Press Release: FindMyPast Family Tree Challenges

FINDMYPAST CHALLENGES FAMILY HISTORIANS TO FIND THE ANCESTORS THEY’VE NEVER MET IN THEIR TREE CHALLENGES

· From 23rd May until 30th May 2016 all records hinted against in Findmypast trees will be completely free

· This includes over 116 million United States Marriages and over 10 million Irish Catholic parish registers

· Findmypast challenges you to find at least one new ancestor through an FMP family tree

· Family historians will be supported with expert insights, help videos, how to guides and a dedicated “tree building” webinar at 11am EST on Wednesday 25^th May.

London, UK. 23 May, 2016.

Is your family history leaving you stumped? Findmypast is here to help with their “Tree Challenge”, a seven day event to encourage people to branch out and discover ancestors they’ve never met. From 9am, 23rd May until 12pm 30th May 2016, all hints on Findmypast Family trees will be completely free to view and explore.

Findmypast is challenging family historians around the world to discover at least one new ancestor by building their family tree on the site, or uploading an existing GedCom file. Researchers will be provided with daily getting started guides, expert insights, useful how to videos and a special webinar hosted by expert genealogist, Debra Chatfield, dedicated to helping you get the most out of your Findmypast family tree.

#TreeChallenge week will have something for everyone, from seasoned experts to complete beginners. Keeping a tree on Findmypast is the first step towards exploring our archive of more than 8 billion records from around the world, more than 1 billion of which aren’t available anywhere else online. That’s over 1 billion family connections you won’t find anywhere else, so explore our collections today to ensure you don’t miss out.

Findmypast trees currently provide matches from birth, baptism, marriage, death, burial and census records across the UK, US, Ireland, and Australia. This includes Findmypast’s vast collections of more than 116 million United States marriages and over 10 million Irish Catholic baptisms, marriages and burials. Findmypast’s entire collection of 570 million UK BMDs - the largest available online - will also be free for the duration of #TreeChallenge, including over 78 million exclusive parish records you won’t find anywhere else. All UK and Irish parish records are hinted against.

Uploading a tree to Findmypast is quick, easy and secure. As you add information, Findmypast does all the hard work for you by sifting through millions of records to instantly identify potential matches. Once potential matches have been made, you can quickly and easily review possible leads before adding the relevant information to your tree.

To encourage you to make the most of this feature, we are running a special tree themed competition. Share any discoveries you make on your tree via social media with the hashtag - #TreeChallenge and you could be in with the chance of winning an expert bundle worth $1000. This includes a 64 GB Ipad mini4, a three TB hard drive and a 12 month subscription to Family Tree magazine. We will also be giving away a 12 month world sub on our social media channels daily. You can find out more here.

Hinting allows you uncover records for multiple ancestors at once with virtually zero effort. The larger your tree, the more potential matches you’ll be presented with so it’s well worth your while to add as many ancestors as possible.

As we release new records, our hinting system will continue to grow, providing you with even more opportunities to find unknown ancestors.

Blankies, Free Time, Whiskey and Find My Past

Image courtesy of iosphere at 

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Now that I got your attention, it’s been one of those weeks around here.  Many of you know that I have an ongoing illness and last week was a bad.  Most days found me curled on the couch with my pillow, fuzzy blankie and a mindless movie.  On the days where my head was clear enough I did work on deadlines and do a bit of research.

Which brings us to Friday.  The first day in 5 that I was feeling good.  I took my laptop out on the back porch, sat with some tea and cruised the Find My Past website.

It hit me earlier that week that I had not done any personal family history research in months.  MONTHS!  I have been writing, lecturing and doing client work but really have not had any time to do anything on my or my husband’s trees.  Well, now that I was feeling better that was going to change.  I gave myself the weekend to play and have fun.

In the past I have found some really great items there for my husband’s family in Somerset.  Plus I discovered some great newspaper articles for my father’s family from his hometown.  This time, however, I was going to try a new feature.  Well a new to me feature, their family tree feature.

You can upload a tree or start from fresh and using their new hints (it is still in Beta) feature it will

show you matches from their documents and databases.  Yeah, I know, they and every other company have this ability.  I do try them all though hoping that one day I will find one that I love.  So, seeing as this is new, with a Beta version of some features, I was up for trying a new one and seeing where it could lead me.  What’s the worst that could happen? It should be fun!  Right?!

