How Cloud Backup Helped One Genealogy Gem Get Closer to Living a Paper-Free Genealogy Life

by | Apr 13, 2019 | 01 What's New, Cloud Backup, Disaster Prevention, images, Organization

Every genealogist eventually finds themselves with more paper than they know what to do with. Records, photos, letters, and other ephemera inevitably begin to pile up in the pursuit of our ancestors. So how do you preserve it and protect it for future generations? One Genealogy Gems listener wrote in with the online tool that has her one step closer to living a paper-free life. 

Have you dreamed of living a paper-free genealogy life? One where there are no sticky notes surrounding your computer screen and–not so much paper piling up on your desk that your actual remaining work surface is about the size of a sticky note? It happens to the best of us! And much of the reason is we haven’t felt confident about our ability to keep digitized versions of the paper truly safe. 

That’s all changing, and a long time Genealogy Gem, Michelle, recently wrote in about her journey to living an almost paper-free genealogy life:

“Dear Lisa,

I wanted to let you know that I just purchased Backblaze to back up my files. I thought you might be interested in my story.

I did my first genealogy project in high school in 1971 and got an A+ on it. I’ve attached the title page for you to enjoy. Well, that project ignited my lifelong passion for family history. During the past 44 years, I’ve amassed a LOT of documents, photos, and videos as you can imagine.

This past year I retired and began the task of scanning all of these items for a couple of reasons:

  1. I wanted them to be protected.

     

  2. I wanted everyone to be able to use them and benefit from my lifetime of research.

I purchased a few external hard drives for storage but couldn’t bring myself to toss much of the physical items at all due to fear of the hard drives failing.

I tried several cloud services but none of them fully met my needs.

Then (on The Genealogy Gems Podcast) I heard your endorsement for Backblaze and tried it out. I knew immediately this was the service for me, especially because you vetted it out and I trust you completely. Now I can finally toss all that unnecessary paper and almost live a paper-free genealogy life!

Thank you for all the wonderful things you do for the genealogy community. You are a hero in my eyes.

A loyal friend and listener,
Michelle”

Thank YOU Michelle for writing in, sharing your story about how you are using cloud backup as part of your paperless strategy, and your kind words. Backblaze is the official cloud backup of Genealogy Gems and we truly appreciate their sponsorship which helps keep The Genealogy Gems Podcast available for free to all genealogists.

And Michelle is very lucky because she even has a record, in the handwriting of her youth, of when she first caught the genealogy bug. This is an original document that she will probably want to keep in paper form. But whether you scan and toss or scan and keep, having your digital files backed up keeps them safe. 

Below Michelle shares the rough draft of the foreword to her paper that describes her first encounter with her Grandma on the subject of family history.

“Grandma, how do you remember all this? Do you have it written down somewhere?” 

“No,” she replied, “It’s all in my head”

I couldn’t believe how she knew everyone’s extended family – names, dates, places, and a biography of each one. She had a whole family history living in her head.”

And now Michelle does too! Do you?

Your Cloud Backup Questions  Answered

Click below to watch my free video class that answers YOUR questions about cloud backup. You’ll learn all about what cloud backup is, how it works, what services are available, and most importantly, how it can save your previous files from being lost or destroyed. 

Protect Your Data with the Cloud

If you’re ready to protect your data, there’s no one I trust more than Backblaze.

Get peace of mind knowing your files are backed up securely in the cloud. Backup your Mac or PC just $6/month – that’s about the cost of one latte!

It’s incredibly easy to sign up, and you can even opt for a 15-day trial to make sure Backblaze is right for you. Click here to learn more and sign up now. 

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

This article was originally published on July 2, 2015 and updated on April 12, 2019.

Here’s Why Quebec Church Records are a Great Place to Look for Ancestors

by | Apr 8, 2019 | 01 What's New, Canadian, Church, FamilySearch

Do you have ancestors who lived in the earlier days of Quebec, Canada? Catholic church records may prove some of your most consistently helpful resources! Read about how to tap into these great resources online, going back as far as the 17th century, to uncover your Canadian family history.

Those tracing their ancestors in Quebec can encounter serious frustrations! The same 50 given names appear for 70% of the people before 1800 (and many share the same surnames, too). Almost all passenger lists are missing before 1865. Several early censuses are not easily searchable online.

Thankfully, in Quebec church records are often available back to the 1600s. There are LOTS of them online, and they often contain the distinguishing details–those exact dates, names, relationships and locations–that can help identify an ancestor with greater certainty.

The Catholic church was the dominant religion in Quebec. “Between 1679 and 1993, priests were required to make two copies of all baptisms, marriages, and burials,” explains FamilySearch. “The second copy was sent to civil authorities, and these are found in civil archives. In 1796, churches were required to index their registers.”
 
