“Brick Wall” Tags and Other Technological Innovations Coming to an Ancestry® Family Tree Near You

Brick walls might soon become more fun. (Image: John Vachon, 1938, U.S. Office of War Information).

The words “brick wall” are powerful—so potent, in fact, that just thinking them is often enough to cause even the most intrepid of genealogists to abandon their research in favor of a glass of wine and a good book. But the planned rollout of a new tool by Ancestry® may help family historians stay glued to their research projects longer by transforming those words from disheartening to merely descriptive.

That promising new tool is called MyTreeTags™, and it is slated for release by Ancestry® sometime later this year, according to a February 28, 2019 announcement by the company’s chief executive officer, Margo Georgiadis, who described the change as part of the company’s “commitment to continuous innovation.”

But, while the new tagging system will likely be helpful to everyone using the company’s technology to create online family trees, it will likely benefit those with larger trees most because it will enable users to label profiles of individual ancestors with “predetermined or custom tags,” such as “actively researching” to denote a profile’s current research status, “confirmed” or “unverified” to clarify whether or not the date for a particular profile is accurate or needs updating, or “blacksmith”, “immigrant”, “military”, “unmarried”, or “orphan.” Family historians will then be able to use those tags in combination with a special filter system developed by the company to retrieve lists of ancestors who fall under specific tags (such as everyone in a user’s tree who was a member of the military or worked as a coal miner, for example).

Project managers at the company expect that this new technology will help users “save time as they work to break through brick walls and enrich ancestor profiles.”

The former president of Americas, at Google Inc. and then CEO at Mattel, Inc., Georgiadis took over the helm at Ancestry® on May 10, 2018, following the company’s six-month, global search for new leadership. Expressing excitement at the time of her appointment, she said that, in addition to helping to facilitate “Ancestry’s mission to connect the world,” she also hoped to “enhance our consumers’ understanding of who they are and where they come from.”

 

 

International African-American Museum Awarded Two Million Dollars in Support by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Slave Trade, Africa, 1899 (Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, et. al., public domain courtesy of the New York Public Library).

Leaders of a new museum under development in United States have announced important new funding which is expected to greatly enhance African-American family history research across the globe. The two million dollar award was made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the International African American Museum — a new educational facility which is slated to be built in Charleston, South Carolina, where roughly half of all enslaved Africans were brought after being forcibly transported via the Transatlantic Slave Trade prior to the end of the American Civil War.

The funding is expected to support not just the creation of the IAAM Center for Family History, but to help make it “[o]ne of the crown jewels of the experience at the museum,” according to Joseph P. Riley, the longtime former mayor of Charleston and lifetime IAAM board member. “Because of this generous donation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the center will catapult into a level of excellence that simply would not be achievable” otherwise.

During his announcement of the donation at RootsTech’s 9th family history conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, elder David A. Bednar explained that the church is supporting IAAM’s Center for Family History at this early juncture of its development because its leaders and members “value the strength that comes from learning about … families. The museum will not only educate its patrons on the important contributions of Africans who came through Gadsden’s Wharf and Charleston, it also will help all who visit to discover and connect with ancestors whose stories previously may not have been known.”

Also speaking at the Salt Lake event was Martin Luther King III, son of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The younger King noted that the collaboration between the IAAM and the church was very much in line with the efforts of his father to create a “beloved community.”

Prior to this The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its FamilySearch International were instrumental in increasing access to African heritage records, including letters and contracts which were created immediately after the American Civil War as part of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

When its doors open on the site of the former Gadsden’s Wharf in Charleston in the year 2021, the IAAM and its family history center are expected to deliver not only a world-class museum experience, but to serve as a “memorial and site of conscience” which will help visitors better understand and appreciate “the history, sacrifices and contributions of Americans of African descent,” in a way that “contribute[s] to a more complete and honest articulation of American history.”