RootsTech 2026--Day 3

RootsTech Day 3

Sat. March 7, 2026

Announcements & Sales

Today was the last day of RootsTech 2026.  I really loved the advanced classes this year.  That said, I did feel like there was a larger disconnect than normal for the #NotAtRootstech attendees. Don't forget to check the online Expo Hall for sales.  Many of them end at midnight tonight.  Next year, RootsTech will be March 4-6, 2027.  Mark your calendars.

My session selection today was focused mainly on methodology.  These were just the classes that I viewed. There are many more available. For more in-depth information on the day's events check out any of the classes or online expo hall at the RootsTech website.  Even if you miss the deals be sure to come back and check out the many online sessions available free online.

Saturday Sessions (4)

• Advanced/Professional  Mar 7, 9:00 AM CST  DNA Analysis Methodology: Defeat the Genealogy Gremlin–Karen Stanbary

• Advanced/Professional  Mar 7, 10:30 AM CST  Wanted! Seeking the Identity of Unknown Parents –Dana Palmer 

• All Levels  Mar 7, 01:15 AM CST  New Ancestor Connector Tool with 21,000 19th-century People Researched –Sara Eagle Briggs  &  Kristy Wheelwright Taylor

• Advanced/Professional  Mar 7, 2:30 PM CST  Question Everything: Sharpen Evaluation, Avoid Assumptions, & Clarify Your Writing  –Kelley Conner Lear

RootsTech 2026--Day 2

RootsTech Day 2

Fri. March 6, 2026

Announcements & Sales

From the RootsTech Innovation & Tech Forum

https://connectmyvariant.org/

https://www.goldiemay.com/

https://storied.com/

https://www.ancestry.com/

https://www.familytreedna.com/

https://lifeweaver.ai/

https://www.myheritage.com/scribe-ai

RootsTech 2026

Many of the vendors are offering some great promotions so be sure to click thru.  

Below are some of my favorites of the ones that I have used that can be found in the virtual Expo Hall.

• 23andme
• Ancestry(DNA, subscription, add on tools and digitization deals)
• Civil War Records
• FTDNA
• GedMatch
• GenealogyBank
• GoldieMay
• KY Genealogy Society
• LegacyFamilyTreeWebinars
• Research Like A Pro
• RootsMagic

The list below is just the classes that I watched. There are many more available. For more in-depth information on the day's events check out any of the classes or online expo hall at the RootsTech website.

Friday Sessions (6)

• Advanced/Professional  Mar 6, 10:30 AM CST  Avoiding Research Pitfalls–Jana K Greenhalgh &  Mindy Taylor

• All Levels  Mar 6, 10:30 AM CST  RootsTech Innovation and Tech Forum 2026

• Advanced/Professional  Mar 6, 1:15 PM CST  Cards, Clevises, and Calomel: What Probate Files Can Reveal about Our Ancestors–Nancy A. Peters

• Advanced/Professional  Mar 6, 2:30 PM CST Using Autosomal DNA Analysis to Identify an Ancestor's Likely Parents —Alice Childs

• Advanced/Professional Mar 6, 4:00 PM CST  Planning and Organizing Research Findings for Tough Problems –Kate Townsend, CG

• Advanced/Professional   Mar 6, 5:30 PM CST  From Discovery to Proof: Crafting a Genealogical Proof Argument –Stephanie O'Connell

RootsTech 2025--Day 3

RootsTech Day 3

March 8th 2025

FamilyTree DNA recently announced a new updated MitoTree.  This means an updated haplogroup for those who have taken the mtDNA test and new reports via the mtDNA Discover tool.

Below is a list of the classes which I selected for Day 3.  There are many more sessions available.  For more in-depth information on the day's events check out any of the classes or online expo hall at RootsTech website

9:00 AM CST Online Advanced / Professional

Session:  Document Analysis: Digging into the Details

Speaker:  Angie Packer McGhie

10:30 PM CST  Online Intermediate

Session:  Navigating Sensitive Topics: Writing about Difficult Chapters of the Family’s History

Speaker:  Laura Hedgecock

2:30 PM CST Online Intermediate

Session:  Learning to Use AI Tools: Taking Your Prompting Skills to the Next Level

Speaker:  Steve Little 

These last 3 classes were unavailable to online attendees Live due to technical difficulties but were made available by late Saturday and Sunday.

