Hi Everyone!
We hope you are staying safe and are well. Besides doing what we need to and have to do, as some are able to do so they are filling time with genealogy doing things like actually doing their own genealogy, cleaning up and organizing their genealogy, and/or taking some time for some genealogy education.
Take a look around and you will find a variety of free things genealogy related. We will list some that we have found here but take a look around yourself at your favorite sites to see what is out there and available to you.
First off, we want to tell you about our new Macomb County Genealogy Group YouTube Channel. It is free and available for anyone to view. We have started off with three Tech Tips videos. The first (about 12 minutes long) is on how to do a Screenshot on Windows and Mac computers. The second (about 2 minutes long) is on adding the Calculator and Character Map to either your Start Menu or Taskbar on your Windows computer. The third (about three minutes long) is on printing a website page as a PDF file. While it is demonstrated on a Windows computer, the technique can be used on a Mac as well.
For Michigan residents, please remember that through the Michigan Electronic Library aka mel.org you have free access from home to a variety of databases including MyHeritage Library Edition. There are lots of databases there to search.
Ancestry.com
Today, Ancestry.com announced on its Ancestry blog that it is making teacher-developed lesson plans available for free for anyone to download, covering a range of educational topics for various ages. Ancestry has collaborated with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration to offer temporary free access to millions of historical records and images from the federal government. And says it will continue providing free online tutorials and video courses to help people get started with family tree building. A list of lesson plans and more information can be found as well as a sampling of the temporary free access collections here. There are also free videos explaining getting started with family history in the Ancestry Academy. Ancestry's promotion says you just need to provide your email to take advantage of the completely free promotion.
While a link to create free username/membership was not given, do remember that usually a free username will not request your credit card information. Do not click on the free trial because that will require your credit card information. This page here is often the one needed to create a free username (no credit card) but sometimes Ancestry has a special search page where the free access is given. We will update this when we confirm the method to access the free records offer. Another website has said the search/index is free but to access the images you have to do the free trial which is not free if you forget to cancel before you are charged. If you already have a guest/free username account you can sign in and see if you can access the temporarily free collections. Update: On March 26, 2020, at 4:07 p.m. ESDT. we have personally confirmed if you already have a free username account meaning one without a paid data membership (or create one using the link above meaning not the free trail membership that asks for your credit card information) you can access the temporarily free collections and see the record images. This was tested by signing into a free username account that does not have a paid data membership and searching a few of the collections appearing in the sample listing of temporarily free collections. Record images were viewable from the search result lists. So get searching!
Family Tree Magazine
Family Tree Magazine is giving its March/April 2020 issue in digital (PDF) form away for free. Here is the link to the PDF. The issue's main article is a comparison of the four major genealogy websites. Along with a Roundup of Free Online Record Collections.
Family Tree Webinars
Legacy Family Tree Webinars almost always has its latest webinar free to view for a week after its initial live presentation. This week's webinar today was on Using the Fold3.com website. Did you know Family Tree Webinars also has a variety of recorded webinars available for free anytime. Just to to the Webinar Library tab and select View All - Free. On March 12th of this month Family Tree Webinars hosted a 24 hour marathon of live webinars, and now all these marathon recordings are available to view for free thru April 6, 2020. So, take some time to learn something new.
MyHeritage.com
MyHeritage.com has decided to make its MyHeritage in Color feature free and unlimited for one month (until April 22, 2020) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. See its blog post for details. MyHeritage in Color takes scans of black and white photos and colorizes them. Normally only 10 photos can be colorized by anyone without a Complete subscription plan.
Archion.de
Archion.de is a website of the Evangelical Church of Germany where church books from the various regional churches are digitized and placed online for family researchers to access and view. The site is in German with some English translated pages. For four weeks from March 31 to April 27, 2020, there will be a sale on access Passes. A one-month pass regularly 19,90 Euro will be 17,90 Euro; a three-month pass regularly 52,20 Euro will be 43,50 Euro; a one-year pass regularly 178,80 Euro will be 139 Euro. The passes do not auto-renew and each pass allows only a certain number of image downloads. See details on the site's Available Passes page.
You are able to browse the contents of the website. The church books are organized first by the regional holding archive and the regional division and the parish location where you can then see what records types and time periods are available. At this time the digitized church records are mostly not electronically index so this is a browse and manually search like you would have done in the days of microfilm.
We can not list every offer out there so keep an eye out for the websites you visit and use.
Stay Safe Everyone!
See you soon at Mt. Clemens Public Library!
LE
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