Records duplication means more chances to find an ancestor. And “while the form and content of the entries vary somewhat, the general quality of the records is excellent.”
 
Catholic baptisms were performed for newborn babies, often within a day or a few days of birth. It’s often possible to glean the birth date from the baptismal date. This one, for example, states the child was born the day before:
As you can see, in this baptismal record, the parents are identified as lawfully married. The father’s military regiment is named. Two witnesses are named, one who signed the register himself and the other who declared herself illiterate. Catholic marriage and death records can also be rich in genealogical data. Though most Quebec church records are in French, this one happened to be in English.
 
I learned recently about an interactive map of Quebec’s Catholic parishes (and other churches) up to 1912. Click below to check it out:
Quebec catholic parishes
 
Once you’ve identified the nearest parish, you will more confidently identify your ancestors in databases of church records, or pursue their listings in offline resources. Start looking in databases like these:

I also recommend exploring this excellent website for Quebec genealogy: Quebec Records: The Genealogical Website of French America

More Canadian Genealogy Gems Right Here at Genealogy Gems

Plus get inspired by this Family History Video about the Cooke family’s immigration to Canada! You can make videos just like this using Animoto. It’s incredibly easy! Click here for step-by-step instructions. 

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

This article was originally published on October 6, 2015 and updated on April 8, 2019.

Amish Genealogy Revealed

by | Apr 6, 2019 | 01 What's New, Amish & Mennonite, Newspaper | 3 comments

Amish genealogy is revealed with Facebook! Well, sort of.

I made a recent visit to Amish country and I couldn’t resist talking genealogy with my new friends. I learned a lot about resources for family history and gained invaluable insight that I’m here to share with you. If you have Amish or Mennonite heritage in your family history, you won’t want to miss this amazing information!

The Amish Facebook Equivalent: The Budget

The Budget is the Amish newspaper our guide wittily referred to as “Amish Facebook.” However, this Facebook alternative has been around since 1890! The Budget covers news from all over the United States and Canada pertaining to the Amish and Mennonite communities and families. Who just got married, who had a baby, and who recently passed away…it’s all in there!

Amish Genealogy Newspaper Each weekly edition comes out on Wednesday and the cost is $1.50 per paper. However, you can save by signing up for a 6-month, 1-year, or 2-year subscription. They have local and national editions and you can check out all the subscription prices at their website here.

Local public libraries in the area may have copies of The Budget in their archives or on microfilm. Be sure to call the library and speak with someone in the history or genealogical department to determine what is available.

You may be thinking, “Wait a minute. I didn’t think the Amish liked having their pictures taken.” But you will actually find many nice pictures in The Budget. I learned not all Amish and Mennonite’s have the same rules about photography. Often, rules about photography, clothing styles, and even the types of dolls a child has are determined by the Bishop and church leadership of that district.

I was delighted to also learn The Budget has its own traditional Facebook page, too, where I could keep up with some of the local news.

The Amish Church Directory

The Amish churches are divided into districts. A district may cover more than one county. They are not necessarily based on county or town borders, but rather encompass about 50 families in a given vicinity.

Most Amish families are listed in a church directory for their area. Not all districts find a directory “important,” said my guide.

My new friend at Yoder’s Amish Farm also shared with me the genealogical value of such a directory. He said the directories came out “most every year” in his district, though not all districts publish yearly. By using the directories for any given district, you could easily piece together a very accurate family genealogy.

The directories are listed by surname of the head-of-household. Each family listing includes their home address, which is particularly helpful to the many local government agencies, my guide mentioned. Each member of the family is listed by first name and birth date.

Marriage dates and death dates, if applicable, are also included. If there has been a second marriage involved due to widowhood, the deceased spouse and the couple’s children are also listed. Maps are also found in the church directory so you can keep track of where all the cousins are living!

Directories can be purchased by anyone and are often found at local dry-goods stores within the communities.

Amish Genealogy Family History Books and Newsletters

You may be interested to know that many family history books or published newsletters exist for Amish family genealogies. You will most likely find these books and newsletters at a local library. Sometimes, they are available to purchase from local dry good stores in the area.

Even better yet, try Google! I Googled Amish Yoder Family History and learned about the Oregon Mennonite Historical and Genealogical Society newsletter. It was packed with great information!

The large bound volumes of Amish genealogy may hold thousands of names and dates. Many begin with a detailed history of who came to America, or who came to a given state or area. Then, it will map out for you the family branches.

Using a few of these wonderful sources may help you trace your genealogy farther than you ever imagined. Happy hunting, friends!

Discover even more ancestors with Google!

To learn more amazing techniques about using Google for your genealogy research, check out Lisa’s The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, available in the Genealogy Gems store.

