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| Steve Rockwood at the Opening Session |
RootsTech
often brings exciting new announcements, and this year is no different, except
there seem to be more than usual.
First,
there two announcements concerning DNA. MyHeritage announced that it is
offerning "The Theory of Family Relativity". This combines paper trails (your genealogical
heritage) with DNA (your genetic heritage) and uses graph theory (don't worry –
I don't understand that either) to tell you the most likely way you and your
matches are connected. And sometimes it gives potential alternative match
scenarios. It makes use of the trees on MyHeritage, Geni and FamilySearch. It's
a much easier way to find how your DNA matches are connected to you because it
can now give you a visual connection that looks rather like the Ancestry shared
matches used to to see how you connect to your DNA match. Sometimes. I found
one case where it connected me to an incorrect parent for my ancestor, but the
rest were very helpful.
Ancestry
has also introduced "ThruLines", which are designed to suggest
possible ancestors, and link to all people who have that DNA match where applicable.
It is only available in beta at the moment to people who meet certain criteria
(like searchable trees and having DNA matches). They have also introduced
"MyTreeTags", allowing you to add tags to people in your tree. Those
can be predefined tags, like "Direct Ancestor", "DNA match"
or one of the other 18 tags, or you can create your own. There is also another
new feature allowing you to more easily sort, group, and view your DNA matches
in any way you'd like. Both of these latter two offerings are also in beta.
The power
in these new offerings from MyHeritage and Ancestry is in the massive size of
the trees these companies have. I'm sure more will come out about these
functions as people have had a chance to play with them.
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| Tamsin Todd, Findmypast CEO |
Findmypast was
not to be left out. They made a very exciting announcement. The good news is
that they have been granted an exclusive contract to digitize the 1921 census
and make it available online. The bad news is that we won't be able to see it
until January 2022 due to the legislated closure period. The other good news – once we can get access
to it – is that it contains more information than the 1911 census. Householders
had to reveal their place of employment, the industry they worked in and the
materials they worked with as well as their employer’s name. Those aged 15 and
older were required to provide information about their marital status,
including if divorced, while for those under 15 the census recorded whether
both parents were alive or if either or both had died. I can't wait, as I need
this to try to solve a particular mystery.
Findmypast
also announced the addition of further catholic records to their collection,
some from Liverpool and others from various parts of America. And they didn't
miss the chance to reiterate their recently announced partnership with
Rootsfinder, and their partnership with Living DNA, which will in future help
build the kind of trees Ancestry and MyHeritage announced today.
FamilySearch
had an announcement too: they are giving two million dollars to the
International African American Museum. This museum is located in Charleston, on
the spot where nearly half of all enslaved Africans arrived in America.
FamilySearch's donation will help support the museum's Centre for Family
History, and this donation will help.
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| Martin Luther King III |
Much of the
Opening Session was a tribute to the fact that this August marks the 400th
anniversary of the first slaves from Africa arriving in America. And there was a very special guest: Martin
Luther King III, the son of Martin Luther King Jr, who was assassinated in 1968.
He talked about his father's vision of complete integration, not just
desegregation. The end result, he felt, would be reconciliation. This would allow everyone to Connect &
Belong.
