RootsTech Connect

 After attending every RootsTech for the past 10 years, this year will be different!  Like every Conference in the past year, this one will be virtual.   While I'm happy so many new people from around the world will be able to participate, I will miss the crowds, comraderie, classes and vendors.  

And mostly, I will miss the opportunity to spend a few extra days in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.  I have spent many a happy day and night trolling through microfilms, becoming lost in my family tree!

I've seen a preview of the RootsTech Connect platform, classes, key notes, etc and I think it will be great. I particularly like the idea that I can watch at my leisure, and dip into classes that I wouldn't have time to do if we were in person in Salt Lake City.  It's always a dilemma over which classes to go to, when there are multiple classes of interest at the same time.   

Things I won't miss:

    Queueing for a seat, queueing for a bathroom

    Enduring a room that is too cold, too hot, too stuffy, and too crowded

    Struggling to hear a presenter and enduring technical glitches

    Racing from one end of the Salt Palace to the other through huge slow moving crowds

    The cold Salt Lake City weather

Things I will miss:

    Meeting cousins and friends

    The Expo Hall and ability to chat with the experts

    The Family History Library

    The buzz of being around thousands of people who share my passion

    The complete immersion for days on end, totally focused on genealogy

    

I look forward to blogging about the positives/negatives of a virtual RootsTech after it's over. I have confidence that FamilySearch will do a great job of pulling it off -- and I hope that in the future we can have a hybrid model, with both in person and virtual options!

Pandemic Research!!!

 As the pandemic drones on and on, I've finally gotten my research groove back.  A year ago at the beginning of the pandemic, I couldn't focus and realized I was just trying to distract myself with research, and wasn't making any great headway due to my distraction.

Now, a year on -- I've reignited my research genes, and made some great discoveries.  I've gone back to some of my original research that I did via microfilm, before the internet even existed (sounds like the dark ages!).   New records have come online, and so I've added those and corrected some of my original suppositions with facts and records.

I've greatly expanded some of my Cornish lines -- particularly a branch that went to New Zealand and another to Montana.  I found ancestors on my Oats line via a DNA match names Atkinson, who's ancestor had married Elizabeth Sara Oats.  I had her in my tree, but she had "disappeared" -- and reappeared in New Zealand, where she and a brother emigrated.

The Montana connection is through my Davey line.  They emigrated to work in the mines, and then became ranchers.

I haven't spent that much time on my Irish side, but recently cleaned up some confusing NEE families. I had two Colman/Coleman John Nee's born the same year or so - one came to the USA (Pittsburgh) and one I'm not sure on.   Multiple online family trees have these 2 men mixed up, so trying to sort out through  original baptism/marriage records has been a challenge.

Ancestry's DNA hits, and Thru Lines have helped tremendously in unearthing some small matches that helped solidify research presumptions, and proved the connections. Sometimes just one connection this way has led to hundreds of new cousins. 

Coming back to this blog reminds me I need to document all these "new" findings, so that I can recall how I got there.  Reading back through my old blog entries reignites my interest in discoveries and documentation.  I like to set out my original assumption, why I thought this and then the records that helped to corroborate my idea or disproved my theory.  

DNA Hit equals a new Half 4th Great Uncle!!!

 I love it when a new random distant DNA match leads me on a spiraling journey deep into my tree. Today's new match led me to find a NEW very close ancestor, my half 4th Great Uncle!

Today's DNA hit had folks in New Zealand, so I realized it must be my Cornish line.  Something didn't seem quite right in the St Just in Penwith parents, so I did some digging in my files. The Geoff McKee file that documents all the St Just in Penwith families, showed an illegitemate son that I didn't have in my tree.

This child was born just after his Father's first wife died, and before he married again.  This son was baptized as Thomas Tonkin (his mother's maiden name), but his Father was James Oats -- and he used the name Thomas Oats after baptism.   

This Thomas married a Mary Davey, and their dau Elizabeth Sarah Oats b 1834, ended up emigrating to New Zealand (along with a brother) and marrying a William Francis Alexander.  Elizabeth Sarah Oats was my 1st cousin 4x removed. Thus a whole new line of ancestors to follow!  

DNA is really the only way to find some of these Cornish folks that "disappear" from England.  Their names are often very common, and so tracking down their connections is difficult unless you have a DNA match to prove things.  That's exactly the case here, where the DNA match between my Father, Sister, and 1st cousin all connect to this family -- which makes sense as it goes straight up my direct line to our 4th Great Grandfather James Oats.

The descendants of this Oats family really did scatter all across the globe, New Zealand, Australia, Montana, USA, Ireland, etc.

Of course, as with most of my Cornish family - there are intersections all over the place with marriages to other distant cousins up and down this line! Lots of work to do to merge them all together and sort out the descendants!