The update includes corrected links and resources to replace any outdated or defunct information. You’ll learn more about all the Google tools you need to master to aid you in your family history. Better yet, after you learn how to use these tools for family history research, you’ll find yourself using them to find all kinds of things!

This article was originally posted on August 29, 2016 by Amie Tennant. It was updated on April 5, 2019. 

“Results May Vary:” One Family’s DNA Ethnicity Percentages

by | Mar 30, 2019 | 01 What's New, Ancestry, DNA

Four members of a family–mom, dad, daughter, and son–tested with AncestryDNA. Their DNA ethnicity percentages vary. Why?

If you’ve taken a DNA test and received different ethnicity results than you expected and different from your family members, DNA expert Diahan Southard is here to explain why that happens. 

There are limitations to the ethnicity results delivered by the various DNA testing companies.

For the most part, these admixture results are like that short film before the actual feature presentation. That feature presentation, in this case, is your genealogical match list. But, the short film is entertaining and certainly keeps your attention for a while. It can be especially interesting when you have several members of the same family tested so you can compare their ethnicity results.

Understanding Ethnicity Variance Within Immediate Families

Let’s consider the real AncestryDNA test results of a family we’ll call the “Reese family:”

The Reese family has something to their great advantage: their family history indicates that they are mostly from Western Europe. This is a big advantage in the climate of today’s ethnicity results as all of the testing companies have far more data in their reference populations pouring out of western Europe than from anywhere else. (See this article for more information and the latest data on DNA reference populations on each testing company.) That means that in general, they are going to be better at telling you about your heritage from Ireland or England than they are at discovering that you are from China or India.

Looking at the ethnicity results for the Reese family, we are tempted to start applying our knowledge of DNA inheritance to the numbers we see. We know that each child should get half of their DNA from their mom and half from their dad. So our initial reaction might be to look at the dad’s 40% Scandinavian and mom’s 39% Scandinavian and assume that the child would also be about 40% (20% from dad and 20% from mom).

You can see that the daughter did, in fact, mostly measure up to that expectation with 37% Scandinavian. But the son, with only 25%, seems to have fallen short. The temptation to consider the daughter as the far better example of familial inheritance is strong (especially for us daughters, who are so often exceeding expectations!), but of course inaccurate. It is actually very difficult to look at the parent’s numbers alone and estimate the percentages that a child will receive.

A Snippet about SNPs (snips)

Remember that these numbers are tied to actual small pieces of DNA we call SNPs (snips).

Of the near 800,000 SNPs evaluated by your testing company, less than half of them are considered valuable for determining your ethnicity.

The majority of the SNPs tested are working to estimate how closely you are related to your genealogical cousin.

A good SNP for ethnicity purposes has to be ubiquitous enough to show up in many individuals from a given population, but unique enough to only show up in that population, and not any others.

It is a difficult balance to strike. But even when good SNPs are used, it is still difficult for the computer at your testing company to make accurate determinations about your ancestry.

New to using DNA for genealogy? Watch: 
(Click on player to unmute sound)

Take the Great Britain line in the Reese family data, for example. The dad has 21% and the mom has 7%, so it would follow that the largest amount any child could have would be 28%. We see the daughter (of course!) falling well within that range at 10%, but the son is seven points above at 35%. How does THAT happen?!

Let’s go back to some basic biology.

Remember that you have two copies of each chromosome: one from mom and one from dad. These chromosomes are made up of strings of letters denoting the DNA code. That means that at each SNP location, you report two letters (again, one from mom and one from dad).

As the testing company is lining these letters up for comparison, they have to decide which letters go together: which are from the same chromosome and which set came from one single source.

Understanding Phasing

The process of determining which set of values goes on which line is called phasing. Often the inconsistencies you see in your DNA test results, whether it be in the matching or in the ethnicity, are because of problems the company has with this very difficult process.

To illustrate how this works, let’s say we are trying to write two sentences: “The brown dog ate the bone.” and “A black cat scared a mouse.”

In this example, each word in each sentence represents a SNP. However, all the computer sees are two words, and it doesn’t know which word goes in which sentence. You can see in this example that it would be fairly easy to get it wrong. Mixing up a couple of words creates entirely new sentences with very different meanings, as shown in the examples below.

Phasing correct:

Phasing incorrect:

It’s important to understand that ethnicity results can, and will, vary among family members as well as different DNA testing companies for the reasons outlined above.

It can certainly be fun to compare what each family member received, but take it with a grain of salt. As you can see, a lot of genetic data is quickly lost over time.

In the Reese family example, we see that in one single generation this family has lost all traces of ancestry to several world regions. This really highlights the value of having the oldest generation of family members tested, to try to capture all that they have to offer in their DNA code.