Yes, I did upload a tree.  Yes, I have a lazy streak in me.  Well, honestly I wanted to see how easy it would be.  I have the worst luck with uploading files.  I was pleasantly pleased that it went without a hitch and I had literally hundreds of viable hints with a few minutes.  So many hints, to real DOCUMENTS, that I deleted my tree.  Don’t freak on me.  It was just a tree.

Well, I thought to myself, if I can get that many so quickly why don’t I start with myself and then start building out like, well, you are supposed to do.  I wanted to see where these documents lead me.  That thought then lead me to the decision where I sat down on Saturday and just went for it.  It wasn’t until I entered our parents in the tree that I started to get any hints.  It surprised me, really, but made me a little happy that no hints popped up for the hubs or me.  Within 30 minutes I was 4 generations back on my father’s line with census, marriage, birth and death records.  Yeah, I couldn’t believe how fast it was going.

Then the whiskey came out.  Yes, genealogy research really is heightened by a good glass of whiskey.  Okay, it also helped with the cough and aches.

I only have a couple critiques.  I prefer a sideways pedigree chart and only a top to bottom pedigree chart when I am looking at a specific family.  Unfortunately the top down pedigree chart seems to be the default setting in the family tree page. I had to keep clicking back over to the “pedigree view” from the “family view” each time I finished looking at a document.

Also, the house icon with my family tree title does not take you to the home person for the tree like I thought it would.  From the hints page (or the person you are looking at page) it take you back to the family view for that person.  You have to re-navigate back down to the home person. 

While it shouldn’t be a big deal, it was annoying.  These things are still being worked through obviously so hopefully they will come along in future versions.  Unless I am completely missing the boat then hopefully someone will point this out to me!

So yeah, a productive weekend to say the least.  With summer just starting and the kids getting out of school I think we will have some fun genealogy lessons using Find My Past.  It should keep them busy for the next 10 weeks…right?

Are you at RootsTech or watching from home?

RootsTech starts this week, and once again I am not there.  Drat!  Next year, next year I am going to make it. Grumble, grumble, grumble...

Well, if you are at home like I am then listen up!  You do know that there are 15 streaming videos available for us to watch, right?  We can watch along in real time, just like we were there.  Except, if you are like me, you will actually be in fuzzy slippers, comfy clothes, with hot tea, and snacks nearby. 

You can see the schedule of broadcasts here.  They start Thursday February 6^th at 10:30 am Mountain Standard Time and they will play on the RootsTech homepage.

I won't be able to watch them all (even though I really, really want to) so I have picked a couple each day that I am going to try and attend.  That is if the kids, the world, and life in general will let me.

Thursday, February 6

10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family from My Couch by Tammy Hepps

2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Intro to DNA for Genealogists by James Rader

5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Sharing Your Family with Multimedia by Michael LeClerc

Friday, February 7

1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Tweets, Links, Pins, and Posts: Break Down Genealogical Brick Walls with Social Media by Lisa Alzo

4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Finding Family and Ancestors Outside the USA with New Technologies by Daniel Horowitz

Saturday, February 8

1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Information Overload: Managing Online Searches and Their Results by D. Josh Taylor

4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., How to Interview Yourself for a Personal History by Tom Taylor

5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Five Ways to Do Genealogy in Your Sleep by Deborah Gamble

What are you going to try and attend?  Let me know so I can give you a virtual wave from Twitter or Facebook! Oh, and least I forget, RootsTech has a Facebook page they are posting to like mad. Plus their twitter handle is @RootsTechConf and posts are being encouraged to be tagged as #rootstech.

Until then, you can relive all the great moments from last year here.  All of the recorded sessions from 2013 are on line available for you watch over and over again.  Isn’t that fantastic?  I think I want to go watch the keynote with Syd Lieberman again.  He was just amazing.

Must see sight for Cape Cod online research

Last week I stumbled on a site that I want to share with everyone.  If you are looking into ancestors from the Cape Cod area, you need to go and check this one out.  It is The Cape Cod History and Genealogy page.  The site owner is the process of moving old files to this new site. I would check back often as he adds more and does updates.

Things you can find are:

• Surname list
• Photographs of people and places
• Brickwall people and mystery photographs
• List of sources
• Statistics on individuals in the database
• Listing of dates and anniversaries (if you go out today you will find everything that happened on this date in the database on the main dates page!)
• Listing of places

I have not fully explored this site, but I will be.  Hope you all have a good ancestor hunt!

*Image from the Library of Congress: Moonlight view of ocean, at Cape Cod, Mass., in winter, 1875