Diana Elder, AG® Lecture Topics
Please contact me about speaking at your event – Diana@FamilyLocket.com
RootsTech 2020
PROFESSIONAL GENEALOGY
When to Hire a Professional Genealogist – A professional genealogist can help you brick down a brick wall in your genealogy by looking at the research with a new perspective. Learn what services professionals offer, how to identify a qualified researcher, and how best to prepare your research for a professional project.
Accreditation: A Pathway to Becoming a Better Researcher – The process to become an Accredited Genealogy Professional through the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists will strengthen your skills in analysis and correlation of records, research planning, source citations, report writing, and more. Learn about the process and what you can do now to prepare.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND GENEALOGY
Understanding AI in Genealogy: Foundations and Tools
Learn how artificial intelligence can help with your family history research. This presentation covers what AI is, how it works, and which tools are most useful for genealogy. We’ll look at popular AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini and discuss what each one does best. You’ll learn how to work effectively with AI, including how to ask questions that get the best results and how to verify the information it provides. Whether you’re new to AI or already experimenting with it, this session will help you understand how to use these tools responsibly in your genealogy work.
AI in Genealogical Research: A Practical Approach
See how AI works in real genealogy research through hands-on examples. Using the case study of Isabella Weatherford, we’ll learn how AI can help with common research tasks like writing research objectives, creating timelines, analyzing documents, and preparing reports. You’ll see examples of AI tools in action and learn what they do well (and not so well). Leave with practical tips and specific examples you can use in your own family history research.
Efficient Locality Research with AI: Discovering New Avenues of Exploration
Genealogists often face the hurdle of locality research – gathering historical details, records, and repositories for a specific area. This step, though essential, can be slow and laborious. Here’s where large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini can empower your research. Imagine having an AI assistant that can unearth historical context, relevant archives, and past laws related to your location. LLMs excel at summarizing vast amounts of information and pinpointing key details you might miss. They can even translate resources in foreign languages, broadening your search scope. However, like any tool, success hinges on user expertise. Learn to craft clear prompts and critically evaluate the information LLMs provide.
Streamlining Genealogical Research Plans with AI: A Step-by-Step Guide
This practical session offers a detailed look at integrating AI into your genealogical research planning workflow. We’ll explore AI-powered tools that can assist with each step of the planning process: clarifying research objectives, analyzing and summarizing known facts, generating hypotheses based on existing data, expanding your list of potential sources, and creating an optimized research strategy. Learn how to use AI to save time, reduce oversight, and create more robust research plans while maintaining control over your genealogical process.
RESEARCH STRATEGIES
Research Like a Pro Seminar
In this four-hour seminar, your group will be treated to four lectures teaching the Research Like a Pro process using case studies and examples. Although used by professionals to solve difficult cases, this step-by-step method is easily understood by any level of genealogist. The lectures cover the following information:
– Form an objective focusing your research for an entire project.
– Review your research with new eyes by creating a timeline and carefully analyzing the source, information, and evidence.
– Construct a locality guide to direct your research.
– Create a plan to keep your research on track.
– Style source citations, giving your work credibility.
– Set up a research log to organize and track your searches.
– Write a report detailing your findings and ideas for future research.
Where are the Records? Solutions for Burned Courthouse and Other Disasters
When disaster strikes and records are lost, how do you compensate? Learn strategies to deal with the loss, such as exploring alternate jurisdictions, studying the locality for additional repositories, and carefully analyzing any remaining records. We’ll discuss key research processes that help to focus, track, and correlate the research.
Caring for Your Family Tree: How to Prune and Graft In New Branches
Accepting hints without careful analysis can add the wrong people to your family. Learn how to analyze the relationships, dates, and places before adding a new source or person to your tree.
Jurisdictions Explained: Finding New Avenues of Research for Your Family
Exploring each level of record-keeping for a locality can reveal additional records for a research subject. Learn about records on the town, city, county, state, regional, and federal levels and how to locate them.
Location, Location, Location: Putting Your Ancestors in Their Place
Locality research is key to making progress in genealogy research. Understanding the history, geography, records, and repositories for the research locality is the foundation for building a solid research plan and finding additional information about your ancestor.
Research Logs: The Key to Organizing Your Family History
Research logs are key in tracking negative and positive searches so you can make progress in your research. Learn about various types of logs, then follow a case study showing how the research log was key in solving the problem.
Research Planning for the Win: Next Steps for Breaking Down a Brick Wall
Fruitful research begins with a plan. Learn the steps and how to harness the power of thought before action.
Source Citations: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Documenting sources doesn’t have to be complicated. Learn what details to include in a source citation and how to deal with online sources as well as those in your personal files. We’ll also look at ways artificial intelligence can streamline the creation of source citations.
