The Best of Joy for 2017!

Pinterest

thefhguide.com
thefhguide.com/blog

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you have all been enjoying the holidays!Very soon it will be business as usual for all of us! 

There are so many rewards for doing our family history! One of them is collaborating with others. 8 years ago I met a wonderful man who wrote and asked me about someone on our Italian line. He was trying to find his great grandfather in a little village in the province of Genova, Italy called Tasso. As we collaborated together over the next several years we became good friends and also established that he and my husband are, indeed, cousins descending from several common ancestors. Often times the collaboration stops there but not in this case.

We have worked together on his Italian database of over 8000 names and made connections with some living cousins as a result of mostly Stephen's unending efforts. As a result this week we gathered together as cousins from three states.

My mother-in-law, Gloria, is now 91 years old. She has felt for a long time that she is the only Ferrera left since everyone she is related to with that surname is now dead. Much to her delight this week she met Stephen for a second time and his brother Andy for the first time and a relative and his wife and son from Pennsylvania. Richard from PA turned out to be Gloria's second cousin, they share Great Grandparents!

Andy, Jim, Gloria, Bonnie, Richard, Anne, Stephen & Mark

8 cousins!

The kind of joy this brought to my husband, Jim, and his mother and to Richard from PA and our two cousins from Utah was unbelievable. It is one thing to find records and sources citations for ancestors and relatives but to actually meet them is the ultimate. You know the old saying that "Blood is thicker than water". It is definitely true.  Richard bought his wife and son and the joy for all of us was amazing.

So sometimes when we get involved in our genealogy we get way more than we bargained for in the way of blessings.

Twitter And Family History

Pinterest

The Family History Guide

The Family History Guide Blog

Good Morning Everyone! I hope you're enjoying your weekend. I have noticed that a lot more people tend to like to read and catch up then. I've been thinking a lot about the social medias and how we can use them for our family history. I want to give you some information on some of them and their unique features and options. My first post on Facebook was about Facebook itself. You can find an enhanced version of that post on our blog found at:

This week I have been focusing on Twitter. Have you ever heard someone discount Twitter because they don't care what someone else had for lunch that day? That probably came from Twitter being limited to 140 characters (including spaces) and what can you possibly say of importance within that limited space.

When I started tweeting for the Family History Guide (The FH Guide) it was tricky to get a message and your hashtags  and tweets in that allotted space, but it definitely can be done with practice. Twitter is all about brevity but you can add links. However, and this is big, Twitter has just this month lengthened the character allowance to 280 characters. Double the space worldwide!

The purpose of Twitter is to share information, connect like-minded people to their target groups and to have conversations within those communities. So for us as genealogists and family historians it is all about learning and teaching, social engagement, and target groups.

Many high profile individuals in the genealogy community have Twitter accounts that you can follow to learn and ask individual questions. As an example, Ron Tanner of FamilySearch/Family Tree has an hour long, live Q&A every week on his Twitter page. You can send in a question during that time and he will answer it on the spot. 

#Hashtags are used to identify target groups or companies like #familysearch #ancestry #myheritage #findmypast #genealogy #familyhistory.

You can search for the #hashtags or people or companies (the fh guide) in the search bar and all the tweets will be filtered with those labels/tags.

The underling purpose about all social media is engagement with other people. If we just read and don't engage we are only getting half of the benefit. With the click of a mouse we can like, comment or share with others.

To me this is a nice way to show that we support and thank someone for giving us something that can be of help to us in our individual pursuits. Twitter allows us to like, comment and retweet anything we wish on the platform.

To find out more about Twitter we can Google it or YouTube it to get an overview video tutorial. Two of the things I like about Twitter are meeting new people in our field of interest and sharing about the fantastic aspects of The Family History Guide. Check it out it may perfect for you!

How Facebook Can Help You Learn More About Your Genealogy

Pinterest

The Family History Guide

The Family History Guide Blog

These past couple of months I have had lots of questions about what social media has to do with family history and genealogy.  Most people can name several social media platforms but don’t recognize that there are hundreds and hundreds of Social Media platforms.  In the broadest sense of the definition, social media is any platform that offers interaction with other users through comments, replies and even revision.  A couple you may not have thought of as social media are YouTube and Wikipedia. Most of us think of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and blogs.

