CVGS August 9th Research Group Review

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society Research Group meeting on Wednesday, 9 August had 11 attendees.

In the first hour, Randy reviewed:

*  The MyHeritage purchase of Legacy Family Tree software and Legacy Family Tree Webinars on 3 August.  This appears to be a win for both parties - MyHeritage gains millions of potential subscribers and DNA testers, while Legacy gains potential software users and webinar attendees plus financial support.  

*  The Family Tree Magazine list of the Top 101 FREE genealogy websites was published, and Randy's blog, Genea-Musings, was on the list.

*  Find A Grave is changing their website presentation and has a beta test site up at  https://new.findagrave.com/.

*  Randy's blog post about what to do with collected family papers, with comments, is at  http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/07/dear-randy-what-can-i-do-with-my.html .

*  A project in July has been finding where the land for his 18th century Gates ancestors was located in Stow, Massachusetts.  A Facebook friend helped locate it, and probably lives on it.  

In the second hour, the attendees discussed their research challenges and successes:

*  Diane wrote an "Honoring Our Veterans" sketch of her grandfather's World War I Canadian Expeditionary Force service.  She found a 94 page report about his life story at the www.livesofthefirstworldwar.org site.

*  John found Canada census and marriage data for ancestors who migrated from New Brunswick to Massachusetts and Manitoba to Minnesota.  He found other marriage records on www.USGenWeb.org. 

*  Virginia successfully downloaded the updated RootsMagic version 7.5.2 to her desktop and laptop computers and is working on it.

*  Ralph mentioned the $69 AncestryDNA special.  He recently misplaced his paper tree and needs to find it.  He distributed copies of it to family members some time ago.  

*  Helen is trying to trace both lines of a match to her brother's Y-DNA test from Illinois.  One source for the match's line is "some people said..."

*  Gary has a first cousin DNA match on 23andMe that may identify his biological father.  He was adopted and knows his mother's family, but doesn't think it's on his mother's side of the family.  The cousin's grandfather had three children including a son with whom there was a bad relationship.  The cousin match lives in the area of Michigan where Gary was from.

*  Sam asked "how do you transcribe a document?"  Randy uses a window for the word processor, and a window for the document image on the screen and scroll and/or magnify as required.  Gary uses the free Transcript program which has two panels open - one for the transcription and the other for the document image.  

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