Tracking a Migrating Ancestor Through Land and Tax Records
Migrating ancestors present challenges in discovering their actions and records. Land and tax records place an ancestor in a specific location in time and provide details to uniquely identify him from people of the same name. Learn key strategies for utilizing these important records, including where to find them and how to use them to discover more about your ancestor.
Separating Multiple Generations of Men with the Same Name
When many descendants of the original settler inherit his name, diagramming and careful analysis of land, tax, and probate records can reconstruct families.
Using Evidence Analysis in a Timeline to Separate Individuals of the Same Name
Merged identities are a common problem in genealogy – especially in online trees. Arranging records in a timeline and careful evidence analysis of each record can separate identities and lead to new research opportunities. Learn about sources, information, and evidence and the power careful analysis has to find errors in research conclusions.
Where Did They Go? Migration Trails and Roads
Have you located the route your ancestors might have taken as they traveled to a new area? Could exploring migration open up new areas of research in your genealogy brick walls? Taking a look at the historical roads and trails that our ancestors possibly traveled can add to their story and help us understand more about their lives. It might even lead to more discoveries that could expand our knowledge of the family and extend our ancestry.
Write it Up: Tools of the Trade
The best way to understand and preserve your research findings is to write a report or proof summary. Learn a proven method for organizing your writing and discover how valuable it can be to put your research into words.
The Dynamic Duo for Locality Research: The FamilySearch Catalog and Research Wiki
Open up a world of possibilities for your research by learning to use the FamilySearch Catalog and Research Wiki. Discover records, research helps, and more.
RECORDS
Finding Franklin in Census Records
This beginner-level class is fun for youth and adults alike. Learn why the census was created and what interesting information about your family can be discovered. Learn how to search for census records then explore them to find fun facts about President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Discover tips and tricks, then try your hand at researching your own ancestors in the census records. This hands-on class will open your mind to the clues that census records can provide.
Clueing In To Census Records
Census records are the basis of United States research. Have you discovered all of the clues that can be found in each enumeration? Learn how to make the most of this valuable resource and find the information that will lead to you even more discoveries.
Demystifying Probate Records: Taking Your Research to the Next Level
Are you a bit intimidated by probate research? Have you located a will but neglected to find the “rest of the story?” With probate records being digitized by Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, chances are you have some exciting discoveries to be made. Learn how to locate probate records and use a proven methodology for your research.
Problem-Solving with the Pre-1850 Census: What Can Those Tick Marks Tell You?
The pre-1850 census records may be ignored because of the lack of names and relationships. However, several strategies can turn those tick marks into valuable clues for a family and even be used as evidence in proving identity or relationships.
ORGANIZATION & PRODUCTIVITY
A Beginner’s Guide to Using Airtable for Genealogy
Genealogy research projects generate large amounts of data. Tracking and organizing that data with Airtable allows better analysis that can aid the researcher in making progress on any research problem.
Getting Organized One Paper at a Time
When you are faced with the overwhelming task of organizing years of genealogy research, learning a system to deal with each paper will make this task doable. Learn about digital and physical filing systems, genealogy databases, and more.
Getting Things Done and Family History: Productivity Tips and Tools
How do you stay productive when you have numerous genealogy projects? Learn a system to capture to-do items, prioritize projects, and erase overwhelm.
BEGINNING DNA
Ancestry DNA: Getting the Most Out of Your Results
You’ve taken the DNA test at Ancestry.com. Now what? Learn how to navigate the DNA web page, understand your ethnicity results, and the tools that make finding your cousins easy. Also, discover how to upload your raw DNA to other major DNA testing companies for free!
Choosing the Right DNA Test: A Simple Guide to Understanding Your Options
DNA testing can be confusing. In this presentation, we’ll unravel the basics of DNA and genealogy, setting the stage for understanding why genetic testing is a powerful tool for genealogy. Discover more about the three main types of DNA tests — Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and autosomal DNA.
Understanding and Using Your DNA Results
Learn the basics of using DNA in genealogy and estimating DNA match relationships. Discover tips for identifying DNA matches and how to use DNA testing company tools to track DNA matches.
INTERMEDIATE / ADVANCED DNA
Advanced Airtable Techniques: Sorting, Grouping, and Filtering a Research Log
Find relevant entries in your Airtable research log by using advanced features in Airtable. Write more efficiently by keeping your evidence organized.
DNA Reports: You’ve made a DNA Discovery. Now, How Do You Share It?
Learn strategies for correlating and summarizing your DNA discoveries in a research report to share with clients, cousins, or for your own records.
