More relatives at RootsTech

I wrote several weeks ago about Relatives at RootsTech.

In the past if you attended the RootsTech conference in person you had, of course, the opportunity to meet your fellow participants. At a genealogy conference you would naturally be interested to meet your relatives. RootsTech has an app to search for attendees you might be related to. As we cannot meet in person this year we can search for cousins who have also signed up to the virtual conference. There are more than 408,000 participants who have signed up to the connection tool and the conference. The connection tool is only available for a limited time, this year until 25 March.

On 21 February I had identified 700 cousins through the application. I now have 4,845. They include my daughter, a third cousin and a fourth cousin once removed. These three are from Australia. There are seven more distant cousins from Australia. The very great majority of my cousins are from America.

Relatives at RootsTech filtered by location

The cousin relationships are mostly too remote to be interesting. It’s usually by other means that I find cousins who might be interested in collaborating on family history.

I persuaded my daughter to sign up because I was wanted to find her cousins on the paternal side. Interestingly, she has only 1,963 relatives including me and the two close-ish cousins on my side.

Her closest paternal cousins are from the US and are descended from my husband’s first cousin four times removed, Rebecca Leavitt, formerly Waite nee Gibbons. Rebecca was a Mormon pioneer who emigrated from England to the US in the 1870s with her first husband. The closest connecting cousins are fourth cousins twice removed to my daughter; those cousins are great grandchildren of Rebecca Gibbons. There are 152 cousins at RootsTech descended from my daughter’s 5th great grandparents, John Gibbons (1780-1840) and Frances Atkins (1772-1856).

I wrote some years ago about discovering the DNA connection between my husband Greg and his cousins descended from Rebecca (DNA analysis: taking the tree back two generations).

An example of a family tree connection shown on RootsTech Relatives application between Waite cousins and my daughter’s Dawson forebears. Rebecca Gibbons married twice and there are also descendants from her second marriage.

Photograph of Rebecca Gibbons retrieved through FamilySearch profile KWN5-32S

Back to the numbers. Although my daughter’s matches include my forebears and those of my husband, she has only about 40% of the number of relatives I have. More than 60% of my relatives are so distant they are not included in her results. Testing the distance I found that two of my distant cousins from Argentina, a ninth cousin and an eighth cousin once removed, are not included in my daughter’s results table. These relatives were both on my Dana line, an early colonial American line. I am sure it was the source of many of my distant cousins, for that line is well researched.

While looking at relatives I used the opportunity to edit the FamilySearch tree. Some incorrect branches I edited and removed, but in other cases I merged profiles. I also managed to add a few people to my German pedigree. Despite this effort in contributing to the single family tree at FamilySearch, I haven’t yet connected with cousins from my mother’s German family who are interested in genealogy.

Slow progress on this bit of my family tree and as yet no connection with cousins who are interested in genealogy

Wikitree and FamilySearch links

• Wikitree: Rebecca (Gibbons) Leavitt (1843 – 1897)
• FamilySearch: Discovery person page for Rebecca Gibbons
• John Gibbons (abt. 1780 – 1840) on Wikitree and on FamilySearch
• Frances (Atkin) Gibbons (1777 – 1856) on Wikitree and on FamilySearch

Ethical issues of genealogy discussed at RootsTech 2022

RootsTech 2022, which ran from 3 to 5 March, was a virtual conference sponsored by FamilySearch, an organisation closely connected with the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

More than a million participants listened to 1,500 presentations in at least 30 languages. Many were pre-recorded; others were created during the conference. Recordings of conference sessions are now available online.

I listened to several sessions about ethical issues of genealogy.

Dr Penny Walters, a lecturer from Bristol University in England, gave several talks including one about the ethics of genealogy titled Damnatio memoriae – condemnation of a person’s memory.

She asked whether:

"…we, as family historians, are manipulating the past with our narratives of people's lives. Do we gloss over things, not investigate specific ancestors and favour others? If we do so, are we engaging in a form of subtle iconoclasm? How do we deal with unsavoury people in our family tree?"

The destruction of the images of a ruler after his or her death or overthrow, is known as damnatio memoriae. It means “condemnation of memory” and indicates that a person is to be excluded from official accounts.