2:30 PM CST Online Advanced / Professional

Session:  Why Did It Say That & Other Contextual Clues

Speaker:  Rebecca Whitman Koford

4:00 PM CST Online Intermediate

Session:  Extracting Evidence:  Strategies for Analyzing Genealogical Sources

Speaker:  Alice Childs

4:00 PM CST Online Advanced / Professional

Session:  Taming Same-Name Research

Speaker:  Jenny Hansen

RootsTech 2025--Day 2

RootsTech Day 2
March 7th 2025

MyHeritage has introduced a new feature called Cousin Finder™, which helps discover other MyHeritage members who share common ancestors with you. They launched Ancient Origins a few weeks ago for members with a Complete or Omni tier subscription. Their latest ethnicity update (v 2.5) was released earlier this year for those who have tested or uploaded their DNA.

Ancestry has several new features that use AI.  "Recognize Ancestors" helps to identify people in photos by using AI to compare them with other photos on the site.  Another feature uses AI to transcribe the handwriting in uploaded documents. A DNA match clustering tool is also in the works for release later this year. See the video for more on Matches by Cluster.

These were just the classes that I viewed.  There are many more available.  For more in-depth information on the day's events check out any of the classes or online expo hall at

RootsTech website 

Session:  The New FamilySearch Catalog

Speaker:  Robert Raymond

Session:  FamilySearch Full Text Search Is Even Better (a session I missed from Thursday)

Speaker:  Robert Raymond

9:00 AM CST Online Intermediate

Session:  Becoming Betsey: Find Female Ancestors with Cluster Research

Speaker:  Rebecca Whitman Koford

9:00 AM CST Online  Advanced / Professional

Session:  Analyzing Evidence:  A Research Game Changer

Speaker:  Mindy Taylor

10:30 AM CST  Online  All Levels

Session:  RootsTech Innovation and Tech Forum 2025

10:30 AM CST Online  Advanced / Professional

Session:  DNA and Endogamy:  Strategies to Analyze Your DNA Matches

Speaker:  Adina Newman

2:30 PM CST Online  Intermediate

Session:  The Story of Rachel -- Eventually This Enslaved Woman & Her Children Were Freed

Speaker:  Diane L. Richard

2:30 PM CST  Online Intermediate

Session:  How Just One Match Can Help You Find Missing Ancestors in 2025

Speaker:  Diahan Southard  

RootsTech 2025--Day 1

RootsTech Day 1
March 6th 2025

Ancestry announced the addition of Networks.  It is a tool that can be used to track an ancestor's FAN.  Right now it's only available to ProTools subscribers, but might be rolled out to other users at some point.  There are a few other promotions they are running right now here

FTDNA has discount codes available and includes some discounts on upgrades 

Legacy Family Tree Webinars has a great offer see the coupon code at

https://cms-z-assets.familysearch.org/b6/00/dacb99a94dd6037ce9e5111ebf69/webinars.pdf

These were just the classes that I viewed.  There are many more available.  For more in-depth information on the day's events check out any of the classes or online expo hall at

RootsTech website.

9:00 AM CST Online Advanced/Professional

Session:  Intersecting Lines: Pedigree Collapse Helps Identify an Ancestor’s Parents

Speaker:  Alice Childs

10:30 AM CST Online Intermediate

Session:  Women and Children Second: The Laws and Records of Citizenship
Speaker:  Alec Ferretti

1:15 PM CST Online Intermediate

Session:  Endogamy? Now what?

Speaker:  Kelli Bergheimer

4:00 PM CST Online Advanced/Professional

Session:  Finding Migrating Families: How to Trace Elusive Ancestors Using Cluster Research

Speaker:  Nancy A. Peters

5:30 PM CST Online Intermediate
Session:  Using Indirect Evidence to Identify Enslaved Parents
Speaker:  LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson

RootsTech 2024 --Day 3 Online

Day 3--My Virtual Attendee Session Schedule

• 9:00 AM You Can Do the DNA #4–See What DNA Success Looks Like: Real Case Studies--Diahan Southard

This was Part 4 of the "You can do the DNA series".  I love case studies and have attended a number of Diahan's lectures online.  She always has a wonderful syllabus.  Loved that she used DNAPainter's WATO + in the case study.  I love working with DNA matches at MyHeritage because you can see their relationship or how much DNA they share with your shared matches.