In this realm of social media, Facebook is the #1  platform in the world right now.  According to their stats, over 2 billion users sign on to Facebook monthly and over 1 billion check in daily.  Facebook is so much more than simply a place to chat with people.   With that kind of visibility we need to think about how we can use Facebook as more than a news feed for updates on friends.  We can ask ourselves how can I use this to go beyond the usual and ordinary. One way is to use Facebook as a search engine.

The Family History Guide contains a video of instructions about Facebook allowing individuals and  groups to create special interest pages on any topic.  We have two Facebook pages for The Family History Guide (public)  and The Family History Guide for Trainers, Consultants and Directors.(closed group).  These groups can be found by simply adding the name of the group to the search bar at the top of the Facebook page. Facebook pages can be open to everyone or closed.   If you want to gain access to the closed Family History Guide page for  Trainers, Consultants and Directors page you need just ask to be admitted.

You might want to create a special page that is closed to everyone except your family.  If you have a special interest like family history, you can find thousands of pages for localities, surnames, etc.  They are  pages where you can contribute and share with others researching in your same area of interest. One site alone has captured links for over 11,000+ genealogy user groups and family history enthusiasts.

This Genealogy on Facebook list is unbelievable.  (Clink on the red link list that takes you to the PDF version of this list.) It is browsable and organized by countries beginning with the United States and it is alphabetical. Kathrine R. Wilson has created this list in a PDF document updated this month.  I mention using this as an example, so you to see how social media can be helpful in doing your research and finding others working in your same localities and often with the same surnames.  Facebook is simply an option when you are trying to find new information. The more resources we are aware of the more successful we can be with those difficult brick walls we sometimes face.

The Family History Guide provides you with quite a bit of information on Using Facebook to further your Family History work here.  Look at Goal 3 Choice C for Facebook ideas, articles and videos.  Or look at the whole Social Media section on the same page.

Coincidentally this past week, James Tanner, Chairman of The Board for the Family History Guide Association was also writing about Facebook on his blog.

He said,” As a genealogist, the content on Facebook can be mined for information. The key is using Facebook as a database for searching rather than a news stream”. I agree with that and using the search bar on Facebook like you would any search engine with key words to narrow your search results to genealogy, or whatever you want to pursue, be it surnames, locality, etc.

Not to discount the sharing of currents events with family and friends, Facebook is a wonderful way to stay connected and at the same time even create a journal that can be transformed into a nice family yearbook. This is especially nice if every family has contributed some things throughout the year.   We make a book of these posts every year and it is a big hit at our family reunions.

Another thing Facebook is very good for is finding living relatives. As an example, I may have found a relative in the 1940 census that is deceased now but if I see the names of his young children on the census, I may be able to find his descendants with that surname alive and well and easy to reach to gather additional information on the family. I have met three cousins in my family in this way in the last few years. Be creative in how you use the social media platforms to help you accomplish your family history goals.
I hope that these tips may have helped you see beyond the surface of social media and have given you some ideas of how you can use the resource to benefit you in your family history work.

AuthorBonnie MattsonPosted onNovember 11, 2017CategoriesSocial Medi

Missionary Training And The Family History Guide

Pinterest

The Family History Guide

The Family History Guide Blog

I have a friend that is just on day two of her full time mission for The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints.  She will be serving in Salt Lake at the big Family History Library near Temple Square.  This is a photo collage she posted on Facebook last night.

Can you see what their training tool is?  Yep, the Family History Guide!  I am so excited about this.  I am hoping that I can keep in touch with her throughout her mission and we can learn more  about how the whole training is done and how she implements it and how all will benefit!  We've been told that the entire Family History Guide (as in every single link) was carefully researched thoroughly, vetted and approved for use by the Church Correlation Department and FamilySearch.

I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before but it was just so exciting to see it in action through my friend's real life experience.

"It doesn't get any better than this!" as Jim would say!

Family History Guide Goes To RootsTech 2018

Pinterest

The Family History Guide

The Family History Guide Blog

The Family History Guide Association is delighted to participate in Rootstech 2018! In addition to having a booth in the Expo Hall all four days, our vice-president and executive director, Bob Ives, will be presenting Introduction to The Family History Guide on Friday, March 2nd at 3 pm.