From California to Virginia: Confirming the Emigrant Ancestor with a Paper Trail and Y-DNA
Learn strategies to confirm generational links as you move back in time, then how to employ Y-DNA to provide evidence of an emigrant ancestor.
A Systematic Approach to Validating Ancestry DNA Thrulines: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
We’ll explore how ThruLines helps you identify potential relatives through shared DNA segments and visualize genetic connections. However, not all Thrulines may be correct. Learn about the limitations so you can set realistic expectations. Discover strategies for overcoming common pitfalls in ThruLines, such as faulty family trees and false positive matches. We’ll examine the DNA research process, including assessing matches, analyzing pedigrees, and setting clear research goals. You’ll learn to evaluate ThruLines hypotheses by analyzing DNA evidence, verifying historical records, and identifying false positives to ensure the accuracy of your research.
Solving a Family Mystery with DNA
Learn how combining traditional research with DNA evidence revealed an unknown grandfather in this compelling case study. Follow the project from the beginning steps of creating an objective to writing the conclusions. Discover the importance of a research log and careful tracking of sources. Finally, see how Y-DNA and autosomal DNA used in tandem with the documentary sources solved this family’s mystery.
Pedigree Triangulation: A Key Methodology for Genetic Genealogy
Learn the power of pedigree triangulation in analyzing DNA matches and building your genetic family tree. Discover how to use company tools such as Ancestry’s Thrulines and MyHeritage’s Theory of Family Relativity to boost efficiency and accelerate your discovery of common ancestors. We’ll discuss the basic steps of analyzing the amount of shared DNA, then building incomplete trees and comparing surnames and locations.
Using Ethnicity Estimates and Locality Research to Shed Light on a DNA Project
When working through a DNA research project, biogeographical estimates can inform locality research, providing clues for ancestor origins and new places to explore.
Who’s Her Daddy? Testing an Ancestry DNA Thruline Hypothesis for a Female Ancestor
When no record names a father, discover how documentary records, a migration study, and DNA evidence can confirm a hypothesis in this pre-1850 case study.
CREATING AND SHARING FAMILY HISTORY
Illuminating Ancestors’ Lives in Small Bites through Focused Themes and Engaging Narratives
Learn how to craft compelling ancestor stories to share: Spotlight captivating aspects of their lives through themed sketches, organized timelines, citations, and engaging narratives.
Getting to Know Your Latter-Day Saint Pioneer Ancestor: Seven Steps to Success
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began emphasizing family history about 1890, so you may think that those branches of your family tree are complete and accurate. In reality, your pioneer lines may be reasonably accurate up to a point, but the dates, places, and relationships are often based on family knowledge and not fully documented. Learn seven steps to guide you in your journey of discovering the real story of your Latter-day Pioneer.
Heirlooms: Connecting the Past With Your Posterity
How can you ensure that family heirlooms retain their importance in telling the family narrative? The key is to discover, record, and share the stories behind the heirlooms. Learn specific ways to meaningfully share your family history with all ages through the things your ancestors left behind.
Researching and Writing about Skeletons in the Family History Closet
We all have them: ancestor stories that tend to be hushed up: illegitimate children, desertion, abuse, mental illness, etc. How do we discover the facts and what do we do when our family history research uncovers something unexpected? Recording these kinds of details can be difficult. We’ll explore ways to tell our ancestor’s story with integrity and kindness.
REGIONAL
Finding That Elusive Southern Ancestor
Research in the United States South presents many difficulties: burned counties, poor record-keeping, frequent migration, and more. Explore ways to overcome these obstacles and discover your Southern roots.
Navigating the Unique Texas Land Grant System
Many factors likely influenced an ancestors’ decision to move to Texas, with land availability being a major reason. Your Texas ancestor might have received land from Spain, Mexico, the Republic, or the State of Texas. Learn how to locate the records and use them as evidence in discovering details such as the place of emigration, the date of arrival in Texas, evidence of a wife and children, residence, associates, and military service.
Separating Multiple Generations of Virginians with the Same Name
When many descendants of the original settler inherit his name, diagramming and careful analysis of land, tax, and probate records can reconstruct families.
Settlers of Indian Territory: Discovering Their Story in This Unique Place and Time
Treaties and laws resulted in the eventual removal in the 1830s of the Five Civilized Tribes from the southeast United States to present-day Oklahoma, naming it “Indian Territory.” Settlers of Indian Territory also included African Americans and white non-citizens who began entering in significant numbers in the 1880s. Learn the push/pull factors that drew settlers to Indian Territory and what records were created that reveal their actions.
Who was Polly Cessna? Using Early Georgia Records to Uncover a Woman’s Identity
Discover how thorough research in court, tax, and land records in several jurisdictions revealed Polly’s two marriages, a divorce, and two sets of children.