In 2020 the statue in Bristol of a trans-Atlantic slave trader, Edward Colston (1636–1721) was felled by protestors.
Photograph by Caitlin Hobbs “The space where Colston stood is now filled with #BlackLivesMatter signs – a powerful day in Bristol” https://twitter.com/Chobbs7/status/1269682491465576448/photo/1 CC BY 3.0, Picture retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

I had a chat with Dr Walters before the conference. The questions she raises are very interesting, with no easy answers.

I myself find that it is challenging to include unsavoury details about my forebears in my family tree. On the other hand, I think that no one should be excluded, and perhaps sometimes just names and dates are sufficient while I wait to consider how to provide biographical details.

I have also listened to Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas in an Online World (A Discussion) where the panel included:

• American genealogist Lyn Broderick https://thesingleleaf.com/about-2/
• Australian genealogist and blogger Jill Ball, who blogs as Geniaus http://geniaus.blogspot.com/),
• Daniel Loftus a young Irish genealogist https://thehiddenbranch.com/who-we-are-2/,
• American genealogist Judy Russell who blogs as the Legal Genealogist https://www.legalgenealogist.com/,
• American genetic genealogy researcher CeCe Moore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCe_Moore, and
• Australian genealogist Kerry Farmer https://www.kerryfarmer.info/.

The aim of the session was to “discuss common scenarios to help increase awareness, promote understanding, and educate the community on this important topic.” Scenarios included:

• The inclusiveness of the genealogy community; the discussion touched on the issue of cyber-bullying, concluding that we should promote the notion of genealogy for all.

• Daniel Loftus looked at the issue of memorials at FindAGrave and similar sites being created by people who are not close family members. FindAGrave has dealt with this problem by creating new guidelines for people who have recently died.

• Judy Russell spoke about copyright and also the terms of service for websites where we gain information in our genealogical searches. Some of the issues she discussed she had written about in January in her post Reprise: TNSTAAFL. Other earlier posts also covered the issues she explored:
  • Credit doesn’t cut it : nowhere in the law does it say “but it’s perfectly okay to copy and share it if you give the creator of the work credit.”
  • Contract, not copyright : websites rely on contract law (their terms and conditions) to restrict re-use of any out-of-copyright materials

• CeCe Moore spoke about investigative genetic genealogy. There are some misconceptions, for example about the databases available for investigative genetic genealogy: AncestryDNA and 23andme, the two largest databases do not permit access for law enforcement purposes. MyHeritage does not permit the use under their terms of service. GedMatch requires you to opt in to permit your data to be used for law enforcement and FamilyTreeDNA allows you to opt out if you do not wish your data to be used that way.

• Kerry Farmer talked about belonging to many family history societies and possible conflicts of interest with her roles including that for promoting her own genealogy business. She addresses these conflicts by declaring them if she recognises them as they arise and always being aware of what ‘hat’ she is wearing in different situations.

The session was slightly marred by technical issues:

• Those viewing later could neither see the questions posed to the 130 or so viewers in real time nor the see results. Some of the questions also were not worded so as to elicit the information the panel was looking for: the ‘societies’ question should have had as an option ‘belonging to no society’, and the DNA database question should have had as an option ‘to have been tested with multiple databases’.
• Reference was made several times to the chat log but that was not available to later viewers and unless an item raised was directly and coherently addressed was not of relevance to viewers.
• Screen sharing was not always smooth.
• The amount of time devoted issues was sometimes disproportionate to the amount of interest in them.

The RootsTech library has more than 1,500 sessions on 185 topics in over 30 languages. I chose Germany as a research location in my filter to find 51 relevant sessions.

RootsTech sessions continue to be available online even though the conference has ended, a terrific genealogy education resource. There are at least 51 sessions on German genealogy and I plan to work through many of these as I hope to improve my knowledge in this area.

Relatives at RootsTech

RootsTech, first held in 2011, is an annual family history and technology conference and trade show convened by FamilySearch, a nonprofit organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).

Because of the Covid pandemic, in 2021 the conference was conducted online. It had more than a million participants, from 242 countries, who watched more than 2,000 on-demand genealogical class sessions taught by experts, archivists, and family-history companies. (These sessions are still available for viewing.)

I participated in 2021. This year I have signed up again, and I look forward to the 2022 presentations, which begin on 3 March. (Once again, FamilySearch will make these available after the conference.)

