One of the greatest educational treasures in genealogy is the Legacy Family Tree webinars series which broadcast live nearly every Wednesday of the year. As a free resource, they provide some of the best ongoing genealogy education available right from your computer. But keeping up with the webinars can be a challenge. You don't always have time to view each one.
Now you can take advantage of the Legacy webinars even if you don't have time to watch them. Here's how:
No Time on Your Hands
If you have absolutely no time on your hands to catch up with a Legacy webinar you can still benefit from it. Use the webinars as a prompt. Let's take two recent webinars as examples: Migration Patterns East of the Mississippi Prior to 1860 by Mary Hill and American Revolution Genealogy by Beth Foulk.
During the course of your day you'll see the titles come across your screen either in an email or on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Make a mental note of the title. Then when you are driving, on your lunch break or taking a walk think about the topic and how it might apply to your ancestors. Did you have ancestors who migrated from one place to the other prior to 1860? Did you have any Revolutionary War ancestors?
Genealogy Research is not all about searching databases or microfilm. Thinking about your ancestors and analyzing what you know is just as critically important. Allow the titles of the weekly webinars to prompt you to think about your ancestors. You will start to ask yourself new questions and then when you have free time you'll be able to seek out the answers.
Limited Time on Your Hands
With only 15 minutes you can push your genealogy forward. Again, use the webinar titles as prompts. When you have 15 minutes in front of your computer do some searches related to the titles and see what you can find. For migrating ancestors, pick an ancestor in your Legacy database that lived before 1860. Then in the My Toolbar tab select the Map Family option. Now you can view a map of all the locations where your ancestor lived. You can also press the play button and watch the progression of your ancestor's life journey. Next, decide whether you have researched each location thoroughly enough. If not, come up with some research tasks and save them so they can be done when you have more time.
In the case of Revolutionary War ancestors, do a search for ancestors born between 1726 and 1767. You can do this by going to the Legacy My Toolbar tab and then selecting the Search button. In the primary condition box search for a birth date after 1725. Using the "And" function add a second condition of birth date before 1767. Next, choose create list. While women did participate in the American Revolution, your search results will be more manageable if you search for only males. When the list comes up print it out for future research.
A Bit More Time on Your Hands
If you're a Legacy webinar subscriber and have to wait to watch a webinar, you can still benefit each week. Make a point of printing out the handouts. During your lunch break, visit some of the internet links listed in the handout. For the Migrations East of the Mississippi, spend some time visiting the websites Migrations.org or Historical Maps of the United States from the University of Texas. See if you can learn something new about the places and routes your ancestors took. For the Revolutionary War topic visit websites such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) or the National Archives and do some searches on your Revolutionary War ancestors.
You see, even if you're too busy to take advantage of Legacy webinars every single week you can still benefit from them! Use the webinars titles as weekly prompts that lead you to think about your ancestors, help your plan your research tasks or take you on a brief adventure visiting genealogy websites.
Marian Pierre-Louis is the Social Media Marketing Manager for Legacy Family Tree. She is also the host of The Genealogy Professional podcast. Check out her webinars in the Legacy library.
I have never lived in the USA and have very few distant relatives there. Consequently I have no ancestors who moved between US states or were involved in the revolution. However, the tips are useful for any future webinars relevant to my English ancestry.