Scottish Conference Online May 1st

The following was announced in the Ontario Ancestors e-Weekly today!

Scottish Indexes Conference - 1 May 2020

After the success of our first conference on 9 April 2020, we are pleased to announce that our second virtual conference will be held on Friday 1 May 2020.

A detailed schedule will be posted shortly so you can plan your day. We will again start at 7 am BST and end after 10 pm BST, this should enable our genealogy friends around the globe to join us for part of the day. The day will be in two sessions, with the presentations being repeated to enable you to watch them from different time zones.

This event is completely free and will be streamed live to our Facebook group which you can join here. The event will also be accessible on Zoom, click here to register.

We’re still finalising the exciting schedule, but here are some highlights to look forward to on the day. Chris Paton, Professional Genealogist and author of “Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet” will give the presentation, “Tracing the Irish in Scotland”.

Kirsty Wilkinson, Professional Genealogist and author of “Finding Your Scottish Ancestors: Techniques for Solving Genealogy Problems” will deliver an interesting talk, “Sources in Scotland for Tracing Scottish Emigrants”. The presentation “DNA Testing for Family History” is eagerly anticipated and will be delivered by DNA Detective Michelle Leonard.

We’re also pleased to announce that George MacKenzie, a former Keeper of the Records of Scotland, will be joining us to deliver a presentation with the intriguing theme, “...bread & cheese & kisses is not enough…”

Keep an eye on Facebook and here on our website for announcements of more subjects and the event schedule.

Free Access to US Yearbooks Collection on My Heritage

From My Heritage newsletter: 

"I’m pleased to share that we’ve opened up access to our U.S. yearbook collection for FREE, through May 23, 2020! 

In addition, following the successful release of MyHeritage In Color™ (10 million photos were colorized in the first 3 months), one of the ideas raised by our team was to apply this technology also to records. We focused our attention on the huge U.S. Yearbook collection on MyHeritage, and I’m happy to announce that you can now view our entire collection of U.S. yearbooks in color!

Search MyHeritage U.S. Yearbooks for Free Now

We’re doing this because we want to help our community in these challenging times and give people a fun activity to do when they are isolated at home that is genealogical, enjoyable, and free.

We’ve made it easy to share the yearbook pages on social media. Anyone who shares a yearbook page on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with the hashtags #LookingGood and #FreeYearbooks and tags @MyHeritage will enter a draw. Each week we’ll select one lucky winner who will receive a free MyHeritage Complete subscription! "

Clarington Library also has Ancestry Library Edition

After Stephen Wood mentioned that the Whitby Library also has the Ancestry Library Edition and I attached that as a comment to the last post, I decided to check out my local library. Clarington Library also has the Ancestry Library Edition online.

They too will give you a temporary library card online.

Unfortunately, my computer firewall gave me some issues!

So, check out your local library's eResources - maybe your current library card will give you local access.

Oshawa Public Library Announces that Ancestry Library Edition is Online (also Whitby Library)

If you have a library card for the Oshawa Public Library, you are in luck. You can get the Ancestry Library Edition from your own home for the rest of April! [and maybe that will get extended?]

Check it out here.

FYI, The Whitby Library also has the Ancestry Library edition
available from home, as long as you have a library card, and they can
do new library cards if you need one. Tip from Stephen Wood

Durham Branch of Ontario Ancestors Announces Their May Meeting Will be VIRTUAL!

Durham Branch of Ontario Ancestors Announces Their May Meeting Will be VIRTUAL!

Join the Durham Region Branch Tuesday, May 5th at 7:30 p.m. on the Society's virtual platform, Zoom.

The topic will be "Making English Connections". It will be presented by Bob Dawes, an excellent speaker who has presented at several of the Ontario Ancestors Conferences in the past and has been a speaker at many Durham Region Branch events.

This presentation will demonstrate how to use the many free and paid websites to make connections with your English ancestors. Bob Dawes has traveled throughout the UK doing his family history and is experienced in using their many genealogical research sources.

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/vpUrde2pqz8vmPQtdkb6BsuwCnF4LkRhLw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. 

Bob’s handout is at http://tinyurl.com/EnglishConnections