Genealogy à la carte

FamilyTreeWebinars and MyHeritage will soon host the 2nd Annual 24-Hour Genealogy Webinar Marathon with a line-up of international speakers and topics.

The marathon will begin on Thursday, April 8 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time (Friday, April 9 at 7:00 a.m. Sydney time) and end on Friday, April 9 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time (Saturday, April 10 at 9:00 a.m. Sydney time).

Speakers come from Australia, Canada, Israel, Germany, Northern Ireland, Belgium and the United States.

The Canadian speakers are Janice Nickerson, Lianne Kruger, Kathryn Lake Hogan, Tammy Priolo, and Wayne Shepheard.

There are 26 hours of classes — and the entire event is free. You can pop in for a session or two or stick around for the full 24 hours. There will even be time for Q&A and door prizes.

If you can’t watch in real time, all recordings will be available for free for a week afterward. 

To see the program and register for the live presentations, visit Legacy Family Tree Webinars. Live attendance for each session is limited to the first 1,000 attendees.

The Vernon and District Family History Society’s virtual seminar in April features two speakers and four lectures over two Saturdays.

Saturday, April 24 — Pamela Guye Holland
Starting at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time

Discovering Cousins Using DNA
This talk will show you how to explore your Autosomal DNA matches and use the tools available at the major DNA testing companies.
Researching in Irish Records
Finding genealogy records in Ireland can be confusing. There is no “one-stop” site for all your research needs and different websites offer different records.

Saturday, April 31 — Gena Philibert-Ortega
Starting at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time

25 Tips for Researching Your Female Ancestors
Yearly I create 30 blog posts about researching female ancestors. Based on those articles, learn 25 tips to help you identify, trace, and discover more about your female ancestors.
10 Reasons Why You Can’t Find Your Ancestor
We face brick walls in our research for a variety of reasons.

The registration fee is $30 for members and $40 for non-members. Registration information is available on the British Columbia-based society’s website. Payment must be received by April 12.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been horrible, there are positives for the genealogy community.

Apart from being able to do some of our research online and receiving free at-home access to Ancestry from our local public library, we’ve benefitted by being able to attend dozens of societies’ virtual meetings and conferences.

For example, the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (BIFHSGO) is holding a virtual conference in September with a stellar line-up of speakers, and at $CDN45 it’s much cheaper than their past in-person conferences.

I’ve attended several BIFHSGO conferences in person and I’ve only been able to attend less than half the presentations. This year, I’ll have the opportunity to attend all of them live or recorded.

The theme of the conference is Irish Lines and Female Finds and it features Irish genealogy research, female ancestors, and DNA.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks a virtual conference is a great opportunity.

Since registration opened a week ago, BIFHSGO has seen registrants from as far away as Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as registrations from five Canadian provinces and 11 American states.

To see what is attracting people, visit the conference website for program details and to register.

Of course, there are some things I miss from the in-person conferences, such as meeting old friends, making new friends, browsing the marketplace, nightly “debriefing” sessions in our hotel room with a glass or two of Chardonnay, and the free pen in my swag bag.

Still, with the money I’ve saved from not having to pay for a hotel room and meals, I can probably afford to buy an extra bottle of wine and my own pen.