This year as part of RootsTech, FamilySearch produced an app for participants to determine whether and how they were related to each other. The app matches RootsTech participants worldwide by comparing the names of their ancestors found in the FamilySearch Family Tree. When a common ancestor is discovered, a participant is shown the names of living relatives and their family connections.

I have about 700 relatives at RootsTech, with the number growing as new participants sign up for the conference. Five hundred of these are from the United States, 9 from Canada, 2 from the UK, and 3 from Australia. About a quarter have not given their location.

My closest relative is a 3rd cousin from Australia, both of us descended from my great great grandfather James Francis Cudmore and his wife Margaret nee Budge. We have corresponded in the past.

James Francis Cudmore

Margaret Cudmore nee Budge.

My next closest cousins at RootsTech are 6th cousins once removed in the United States. Our shared common ancestor was Edward Mainwaring 1709 – 1795, my sixth great grandfather.

Disappointingly, there seems to be an error in the tree and I don’t think we are in fact related.

The family search tree showed Edward Mainwaring 1754 – 1842 (FamilySearch id M2CP-HGK) being the son of Edward Mainwaring 1709 – 1795 (Family search id L4HK-DWJ) and Mary Morgans (FamilySearch id M2XG-FBZ) born Wales (no dates). Mary is said to have married Edward on 8 August 1753 at Kinsham, Herefordshire.

Edward Mainwaring 1709 – 1795 married Sarah Bunbury 29 May 1735 at Whitmore, Staffordshire. They had 8 children, including an Edward (1736 – 1825). The family is well documented, with church records, wills, marriage settlements, and histories. Thee marriage and children are recorded on the FamilySearch tree.

The Edward Mainwaring in the Bishop’s Transcript of the marriage (referenced on FamilySearch) between Edwd Mainwaring and Mary Morgans on 8 August 1753 at Leysters, Herefordshire, is not the same man as the Edward Mainwaring of Whitmore.

Feeling a little deflated that my cousins were incorrectly linked, I set out to collaborate on editing the tree. The FamilySearch tree is one of several major online collaborative trees; I also contribute to Wikitree. The aim of these trees is to have only one profile per person, properly documented.

To correct the tree at FamilySearch I wrote a note attached to Mary Morgan’s profile explaining that the wrong Edward Mainwaring had been linked. The note shows up under a tab labelled ‘Collaborate’. I then removed Edward 1709 – 1795 as the father of Edward 1754 – 1842 and husband of Mary Morgans. I added a new Edward Mainwaring https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G67M-M97 as a husband of Mary Morgan’s and father to Edward Jr. I don’t know this man’s biographical details other than that he married Mary, so I had to leave the other fields blank. Perhaps some enterprising family historian will discover more about him. I ignored the possible match who is married to someone else; there are a lot of Edward Mainwarings.

Explaining my reasoning on the profile of Mary Morgans

Removing Edward Mainwaring of Whitmore from this family and leaving an explanation

Lastly add another Edward Mainwaring, a new husband for Mary Morgans and father to Edward Mainwaring born 1754

I expected that this change would reduce the number of cousins I have at RootsTech and, sure enough, I dropped from 705 to 667 relatives instantly.

Collaborative trees take work but I believe the result is better than a genealogist can achieve by working alone, and that over time these single family trees will become increasingly accurate.

In the mean time I look forward to finding more cousins and of course to learning from the presentations at RootsTech from the beginning of March.

Relatives at RootsTech is an optional activity that is part of the RootsTech Connect 2022 conference. Attendees can sign up for RootsTech and access some of the classes and sessions without choosing to join Relatives at RootsTech. Attendees who join Relatives at RootsTech can see how they are related to other conference attendees and send a text message to relatives, if desired. The functionality will be discontinued after the conference though you can still stay in contact with people who you have added to a friends list. Currently there are more than 50,000 participants in Relatives at RootsTech, I expect that participant numbers to grow significantly closer to the conference. Are we related?

Some of the speakers at RootsTech in 2022.

Wikitree:

• James Francis Cudmore (1837 – 1912) Family search tree : KC5C-TGP
• Margaret (Budge) Cudmore (1845 – 1912) Family search tree : 2H3D-LTH
• Edward Mainwaring (1709 – 1794) Family search tree : L4HK-DWJ

Disclosure:  I have signed up to be a RootsTech 2022 Influencer and have committed to writing about the conference.