MyHeritage Publishes 8.5 Million Germany Hesse Records

MyHeritage.com has just published two historical record collections from Germany: the Hesse Birth Index (1874–1911) and Hesse Marriage Index (1849–1931). These collections, totaling 8.5 million historical records, are now indexed and searchable on MyHeritage.com.

The German Collections alone on MyHeritage.com now contain over 174.9 million records that are completely indexed and searchable. Here's an example from the Germany, Hesse Marriage Index, 1849-1931.

RootsTech 2020 Mobile App Now Available

The Mobile App for RootsTech 2020 is now available for your smartphone from the Apple App Store or Google Play. The App is still being populated. One of the best features in the past was the map of the Salt Palace. This is especially useful if you are attending for the first time. Another useful feature is a list of all the Speakers with bios. There is also a schedule for each day and you can customize your own schedule.

Check it out.

Can you prove a genealogical connection to Royalty?

To genealogists, the alure of a royal ancestral line is persistent and pervasive, especially in the United States. There are currently 26 monarchies in the world and they rule or reign over 43 countries. See "Meet the world’s other 25 royal families." The idea that you could be descended from one of these families is an "age-old fantasy." But modern statistical analysis coupled with genealogical DNA testing suggests that if you are descended from Europeans, you definitely have royal lineage because all Europeans are related and have a common ancestor. This conclusion is supported by a study done by Joseph T.  Chang of Yale University. Here is the citation to that study.

Chang, Joseph T. “RECENT COMMON ANCESTORS OF ALL PRESENT-DAY INDIVIDUALS,”

Adv. Appl. Prob. 31 1002-1026 (1999

 http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/CommonAncestors/AAP_99_CommonAncestors_paper.pdf

This paper is complex but supports the idea of the existence of a common European ancestor. You can read a less complicated explanation in an article from The Guardian entitled, "Are you descended from royalty? Six things to consider." Despite the suggestions of this article, my own personal experience in examining thousands of pedigrees indicates that the chances of accurately constructing such a pedigree are vanishingly small.

Here we get into an important issue: royalty vs. nobility. Royalty is limited to kings and queens and their heirs. All other relationships are termed "nobility" and there are many more noble families than there are royal families. For those people living in the United States whose ancestors go back to the early immigrants, as is mentioned in The Guardian article, some of us living in the United States can trace our lineage back to "gateway ancestors" or early colonial immigrants with documented lineage to royal lines. This article on Geni.com has a fairly comprehensive list of the gateway ancestors' books and publications.

geni_family_tree. “New England Gateway Ancestors of Proven Royal Descent Genealogy Project.” Accessed December 23, 2019. https://www.geni.com/projects/New-England-Gateway-Ancestors-of-Proven-Royal-Descent/43693.

The conclusion of this article referring to the list of books and periodicals is interesting and I quote, "If your immigrant ancestor isn’t on at least one of these lists chances are any royal ancestry you found for him or her on the Internet is bogus."

There is always someone claiming to be an exception to the rule and either writing to me or talking to me about how they have proved a connection to a king or queen or more. I don't claim that this is impossible because kings and queens had children but I do find that the incidence of careful and fully documented research back to a royal line is quite difficult and very rare. I am always reminded of one of my own family lines where there is a cherished tradition that one of my great-grandmothers was related to England's Queen Victoria simply because she has a physical resemblance. However, extensive research has failed to show any connection and they were about the same age.

How to take better photos for genealogy: Part Six More about cameras

To start out with this post, you may want to view my recent webinar for the Brigham Young University Family History Library YouTube Channel entitled "How to Take Better Photos for Genealogy."

When you find an old family photograph, it is interesting to think about the type of camera that was used to make the photo and what it took to get the photograph developed and printed.

The standard camera for a professional studio or commercial photographer up until the latter part of the 20th Century was a large format view camera such as this Deardorff Studio camera from about 1929.

Here is a description of the camera from the Deardorff Historical Website.

Some specs. Maximum Lenth 72 inches with all 3 sets of bellows.
                    Maximum height, The tallest stand was a 20 footer !! Most were 15 feet tall.
                     The tubes hold lead weights to counter the weight of the camera
                     The platform that the camera sits on can rotate 360 degrees around!
                     Total weight, 850 lbs (20 footer)

This type of camera is classified as a large-format camera and had a film holder that held a flat piece of film which was 4 inches by 5 inches or larger. At about the same time, consumer-level cameras in the medium format range were smaller than 4" x 5" but larger than 24mm x 36mm.  The smaller film size is usually called 35mm film and came in rolls.  Here is a photo of some examples of medium format cameras. This photo shows a Hasselblad 500C/M (~1958) Yashica Mat 124 (1968) RolleiCord IV (1954).

