The Genealogy Guys Podcast & Genealogy Connection

For all who celebrate it, the Guys wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! News You Can Use and Share! MyHeritage has introduced LiveMemoryTM, a new facility to animate entire photographs. It runs from an app on your phone and is currently free. Ancestry announces its project to index and digitize Korean War-era military records housed at NARA. Vivid-Pix announces it will expand Alzheimer’s Research by donating 5% of sales through 3 December 2024. FamilySearch celebrates 130 years of family discovery! Listener Email Brian asks whether there is a genealogy podcast that shares people’s stories of family history research. Julie asks if there is a user guide/book discussing how to effectively research at MyHeritage. George has contacted Daniel Horowitz at MyHeritage for information. Stay tuned! Peggy expands on requesting U.S. military records from the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, Missouri, and what is available there. Anne suggests seeking information about WWII military service information in newspapers published near the basic training camps and through local libraries’ scrapbooks and vertical files. With Donna Moughty retiring from leading Irish genealogy research trips, Judy asks whether other people might be conducting such trips. Kevin comments about natural disasters and how they impacted our ancestors. He cites his paternal great-grandfather who was born 3 days after the Johnstown Flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on 31 May 1889. Mike writes a follow-up about German immigration, discussed in Episode #429, and shares his research about his German ancestor. He also cites the sinking of the PS General Slocum on 15 June 1904 and its impact on the immigrant German community of Kleindeutchland in Manhattan, New York. Michael comments on annulments and the lack of divorce records, and about circumstances that might make such records non-existent. Book Review Drew reviews Nathan Dylan Goodwin’s newest book, The Hollywood Strangler, the third installment of the Venator Series. Drew also comments on how he has just submitted his final assignment to Nathan for the pilot genealogy mystery writing online course. Please let us hear from you at [email protected] with your questions and comments.

The Guys have been on a hiatus because of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the damage in Florida. News You Can Use and Share! David Rencher, Chief Genealogy Officer at FamilySearch, received the Italian Heraldic Genealogical Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. MyHeritage has given its Inbox a fresh new look. MyHeritage added 56 million new records in September 2004. MyHeritage has updated its Theory of Family Relativity facility by 40%. Ancestry has launched its largest update to DNA matches. Findmypast has added large numbers of Cornwall baptisms, marriages, and burials. RootsTech 2025 registration Is now open and an early bird discount registration rate is available through 31 October 2024. Listener Email Kelly asks for suggestions to locate marriage annulment records. Kristina has located her grandfather’s WWII draft registration card and wants to know how to proceed to obtain his service records. Jean shares a website, “A Guide to Interpreting Passenger List Annotations” at the JewishGen website. Drew discusses the WikiTree Symposium online on 1-3 November 2024. He will be presenting a talk about Copyright and Plagiarism. Schedule. Please let us hear from you at [email protected] with your questions and comments.

News You Can Use and Share! MyHeritage has acquired MesAieux.com, Quebec’s most popular family history service with more than 15 million historical records. MyHeritage added more than 84 million new records across 16 collections in August 2024. MyHeritage has added 261 million obituary records to its OldNews facility. Listener Email Julie is searching for any Pennsylvania birth records from ca. 1810 and marriage records. The Guys share some suggestions. Drew talks about his recent participation in WikiTree.com’s WikiGames over two weekends. Drew is currently taking Nathan Dylan Goodwin’s online mystery writing class and learning how to develop a compelling genealogical mystery novel. The Guys discuss U.S. immigration and the naturalization process. They recommend Loretto Dennis Szucs’ book, They Became Americans, as a definitive guide to naturalizations. Thank you to all our Patreon supporting members for their support. Your Patreon support helps us improve our technology and provide even more podcast content to you! You can join us for as little as $1 a month or as much as you’d like to contribute. Visit https://www.patreon.com/genealogyguys to get started. And don’t forget to order Drew’s book, Generation by Generation: A Modern Approach to the Basics of Genealogy, from Genealogical Publishing Company (https://genealogical.com/) or from Amazon.com. Please let us hear from you at [email protected] with your experiences with U.S. immigration and naturalizations, and with other questions you have about your genealogical research.

News You Can Use and Share! MyHeritage added 20 million historical records in June. MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA announced a new partnership to connect DNA tests to family trees. JewishGen announced a new partnership between its Romania Research Division and the Jewish Federation of Romania to photograph and document Jewish graves. Drew talks about 19.4 million historical records released by FamilySearch in May 2024. Book Review The Guys review the latest book by Nathan Dylan Goodwin, The Deserter’s Tale, a new Morton Farrier genealogical crime mystery. Listener Email Sam writes about the new RootsMagic 10 update and the book. Drew warns listeners about some fake book entries in Amazon. Stacy Cole responds to an earlier email about her strategies in researching the James James family in Georgia. The Guys discuss their experiences at the South Carolina Genealogical Society's summer workshop at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. George shares how Patrick McCawley, the Deputy Director of Archives and Records Management, spent time sharing with him a history of South Carolina’s geopolitical organization from colonial times to the present. From parishes to electoral districts to counties and boundary changes, George now has a deeper understanding of South Carolina for his research there. Thank you to all our Patreon supporting members for their support. Your Patreon support helps us improve our technology and provide even more podcast content to you! You can join us for as little as $1 a month or as much as you’d like to contribute. Visit https://www.patreon.com/genealogyguys to get started. And don’t forget to order Drew’s new book, Generation by Generation: A Modern Approach to the Basics of Genealogy, from Genealogical Publishing Company (https://genealogical.com/) or Amazon.com. Please let us hear from you at [email protected].