AUDIO PODCAST SHOW NOTES: In episode #290 of the Genealogy Gems podcast, Lisa Louise Cooke covers 5 of the top gems that came out of 2024. Use these to boost your family history now!
Watch the Video
Listen to the Podcast Episode featuring 5 Genealogy Gems
Get all the basic details on LiveMemory on the show notes page for Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #289.
Since the launch MyHeritage has added a set of 10 custom animation options. Now you can choose the action and resulting emotion for more fun. You can choose from emotional gestures such as hugging. laughing, kissing, dancing, and singing. You can also go more playful with zero gravity, underwater, rain, balloons, and even add a T-Rex to the scene!
With the newest update your videos will now be stored in your MyHeritage account. This makes them easily available through the app gallery. Photos with a LiveMemory™ have a play icon on the bottom. Tap the photo, then tap “LiveMemory” to play your video. You can also download the video to your device.
It’s now easy to share your videos with friends and family directly from the app to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Bluesky, WhatsApp, and other social media. Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen, then select the social media platform of your choice.
Tips from MyHeritage for Best Results:
Make sure you have the latest updated version of the MyHeritage mobile app installed.
MyHeritage recommends that you upload “an iconic family photo with interesting content. If you upload an ordinary selfie or a photo showing two people standing, there is no scene to speak of and the output video may look boring, unless you use one of the custom animations.
The results can vary depending on the resolution of the original photo and the angle of a person’s face. If you aren’t satisfied with the results, try uploading higher-resolution photos or photos with larger, more visible faces.”
Ancestry added loads of new records in 2024. The best way to quickly find and review them is in the Card Catalog: 1. Go to https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/catalog/ 2. From the Sort by drop-down menu select Date Added 3. Records will be listed starting with the most recently added. They will be marked New.
#3 FamilySearch new records updates
FamilySearch also added millions of new records. Most were added to existing collections, expanding them even further. FamilySearch also used AI to generate indexes for many of their existing collections making them much more usable. This all means it’s worth revisiting collections where you came up empty in the past. If you’re looking for free international records, FamilySearch is hard to beat! It includes,
Chronicling America is a huge collection of free digitized old newspapers from the United States. However, in the past it did not include all of the newspapers available through the Library of Congress website. Now all digitized newspapers have come under one search umbrella with the new Chronicling America website.
Chronicling America is in the process of transitioning from the legacy Chronicling America interface to a new Chronicling America interface and back-end search infrastructure. Read more about it.
Search the 4,000+ newspaper title with the Advanced Search at Chronicling America.
Use the interactive map at Chronicling America to search for family history in old newspapers.
#5 AI Increased Use in Genealogy
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here and will be with us in 2025 and many years to come. AI has been incorporated into genealogy websites for quite some time. However, in 2024 we saw a real uptick in genealogists using stand alone AI sites like ChatGPT, Gemini, and others to assist with their research.
If you’re going to start using these AI sites, keep a couple of key things in mind.
1) It’s not a person. No matter how realistic it sounds, or how many times it refers to itself as “I”, it’s not a real person. This is important to remember as you’re interacting with it. When AI talks to you like it’s a person, and you work with it for a period of time, you can start to have the impression or the feeling that it knows what it’s talking about. It can come across as authoritative. You can get the impression that it understood what you asked for, and that’s just not the case. It’s a language tool, and it’s trying to put together what it thinks makes sense based on what it has already “learned”.
This means you must be in the driver’s seat and stay in the driver’s seat. Continually analyze what you’re getting from AI. Think about what it is “saying: Go check it out and verify the information and get more evidence to back it up.
2) It’s not a stand-alone search engine. At this point AI isn’t ready to be used as a stand-alone search Q and A tool. However, it does have strengths we can use today for such activities as: • Translating typed text, • Summarizing large documents, • Reassembling information into desired formats, • Finding information buried within a document. • Quickly determining if particular items appear in a document.
It can do much of the legwork, thereby speeding up the research and writing process.
If I had to predict, I would say we’re going to see AI and search merge more and more. In fact, over at Google’s Gemini, we’re noticing that it sometimes provides users with a check this at Google button. For now though, be aware that Google’s search results are not fully represented in Gemini’s responses. Go search it separately on Google, and then review the results provided. Make sure you can actually find sources for yourself that verify everything that AI tells you.
Learn more about AI and Genealogy with Genealogy Gems:
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Is the tail wagging the dog in your genealogy research? Resist the temptation to jump at each hint and online family tree. Instead, take the lead in your own research and follow the scent of each clue with genealogical best practices. Here’s how…
Almost as soon as you start adding information to your family tree on any of the major genealogy records sites (Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast) you will start getting suggestions. These suggestions are known by a variety of names on the various sites, such as hints, Shaky Leaves, Smart Matches, record matches, etc. No matter what they’re called, they can be a great way to quickly make even more progress in growing your family tree.
There’s an old saying: you get what you pay for. In the case of hints, you have technically paid for them by subscribing to the genealogy website’s service. However, you didn’t pay for them through careful research following solid genealogical methodology. You haven’t yet verified their accuracy, or in the case of suggested online family tree, verified their sources.