• 10:30 AM Diseases our Ancestors Faced and How Those Illness Changed Our World--Gregory C. Gardner

This was an excellent and informative presentation.  Lots of statistics and he mentioned Wolfbane's International Classification of Diseases which is a site I use frequently when working to determine the cause of death listed on a death certificate.  

• 2:30 PM Unexpected Treasures: Family History in the American State Papers--Judy G. Russell

As always a great presentation by Judy Russell.  Need to know the time period covered or type of records?  Where to find them?  That and more were covered in detail in the presentation and in the accompanying syllabus.

Favorite things from RootsTech 2024:

All the Great Presentations  (🠈Link to Full Library)

MyHeritage DNA Upload Promotion

FamilySearch Full Text Search  

RootsTech 2024 --Day 2 Online

Day 2 Highlights:  

RootsMagic 9 is on sale for $20 thru March 4th 2024.

MyHeritage highlights

New Profile Page with Hints

• OldNews newspaper website(available as standalone subscription or as part of MyHeritage Omni subscription package.
• Upcoming Features:  Ethnicity update and the ability to share results(which will get around the 2FA issue) 
• Upload DNA thru March 4th and gain access to MyHeritage's DNA tools

American Ancestors Highlights

The 10 Million Name Project  

My Virtual Attendee Session Schedule

 

• 9:00 AM  Did My Family Get Skipped? Mining Census Records for Missing Ancestors-Nicole Gilkison LaRue

There were some technical difficulties at RootsTech across the board for the virtual attendees but this class was great.  What is not to love about using timelines and city directories to locate those hard to find folks in census records.  Also the Steve Morse site was mentioned and it is a must.   Great syllabus with additional resources!

• 10:30 AM  The Homestead Act and Southern Black Homesteaders--Jessica Korgie Bernice Alexander Bennett

Wonderful overview of Homestead Act of 1862 along with a resource list and break down of documents which are created during the entire process of obtaining the land.  

https://www.nps.gov/home/write-your-homestead-story.htm

49 Stories in 5 States are written about in the Black Homesteaders 

of the South covering the following states

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Louisiana
• Mississippi

If you missed this one and have an interest in Homestead records you really need to check it out. The syllabus does an excellent job of detailing the documents that might be found for your homesteader.

• 2:30 PM Where in the World? Tackling a New Research Location--Cheri Hudson Passey

Excellent Resource list and advice on creating a Locality Guide for an area you are researching.  Be sure to get the syllabus for this session. 

• 4:00 PM  Recover, Restore, Remember: The 10 Million Names Project--Lindsay Fulton

10 Million Names Project

American Ancestors  

The goals of the project

• Establish a document-based research repository
• Amplify the voices of people who have been telling their family stories for centuries
• Connect people and resources

RootsTech 2024 --Day 1 Online

Day 1 Highlights:  

FamilySearch Tech Forum

100 Million Records Searchable with Full Text Search

This is so exciting for me.  I had the opportunity to use the AI search prototype they had available in 2023.  In the few days I had it, it was mind-blowing how many new records I found.

US Land & Probate Records and Mexico Notary Records are currently the only available collections to browse.

Plantation Records records were also mentioned 

See Family Search Labs page for 

https://www.familysearch.org/labs/

Early Release of Family Group Trees

Check FamilySearch Labs for new products under development

MyHeritage has redesigned their profile page.  See their blog post about it at the following link.

https://blog.myheritage.com/2024/02/introducing-all-new-profile-pages-with-hints/

Also don't forget they are offering Access to All DNA Features with DNA uploaded thru March 4th, 2024.  This is the perfect time for those who have tested at AncestryDNA or other sites to upload and get tools for dna analysis for free.

