Elizabeth Swanay O’Neal discusses the popular Relatives at Rootstech feature, which allows conference registrants to connect with family. It’s free to sign up, easy to participate in, and only available until March 31, 2024. Elizabeth shares her strategies for using it.  

• Register for RootsTech to access recorded content and participate in “Relatives at RootsTech” for family tree connections.

• Opt-in to participate in “Relatives at RootsTech” and ensure you have an updated family tree on FamilySearch.

• Use the FamilySearch family tree mobile app to find relatives and actively engage with the genealogical community.

• Experience sharing reveals the potential to connect with distant relatives and gain new insights into family history.

• New features like saving contacts on RootsTech improve long-term communication possibilities with newfound relatives.

Related Episodes:

Episode 205: Numbers to Names: A Holocaust Photo Database 

Episode 24: Civil War Photo Sleuth

Links:

• 5 Things to Do With Relatives at Rootstech
• Heart of the Family 
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Elizabeth Swanay O’Neal is a professional genealogist, writer, educator, and national genealogical speaker. She is the author of the family history lifestyle website, Heart of the Family where her mission is to help others make the past part of their present.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective^Òhelps clients with photo related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.   Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 223: The Power of Relatives at RootsTech with Elizabeth Swanay O’Neal appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week on The Photo Detective podcast, Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, is joined by Trevor Mattea.

Trevor shares how finding a photo in his home’s attic helped inspire him to find who that photo belonged to – meaning the descendants of the people in the photo. 

This episode looks at the intimate journey that can come from these so-called “orphan photos” and what a reunion looks like. In fact, Trevor actually reached out to Maureen for advice on what to do with the photo and the two recount those steps and how to approach one of these ownerless photos to help find a descendant. 

With so many orphan photos, this podcast episode offers advice on how to go about trying to reunite a photo with its owners. 

Related Episodes:

Bonus Episode: Lost History Discovered (in the Recycling) 

Episode 137: The Walls Can Talk: Finding History in a Hidden Room with David Whitcomb 

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Trevor Mattea has a range of professional experiences and interests grounded in conversation, knowledge-building, and creative expression. As an at-home parent to a young son, he focuses on genealogy, family traditions, homeschooling, and home renovation. He creates personalized gifts and party games through his Etsy store, BingoMe.

Previously, Trevor taught elementary school and consulted throughout the country in the areas of deeper learning, digital portfolios, project-based learning, parent engagement, and technology integration. He also hosted the New Books in Education podcast.

He holds an M.A. in Education from Stanford University and an A.B. in Political Science from Washington University.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective^Òhelps clients with photo-related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.   Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 206: Found in an Attic, Returned to Family appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

Twitter is a social media platform that folks either love or hate. It doesn’t generate too much of an in-between feeling. It’s known for short posts and hashtags. It’s the place you go for breaking news and some groups like #GenChat use it to inspire collaboration and social interaction in the genealogy world. There are photo historians on Twitter too. 

But I was surprised to see a photo reunion trending. Historian and author Victoria Johnson maximized her Twitter reach by encouraging her students and twitterstorians (historians on Twitter) to share an unidentified photo she found in a used book. It caused a flood of comments, resulted in a reunion, and landed Victoria in the national spotlight of CNN and ABC News. 

It’s made me reevaluate the power of Twitter for family history ( and it might make you take a look at the social media platform). 

Related Episodes:

Episode 142: Vintage Aerial Photos

Episode 101: Rediscovering an American Community of Color

Links:

• Purchase Victoria Eden’s Pulitzer Prize finalist, “American Eden” here
• Story on CNN
• ABC News Story
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Victoria Johnson is a historian and Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York. Her most recent book, American Eden, a biography of the New York doctor who served at the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (yes, he has a small part in the musical!) was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Nonfiction and for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 146: Using Twitter for a Photo Reunion appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

I know that my guest’s feelings about abandoned orphan photos will resonate with you.  He hates seeing a photo abandoned and unfortunately he sees a lot of them.  It’s a personal mission for Kody Beltz of the Good Finch Company of Witcha, Kansas. He’s an estate and antique dealer.  His eventually successful adventure using Facebook to reunite some identified images with family resulted in national attention.  Here’s the amazing part–Kody isn’t a family historian.  He just loves photos and prefers they remain in family hands even if they end up in a shoebox. His mission is to reunite orphan photos with relatives.

Related Episodes:

Episode 32: The Man Behind DeadFred.com

Bonus Episode: Lost History Discovered (in the Recycling)

Links:

• Photos in auction returned to Family
• The Good Finch Co.
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Kody Beltz is the Co-Owner of The Good Finch Co. Selling vintage and antiques along with Estate Sale services.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 145: Orphan Photos Reunited appeared first on Maureen Taylor.