ROOTS & BRANCHES

RootsTech, sponsored by FamilySearch. Org and clearly the world’s largest genealogy gathering, will offer some 200 speakers over three days in Salt Lake City, Utah, from March 6–8.

A bunch of readers are likely to see where this is going: I’ll be one of those 200 speakers at the conference—which carries the simple theme of “Discover”—and it’s not a complete surprise that all three of the presentations (which will be presented in-person and not available online) in which I’m involved are German themed.

On the conference’s opening day (Thursday, March 6), I’ll be part of a panel discussion with Germany-based professional Andrea Bentschneider and Germanology Unlocked’s Katherine Schober with the title “Unlocking German Ancestry: Expert Strategies for Finding and Interpreting German Records.”

I’ll be stressing the importance of finding every American record of your German-speaking ancestors as the bridge to determining the village of origin for immigrants. Bentschneider, the owner of the German Genealogy Collective, will cover the records you can only access in Germany. Schober will focus on her specialty as a translator and give an overview of the interrelated interpretive skills needed to successfully work with German-language records: Vocabulary and grammar; German cursive script and fraktur font; and translation into English.

On the conference’s last day (Saturday, March 8), I’ll team with Rich Venezia, a top expert in immigration records, and again with Schober for a “Power Hour” presentation titled, “Germans, Coming and Going: Essentials of Exit and Arrival Records.”

For this fast-paced hour, I’ll be talking about the thousands of records documenting German emigrants found by the late Werner Hacker, while Schober will focus upon permissions to leave the German states and Venezia will talk about passenger arrival lists.

On the middle day of the conference, I’ll be going solo with a two-hour hands-on workshop titled “Using All the Tools for German Genealogy Online.”

My goal is to offer how-to’s on each of the most popular websites for German genealogy, from MeyersGaz.org to the new German Genealogy Resource Map. Pre-registration and a fee of $25 will be required to attend this session.

RootsTech is produced by FamilySearch.org, the genealogy mega-website owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Registration for the virtual RootsTech is free; the in-person option costs just $129 for three days (or $79 for a one-day pass) and has many offerings not available online. To register for either, go to the URL,  https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/

FamilySearch.org and the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake are huge one-two punch in the genealogy world.  Supplementing these many records is the FamilySearch Wiki, a genealogy encyclopedia with articles, maps and other research aids that also spans the globe of family history information.

FamilySearch.org’s website, www.familysearch.org, is the gateway to the records, wiki and webinars. Creating a free login in required to access some of the information available.