Tag Archives: social media

Not the First…and Not the Last

I feel compelled to address the current pandemic and how it has affected many genealogical researchers.  For me, I spend most of my time in my office which is in the basement of our home. So being down there all day (and sometimes all night!) is not a big stretch. But I can completely sympathize with just about everyone else who more than likely aren’t mushrooms! Getting out every morning, going somewhere – anywhere – meeting people face to face is something I don’t think anyone after this is over will take for granted.

So how does this directly affect me? First, I was concerned that I would lose a great deal of business. But clients have been happy to meet virtually or at the very least, on the phone. Remember the phone??? With classes and lectures, I can tell you that I average about 2 Zoom meetings a day! I was pleasantly surprised especially by senior center whose program directors tell me that residents have grown fond of being able to participate in these types of meetings.

I had arranged to hold a fund raiser for our church which was due to start the week the pandemic hit. Rather than meeting at the church which was now out of the question, or cancelling altogether and returning the funds collected, I proposed a Zoom class. All but 1 person participated. They were “all in!” And it went smoothly once I helped anyone new to webinars get accustomed to the right buttons to push. I was happy, the participants were happy and, of course, the church was happy!

I happen to be involved with several genealogical societies. Not one meeting has had to be cancelled including the Board and Delegate meetings for NERGC 2021, the biennial conference of the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium. It was planned to be held at the MassMutual Conference Center in Springfield, MA where it was held quite successfully in 2017

MassMutual 2008

MassMutual Center, Springfield, MA

The actual conference next April is another story, however, as we work out what direction we will go in. We may go totally virtual for 2021 and then hopefully be back to normal in 2023. Or postpone 2021 into 2022. Either way, we’ll come up with a solution that will work for conference attendees, speakers and vendors.

Virtual meetings are not foreign to me at all. My first remote speaker was Pat Richley-Erickson a/k/a Dear Myrtle, your Friend in Genealogy. It was in 2014 and I was a nervous wreck! Pat had been doing webinars weekly which is how I became familiar with how it all works. Thanks to her support and the support of “Cousin Russ,” the event was a resounding success. When the speaker allowed us to record the presentations, we put the recording behind the members only paywall. All speakers appreciate that and only a few will ask us to leave it up for a limited period of time. I understand that especially with a topic that is dynamic and the substance can change as time goes on. DNA is a great example.

Below is the title slide from a presentation by Melissa Barker, a genealogist and the Archivist for the Houston County Tennessee Archives.

image

Melissa Barker, Genealogist, Archivist for the Houston County, Tennessee Archives

She presented her Power Point and supplied a handout. She was at her office in Tennessee and we were at our meeting room in Agawam, MA. This was just one of the dozens of recorded presentations I’ve been involved in.

With all the colleagues with whom I communicate, I believe most are soldiering along as much if not more than usual. There’s no libraries or archives or court houses to visit. Just about the only source in the short term for any kind of research other than emailing document requests is the internet. This is when I’m grateful for the enormous list of websites that are currently available for research, the Facebook pages that are a well kept secret for genealogists, the webinars that have always been available with many that had a cost attached to them are now free, genealogical societies that have adapted to virtual presentations are all resources that we are collectively taking advantage of.

Speaking of Facebook, I always ask the attendees at any of my classes to raise their hand if they’re an active user of Facebook. Mostly, I get surprised looks with about 25% of the class raising their hands. Sometimes I’ll ask them to guess how many of those pages are genealogically oriented. I usually get “hundreds” and sometimes “…maybe a thousand?” I want to mention Katherine R. Willson, a professional genealogist from Michigan, and her incredibly comprehensive list of genealogy related Facebook pages. You can access her website Social Media Genealogy here: https://socialmediagenealogy.com/genealogy-on-facebook-list/. There you can download a 419 page PDF file with links to over 16,000 Facebook pages! I don’t advise printing it! But getting that document on your computer or tablet or into your GoogleDrive account or other cloud storage that you are using will be a great tool for you to use. Imagine, 16,000 Facebook pages!

Our collective situation is certainly a life changer. But we can fall back on all the plagues and pandemics that have caused massive upheaval around the world. The Black Plague, Spanish Influenza, Covid-19 along with many more. The bad news is that they were all profoundly disruptive and caused tens of thousands of premature deaths of the young as well as the old. The good news is simple: humanity survived.

