Purchasing the 2024 RLP webinar series gives you lifetime access to the twelve lectures presented in 2024. The researcher’s report will be provided with each lecture.

How it Works

After you purchase the case study series, you will have access to the Research Like a Pro Webinar Series 2024 private page on FamilyLocket.com. Using the username and password you created during checkout, you can log in, view the schedule, and get information about how to watch the presentations live via Zoom. The webinars will be recorded and placed on the webinar series private webpage along with the research report that goes along with it. We will send you an email each month to remind you about the upcoming webinar.

Schedule

Lectures will be presented via Zoom on the following schedule for 2024. All times are 11am Mountain Time (Utah):

Saturday, January 20 – Who Was Robert Steward’s Wife: Using DNA Clusters and Genealogical Research

Amanda Sherwin

Robert Steward, born 1785 in Virginia, had his first son in 1819 in Missouri. One of his 3rd-great-granddaughters searched for 50+ years for the name of his wife. There were no records of any kind – marriage, land, wills. DNA shared clusters identified several DNA matches with similar last names that had never been part of the family. By building out the DNA matches and using traditional records, two cousins were able to put the Stewards and the new family in the same place when Robert and his wife would have met and married. Further research helped identify which of ten men was the likely father-in-law.

Topics: Tennessee, Missouri, atDNA, Shared DNA clusters, pre-1850 census, land, military and marriage records

Tuesday, February 20 – Identifying Henry Jacob Vann’s Mother: a 19th-Century DNA Case Study

Melanie Whitt, MSc, QG

Autosomal and Y-DNA analysis established Jesse Vann as the most likely father of orphan Henry Jacob Vann, born about 1867 in Arkansas or Missouri. But who was “Susan,” the mother reported on Henry’s death certificate? Did the informant merely misremember the name of Jane Davis, Jesse’s known wife? Autosomal DNA analysis revealed both maternal and paternal genetic networks for Henry’s mother, while the synthesis and mapping of indirect geographic, chronological, and onomastic evidence corroborated the DNA findings and refined her identity. This case study features analysis of DNA network graphs created in Gephi using AncestryDNA match data.

Topics: 19th-century US Research, Identifying Unknown Females, Orphans, Burned Counties, Arkansas, Missouri, Genetic Genealogy, DNA Network Graphs, Gephi, Multiple Relationships, McGuire Charts, Indirect Evidence, Census Matrices, Land Records, Tax Records, Probate Records, Mapping, Google My Maps

Saturday, March 16 – Using RLP to Trace an African-American Ancestor back through Enslavement

Allison Kotter
Martin Fambro was born in slavery around 1838 in South Carolina. He died on 17 February 1910 in Dalton, Whitfield, Georgia. His wife was named Frances Collier. The family knew very little of his life before he came to Dalton around 1880. This case study goes through the process of following the clues left by Martin to trace him back to when he was enslaved and to extend his ancestry.

Topics: Georgia, Slavery, African-American, Wills & Estates, Land Deeds, Newspapers

Tuesday, April 16 – Parents of Maria Terwilliger in New York – DNA Case Study

Alice Childs, AG

Documentary evidence revealed Maria Terwilliger as the wife of Solomon Dunn and placed a woman likely to be her in his New Paltz, New York, households in the early 1800s. A baptism record for their son Robert Solomon provided Maria’s maiden name, and census records provided Maria’s birth year range. Baptism records from local churches documented several Maria Terwilligers born in within this range. Following the RLP with DNA process helped outline a plan and identify the correct Maria Terwilliger. Rather than creating problems, pedigree collapse proved helpful in solving this case.

Topics: New York, census records, Dutch Reformed Church records, probate records, Gephi network graphs using Ancestry DNA data, LucidChart diagrams, pedigree collapse, the shared cM project

Saturday, May 11 – Who was Mary F.E. Deshazo? A Case Study using Indirect Evidence in Burned Counties

Scott Dickson

Mary was born in a county whose records burned.  She was married and lived in two counties whose records burned.  It seemed that wherever she went, disaster followed her!  How then, to determine who her parents were and what her surname was?  This case study uses indirect evidence and negative evidence to identify a probable family of origin in antebellum and Reconstruction-era Mississippi.

Topics: Mississippi, Burned Counties, Indirect Evidence, Negative Evidence, War of 1812 Pension, Tax Records, Land Records, Census

Tuesday, June 18 – The Oliver Case: Using Deductive Reasoning with British Parish Records

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG

William Oliver and Mary Heap married on 9 October 1782 in Repton, Derbyshire, England, and had their children in nearby Rolleston parish. How do we find William’s and Mary’s baptisms without a birth year? What do we do when there’s multiple people with the same name, and none of them died young? This lecture focuses on using critical thinking and English traditions to solve a research quandary riddled with roadblocks.