My Virtual Attendee Session Schedule

• 9:00 AM Fixing Sticky Problems in FamilySearch Family Tree--Kathryn Grant  

            This was a great presentation and was very helpful in simplifying the process of making corrections that are due to bad merges and  incorrect relationships.  

Fixing Process

1. Fix Incorrect Merges
2. Fix Incorrect relationships
3. Fix incorrect info and sources.

Half the battle for me has always been trying to figure out the best procedure for correcting.  I've about got my pedigree corrected thru my 2nd Great Grandparents.

Check out the templates that Kathryn has on her website.  

Timeline Grid Information and Templates

Other Templates

• 10:30 AM Who is My Ancestor? Tracing Individuals with Similar Names--D. Joshua Taylor

Joshua's discussion of the 5 step strategy for identifying & tracing individuals with similar names is one we all as family history researchers can use.  

"The best way to know who your ancestor IS, is to know who your ancestor ISN'T"

He talked about using Timelines ,which is one of my favorite strategies for same name research.  The importance of writing and sharing your findings about those same named ancestors can not be stressed enough.

• 1:15 PM Genetic Genealogy Turns 25: DNA Experts Tell Their Stories--Diahan Southard

Happy Birthday, Genetic Genealogy!!  It was great to hear all the experts talk about their start in genetic genealogy research.

• 2:30 PM What’s New at Ancestry® in 2024 Crista Cowan
• Family Groups
• Memories--upload stories, audio, photos(you can organize in albums)
• Life and Times in the US Stories & Events --Newspapers.com   https://www.ancestry.com/c/newspapers
• Sideview Traits and Communities by parent
• DNA--Communities Updated.  We should expect an update about every 3-4 months for the communities although you can be added to a community at any time if there are enough testers with DNA in common showing they all belong to that specific community
• Pro Tools

• 4:00 PM Innovation and Tech Forum 2024 RootsTech

There were presentations by each of the following companies
about their latest projects and how they are harnessing the power of AI to use
in order to bring family history to life.

• Microsoft Copilot
• LivingHistory.AI 
• Storied
• EmulateMe

To be honest, this afterlife and dead relative talk kind of creeped me out.  I love AI as it pertains to indexing and gathering information.

These were just the classes that I viewed.  There are many more available.  For more in depth information on the days events check out any of the classes or online expo hall at

RootsTech website

Live Streams from RootsTech SLC 2020 announced

The Live Streaming Schedule for RootsTech Salt Lake City 2020  was released today.  You can find the complete list by clicking on the hyperlinked words above.  I've looked over the schedule and  picked my top three I'm planning on catching Wednesday thru Saturday.  I'm normally part of the #NotAtRootsTech crowd and this year is no exception.  While I'm at home I usually watch RootsTech on my Roku television but you can watch it on a computer, phone or tablet as well.  This is great because I'll probably have to catch some of the earlier Thursday sessions via my phone as Thursday morning is my weekly chemo treatment til early April.  RootsTech is offering a Virtual Pass again this year for those who want to be able to see additional sessions.  You can find more information on that below the list of Live Stream sessions on the RootsTech website.

My Top 3 from each day of RootsTech SLC 2020

Wednesday Feb. 26th

• What's New At Ancestry--Crista Cowan
• Adding Branches to your Family Tree Using DNA--Angie Bush
• Finding your Elusive Ancestors--Julie Stoddard

Thursday Feb. 27th

• Unlocking the Power of the FamilySearch Wiki--Danielle Batson, Jenny Hansen, Jeff Svare
• DNA Genealogy, and Law Enforcement:  All the Facts--Blaine Bettinger
• Tackling Difficult Chapters of our Family History--Cheri Daniels

Friday Feb. 28th

• 2019: Year of the Copyright--Judy Russell
• City Directories and other New Collections on MyHeritage--Mike Mansfield
• Preserving the Fabric of our Families--Jennifer Hadley

Saturday Feb. 29th

• Ancestry on the Go:  Ancestry App Suite--Peter Drinkwater, Kenric Russell, Victoria Smith
• Healing & Family History: The Emotional Side--Robin Wirthlin
• Intro to What Are The Odds?(WATO)--Leah Larkin