(The tools and tabs listed here may not be new to you, but they are new to me, or I’ve forgotten them and found them again, lol.) This post and the many posts I hope to write in the future will be dedicated to all the blogs and tools I come across that I’d like to keep for myself, but perhaps they would be helpful to you as well. Some weeks the list may be short, and some may be long. It’s my way of cleaning up all the tabs I open, thinking I will come back, only to find myself with too many tabs open. At today’s writing, I had fifty-four, but I won’t write about them all as some are multiple ..read more

(Tina Turner 50th Anniversary Tour – Creative Common Philip Spittle, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons) Sometimes it’s pretty astonishing how someone you’ve never met can impact your life. Yesterday, May 24, 2023, the world learned that the iconic singer; Tina Turner died at 81, and it felt so surreal because I’d just been thinking about her a couple of days ago and about a trip, I’d gone on with my mom. I know many people can tell you the history of rock and roll or tell your stories about every concert they’ve attended, and I’m always in awe. Yes ..read more

In case you haven’t heard, on June 1, 2023, Library and Archives Canada will release the 1931 Canadian Census to the public. That’s just three short weeks away. This will be an exciting day for genealogists whose families lived in Canada. The 1931 Canadian Census was taken on June 1, 1931. This was the seventh comprehensive decennial census since Canadian Confederation on July 1, 1867. The total population of Canada in 1931 was 10,376,379 people, an increase of 1,587,896 people since the last census count in 1921. There was a census in 1926, but this was a special census conducted by the Cana ..read more

When I started writing this blog, I realized that “NEW” is relative. Meaning new could be as of today, or if you haven’t been to the Ancestry site for a while, then “new” could be a year ago. So I’m going to assume that you’ve been on Ancestry since May of 2022, and therefore, you’re aware of the Sideview Technology launched in April 2022. If you didn’t, you can read my blog HERE. Sideview Matches In September, Sideview was expanded to our DNA match lists. Because Ancestry has so many users worldwide, this feature was rolled out over time. In fact, I didn’t get it until November, and I was ov ..read more

Screen snapshot from the TODAY Show (Tissue alert) If you have not seen the linked video segment from “The Today Show” on April 21st about Shutterfly deleting peoples’ photos, please watch it now. (note you might have to click through a commercial before you get to watch it, and this is a tissue alert, I know I got sad). Earlier this year, Shutterfly announced that they would no longer store the photos of any of their customers who had not made a purchase in the past 18 months. Yes, they announced it, and I remember even posting on my social media to check if any of my followers had photos sto ..read more

When was the last time you wondered what would happen to your genealogy in the future? I think about this quite regularly. I wonder whether I’ll get all my organizing done before I leave this earth, and I wonder if anyone will be interested in it. More importantly, I don’t want my family to handle it one garbage bag at a time. As a baby boomer, I realize that my generation, whether they are genealogists or not, has to deal with downsizing and dealing with all the things we might have collected. My mom wasn’t a genealogist, but I actually remember my mom telling me, “I don’t want to leave you ..read more

Good morning, Today started early for me. One of those mornings where you wake up feeling refreshed, but you know it’s far too early to get up because it’s still not light outside. But it did allow me to finish the book I was reading by Barbara Rae Venture called I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever. I wanted to read this because Barbara started out like me, working on adoption and unknown parentage cases, and ended up being the person who solved the Golden State Killer Case. I’ve followed this case since April 24, 2 ..read more

The theme for RootsTech 2023 is Uniting It’s March 6th, and my feet are still tired. I got home Saturday from three days at #RootsTech2023 and logged 46,538 steps. I’m not complaining because I try to get at least 6,000 steps every day, and it’s helping me with my trend of making that goal. (I’m up to 18 days straight). I say three days, but in fact, my RootsTech adventure started on Wednesday, February 28th, not because I arrived at Salt Lake City but because that evening I went to the joint event of Diahan Southard and Nathan Dylan Goodwin. The event was a murder mystery type dinner, but it ..read more

You know how you wake up in the morning and think, Today I’m going to get this, and this, and this accomplished, and you are feeling strong. You get a coffee and sit at your computer and have a quick look at Facebook (I know, right), and you see a post on Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques, which references a blog from 23andMe describing their new tree algorithm that helps clean up the tree you have on their site. Well, I’m all about that, so I go on to read the article (click HERE but be careful; you may go down a similar rabbit hole). I’m interested because when 23andMe first launched ..read more

It’s only a few days until RootsTech 2023 begins, and I can’t wait because I haven’t been on a plane since 2020, when we have the last in-person event. As I’ve done in the past, I’ll be searching the Marketplace of RootsTech searching for the perfect prize to giveaway. What will the prize be? Well, that’s just it; the prize will be a surprise, but it will be valued at over $100 US. You can enter whether you are attending virtually or live. You will receive two entries automatically, and you can receive additional entries just by going to the RootsTech website, my blog site, Facebook, and more ..read more