Topics: English Parish Records, Parish Chest, Parish Maps

Saturday, July 20 – Who is Grace Brown’s Mother?

Mark Thompson

Mark Thompson is a graduate of the Research Like a Pro with DNA study group and author of the blog Making Family History – https://makingfamilyhistory.com/.

Tuesday, August 20 – Who’s Eli’s Daddy: A Civil War-era Open Secret – A DNA Case Study

Steve Little
James Eli “Bawly” Bower was born in 1863 in Ashe County, North Carolina, during the Civil War. Oral family history suggests that Bawly’s father was a Confederate soldier who, while on leave in 1862, allegedly returned home not to his wife and children, but another woman, Margaret Riley Bower. Nine months later, Bawly Bower was born, and shortly after the solider, William McMillan, was dead. This case study aims to determine if documentary evidence and DNA analysis (both autosomal and Y-DNA) can confirm or refute the family legend that William McMillan (1830-1865) is the father of James Eli “Bawly” Bower  (1863-1960), born to Margaret Riley Bower (1840-1915).

Topics: North Carolina, Civil War, Non-Paternity Event (NPE), Oral Family History, Y-DNA Testing, Autosomal DNA Analysis, Pedigree Collapse, Endogamy, Multiple Relationships, Visualization Techniques in Genetic Genealogy

Saturday, September 21 – Proving the Parents of John G. Winn: A 19th Century New England Study

Karen Ramon

An undocumented history gave clues to the parents of John G. Winn. Using the Research Like a Pro method, evidence in a variety of records was discovered to conclusively document John’s connection to his parents.

Topics: Massachusetts, vital records, census, newspapers, cemetery, probate

Tuesday, October 15 – Crossing the Pond: Tracing Dorothea’s Roots in 19th Century Pomerania

Emma Lowe

A passenger list recorded by a particularly conscientious clerk and a new index entry for a German civil registration record provided clues which opened the doors to tracing Henry and Dorothy Trotz’s origins in Greifswald, Pomerania, Prussia, Germany. This case study follows the Research Like a Pro process to systematically identify and search relevant record collections, following the clues that enabled the discovery of new generations in the homeland of Germany.

Topics: Germany, immigration, Evangelical-Lutheran church records, German civil registration, locality survey, resolving conflicting evidence, German research resources

Saturday, November 16 – Four Generations of the Elder Family: Verifying Documentary Research with DNA

Nicole Elder Dyer

Verifying traced research with DNA evidence is a helpful first step to using DNA evidence for more challenging cases on that line. Nicole’s father and grandfather tested their autosomal DNA at Ancestry.com. Mark’s uncle was selected for additional autosomal DNA testing. This case study shows how their DNA results were used to prove the Elder line for four generations, from Mark Elder, to his father Charles William Elder, to Charles Rudolph Elder, to Daniel O’Connell Elder, and to his parents, Charles Elder and Elizabeth Ann Medley. The Leeds Method was used to separate Mark’s matches into his four grandparent groups. The Elder matches were then evaluated with the Shared cM Project using standard deviation to further the analysis. Matches who descended through independent descent lines and who matched multiple test-takers were selected as evidence of the traced relationships.

Topics: autosomal DNA, Leeds Method, proving your pedigree, Shared cM Project, standard deviation, independent descent lines, targeted testing, Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon, Washington

Tuesday, December 10 – Who Was Clemsy Cline’s Father? DNA and Indirect Evidence Provide a Candidate in this Burned County Case Study

Diana Elder, AG

Clemsy (Cline) and Henderson Weatherford’s 1850 Morgan County, Missouri, household included two Cline children born in Arkansas. In the same neighborhood, Jacob and Telitha Cline’s household also included two extra Clines with an Arkansas connection.  What is the relationship between Clemsy and this group of Clines? Her maiden name is known only from the death certificates of two of her children. No marriage record has been found for her and Henderson Weatherford, but his presence in an 1839  Izard County, Arkansas, provides a starting place for research. However, this is a severely burned county with no extant records for the research time frame. Researching Cline individuals in the area in the only available records – federal land records and state tax lists -and correlating the indirect evidence pointed to a strong hypothesis for Clemsy’s father and connections to this cluster of Cline individuals. DNA  added further evidence to the hypothesis.

Topics: Burned Counties, Arkansas, Tax Records, Federal Land Records, Cluster Research, Boundary Changes, Census Records, DNA, Indirect Evidence

Call for Presentations

We are looking for case studies showing how you have worked on a case following the Research Like a Pro process or Research Like a Pro with DNA process. The call for presentations is here.