I didn’t get the chance to watch as many presentations as I’d like on Day 2, as life got in the way but I have reduced my playlist to something more realistic, partly because some of the talks I’d earmarked are not available virtually and were live at times when I wasn’t available, or was asleep. It is great that so many can be watch online, especially as they are free of charge. So this is my round up of Days 2 and 3. I enjoyed giving my own Marginalised Ancestors talk live but remotely and thankfully the technology behaved itself. This is one that is available for you to watch when you have an hour to spare. It was so difficult to decide what to miss out and I have fun varying the categories and case studies each time I give this talk.

I watched Liz Craig’s second One-Place Studies presentation on studying a street; a great introduction and Liz’s enthusiasm is infectious. I saw the Impact Forum live, with several presenters discussing the impact of family history on resilience, metal health and a sense of identity. Also on my watch list was ‘Reconstructing the Lives of our Female Irish Ancestors’ with Stephanie O’Connell. Plenty there for those with Irish ancestry and it was good to hear the emphasis on the importance of the social historical context. I have squeezed several short, Ancestry-sponsored, case studies from television programmes into odd moments. These included Every Family has a Secret and Finding your Roots.

With my Smith ancestors in mind, I watched Shaunese Luthy’s ‘Finding your Common Name Ancestor’. She utilised the F(riends) A(ssociates) and N(eighbours) principle in her case study of the Brown family. My interest in the history of medicine meant that ‘Diseases our Ancestors Faced and how those Illnesses Changed our World’ from Gregory C Gardner, was a must-watch. This is highly recommended and covered UK and US records. I am very envious of the US mortality schedules.

‘From Research to Draft: Rapidly Writing Your Ancestor’s Story’ by Devon Noel Lee contained some interesting ideas for turning basic facts into a narrative, although using AI for this doesn’t appeal to me personally. Her marking-up technique is similar to the work that I do with my writing your family history students and I am looking forward to leading a new cohort of Pharos students through the writing process in a couple of weeks. There is still time to join in on this one.

I have some great RootsTech talks still to watch, including Nick Barrett’s ‘Researching English Industrial Labourers’. I may even catch up on some that are lingering in the playlist from previous years.