Blog – Family Locket

RLP 90: Goldie May – Research Assistant and Log

Today's episode of Research Like a Pro is about Richard Miller's new chrome extension, Goldie May. The extension logs each website you visit and offers helpful research guidance for research in the United States. Start with a person in your FamilySearch Family Tree, then set an objective. Goldie May advises you where to look for locality information, suggests reviewing the ancestor's timeline, and reviewing the sources already attached. From there you can set additional tasks to do and continue to research. Richard hopes to add more locations outside U.S. research soon. Join us as we talk with Richard about this...

By Nicole Dyer March 30, 2020 Podcast No Comments

Courage to Face the Chaos – Helping Children Find Strength From Ancestors

Have you taught the children in your life about food rationing? Charlotte's timely post today is about a food shortage role-play activity she did with her children. I love that she taught about her grandmother's experience with rationing in Hawaii during WWII and tied that together with today's chaotic circumstances. I wholeheartedly agree with Charlotte that learning about our ancestors surviving troubled times gives us strength when our lives are upturned. I hope you enjoy this guest blog post. -Nicole Early last Saturday morning, I got in my van alone and braved a rare Washington blizzard to pick up a...

By Nicole Dyer March 29, 2020 Creating and Sharing Family History, Families and Children No Comments

How to Research Like a Pro with Goldie May

Have you ever wished an automated research log could track all the websites you visit during a research session? Me too. I'm excited to introduce Richard Miller, the developer of Goldie May. This new app helps you keep a research log and offers research assistance. We asked Richard to tell us how his app can help us Research Like a Pro. Here's his guest blog post. Enjoy! -Nicole p.s. I'm updating this to add that right now, Goldie May only offers research guidance for U.S. research. Richard plans to add more countries soon. Goldie May is a new...

By Nicole Dyer March 28, 2020 Research Like a Pro, Research Tips 1 Comment

Genealogy Research in the 21st Century Part 2: Overcoming Bad Research Habits

Technology has made genealogy research more accessible, but how has it impacted our research habits? Depending on when you began your genealogy journey, you may have received your initial research training from family history websites and tree-building services. Searching in online databases and seeking information in record hints have created habits that many researchers now are trying to break. Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS gave the lecture, "The Advance of Research Habits over Recent Decades—And the Downside" at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) in January. The lecture was part of the "Meeting Standards with...

By Nicole Dyer March 27, 2020 Research Tips 2 Comments

Share the Joy of Family History with the “Learn About Your Family” Tool at FamilySearch

At RootsTech in February, Nicole and I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with the executive director of the family history department for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Elder Kevin S. Hamilton. Among the topics he discussed was a new FamilySearch feature called Learn About Your Family. It's built right into the FamilySearch home page. You will see it prior to login. This tool is available on the desktop version as well as in the Family Tree app. Just remember you have to be logged out to access it. How to use Learn About Your Family...

By Alice Childs March 26, 2020 LDS Family History No Comments

Revisiting a Research Project – Men of the Same Name

When researching complicated families with many men of the same name, how do you track them? Can you really sort out individuals and come up with a possible father for your difficult ancestor? You may think it impossible, but with good research practices and a way to visualize the information it can be done. I first wrote about the Norman family research project a year ago in Researching Low-Tech Style With a Whiteboard. I outlined the five steps I used to tackle the challenge: -1 Sort Records chronologically - do an initial sort to put the records in order from...

By Diana Elder March 25, 2020 Research Tips No Comments

RLP 89: DNA Report Writing

Today's episode of Research Like a Pro is about how to write about your genetic genealogy research. After keeping track of your searches in your research log, you are ready to write about what you found in a report. We discuss what to include in the report, how to discuss genetic connections, and ideas for making the report flow. Links DNA Research Reports – the Ultimate Finish by Robin at Family Locket Writing a Research Report on a DNA Research Project by Diana at Family Locket - includes Diana's sample report about Benjamin Cox Research Like a Pro with DNA...

By Nicole Dyer March 23, 2020 Podcast No Comments

Genealogy Research in the 21st Century Part I: Genealogy Research is Still Hard

Genealogists have seen amazing advances in technology over the last 40 years. These advances have made many genealogical records more accessible and increased the speed of communication. But how has it affected our research habits? Do we fall victim to the random search-and-click hunting encouraged by the slot-machine effect? What can we learn from the pre-1980 era of genealogy research? How has the addition of DNA as a genealogically relevant source affected our research? Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG®, CGL®, FASG, FUGA, FNGS addressed this in his lecture, "The Advance of Research Habits over Recent Decades—And the Downside" at the...

By Nicole Dyer March 20, 2020 Research Tips 2 Comments

Share Ancestor Character Traits with Kids: A Simple Activity

Today I'm sharing a guest post from Charlotte Barnes, author of the new book Turning Little Hearts: Over 90 Activities tot Connect Children with their Ancestors. Charlotte is sharing a fun idea for teaching children about the character traits of ancestors by creating a man out of a paper bag! This easy activity takes minimal time to set up and provides an opportunity to learn about ancestors in an engaging way. To watch a video of Charlotte's family doing this activity, click here. - Nicole Share Ancestor Character Traits with Kids: A Simple Activity by Charlotte Barnes In a rare, quiet...

By Nicole Dyer March 19, 2020 Crafts and Projects, Creating and Sharing Family History, Families and Children No Comments

RLP 88: DNA Research Logs

Today's episode of Research Like a Pro is about how to use a research log in your genetic genealogy research. We discuss the sources and methods to include in your log, how to best keep track of your DNA matches, correspondence logs, and tech tools that will help you be efficient. We discuss how to use a database tool called Airtable to help you with big projects where you have a lot of DNA matches and searches to keep track of. Links Healing and Family History: The Emotional Side of DNA - Robin's RootsTech 2020 class, available in the RootsTech...