CLASS DESCRIPTION:

Attendees will be able to successfully navigate the free The Family History Guide website (www.thefhguide.com) to get an introduction to family history, and to accelerate their learning and progress with FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, and Findmypast. Objectives that will be covered in the class include: • Understand how The Family History Guide helps make genealogy learning and research easier, more efficient, and more enjoyable • Learn how to find and navigate the features available in The Family History Guide • Find online resources for beginners in family history or beginners in computer skills • Understand the unique learning structure of The Family History Guide, based on Projects, Goals, Choices, and links to learning resources • Explore the four Learning Paths of The Family History Guide: FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, and Findmypast • Learn how to quickly and easily find resources for doing research • Learn how to track family history learning progress through the Tracker system and Exercises • Get a brief introduction to family history activities for families, singles, youth, and children.Difficulty: Beginner

Room: Ballroom J

Session Number: RT9938

Pass: RootsTech

Categories: Methodology

The Family History Guide Association will have a booth in the Giant

Rootstech Expo Hall 

We will join hundreds of exhibitors from around the globe in the Expo Hall all four days of the conference! We will have interactive games, “hands-on” help for learning to do family history using the Family History Guide, and mini-classes throughout the event.

From the Rootstech website:

RootsTech is excited to add a theme to the annual conference: Connect. Belong. We love this concept as it encompasses what family history adds to our lives. We understand that the journey of connecting and belonging is different for everyone, and while each of our experiences and journeys is unique, family history connects us in many different ways and helps us feel a sense of belonging.

Content Review And YOU!

Pinterest

The Family History Guide

The Family History Guide Blog

Did you know that The Family History Guide offers each of us the opportunity to make helpful suggestions regarding the content in The Family History Guide? In the section under the Misc. link on the Homepage  you will see Content Review in the dropdown menu.

"Content Review is the feature you can use to submit a review of website content for The Family History Guide. It is not a rating system but is intended to provide detailed feedback on the Projects, Goals, and Choices in The Family History Guide. Here are the basic steps.

Complete the Content Review Form:

Work through each Choice and each step in the Goal, recording your suggestions and feedback as you go.

Send your feedback to The Family History Guide.
Your feedback will be analyzed and may be included in updates to The Family History Guide."

This is a great opportunity to have your voice heard. Bob does an excellent job of keeping everything fresh, pertinent, and updated. But remember there are thousands of links to various topics in The Family History Guide, so please consider sharing when you find something that has a broken link or needs updating or something you might like to see added at some point. One person can do so much and you never know, that one person just might be YOU!

Redesigns, Additions, Improvements and Updates for October!

Pinterest

The Family History Guide
The Family History Guide Blog



Twenty-two improvements in October!  The Family History Guide is dynamic, always striving to be better!

2017—October

• Redesigned the Vault: it now uses a table format to save space and has links in the header area, among other enhancements. For details, see this blog post.

• In FS Project 2, added information on importing photos to Memories via Facebook, Instagram, and Google accounts.

• Added links to a number of our blogs from the Activities pages.

• Added navigation links in the header area of the following pages: Topics, Introduction, Begin, Media, and Countries.
• Filled in Goal 4 in Project 6 for Ancestry (Using Ancestry Technology).

• Added a section at the bottom of the Home page with links to the Activities pages.

• Added a new webinar on the Media page (Intro menu) for Activities.

• In the Activities pages, added ID #'s for activities and added links to reference areas in The Family History Guide.

• Updated Word Tracker sheets for the Partner pages.

• Added a Canadian province page for Newfoundland.

• Updated the Course Catalog in the Training section to add new courses and mini-classes for the Partner pages, as well as enhancing the catalog. See this post post on our blog site for more details: http://www.thefhguide.com/blog/the-updated-course-catalog/.

• Added links to over 20 new articles from Thoughtco.com on a variety of genealogy topics.

• Made enhancements and corrections to over 30 of the Country pages.

• Added Goals in the Ancestry, MyHeritage, and Findmypast Partner pages for preparing document and photo uploads.

• Added the Twitter logo and link to the bottom of each page on the site.

• Added links to over 40 new FamilySearch videos, for Scotland, Finland, Ireland, Vault, England, Wales, Poland, U.S., Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

• Added links to the Archives Portal Europe for 28 country pages.

• Added CensusLinks.com links for all Canadian provinces.

• Made additional updates to FamilySearch Projects 1 and 2 to adapt to the changes made recently by FamilySearch.

• Updated FamilySearch Projects 1 and 2 to include numerous changes made recently by FamilySearch.

