Along with 20,000 of my “closest friends,” I spent three days at the RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah February 12-14. This is my fourth year attending, and I continue to be dazzled at the variety of sessions and topics offered. With the surge of interest in Greek genealogy, I attended sessions on Italian and French ancestry to learn tips for teaching ethnicity research.

Both presenters did not discuss U.S. collections but focused exclusively on the records available online and on-site in their countries. Their lectures covered:

1. the types of records found in civil and ecclesiastical collections and the date range of those collections

2. the vital importance of understanding the geographic boundaries and the country’s history to ascertain which government had control of the records at varying times;

3. the structure of other repositories (e.g., libraries, archives) and the resources found in each.

These classes were of significant value to me as I prepare for two Greek genealogy conferences this year (New York City in April; Salt Lake City in September).

At a vendor’s booth, I was thrilled to find issues of Tracing Your Italian Ancestors and Tracing Your Eastern European Ancestors. Both of these are filled with “how-to” tips such as visiting ancestral villages, strategies for successful research, locating online resources. These articles will be of tremendous help in structuring classes for Greek researchers.

I also attended several sessions on DNA and Genetic Genealogy. This field has become a hot topic in the past two years, as more people learn how to connect with others who descend from a common ancestor. Although I have taken both an autosumnal (or Family Finder) test and a mitochondrial test, I have not followed up on contacting “matches” as my time has been spent on analyzing records I got in Sparta last summer.

This is the ethnicity breakdown of my DNA test and look forward to exploring more. It will also be interesting to see how this DNA “map” changes as more people test in the years to come, and algorithms change to reflect an expanding pool of DNA.