Friday, December 12, 2014

December Research Group Highlights

The CVGS Research Group meeting on Wednesday, 10 December had 12 attendees.  

In the first hour, Randy discussed:

*  The Member Survey and the Program Survey, and handed copies to all in attendance.

*  A short summary of the Heritage Books Genealogy Cruise with photographs.

*  Legacy Family Tree Webinars - genealogy education available for free or by subscription.  See www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com.

*  Ancestry.com's Free State Research Guides - see Tuesday's Tip - Collect Ancestry.com's FREE State Resource Guides.

*  Ancestry DNA matches have been updated to eliminate many false positives.  See http://dna.ancestry.com/

*  RootsMagic 7 was released, with a WebHints feature for MyHeritage and FamilySearch record matches.  See www.rootsmagic.com.

In the second hour, the attendees shared their questions, challenges and successes, including:

*  Karen Y.'s neighbor wrote a book titled Journeys Home published by National Geographic; Karen passed a proof copy around the group.  

*  Shirley received an FamilyTreeDNA match contact who said she was related to John Howland of Plymouth, but provided no other information.

*  Shirley also described finding Phelps and Bickle family information in a book on www.Archive.org.  

*  John found information about his Shed family in Massachusetts on Ancestry.com.  It is also available on google Books.

*  Diane says that she is an "eclectic researcher" and enjoys going off on research tangents.  She looked for records of an old boyfriend and found a Find A Grave memorial for one of his parents with an obituary mentioning him.

*  Diane is going to Mexico next week to research her husband's family - the church records for the town are not available on FamilySearch.

*  She has ordered more 23andMe autosomal DNA kits as Christmas gifts so she can test her son and several cousins.  With them, she will have tested 14 family members.  A previously tested cousin recently died suddenly, but she has his DNA results.

*  Ana has several family members with the same first name and surnames, and wondered how she should sort these out to keep the families straight.  The group suggested using Family Group Sheets, talk to family members, and use an online tree or genealogy software to organize all of the information.

*  Karen S. asked about passenger lists of persons to colonial Virginia.  The group suggested the FamilySearch wiki for Virginia immigration, and to read the reference books listed there.  Also read Virginia history and immigration on Wikipedia.

*  John was frustrated by duplicate families in his Ancestry Member Tree - he can't seem to merge them.  The Ancestry.com Help page was explored to find the correct process to use.

*  Virginia mentioned the FamilyTreeDNA upgrade sale, and recently has received more matches.

*  Karen Y. described the day at the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park at the CVGS table.  She took the two Glen Abbey Cemetery books published by CVGS, which elicited admiration and interest in the society.

The next CVGS Research Group will be on Wednesday, 14 January 2015 starting at 12 noon in the Conference Room of the Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street in downtown Chula Vista).  


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