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There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the new and innovative RootsTech conference
in Salt Lake City. (Check
out my blog about it here.) The wide range of family history and technology developer
classes was something we really haven’t seen in mainstream genealogy conferences.
And the exhibit hall was hands-down the most exciting high-tech genealogy space (and
most expensive!) that family historians have ever seen.

It was quite amazing considering it was a first time event for FamilySearch. As Jay
Verkler commented in my interview with him, they fully expected to make a few mistakes
here and there, and strive for continuous improvements. The commitment has been made:
RootsTech will be an annual event, and it will just get better and better.

While FamilySearch’s RootsTech roared onto the genealogy scene, it was the Who Do
You Think You Are? Live event in London (Check
out my blog about it here.) that featured a simple and yet very effective technological
component: hands-on computer access.

As I scoured the vast aisles of the Olympia Conference Centre, everywhere I looked
attendees were not just browsing exhibits, but they were also interacting with them.
While there were banks of computers provided by FamilySearch in both the Internet
Café area and the Family History Library area of the exhibit hall at RootsTech, a
hands on experience was not the norm at most vendor booths. Of course, the challenge
for vendors is that power hookup at events like these can be quite costly, and yet
exhibit stalls from the largest to the smallest seem to be able to pull it off at
Who Do You Think You Are? Live.

Having the ability to put their hands on keyboards, test drive software, search for
ancestors kept attendees fully engaged and prolonged their stay at each stall. The
level of engagement achieved at WDYTYA? Live is a great role model for future RootsTech
conferences. Perhaps FamilySearch can work to negotiate lower fees in exchange for
a larger number of power and Internet hookups. As so often happens with technology,
it’s the access and hardware that tend to be the biggest hurdles, as there is no lack
of interest or innovation!

And speaking of innovation, check out my newest video interview with Mike Dowdle of
GenerationStation. Mike is the perfect example of someone who saw a need, had an idea,
and succeeded in converging technology and family history into a cool new website
tool.

You can view many more videos recorded at the RootsTech 2011 conference at the the
Genealogy Gems Podcast Channel at YouTube.

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Genealogy blogs are serving a more and more important role in family history research. Anyone with internet access can maintain their own blog, sharing their best tips, research stories, information about their ancestors and more. Even our Family
Tree Firsts blogger Nancy Shively has stumbled upon distant cousins by chronicling
her research online.

Blogs are invaluable to the online genealogy community; that’s why we started the
Family Tree 40, our annual roundup of the best genealogy blogs as decided by our readers.
The results are in — visit
FamilyTreeMagazine.com for a roundup of all the winners.

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If you’re not a basketball fan, join Family Tree Magazine contributor Lisa
A. Alzo for her March Madness for Genealogists free webinar series. Space is limited
to the first 100 attendees, so you must reserve a spot to participate.

The available webinars include:
Getting Started in Genealogy: The Basics
Saturday, March 12, 1:00 p.m. EST
Register here.

Silent Voices: Tips and Tricks for Tracing Female Ancestors
Saturday, March 19, 1:00 p.m. EST
Register here.

Life Stories: How to Write a Compelling Family History Narrative
Saturday, March 26, 1:00 p.m. EST
Register here.

Read more about the free webinars on Lisa’s blog The
Accidental Genealogist.

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Ancestry.com ended 2010 with 1.4 million subscribers, up 31 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009. The genealogy website also posted sales of $82.7 million for 2010, up 38 percent from a year earlier. Read
the full financial report here.

If you have a British black sheep in the family, you may be in luck. Ancestry.co.uk
has published parole
records of some of the United Kingdom female prisoners sentenced during 1853 to 1871,
and 1883 to 1187. The database includes 4,400 records and 500 photos, and is available
to U.S. Ancestry.com members with a world subscription. Click
here to search the Licenses of Parole for Female Convicts collection.

