My Summary of Ancestry Updates and A Surprise From FamilySearch

Where to Find Some COOL New Family History Stuff !

Did you know that there is a wealth of information STILL available in Ancestry’s online RootsTech 2025 Expo Hall, and they organized it all neatly for us?

In the following categories:

• Main Stage and Classes - easy way to find those gems from this year!

• Live Recaps with Crista Cowan - always fun!

• In Booth Demos***

and

• Ancestry Learning Tracks - curated videos from previous year’s RootsTechs that are still GREAT to watch:

Getting Started and The Most Out of Ancestry

Quick Tips and Ticks

Ancestry Studios

Research Around the World and

AncestryDNA

About those in-booth demo videos…

If you want to see a longer in-depth look at what all was newly released with Ancestry at RootsTech last month: Just.Go.Watch.theBoothDemos! Especially “What’s New” and “DNA”.

These are the demonstrations that we got to see in person in the Expo Hall booth, recorded for all to view at home (and continue to review! YAY!)

Use this link: RootsTech Expo Hall, scroll down and select Ancestry.

And then check out the rest of the vendors, there’s still lots to see!

Latest Big Thing: Ancestry Networks

I am unsure about how Networks will help me right now, I have lots of ideas though!

Its exciting and great to have a tool to track those people (FANS), but how will that help me see the connections? Will entering them in a Network be more data entry time that may be better spent tracking down DNA matches? I’m going to need some type of charting function to show patterns and overlap, etc. right?

There are some suggestions out there: employees, ship manifests, census pages, teams, clubs, neighborhoods, enslaved families, military units.

I’m going to start with my grandpa’s Hobbs, New Mexico friends and co-workers, first living in the oil field “camp” and then moving “into town”, adding names from the diary of my teenage aunt, as she chronicled who visited, who was sick and who she went out with (lots of friends!). I have lots of letters between my grandparents and my mom during that time, too, as she was grown and flown.

The next network I’m going to create using the census records (1880, 1900 and 1910) and 1880-1930 newspaper for the small Colorado mining town that both my grandparents were born and raised in. One great-grandfather was a merchant and had a general store and saloon. His wife played piano at the Baptist Church and her diary is full of visitors and the sick friends she took care of. My other great-grandfather had a trout lake and a homestead outside town, was a bit of a mystery and perhaps a scoundrel. That great-grandma divorced him, moved to “town” and took in laundry to support herself and the children, married briefly again, this husband died tragically, and shortly after, she remarried a third time, to the local Marshall. Both grandmothers were active in the small town civic clubs. Can you imagine the network I can create of all those names and relationships, and what that might mean to other descendants of that town once I can share it?

Crista Cowan has a great information about networks video on the Ancestry Youtube channel called, “Find a More Complete Story of Your Ancestor’s Lives” and she also recommends these two videos in the RootsTech Ancestry Expo Hall booth:

Nicca Sewell Smith: “Discover Ancestry Networks: A Look at Trask 250” and

Lisa Elzey: “Discover Ancestry Networks: A Look at a D-Day Flying Fortress Crew”.

Here is a good indepth post from Lisa Lisson on her blog Are You My Cousin? Genealogy entitled, “New Ways to Solve Old Mysteries: Ancestry.com’s Networks Explained.

Right now, this is in beta, meaning it is only available to Pro Tools users. I would recommend turning it on and give yourself a month to try it out.

What do you think? Is your mind exploding yet? How will you use these? Or will you? I need your ideas and insights. Please drop in the comments or join the Rootsquad chat.

FamilySearch Surprises

And now, shifting gears. I can tell you one thing that FamilySearch is really really good at and that is Discovery. They are not big on announcements, you almost have to wait until its tested. I like the cautious factor of the release of Full Text Search - it has been ‘in the works’ for YEARS before it went to beta testers…

And if you haven’t heard or checked out CETs yet, those are quietly being developed as well. Yes, user controlled Research or Collab trees - sign up to be an early release tester under FamilySearch Labs if you are interested.

Now, the big release of the FamilySearch “AI Research Assistant”. Play around with it, if you haven’t yet. Wow. Just wow. I predict that this will quietly get much and much better, perhaps with us seeing as often as weekly updates. Did you notice how it didn’t even go to Labs? Do you know why? Because its innovative and free, and been getting lots of user testing already. Check it out.

Thank You For Listening, FamilySearch !! My Big Surprise This Week

I regularly search the Books section of FamilySearch for my “Brick Wall Peeps”. And I noticed a very very wonderful surprise, as I entered my guy “Moses Ogle”. Look closely underneath…

Yes, you see that correctly. Full Text Search. They have added the full functionality of searching INSIDE the digitized books. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

As part of a FamilySearch new product focus group, the last question they always ask is: “If you were given a magic wand for this product, what would you want it to do?”

And last spring, I replied, “Full Text Search in Books”.

I’m sure I’m not the only one, but it looked to me like they said, “Huh. That’s pretty easy. Let’s do that.”

Dare I say it?

“Game-Changer” AGAIN. BOOM. FamilySearch Developers Rock.This.Thing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Go look for your people in the books now, yall! Or setup a free appointment with me, and I’ll show you how. In person at the library or on zoom, just let me know!

Now excuse me, I will be busy for a few months doing Networks and Full Text Book Searches.

Wait, I forgot to rant about Ancestry’s Sticky Notes feature! <headslap>