As always, RootsTech was amazing and it was fun and informative to be able to watch some of it from the comfort of my own home.  If you haven’t yet checked out what is available, you can see the list at rootstech.org.  Dick Eastman’s newsletter this week (eogn.com) noted one particularly interesting session which compared four of the main websites for online research.  I also recommend Sunny Morton’s Friday session, “Big 4:  Comparing Ancestry, Findmypast, FamilySearch and MyHeritage.  If you enjoy watching the Property Brothers (Jonathan and Drew Scott), you will also enjoy their Thursday morning keynote presentation.

One of my favorite “goto” sites is Cyndi’s List (cyndislist.com).  For over 20 years, Cyndi Ingle has assisted us with our family history research by offering a free website which organizes myriad websites into research oriented categories.  She has recently added a new category which focuses on the various laws which have affected our ancestors over the centuries. Trying to identify property and marriage laws in a particular time frame has always been a challenge for me, so I know Cyndi’s new category will be very helpful.

I have been spending a lot of time with the digitized images which are available at FamilySearch, particularly the Archdiocese of Chicago cemetery interment records.  These are individual file cards which were made for each burial in the Catholic Cemeteries in Lake and Cook Counties.  Since my Dad’s side is Chicago Irish, I have a lot of interment records to locate and record.

I have also been learning some Danish, at least enough to glean the pertinent information from the church registers of what was once the Duchy of Slesvig (now southern most Denmark).  One of my sister-in-law’s ancestors was born in Slesvig in 1862 and FamilySearch has the parish registers in digital format.  Finding the records has been fairly easy; the challenge has been interpreting the handwriting and then translating the document.  Lots of fun work ahead!

Until next time,

Maureen