 
Ever wish you could access your family history easily anywhere? Now there’s an app
for that. Ancestry.ca has unveiled a new genealogy app for iPad and iPhone. The Ancestry
app features multi-generational family trees complete with images of family records
and photos, giving users access to their family history on the go. The
app is available as a free download in the iTunes Store.

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We’re celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Civil War by devoting our May 2011 issue
of Family Tree Magazine to the war between the states. In this issue, we give
you the inside scoop on tracing Blue and Gray ancestors, tips for preserving military
uniforms, a guide to ordering an official military grave marker and more. It even
includes a special excerpt from our new book Life
in Civil War America.

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Spoiler Alert: If you don’t already know what happened during Lionel Richie’s
episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” you are about to find out.

Singer-songwriter Lionel Ritchie explored his great-grandfather’s history on his episode
of “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Richie began his journey at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where his mother, father
and grandmother were professors. Gathering clues with his sister, Richie uses his
grandmother’s Social Security application to find her father’s name — John Louis Brown.

He heads to his grandmother’s birthplace of Nashville to learn more about J.L. Richie
searches an old marriage registry and finds J.L. married Volenderver Towson on April
6, 1890. An archivist then shows Richie a copy of a divorce complaint, revealing J.L.
was 50 when he married the 15-year-old Towson. A judge grants the divorce because
J.L. abandoned his young wife for over two years.

Perplexed, Richie searches city directories from the 1880s, which list J.L. as a member
of a black fraternal organization Knights of Wise Men. The group, founded in 1879,
offered financial benefits to all members for illness and death. The Knights of Wise
Men was a prototype of modern organizations that propelled the Civil Rights Movement,
and J.L. was the national leader of the group.

According to an 1891 Chattanooga, Tenn., newspaper article, the Knights of Wise Men
eventually collapsed because the group had to pay out a large amount of death benefits
at once during a small pox epidemic; the treasurer then ran off with what was left
of the money. For
more on researching African-American ancestors in newspapers, see our Family Tree
University independent study course here.

A 1929 Chattanooga city directory reveals J.L. was caretaker at a black cemetery,
Pleasant Gardens. J.L.’s death certificate indicates he was buried in that cemetery.
The document also lists J.L.’s father as Morgan Brown and his mother as unknown.

Richie visits Pleasant Gardens, distraught to see the graves overrun by weeds and
grass. J.L. is buried in the pauper section of the cemetery, where most of the graves
are unmarked.

Richie then finds J.L.’s pension application. At first he thinks J.L. was a soldier
in the Civil War, but he was actually body servant — a butler to soldiers. Slaves
were hired out for this dangerous job, and free blacks did it for low pay. J.L.’s
owner was listed on the pension application as Morgan W. Brown, meaning J.L. could
have been a slave and his owner could have also been his father. Learn
more about tracing slave ancestors here.

At the Nashville Public Library, Lionel discovers there are two Morgan Browns in the
area: Dr. Morgan Brown and his son Morgan W. Brown. Dr. Brown’s journal reveals he
owned a working slave plantation and one of the slaves, Mariah, gave birth to a son,
Louis, in 1839, an unusual notation for a master to make in his journal. Dr. Brown
was about 80 years old when Louis was born, but his son Morgan W. Brown was 39 at
the time. It is still unclear which Morgan Brown is J.L.’s father.

Dr. Brown wrote his will during Mariah’s pregnancy, granting Mariah and her child
freedom, land and money for education of the child upon Dr. Brown’s death. It is unclear
if the executor of the estate, Morgan W. Brown, carried out Dr. Brown’s wishes. For
more on researching African American ancestors, see our guide here.

“WDYTYA” airs Fridays at 8pm EST on NBC. Check the Genealogy Insider blog for a brief
recap of each episode.

Surname Forum Activity
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you have my great grandparents lineage down on your website mary manley (aka sadie was my grandmother.they were 6 grandchildren in this family and i am the only girl. still researching my family coming from ireland to the U.S. on the princeton in 1850.
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