By B4silio - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4391227

The earliest roll film for consumer-level cameras was produced by Kodak in 1912 is called 127 film and was 46mm wide. The photographs produced were either 4 inches x 4 inches or 4 inches x 6 inches. There were 16, 12, or 8 images per roll of film depending on the size of the image. Here is a common Kodak Brownie camera.

Kodak SIX_20 'BROWNIE' E

Here is a newer model Brownie camera.

Kodak Brownie Holiday Flash Camera

1954 – 1962

If you were a photographer using a medium format or larger camera, you might have to spend as much as $2.00 or more for each photo back in the 1950s. The current price of a roll of 35mm film with 24 exposures is about $25 or $1 for each photo. Here is an ad on Amazon.

It presently costs about $5 to get one roll of film developed and scanned at Walmart and Costco.

Now, when you think of the cost of the cameras, the cost of the film,  the cost of developing the film, and the time it took to do all this, it is a wonder that we have any photos of our ancestors at all.

Part One: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-to-take-better-photos-for-genealogy.html
Part Two: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-to-take-better-photos-for-genealogy_15.html
Part Three: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-to-take-better-photos-for-genealogy_20.html
Part Four: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-to-take-better-photos-for-genealogy_21.html
Part Five: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/12/how-to-take-better-photos-for-genealogy.html

To see some of my images go to Walking Arizona or https://walkingarizona.blogspot.com/

Dallas Cowboys' Emmitt Smith to Keynote RootsTech 2020

https://media.familysearch.org/dallas-cowboys-emmitt-smith-to-keynote-rootstech-2020/

Quoting from the FamilySearch Blog article entitled, "Dallas Cowboys' Emmitt Smith to Keynote RootsTech 2020."

RootsTech 2020 is delighted to announce that Emmitt Smith, NFL all-time leading rusher and three-time Superbowl champion with the Dallas Cowboys, will be the RootsTech keynote speaker on Saturday, February 29, 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Football fans will love his personal stories, big smile, and contagious zeal for life. Learn more at RootsTech.org. 

Emmitt Smith played for the Dallas Cowboys (1990–2002) and the Arizona Cardinals (2003–2004). During his 15-season career, he became the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, with 18,355 yards, and he still holds the record for the most career touchdowns (164). Smith is the only running back to ever win a Super Bowl championship, the NFL Most Valuable Player award, the NFL rushing crown, and the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award—all in the same season (1993). 

As a rusher, Smith was known for running “north and south” and making yardage when the opportunity to do so was not apparent. He was also a triple threat with his ability to block and catch. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010, and is the author of Game On, which outlines the principles that helped him succeed both inside and outside of professional football. 

Americans fell in love with Smith all over again as he showed his softer side as a contestant on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. He was called the “king of effortless cool” as he waltzed and sambaed across the dance floor and eventually was crowned the Season 3 champion. 

Smith has had amazing personal family history discoveries, some of which were depicted with him as a guest on the popular reality TV series Who Do You Think You Are?. Like many, he wanted to make ancestral connections and hopefully learn where he inherited his drive, determination, and passion. His incredible journey took him to several states and across the ocean to Africa, where he has been able to fill in missing links in his family’s past. He now feels that he has found what he was seeking and that he’s different—stronger—after learning more about the ancestral shoulders he stands on. 

Today, Smith lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife and 5 children. He owns several successful businesses in real estate, construction, and technology. He and his wife founded Pat and Emmitt Smith Charities to provide unique experiences and educational opportunities to underserved youth. 

RootsTech director, Jen Allen, is elated to welcome Emmitt Smith to the RootsTech family. “Emmitt is a passionate individual and one of the best examples of determination and grit—two traits that are often found in many of our ancestral stories, including Emmitt’s,” said Allen. “Besides all of his accolades and accomplishments, he is a really good person. He loves his family and is deeply grounded in simply being good. We can’t wait to feel his enthusiasm on the RootsTech stage.” 

Attend RootsTech 2020, February 26 to 29, to learn more about Emmitt Smith’s incredible journey, discover your roots, make family connections, and catch the spirit of belonging to generations of your family. Learn more at RootsTech.org.

Royalty is back in the genealogy promotion arena

Back in the 1800s unscrupulous genealogical hacks advertised finding connections for U.S. clients to royal lines in the British Islands. See "Genealogy as a Fraud." (Sorry about the broken link in that post. Here is the updated link: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Fraudulent_Genealogies. The most complete discussion of this huge problem is in the following book.