Online family trees are one of the most common types of hints you’ll receive. And it’s no wonder: there are billions of names entered in online family trees*, so your tree is very likely to match some of them.
However, with all those matching trees there are bound to be problems. If you’ve been wondering about the reliability and usability of other people’s online family trees being recommended as hints, you’re not alone. Keep reading to learn more about using information gleaned from other’s online family trees.
The question of trusting online family trees
Brenda is a Premium eLearning member, and she wrote me recently with a question about using online family trees: “I’m just getting back into my genealogy research after 10 years of not having time. It seems that research has completely changed to online work! I’m getting [hints that link to other] family lines, but can I trust them?”
And this related question comes from Douglas:
“Weekly, I get emails with family tree matches, asking me to confirm the match. My problem is not with the matching but with when I dig into their tree, the source for their information is another tree. That info may be a clue but I learned way back that the info needed to be backed up by good primary and sometimes secondary sources, not what somebody thought was right. Info that I entered in my tree years ago and found subsequently to be wrong is still hanging out in a dozen trees. What is your opinion?”
My guess is that at some point you’ve had some of the same questions as Brenda and Douglas. Am I right? Well, even though it’s exciting to find someone who’s already built a family tree that includes your ancestors, it’s important to proceed with caution. Avoid the temptation to “graft” or copy the tree onto your tree.
That’s not to say you should ignore online trees. Instead, let’s discuss how reliable they are and how to use them wisely and responsibly.
How to use online family trees as hints
Douglas has stated the problem accurately. The researchers behind those tantalizing trees may have made mistakes or copied unfounded information without verifying it. Unfortunately, this is a very common occurrence.
Once copied to one tree, incorrect information can easily get picked up by others and copied over and over again. And the problem is made worse because the more it’s copied, the more unskilled researchers may assume it must be accurate because they see everyone using it. It’s a vicious circle indeed!
Mistakes can happen in online family trees
Approach every online hint and tree as a clue – a lead – to be considered and scrutinized. You won’t know the accuracy of it for sure until you review the research and verify the sources. That being said, the next logical questions would be “how in the world will I have enough time to verify all of the information in all of these trees?”
The answer is, you don’t.
Instead, do your own genealogical research first, one person and one generation at a time. Work from the present generation backward and learn everything you can from known and trusted primary and secondary sources. If this idea sounds new to you, I strongly encourage you to start listening to my Family History: Genealogy Made Easy podcast. It’s free, and available here on my website, as well as through all major podcast apps. If you’re new to genealogy or returning after a long spell, this podcast will cover the basics in genealogical research and help you get on track.
It’s easy to let other people’s online trees give you a false sense that you are quickly and easily building your own family tree, but it’s just not true. A tree worth having is a tree worth researching. Don’t let the tail wag the dog here. Follow the proven genealogical research process, and then tap into online family trees when you need a fresh new lead.
Automated record hints and matches
On genealogy websites, you’ll get two types of automated hints or matches. The first is for other people’s trees, which we’ve already discussed. The second is for historical genealogical records.
In order to deliver the historical record hint, the website has compared the data on your tree with the data available in the transcriptions of their records. Since many people share the same name and other distinguishing characteristics like birth dates, it’s important to look at each record closely and carefully.
Review both the record transcription and the digitized image of the document (when available), keeping in mind that not all the useful genealogical data is always transcribed. And in the process of transcribing, errors may have been made.
You first want to evaluate whether this document pertains to your relative. Next, you will need to determine what else it adds to your knowledge of them. Compare what that document says to what you’ve already learned about your family. Watch for multiple, specific pieces of evidence that support or are consistent with what you already know.
Genealogy Giants guru Sunny Morton says that “record hints on Genealogy GiantsFamilySearch and MyHeritage are especially known for a high degree of accuracy; Ancestry.com’s are generally pretty good, too, but the site is clear about reminding you that these are just hints. I don’t have data on how accurate Findmypast hinting is, but I do know that they’ve been adding more records to the pool of records they hint on, and that’s also good.”
After reviewing all the record hints you’ve received, conduct additional searches yourself for records about each ancestor. Use the same process described above to scrutinize and evaluate each record.
Remember that even a digitized record hosted on one of the major websites can have transcription, spelling, or other errors, and sometimes you’ll have to make judgment calls. There’s no substitute for your brain! And there’s no substitute for carefully verifying and documenting every discovery as you go.
Next steps for using hints and trees wisely
By using hints for online family trees and historical records as leads when needed rather than the main path to follow will help you build an accurate family tree.
We are here to help you take control of your family tree and your research every step of the way. For specific information about reviewing record hints, read Getting started on Ancestry.com.
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!
It’s easy to let other people’s online trees give you a false sense that you are quickly and easily building your own family tree, but it’s just not true. A tree worth having is a tree worth researching. Don’t let the tail wag the dog here. Follow the proven genealogical research process, and then tap into online family trees when you need a fresh new lead.
After reviewing all the record hints you’ve received, conduct additional searches yourself for records about each ancestor. Use the same process described above to scrutinize and evaluate each record.