Research Services
Seminars & Lectures Series
Please Contact Us for prices and availability of our lectures and seminars.
DNA Lectures
Understanding DNA
This workshop is for those just beginning to explore the wonderful world of DNA. Verify a family line. Learn your ethnicity. Smash a brick wall. Discover a story. Connect with cousins. Network your research. We will explore what genes are, our genetic inheritance, our ethnicity results, recombination through the generations, what our DNA results are composed of, and the answers that DNA can and cannot provide for our family research.
The Mechanics of finding your family using DNA
If you have autosomal matches then, in 98% of the cases, those people are related to you. The goal, of course, is to determine how you and your cousin matches are related. This workshop is for those that have had a DNA test done, understand the principles of DNA matches and have worked with their results for a short time. Organization of genetic cousins is a huge component of managing your DNA test results and clustering your matches allows you to identify information that is not immediately visible or apparent. This workshop will take you through organization techniques and the DNA match comparison tools that are available to sift and sort through your matches efficiently. We will also look at Y-DNA and mtDNA and the usefulness of these two types of tests to your research.
Irish Lectures
Irish Family History: making the connection across the Atlantic
This lecture will show you what resources are available to help you research your Irish family history. We will explore available online resources, digital images and material available via record offices, libraries and other repositories to help you with your research. Records relating to the Irish in Canada and Ireland will be discussed. In addition to church, census and land records there are other resources that can help with Irish research. Please Contact Us to schedule this lecture.
Irish Diaspora: 1600 to 1900, 300 years of emigration
The Irish Diaspora consists of some 3 million persons, of whom 1.2 million are Irish-born emigrants as defined by the Government of Ireland: all persons of Irish nationality who habitually reside outside of the island of Ireland - emigrants and their children, who, under Irish law, are Irish citizens by descent. It also includes any grandchildren who were registered as Irish citizens in the Foreign Births Register held in every Irish diplomatic mission. Great-grandchildren and even more distant descendants of Irish immigrants may also register as Irish citizens, but only if the parent through whom they claim descent was registered as a citizen before the descendant in question was born. More broadly interpreted, the diaspora contains all those known to have Irish ancestors, i.e., over 100 million people or more than fifteen times the population of the island of Ireland - 6.4 million - in 2011. This lecture will introduce the myriad reasons for the diverse emigration of the Irish population. Please Contact Us to schedule this lecture.
Scottish Lectures
Scottish Family Research
ScotlandsPeople, the government funded pay-per-view website, should be a required stop for anyone researching their Scottish family history online. However, there are other very useful resources that should be exhausted before diving into the government's treasure trove. This seminar will guide you through the process of exhausting those other useful resources before signing on to ScotlandsPeople in order to help make your research on ScotlandsPeople more cost effective and efficient. This seminar will also guide you through the process of making use of the ScotlandsPeople website. Please Contact Us to schedule this seminar.
Understanding the Quirks in Scottish Research
Are you on the right track with the family you are researching? This lecture will enlighten you on the unique circumstances of Scottish life that can adversely affect the accuracy and correctness of your research: the use of maiden names by married women in the early census and following the death of a husband, the clan system, hand-festing and more. Please Contact Us to schedule this lecture.
Scottish Emigration to Canada
This lecture will provide an understanding of the reasons for Scottish emigration to Canada and will cover numerous research sources that can help you identify a place of origin for your ancestor in Scotland. Please Contact Us to schedule this lecture.
General British Lectures
Beginning Your British Ancestral Research
This "beginners" seminar will take you through the basics of researching your ancestors in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales online. The major online databases will be discussed as will various subscription websites. Please Contact Us to schedule this seminar.
Intermediate British Ancestral Research
Once the online databases and subscription websites have been picked clean of information, census data exhausted and civil registration certificates ordered, you can now take your research further. But where to start becomes the question. This seminar will present information concerning those other records that are able to help you move your research forward. Please Contact Us to schedule this seminar.
Ontario Research Lecture Series
Beginning Your Ontario Ancestral Research
This "beginners" seminar will take you through the basics of researching your family history in Ontario. The major online databases will be discussed as will various subscription websites. We will also look at information to be found in libraries and archives. The basic records will be discussed and methods needed to help you understand and evaluate the information you have discovered. Please Contact Us to schedule this seminar.
Ontario Ancestral Research - The Intermediate Stage
As a follow-up to Beginning Your Ontario Ancestral Researchthis second seminar covers such topics as: Wills and estate records; researching newspapers; military ancestors; immigration, naturalization and citizenship; and municipal records including assessment rolls, collector rolls and pre-1850 census records. Please Contact Us to schedule this seminar.
Ontario Ancestral Research - Advanced Research
This third seminar in the Ontario Ancestral Research series will concentrate on land registry records, crown land records, land petitions and township papers. Land records can be very useful in helping to piece together a family's history and might even reveal their place of origin in the native country! Please Contact Us to schedule this seminar.
Methodology Lectures
Not everything is Online! What you may be Missing
Although there seems to be a wealth of information online, today, if you are relying only on those great resources then you will be missing out on a rich variety of useful information. This lecture will look at what is not available online and use case studies from England, Scotland, Ireland and Canada to demonstrate what you may be missing by focusing only on online records. Please Contact Us to schedule this lecture.
Beware Indexes and Transcriptions!
This seminar will take you through the process of dissecting and understanding the information found in indexes and transcriptions whether those be found online, in major genealogical databases or in print. Not knowing which register was used by an indexer or transcriber creates the first layer of potentially inaccurate data that could creep in to one's research. Did the transcriber correctly interpret any shortforms or shorthand found in an entry? Was the transcriber even aware that for some names and surnames abbreviations and shorthand notations existed and were liberally used right up to the later 1800s? Did the transcriber have solid knowledge of the penmanship - the paleography - of the times? Not knowing the answers to these questions and not being aware that there could have been an inaccurate or alternate interpretation of data could very well lead the unsuspecting family historian straight up the wrong family tree! Please Contact Us to schedule this seminar.
Evaluate your Evidence!
The Genealogical Proof Standard will help you stay on course and analyze the information you have found. This lecture will take you through the process of using the Genealogical Proof Standard in your research to effectively and accurately evaluate the evidence that you have collected online and elsewhere during your research. Please Contact Us to schedule this lecture.
The Importance of Family Memorabilia - a run-up to the Family Interview
We all have one - that box or container filled with family memorabilia that has been passed down through the generations of letters, photo albums, a birthday book, an autograph book, or a pile of other papers from your parents, grandparents or other family members. Have you gone through it yet? How important is it to your family history research? This seminar will take you through the process of dissecting and understanding the information in your family's archive to see what secrets and clues it may hold. Please Contact Us to schedule this seminar.