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News Home Legacy Webinars New to Legacy? Store News Home Legacy Webinars New to Legacy? Store Free Legacy Family Tree update now available (version 9.0.0.339) January 24, 2020 We have an important new update for our Legacy Family Tree 9 users (free) to download . It is a required update to continue using Legacy 9, and provides fixes to minor issues you have reported to us. So download the update to get the best Legacy ever! See the download instructions below for step-by-step instructions on installing this update. What's Been Fixed View the January 22, 2020 release notes here . How to Update For our Deluxe Edition users, all you have to do is connect to the Internet, start Legacy 9, and click on the "Install and Download Now" link on the Legacy Home tab . (If you're reading this from within the Legacy Home tab inside of Legacy 9, you'll first need to click on the Home button in the top left of the Legacy Home tab which looks like the following picture: If you are a Standard Edition Legacy user, you will need to visit our website. Go to http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/DownloadUpdate.asp and follow the instructions. Posted by Geoff Rasmussen in Legacy Updates | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | New TechZone Video - Need a Fillable Form? Word Has Your Back! by Amie Bowser Tennant January 24, 2020 Every Friday we're pleased to offer Legacy Family Tree Webinar subscribers a new short ten minute or less TechZone video just for them! This Friday enjoy "Need a Fillable Form? Word Has Your Back!" by Amie Bowser Tennant. Need a Fillable Form? Word Has Your Back! Learn how to create a fillable form which you can send to others to help with standardized completion of genealogy information. About the Presenter Amie Bowser Tennant is The Genealogy Reporter bringing you genealogy news, education, and inspiration. She is a professional genealogist, nationally known speaker, and internationally known blogger. Amie provides blog and written content for many top companies and societies in the genealogy field. Some of her publications can be found in the NGS Magazine, the Ohio Genealogical Society News and the OGS Quarterly, , and the FamilySearch blog, just to name a few! You can also see her webinars via Legacy Family Tree Webinars . See all the webinars and videos by Amie Bowser Tennant in the Legacy library. Not a member yet? Legacy Family Tree Webinars provides genealogy education where-you-are through live and recorded online webinars and videos. Learn from the best instructors in genealogy including Thomas MacEntee, Judy Russell, J. Mark Lowe, Lisa Louise Cooke, Tom Jones, and many more . Learn at your convenience. On-demand classes are available 24 hours a day! All you need is a computer or mobile device with an Internet connection. Subscribe today and get access to this BONUS members-only webinar AND all of this: All 1,134 classes in the library (1,386 hours of quality genealogy education) 4,681 pages of instructors' handouts Chat logs from the live webinars Additional 5% off anything at FamilyTreeWebinars.com Chance for a bonus subscribers-only door prize during each live webinar Additional members-only webinars It's just $49.95/year. Posted by Geoff Rasmussen | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | Analyzing Online Family Trees And Steak Sauces January 23, 2020 Maybe you’ve seen it. The latest Internet meme making the rounds of Facebook shows an A.1. sauce bottle with a hand drawn arrow to the words above the brand name that read, “Est 1862.” The meme states “So In The Middle Of The Civil War Someone Was Like “You Know What This Country Needs? A Delicious Steak Sauce.” The American Civil War was fought from 1861-1865. So the meme does seem to make sense. After all, weren’t people too busy to invent steak sauces during the Civil War? This meme reminds me of online family trees. Online trees are a great visual tool to help us find family history information. Like a meme, many of those online trees appear to make sense but we need to remember that with all things, looks can be deceiving. So how do we take what we see and verify that it is correct? Analysis of what you find is important and three steps you could use in analyzing family tree information is to question everything, dig deeper, and use sources to verify “facts.” 1. Question Everything and Don’t Assume First, there’s a big assumption for those reading that A.1. meme. It may make sense to you because you assume A.1. is an American invention, after all Americans are familiar with this condiment. When I initially saw this meme my first reaction was “yeah, that is weird.” But then I started Googling to not only make sure the image wasn’t doctored (did it really say 1862?) but to also see if the “historical” facts stated were actually the facts. We may also make assumptions about the online family trees we come across. When we see a tree with source citations and maybe even real photos instead of the website’s default male and female silhouettes we assume the tree has accurate information. But, take a little longer look. Does it make sense? Is there anything that right away signals a problem? How does that researcher know the information they have added? Could they have carefully analyzed the 20,000 people in their family tree? 2. Dig Deeper I carefully read the A.1. meme and realized that while yes, 1862 was during the American Civil War, was A.1. a U.S. creation? Could it have been “invented” prior to 1862, after all, what does “established” 1862 mean on a sauce bottle? Online family trees also require a careful reading and they should be explored and verified not just copied. Even “good” looking trees that appear to be correct can be problematic. We may look for source citations in that online tree but is this enough? Consider this, I was researching for a genealogy TV show when I was asked to verify an online tree that showed a Civil War ancestor. The researcher/descendant’s tree looked really good, everything seemed to be correct. However, all of the sources were from that particular online subscription website and none were from archives and libraries. Plus, one important source that was missing was the veteran’s Civil War pension file. The descendant hadn’t seen the need to pay the money for that file because everything looked correct. I totally understood why she hadn't ordered it but to be thorough I went ahead and had a researcher pull the file at the National Archives. Once I read the almost 200 pages the file contained I realized that, unfortunately, that veteran was not related. This was a case of a same name problem and the man in the family tree who was her ancestor had not served in the Civil War. This fact would have not been uncovered without that pension file. Sometimes things look good but further research into original records disprove those “facts.” 3. Use Sources to Verify “Facts” A quick Google search provided the answer to my questions about the A.1. meme. A.1. was not “invented” in the United States and it was actually decades older than its “established” date on the label. A press release issued by Kraft Foods in 2014, explained the sauce’s history: “Invented in the 1820s by the chef of King George IV, and commercialized in 1862 for the masses, A.1. was marketed as a high-quality, do-it-all "saucy sauce different from any other, appreciated on Welsh rarebits, broiled lobster and English mutton chops." In the 1960s, the brand shifted focus to beef and the product was renamed A.1. Steak Sauce.” [1] So it was first invented in the early 19 th century in England but then was “commercialized in 1862 for the masses.” No, no one was sitting around war torn America contemplating, “how can I make steak taste better?” (well maybe someone was but not the person who created A.1.). Online trees should not only include sources but should be thoroughly analyzed. Use that online tree for clues or hints but then ask yourself what sources are used to verify the facts? What sources are missing? What does ...