Let’s Talk Genealogy Discussions

Tidbits and Take-away from Recent Meet-ups.

Upcoming events

February 22, 2024

• Comparisons of genealogy software products which organize inherited family files (one such example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_genealogy_software)
  

  courtesy of pexels.com

• Before posting anything online, understand a site’s Terms, Agreements, and Privacy rules. For example, who owns the data once it is uploaded, will the data be altered or combined with other data without contacting you?
• Recommendation: Use a software program that stores information on your computer rather than on a website. Some programs incorporate a site’s data in your software without posting to its website.
• Obtain written consent from each living person you wish to include in a family tree, whether only for yourself, “just for family” or publication (online or in print). This provides some degree of protection if distributed to family and others. A parent may give consent for themselves but not their children!
• Photos and copyright; DNA; referred to https://www.legalgenealogist.com/
• What happens to a priest’s personal belongings after death? Do surviving relatives receive them? (Contact the man’s religious governing body.)
• Tips to identify the mother of a woman who was born at a home / charitable institution for unwed mothers (If a religious or community group sponsored/oversaw the institution, are the records archived somewhere?)
• Good starting places for research in a new location (https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Main_Page ; a genealogy society in the county of interest; a county or state research guide)
• Illinois State Prairie Pioneer Certificate Program (See Projects and Initiatives at https://ilgensoc.org/)

January 25, 2024

• How to get copies of a court document which partitioned land among the heirs
• Area residents who went to the California gold fields in the 1840s, 1850s,
• Artificial intelligence for genealogists,
• Trying to overcome writer’s block.