Weil, François. Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674076341.

Before spending you money or your time on a quest for royal lineage, you should carefully read the info/advertisement post from Ancestry.com entitled "Do You Come From Royal Blood? Your Last Name May Tell You." A superficial reading of this article would seem to indicate that you could establish your link to royalty simply by looking for people with similar surnames. However, name searches absent knowledgeable research are unlikely to establish parentage or a valid relationship. Interestingly, the Ancestry post actually discourages searching for a surname connection despite the come-on in the title.

The Ancestry post mentions the following six surnames as "aristocratic": Atthill, Bunduck, Balfour, Bramston, Cheslyn, and Conyngham. What the post fails to mention is that there are perhaps 45,000 different surnames in England alone as posted by Ancestry in another blog post entitled: "What does your surname say about you?" Using the Findmypast.com program, I searched each of those six surnames to see their frequency in Findmypast.com's vast collections of records from England and the United Kingdom. I did a global search of all the records and then searched for the same names in the United States and Canada. Here are the results of my search:

• Atthill U.K 2,642 U.S. and Canada 110
• Bunduck U.K. 240 U.S. and Canada 14
• Balfour U.K. 212,990 U.S. and Canada 22,250
• Bramston U.K.  6,399 U.S. and Canada 226
• Cheslyn U.K. 1,917 U.S. and Canada 256
• Conyngham U.K. 4,973 U.S. and Canada 1,707

Let me give you a little bit of perspective about this extraordinarily small numbers. Here are the results using the same search for Tanners and Smiths.

Tanner U.K. 428,068 U.S. and Canada 283,601

Smith U.K. 22,364,774 U.S. and Canada 15,577,482

What are the chances you are related to any of the aristocratic named individuals? Immeasurably small. Starting out with a search based on finding a royal line and then trying to connect to it is a really bad idea.

Ancestry isn't the only one trying to cash in from connecting people to royalty. Here is a recent post from FamilySearch.org, "Are You Related to British Royalty?" Here is a quote from that post:

If you have British ancestors, there’s a chance that you could have royalty somewhere in your bloodline. Dive into your family tree, and you may find proof of what you’ve always known deep down—you are royalty!

By the way, if you have always known deep down that you are royalty, I would like a ride in your Ferrari. Attracting customers with a promise or implied promise that you are related to royalty is one of the oldest scams in genealogy. However, royalty did have children and some people are related but you need to do careful, documented research whatever your ultimate goal or reason for researching your ancestry.

Ancestral Quest 16 Released and Shipping

With all the advertising for online family tree programs, there are still those who prefer to do their research using a computer-based program especially of that program will synchronize your information with the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. One of the main advantages of Ancestral Quest just got better. Quoting from the Press Release above:

Improved Syncing with FamilySearch Family Tree 

Ancestral Quest 16 makes some improvements in its syncing with FamilySearch Family Tree, intended to make syncing more natural and to better fit into the flow of data exchange between two systems. 

Improved Handling of FamilySearch Sources For nearly a decade, Ancestral Quest has allowed users to download sources from FamilySearch Family Tree directly into the user's personal family tree. FamilySearch sources are formatted as freeform citations in a way that works well for some users but doesn't fit well into the sourcing scheme used by many other users of Ancestral Quest. To overcome this, AQ 16 provides a new option to convert FamilySearch sources into traditional AQ sources during the import process, as well as converting previously imported sources later. For example, if there are 10 members of a family, and all are listed on the 1920 census, then FamilySearch creates 10 different source citations, and if you import them without this new feature, you will end up with 10 source records of the same census record in your list of Sources. If you take advantage of this new optional feature, you can create just one source for the 1920 census, and attach all FamilySearch citations to this single source. This feature is explained in more detail and demonstrated in this video: Advanced Handling of FamilySearch Sources. 

Advanced Syncing When exchanging events/facts between a personal family database and FamilySearch, there is a new "Advanced Options" button, which allows users to transfer just the date or just the place for an event. Users also have the option of editing the name of the place before transferring it.

You can read the entire Press Release here.  Ancestral Quest is available in a downloadable version for $34.95 or on a CD ROM for $39.95. You can download an upgrade from a previous version for $24.05 or upgrade from a CD for $29.95. Ancestral Quest for Mac is $44.95.

Ancestral Quest supports a number of languages although it comes originally in English and the other languages are downloadable. Ancestral Quest is usually rated high among all genealogy programs by GenSoftReviews.com.