• Added links for finding marriage records in the U.S.

• Did misc. cleanup and improvements in Projects 3-7 for FamilySearch.

• Made some enhancements and corrections to the U.S. country page.

Follow The Family History Blog...Don't Miss Anything!

Pinterest

The Family History Guide

The Family History Guide Blog

Happy Monday Everyone!

This past weekend I was doing some work on a blog that I write for the people I work with in the Oakland Family Search Library that don't use social media but want to know what The Family History Guide has to offer.

That led me to think about the new Family History Guide Blog found at http://www.thefhguide.com/blog.

Did you know that you can subscribe to the blog right from the sidebar of the blog? By subscribing you will receive and email every Monday morning with the current posts. There you will hear from Bob Taylor, Angelle Anderson and me on various aspects of The Family History Guide. Instead of listing them here, follow link above so you can go right to the blog.

Are there things you are looking for in The Family History Guide but don't know how to find them? Bob Taylor has written a wonderfully helpful post that gives you three great tips on how it is done.

We'd love to have you stop in and see what is there. We'd love your comments and feedback or to have you just simply say "Hi".

If you like what you see, subscribe so you won't miss anything.

U.S. County Research Using The Family History Guide

Pinterest

The Family History Guide
The Family History Guide Blog


From Bob Taylor:

When you’re looking for information on your ancestors in the United States, remember to take advantage of resources at the county level. These may include vital records, directories, census records, military records, newspapers, and more.

The Family History Guide can be a great asset for your research. Here are four items to explore when you are looking into doing county research. Each item has a corresponding link in The Family History Guide for reference.

Maps (United States, Goal A2)

Seeing a historic map or county borders that match the time your ancestor may have lived in that location can be very helpful in your research.

1. Go to Choice B: Use Maps Effectively.
2. In step 8, there is a link to a collection of historic maps for most states on the Genealogy Hound site.
3. In step 9, you can see how county borders changed over time, using the Newberry or Randy Majors websites. There is a lot to explore here!

Directories  (United States, Goal A2)

Directories commonly provide street addresses, church and cemetery information, etc., which can help you pin down the location of that elusive ancestor.

1. Go to Choice D: Use City, Town, and County Directories.
2. Watch the videos and read the articles in the Choice to learn more about directories and how to use them.
3. In particular, read the article in step 3 to learn about county directories.

Histories and Timelines  (United States, Goal A2)

These resources help you capture historical information that can provide clues in your research.

1. Go to Choice E: Use Histories and Timelines Effectively.
2. In step 2, watch the video on using county histories in your research.
3. Read the articles in step 3 to learn more about using timelines.

QUIKLinks to County Records  (United States, California Counties)

Note: This example uses California counties, but there are also QUIKLinks to counties in all 50 U.S. states in The Family History Guide.

1. Go to the U.S. state page of interest (California in this example). You can find the states listed under the large picture in the United States page.
2. Click “CA Counties” in the QUIKLinks section under the picture.
3. In the Counties section (bottom of the page), you’ll see a map of current counties as well as links to county resources.
4. Click the county name to access FamilySearch county resources; or the “A” for Ancestry resources; or the “L” for Linkpendium resources. (If you haven’t tried Linkpendium, you are in for a treat!)

In the Vault 

Here are a few resources for county research from our Vault page that you may also find helpful:

• City and County Directories
• Getting Around Burned County Records
• County Records and Genealogy

Happy county researching with The Family History Guide!

Three Tips For Finding What You Need In The Family History Guide

Pinterest

The Family History Guide

The Family History Guide Blog

If you are new to The Family History Guide, you may have wondered how to find a bit of information you are looking for. Let’s say you need to learn about adoption records, or you would like to do some research in Tennessee. How can you find what you’re after, quickly and easily?

This blog post offers three handy tips for finding information in The Family History Guide:

• Topics page
• Site map
• Search bar

Topics Page

You can find the link for the Topics page near the bottom of the Intro menu. This page is an alphabetical list of topics and features in The Family History Guide, with links for each one. Need to learn about adoption records? The link is right there in the A section. Also note the new entries in the header area for FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, and Findmypast. These links take you to sections of the Topics page that deal specifically with Partner topics.