Facebook Genealogy

Train Station, Evergreen, ALIn nearly every class or lecture I conduct on genealogy research techniques and strategies, I ask the group, “Who here is on Facebook?” The reaction ranges from a raised hand to snickers to an adamant “NO” here and there. Then I explain that there’s more to Facebook than reporting the BLT you may have had for lunch or whatever mundane activity  you’re involved with.

And here’s why I encourage everyone with an interest in family history research to take a long hard look at Facebook (FB) and where it can take you. If you want to tell your friends that you just saw a great movie or your favorite TV show, I have no problem with that at all. All I’m pointing out here is that there’s more to on-line research than Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org.

I’m here to tell you that there are 10,029 genealogically and historically oriented FB pages in the United States listed on 288 pages with an index. That, according to Katherine R. Willson, is a list that grows constantly! Her website at SocialMediaGenealogy.com contains a link to a PDF file that you   are welcome to download and keep. The direct link to that file is here. But I urge you to take a look at her site and take in all of the information you can that she provides.

So that takes care of the US. But many of us do a significant amount of research in Canada. For that list, we turn to Gail Dever and her site, Genealogy à la Carte. This link will take you to the page where she talks about her work on the list. I encourage you to surf around her site, click on some of the links under “Archives.” The direct link to the page with the PDF is here. Scroll down a bit to find the link to the “Facebook for Canadian Genealogy which was last updated June 2016. She doesn’t list the FB links by number, but there are 26 pages of them!

In either of these files, just pick a subject, perhaps a surname or a hometown. Use CTL+F to open a box where you type in “Smith” without the quotation marks, for example. In the US list, “Smith” gets 48 hits. In other words, there are 48 FB pages that have something to do with Smith. Or just use Katherine’s index.

The same strategy of using CTL+F can be used in the Canadian document. For that matter, CTL+F works in just about any document or web page. Gail’s Canadian list has large groups of page sorted by Province. So you can scroll through or use the CTL+ strategy.

Double Helix - Red and Blue with BandsHere’s how FB has worked for me. I have relatives all over the country. My paternal ancestor arrived in the early 1700’s, a Scots-Irish immigrant. The Scots-Irish element is proven through Y-DNA matches with folks still in Europe. My maternal ancestors include at least one Mayflower ancestor (John Howland) and dozens of post-Mayflower arrivals. In 1621, William Bassett arrived and began the line that includes me, his 9th great grandson.  Many “Great Migration” ancestors arrived after that including Deacon Samuel Chapin, my 8th great grandfather, who first established himself in Roxbury, Massachusetts, then followed William Pynchon to help settle what would become Springfield, Massachusetts. I opened an FB page titled “Descendants of Deacon Samuel Chapin (1598-1675)” expecting a couple of dozen people asking to join. We now have a little over 125 descendants who have all contributed their specific line from the Deacon to themselves. This has provided me with enough data to complete, or nearly complete, a one-name study of the Chapin line. Since the information began to flow, I have confirmed my relationship to Amelia Earhart, President William Howard Taft, Johnny Appleseed, Harry Chapin, Marion Morrison a/k/a John Wayne and dozens of other individuals who have been in the public eye.

One of the other  FB pages is titled “Find-A-Grave Genealogy Discussion” for which I had moderate expectations. Today there are nearly 7,000 members who ask and answer questions, tell their Find-A-Grave stories and in general, provide a great deal of help to other researchers. On that site, I have 4 co-administrators to keep up with it all!

I have a few more pages, most involving genealogical or historical research. And I belong to about 40 others. Nearly all of these pages have proven helpful. They provide information I’m looking for and information I’d like to share while allowing me the opportunity to meet hundreds of like-minded people with whom I collaborate.

Facebook isn’t the only game in town. Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and others can be effective tools to assist you in your hunt for those elusive relatives.

So, are you on Facebook? Instagram? Pinterest? Twitter? If you are, that’s great but follow all the privacy and security recommendations. If you’re not, this could be a great time to get started.

Don’t forget to stop in at my Old Bones Genealogy of New England website. Background, services, lists of classes/lectures and a curious link called “Useful Documents.” Click it then scroll down a bit to the link that will take you to my DropBox folder where there are hundreds of forms, documents, and other useful things.

Use the QR code to the right to get to Old Bones Genealogy of New England:

Old Bones Genealogy of New England

Old Bones Genealogy of New England