June 8th Research Group Review

The June 8th meeting of the CVGS Research Group was lively with 17 attendees.  

In the first hour, Randy Seaver discussed these issues:

*  He attended the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree from June 2nd to 5th in Burbank, and shared some of his photos from the conference from his blog.  He noted that there are 14 Livestream videos available for FREE until 5 July, but users will have to register.  Eleven CVGS members attended the Jamboree.

*  The biggest news from Jamboree was the RootsMagic announcement that Ancestry.com has released the first draft of their API for synchronizing RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker persons with persons in a user's Ancestry Member Tree.  The interface is likely to be person-centric - meaning syncing one person's information at a time rather than syncing all persons in the user's tree at once.  There will be a method to search and capture an event and media directly from Ancestry to RootsMagic.

*  AncestryDNA has improved their matching algorithms, and now users have more New Ancestor Discoveries.  

*  Ancestry.com added 20th century Indiana birth, marriage and death certificate databases to their collections.  

*  Randy discovered another sister of his 2nd great-grandfather David Auble based on researching the heirs of Elizabeth Auble (1811-1899).  

In the second hour, the attendees discussed:

*  Jane attended Jamboree, and visited the Immigrant Library in Burbank for a presentation by Fritz Juengling on German names.  She found her ancestral town on the Meyers-Ort map site at the library.  At Jamboree, she worked iat the Immigrant Library exhibit with Toni Perrone, and attended classes also.  

*  Helen searched for her Jessie Baker great-grandmother, the daughter of Samuel Baker.  She determined that the immigrant ancestors were Valentine Biecher (1673-1760) and George Peder Beicher (1724-1802), from Braunschweig in Lower Saxony aboard the Snowy Betsy out of Rotterdam to Philadelphia in 1748.  They settled in Lancaster County PA.  Peter's son, Christian, served in the Recolutionary War and received a 1793 land warrant under the name of Baker.

*  Mary N. and Susi went to Carlsbad library recently.  Mary found an article in a 100th anniversary memorial book for What Cheer, Iowa that had a photograph and life sketch of her great-grandfather.  

*  Susi highlighted the NSDCGS classes and programs available in June.  She asked how to source a person profile in an online family tree and how to capture records attached to the profile.  The group suggested using the sources attached to the tree and add them to her family tree, including notes, sources and media, rather than citing the person profile. 

*  Virginia attended Jamboree, and enjoyed the German Names class by Juengling and the DNA class by Shannon Christmas.  She won two prizes - an Irish Ancestry book, and a subscription to a German magazine.  She passed the printed syllabus around the group.

*  Karen S. obtained her grandmother's death certificate, and now needs to find her gravestone.  Her grandmother had at least three husbands and probably more.

*  Ana attended Jamboree, and enjoyed the Thursday field trip to the Hollywood Forever cemetery, which had an excellent tour guide.  Ana enjoyed the classes and the exhibit hall, and, with Jane, gathered free stuff for the CVGS Family History Day in October.

*  Arlene found a newspaper article on MyHeritage about her grandparents marriage.  She asked how she could save the newspaper page to her computer.  Th group noted that she could download the page as a PDF file, open the PDF, magnify the article, do a Print Screen and put the image in a word processor file and save it as a PNG or JPG file.

*  Gary noted that genealogy can be hazardous to your health.  He worked on Ancestry recently, and had a heart problem, which resulted in an ambulance ride to the hospital.  He came home with three new stents and feels much better.

*  John found some bad links in the Ancestry.com North American Family History database.  He also received his AncestryDNA autosomal DNA results. 

The next CVGS Research Group will be on Wednesday, July 13th at 12 noon in the Conference Room of the Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street in Chula Vista).