Get more DNA help and plain-English explanations

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by DNA testing or struggling to make sense of the complex scientific data, our quick reference guides are exactly what you need!

Author and DNA expert Diahan Southard’s collection of DNA guides offer explanations in plain-English, helpful examples and graphics, and practical genealogical applications so you can make the most of your DNA results. Head over to the Genealogy Gems Store to browse our 10 DNA guides available in both print and digital download. 

About the Author: Diahan Southard has worked with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, and has been in the genetic genealogy industry since it has been an industry. She holds a degree in Microbiology and her creative side helps her break the science up into delicious bite-sized pieces for you. She’s the author of a full series of DNA guides for genealogists.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

This article was originally published on February 28, 2016 and updated on March 30, 2019. 

How to Correct Mistakes in Ancestry.com Indexes

by | Mar 28, 2019 | 01 What's New, Ancestry, Collaborate, Records & databases | 15 comments

Ancestry.com indexes aren’t always right, making it more difficult to search successfully for your ancestors in old records. In many cases, you can correct those errors and help others find it in the future. Here’s how to do it.

When the announcement was made that microfilm lending from the Family History Library was ending, we received many emails from disappointed fans. Vera, in Ontario, Canada, said she had appreciated the access to microfilmed records because, she says:

“I find the indexes and transcriptions for information digitized is often incorrect. This is especially true on Ancestry.com.”

Vera is right that you shouldn’t fully rely on indexes to tell you whether your ancestors appear in records! Indexers make mistakes when they transcribe names. Or, perhaps the indexer is transcribing it as it appears, but the spelling is different, or it’s just really tough to decipher. Sometimes it takes an informed descendant’s eye—like yours!—to read an entry correctly or to contribute a spelling that’s more common.

If you don’t find ancestors in indexed records where you think they should be, browse the digitized records page-by-page for that time period and locale. (Click here to read a post on how to browse records at FamilySearch.org: a similar technique applies at Ancestry.com and other sites.)

You can also use advanced search techniques, like searching without the first or last name (or both), searching instead with other known characteristics such as the gender, age, place, and another relative’s name.

User-submitted corrections in Ancestry.com Indexes

When you DO find your ancestor in an Ancestry.com record that was incorrectly indexed, you might be able to fix it! The site allows users to submit changes to any indexes they have created themselves. You may even have seen (and benefited from) user-submitted corrections in your search results already. They look like this:

That listing you see means the record was originally indexed as R Care Harris, but someone has submitted a correction.

If you roll over the pencil icon, you’ll see a note that says, “Other possible names: Robert Carr Harris.” Click View Record to the left, and you’ll see the transcribed information:

If you click where the blue arrow shows, on [Robert Carr-Harris], you’ll see that an Ancestry user submitted this name correction:

If you have a correction of your own to make to an Ancestry indexed entry, you may click where the red arrow is pointed above, to where it says View/Add alternate information. You’ll see this screen:

From the drop-down menu, you can choose which fields to correct. In the case of the 1921 Canadian census, you can choose from several different fields to correct, including the name, parents’ birthplaces, occupations, and more. You can even select a field that was left blank if you want to add information here.

As shown below, you must select a reason for making the change. Then you can enter what you think it should say and click Submit Alternate:

Your corrected version is then added to the searchable index to help others find the same record.

Remember, you can only do this in indexes that Ancestry.com has created itself (not indexes supplied by third parties). But that applies to a lot of major indexes, including several U.S. and Canadian censuses, draft registrations, passenger lists, and more.

Ancestry Pro Tip

An Ancestry user who has corrected an entry for one of your ancestors may be a good person for you to know about. If you’re a subscriber, you can click on the user name to see the user profile and send a message. The user profile may show an AncestryDNA test, recently-added content, any of that person’s public trees, and a personal description.

The user who corrected the entry above defines herself as an advanced genealogist who has been researching since 1985, does research almost every day, and is currently active on Ancestry.com. If Robert Care (or Carr) Harris were my ancestor, I would definitely want to meet her!

Learn How to Fix an Ancestry Online Family Tree:
(Click on player to unmute sound)

Pick the right records website for you!

Ancestry.com is one of the 4 major websites that hosts records and indexes, and figuring out which site has the records you need is something that all genealogists wrestle with.
 
The Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites quick reference guide will take on Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, FamilySearch.org, and Findmypast.com like you’ve never seen before!
 
Author Sunny Morton will show you how they stack up when it comes to the numbers of historical records, names in trees, DNA profiles, site users, site languages, subscription costs, and more. It’s everything you would ever want to know, and many things you probably didn’t know that you needed to know. You can pick up your copy here in our store — now updated for 2019!

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

This article was originally published on July 25, 2017 and updated on March 27, 2019. 

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