The Roswell Family History Center will hold its third annual RootsTech conference 9 a.m.-1 p.m. April 9 at 500 Norcross St., Roswell.
This is a free event, with no registration required. The conference will include the latest news and best presentations from the 2016 RootsTech conference held in Salt Lake City.
Four classes per hour will include getting the most out of ancestry.com, the latest with FamilyTree (part of FamilySearch), the best websites and apps for local history, using Google for genealogy, and British genealogy research, among other topics.
This is a great opportunity to learn from experts as well as benefit from this great national conference without having to leave the area. It should be well worth attending. For further information, call Linda at 404-805-7739.
Free persons of color
Michael A. Ports of Jacksonville, who is publishing a series of booklets on free persons of color from Georgia’s county records, will be the Georgia Archives Lunch and Learn speaker April 8.
The event will be at noon and is free; bring your own lunch.
Free persons of color have been studied by many historians, as they were in a unique situation, and many had never actually been slaves, as their status came from their mother. If she were free, they were free. To study further, see Ira Berlin’s book “Slaves Without Masters” (1974).
Ports will discuss Free Person of Color Registers in Georgia, including the state laws governing the registration, guardianship and manumission of free persons of color. He will include a case study of Sylvia, a free woman of color, from the records of Jefferson County, whose court records he is publishing in several volumes.
For his books, see the Genealogical Publishing Co. in Baltimore at genealogical.com. For more information about his lecture or the Georgia Archives, check georgiaarchives.org or call 678-364-3710.
Irish ancestors
An Irish research webinar at Family Tree University by Donna Moughty discussed “Five Reasons Your Irish Ancestors Immigrated.” They were: religion, employment, natural disasters (including the Irish potato famine after which nearly 2 million Irish left Ireland), community (going to join other Irish friends and family who had gone before), and adventure (going for a new opportunity).
See familytreeuniversity.com, a division of Family Tree Magazine, for this and other webinars.
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