Site Map

The Site Map link is located at the bottom of the Intro menu. The Site Map is a handy page for seeing all the menu items laid out at once, including the countries and U.S. states. So if you can’t remember where a particular country is listed in the Countries page, you can find it alphabetically in the Site map.

Search Bar

The Search bar is located under the main picture on most pages in The Family History Guide. Type in a term you’re looking for on our site, and Google returns a list of popular items to match your search terms.

"Finding What You Need in The Family History Guide"

Thinking About Learning How To Use My Heritage?

Pinterest

The Family History Guide
The Family History Guide Blog

Hi Everyone!

Have you been wondering about My Heritage and thinking about starting an account with them and creating a tree? It is a great idea as they have lot and lots of historical records and have users from every country in the world.  Perhaps if you add a few generations in a tree there, you will find some very useful record matches and move forward more quickly in your research. You may even find a second or third cousin in one of your countries like I did in Sweden.  It doesn't hurt that he speaks Swedish and English either! 

The Family History Guide makes setting up the account very easy. Start here:

http://thefhguide.com/project-1-welcome-mh.html#goal-1

With Family History Guide setting up all the Family Search partner sites very easy. Customize your account here:

http://thefhguide.com/project-1-welcome-mh.html#goal-2

Edit your homepage here:

http://thefhguide.com/project-1-welcome-mh.html#goal-3

Manage Your My Heritage Inbox here:
http://thefhguide.com/project-1-welcome-mh.html#goal-4

Other Tools and Options:
http://thefhguide.com/project-1-welcome-mh.html#goal-5

Using Family Tree Builder (optional) here:

http://thefhguide.com/project-1-welcome-mh.html#goal-6

My Heritage is a great resource for all of us! This site has a basic and premium version. It is free, at any Family Search Library through the portal.

Tip: Open The Family History Guide or this Facebook post
The Family History Guide on one side of your screen and do a side by side view with My Heritage on your monitor <http://myhertiage.com> and it will be very simple to set up your account.

Note : MyHeritage attempts to find people who may be your ancestors. If it finds potential matches, it displays them in a two-person match screen. If no match screen appears, you can proceed to Goal 2 below.
THEFHGUIDE.COM

The Vault Has Been Revised And Updated!

Pinterest

The Family History Guide
The Family History Guide Blog


Have you ever checked out The Vault in The Family History Guide?  To keep the learning portion of the Family History Guide Projects streamlined, the Projects are designed in a way that uses the concept of (Just in Time Learning).  Each goal is very carefully selected to be exactly what you need when you need it.  The Project Goals are purposely limited to five of six choices in many cases.  That way you do not get bogged down with a lot of extra details in that phase of your learning process.  

The Vault is the place where secondary and very helpful resources are stored in case you want to further pursue a certain subject you've been learning about in a Project. I highly recommend looking in the Vault now so you get an idea of what is there.  The following (in Black) is an adaptation of Bob Taylor' Blog piece on the Vault.  Because it contains graphics that I could not just copy and paste over, you can click on the blue link to view it.  

When you view it in the Family History Guide's Official Blog, if you scroll down on the sidebar on the right, you can subscribe to the official TFHG Blog.  This blog to date has three contributors, Bob Taylor, CEO, Angelle Anderson, Manager of The Activities portion of The Family History Guide, and me, Bonnie Mattson, the Social Media Coordinator for The Family History Guide.

Bob Taylor wrote...Do you have a utility room, a food storage room, or a garage with all sorts of great stuff inside but a fair amount of clutter as well? Every so often you just need to roll up your sleeves and tidy up the space. And that’s what we have done with our favorite storage room in The Family History Guide – the Vault.

Let’s step inside and see what’s new. (Nothing scary here, even though Halloween is a coming soon!)

Navigation Links in the Header

We have replaced the vertical Index with a series of links in the header area of the page. To show them, click the Topics link near the top of the page. The links help you get to Vault topics quickly and easily. The links remain visible until you click Topics again. 

New Table Format for Vault Entries

Instead of using long, scrolling lists we now use tables to show the Vault entries. This saves space and cuts down on scrolling.  (This is really a great improvement...Bonnie)

Video links are marked with “V” and are the first entries in tables, followed by the article links (“A”).

No More “Top” Links

The old Vault page had “Top” links every so often to take you back to the top of the page. These have been removed, as it’s easier to navigate now with the header links.

***

We hope you enjoy the new Vault format. Step inside and see what treasures you might find!