Sunday was a VERY long day. I aged about a century and couldn’t help but think about my ancestor, the Reverend John Lothropp who was imprisoned in horrific conditions for two years. I feel you, John. I wonder how many other ancestors have experienced something similar or far worse than my brief entrapment.

I was sure Monday would be much better. After all, I was going to chase ancestors for the next two days.

I guarantee you, I avoided anything that even resembled a shortcut that might morph into a Cavern of Doom.

_____________________________________________________________

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