The Shamrock Genealogist

I recently attended my first RootsTech in Salt Lake City, UT. It was one of the most amazing experiences I ever did. It was my first solo trip to travel across the country that wasn't for work reasons. I'm very thankful and appreciative to my family and friends for pitching in for me to go this year. I had the privilege to come in a day early to research at the Family History Library and then attend the entire conference, including some of the innovator summit sessions.  RootsTech was held in the Salt Palace Convention Center. This place was pretty huge - you had multiple ballrooms on the main level, and then classrooms going on and on for another two floors. Depending on when your next session was, you needed to hustle a little bit to make sure you found the correct room and were able to get a good seat. The featured lunches were all the way across the convention center on the 3rd floor. You definitely worked up an appetite by the time you got there. The Expo Hall housed hun...

I am honored for the shoutout on this week's Extreme Genes episode . I highly recommend this genealogy podcast to all of my genealogy friends.

Last week was my first trip to RootsTech , the annual genealogy conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was truly a trip of a lifetime. I came in a day early to get some research done at the Family History Library before I started attending classes. Steve Rockwood, CEO for FamilySearch, was right when he calls the Family History Library "Disneyland". There were so many floors to pick from - U.S. & Canada Books. U.S. & Canada Microfilm, British Isle, and International records. I spent time on each floor as I started going through my family tree. When I first signed onto my computer, I did have the conundrum of which ancestor to start with. I decided to start on the British Isles floor to research my Irish ancestors. My first few minutes on the British Isles floor wasn't uneventful. I needed to purchase a flash drive as I forgot mine at home. Luckily the library has one on each floor. I purchased the flash drive with no issue after inserting a $20 and receiv...

I know it's been forever since my last post. Life got in the way and then the holidays. I am going to try to be more punctual with my posts. My apologies for the wait.  Today I am going to talk about headstones and cemetery records. I have made a lot of progress in my family tree using sites like Find A Grave and Billion Graves to fill in some gaps.  Over the last few months, I recently upgraded to Billion Graves Plus and renew on a monthly basis. I have not regretted this decision. I was able to use the nearby family plots feature (where people with the same surname are buried) to find other possible ancestors in the same cemetery. I had the greatest amount of luck in Prince Edward Island, Canada where my father's ancestors are buried. I easily found an additional 20 plots that I didn't have in my tree.  Through the help of some of my cousins, volunteers on Billion Graves (as well as Find a Grave), and obituary records I was able to pinpoint most of my ancestor...