8 Billion!! Read on for the official FamilySearch press release.

Nonprofit FamilySearch published its 8 billionth free searchable name from its worldwide historic record collections online. The milestone is even more astounding when you think that each name is someone’s ancestor—8 billion family connections just waiting to be discovered. Explore the free databases at FamilySearch.org.

It’s an incredible feat when you realize that just 1 billion seconds ago, it was 1988, or 1 billion minutes ago the Roman Empire was thriving and Christianity was just beginning to spread.

“To digitally preserve and make so many names freely searchable online is impressive, but it’s the personal family connections that matter most,” said David Rencher, FamilySearch’s chief genealogical officer. “With each new record, there’s the possibility to find a missing link in the family tree. And that is soul-satisfying.” And FamilySearch adds over 1 million new records each day.

Read the full, interesting press release here.

October 2 & 3, 2020. Let’s all pretend we are in Des Moines, Iowa attending the fall conference of the Iowa Genealogical Society. However, it’s 2020 and we will really have to pretend, but thankfully we can get together live via Zoom. I am the keynote presenter doing three presentations each day. Therese Liewer and Sheri Snodgrass will present one lecture each. The conference theme is:

Discover New Resources – Expand Your Hunt

All the presentations will be live and you will get to chat with the presenters in between sessions and add questions and comments in the chat area. It’s quite possible there will be some laughter, too. It will all run smoothly on Zoom as IGS has contracted to have Cyndi Ingle of Cyndi’s List as the Virtual Meeting Host. She has done this for other societies and the reviews were excellent. There will be lots of assistance for those not familiar with the technology!

My six presentations are:

The Farmer in the Dell  . . . and in Many U.S. Records
Railroad Records and Railroad History: Methods for Tracking
Finding Maiden Names: Let Me Count the Ways
Research Nugget in the Midwest: The Allen County Public Library
The U.S. National Archives: The Nation’s Attic
Midwestern and Plains States State Level Census Records

To learn more , see the cost, and to register, visit the IGS website or its Facebook page.

Between now and the middle of January 2021 I will be doing presentations in Iowa, Minnesota (2), Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Utah.

I have updated my presentations calendar for all these events with links to the organizations that have contracted with me. That’s where you will learn how to register. You won’t have to wear a face mask or bring hand sanitizer, though. All of these will be done online. This means you don’t have to physically be in these states!

I hope to see you at many of these. I have been enjoying other online education this year, too. All of my presentations include a handout or the handouts are included in a syllabus. The organizations either email these to you or give you a link to the information.

Some events are free and others have a cost. We do need to support our genealogical and historical organizations even through this tough year. The platforms on which they offer online webinars and seminars are not free when they let more than a few people participate. The presenters are also not free.

We put a lot of hours into compiling presentations and handouts. Even if a presentation is not being done for the first time, there is still a lot of time involved in reviewing and updating them. All URLs must be checked, content is often tweaked, and I generally make some alterations to apply more directly to the main area of the probable audience. It’s the job of a presenter to be prepared. I have a couple presentations still in development and have been for several years. I research, find documents, do more research, and then comes the PowerPoint compilation. The handout also takes a lot of time. Now I better go update some handout for upcoming presentations.

The Genealogy Guys Podcast, co-hosted by George G. Morgan and Drew Smith, producers of the oldest continually produced genealogy podcast, and Vivid-Pix, makers of RESTORE photo and document restoration software, are pleased to recognize the winners in the Unsung Heroes Awards at the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference being held online.

The Unsung Heroes Awards acknowledge and celebrate those members of the genealogy community who digitize, index, or transcribe documents of value to genealogical researchers.  The Unsung Heroes Award is designed to recognize the efforts of its recipients in multiple categories.

The winners selected for Unsung Heroes Awards for August 2020 are in the Individual and Genealogical Society categories:

Individual – Rosemary McFarland of Mount Eden, Kentucky. Rosemary created the Kentucky Genealogical Society’s digitization project and has chaired the committee for the past three years.

Society – Eller Family Association The Eller Family Association in Midlothian, Virginia, is the society winner. The EFA was created in 1987 to help “promote a sense of kinship” and to “encourage and aid genealogical and historical research on Eller and allied families in the United States and Europe.”

The Unsung Heroes Grant enables a genealogical society, historical society, or museum to make images available to the genealogy community. The award includes a high-quality scanner, software to save and back up images, and two copies of Vivid-Pix RESTORE software. The package is valued at $500.

The winner selected for the Unsung Heroes Grant for August 2021 is the Morgan County History Partnership (MCHP) of Indiana.

The extensive details of the wonderful work done by each of the winners is on http://blog.genealogyguys.com/ and also on Rick Voight’s Vivid-Pix Unsung Heroes Blog at https://vivid-pix.com/blog. You do need to read all that these winners have done for all of us. These blogs also give details on the next round of award nominations in January 2021.