Live, in-depth, and interactive
genealogy webinars
Want to see GenWebinars instructors Diane L. Richard and David M. McCorkle lecture in person? Even better, it's free! Come see us at the York County (SC) Library Genealogy & Family History Expo on Saturday, October 12. We'll also have a table in the vendor room so you can stop by and chat!
Reconstruct historical communities by following land ownership over time. Records can be traced backwards from today, forwards from the original owner, and points in between.
Hit a brick wall? Wondering why your ancestors did what they did? Need to separate out several same-named contemporaries? Learn about timelines/matrices and how they might help you solve your puzzles.
Genealogical researchers are always coming across numbers when researching their ancestors, but often don't know what they mean. How far is a distance of 43 poles? Is a Troy ounce the same as a modern ounce? Is hogshead a real term or something the Beatles made up? How about money - was 10 pounds in Pennsylvania the same as 10 pounds in North Carolina? Even calendar dates can get confusing – what do they mean by February 15, 1745/6? This webinar will discuss the history and meaning of different measurements like lengths, weights, distances, and volume, as well as money and calendars to make your research more meaningful.
Even before the pandemic, we started to see a plethora of “crowdsourced” projects focused on indexing records that benefit genealogists. Crowdsourcing is based on “many hands make light work.” Learn about the many places where you can discover what is being transcribed, access that material, and possibly help make these records available to genealogists. The talk includes a quick survey of some of the larger crowdsourced platforms (e.g., From the Page) and some currently active projects that genealogists can definitely leverage.
Join GenWebinars instructions Diane L. Richard and David M. McCorkle at the North Carolina Genealogical Society Conference, either live in Raleigh NC or online. They will be giving 3 lectures and 1 workshop, and GenWebinars will have a table in the vendor room so you can meet them in person!
Post offices aren’t just about employees or even the mail. Most of us receive our newspapers and magazines mailed directly from the publisher or purchased in a store. That wasn’t how it used to be - there was no rural door-to-door delivery before the turn of the 20th century!!! Who handled subscriptions for reading material? They were handled by the postmaster at the post office! Wouldn’t you like to see great-great-grandpa’s subscription list? Some of these subscription lists DO survive and can provide insights about a person, including religious and/or political leanings, hobbies, news interests, and much more. We’ll also talk about other post office records that tell us who our ancestors purchased from, sent mail orders to, and more! Information often found nowhere else!
GenWebinars instructor Diane L. Richard will be giving 3 lectures at the Texas State Genealogical Society 2024 Family History Conference - 1 live and 2 recorded for on-demand playback. This virtual event will feature TxSGS Live! November 1-2, 2024, and offer an additional 31 pre-recorded lectures.
Frequently, women are not as well documented in government records, so surviving small business ledgers of stores, physicians, lawyers, blacksmiths, and more provide us invaluable details about our female ancestors, their purchases, and their FAN club – minutiae found nowhere else! This information helps us fill in the gaps in their lives and that of their household and often leads to other discoveries. Learn all about ledgers – why they exist, how to interpret them, and where to find them. Then, enjoy the many examples of ledger types, their entries, and how women are included!
Artificial Intelligence tools can be used to quickly extract and organize information from individual land records or multiple records simultaneously, including all the parties involved and their roles, metes and bounds, public land descriptions, geographic features, and neighbors.
Many valuable and overlooked databases don't make headline news. They are usually hiding in plain sight. Every day, new ones are being created. Many are not genealogically focused and are genealogically leverageable. All can be explored from the comfort of your home 24/7. Most are FREE. Let's explore 50 juicy gems from around the world covering a range of topics from African American to Archivist/Scholar to US (broad and narrowly focused) to the UK and so much more – you will make NEW discoveries. Many of these are my “go-to” websites, a part of my genealogy research toolkit, which I regularly use.
Historical maps can help identify your ancestor's neighbors, migration routes, churches, where they might be buried, and much more. This lecture will review the types of maps available online, where to find them, what they mean, and how to use various free mapping tools to combine different types of maps and data in order to create your own maps based on your research.
