Genealogy - Back to Adam

Back in 2009, my wife and I started researching our family history, after receiving an email from her second cousin. He already had researched a lot of their family tree in Ancestry.com. I started on my family tree and in a few years we both had traced our genealogy back about 8 generations to the 1500's.

Last year I visited Sweden and a town where my great great great grandfather lived in 1800. In January, a posting on a Swedish Facebook page prompted me to google his name and location. A link popped up to Geni.com, another ancestry site that has constructed a world family tree of over 100 million people. Following the link, I discovered a treasure trove.

I discovered links to the Vikings including Ragnar from the History channel TV series. I hit the royal line of kings which took me back 58 generations to the first recorded King of Sweden in the 3rd Century. Further investigation has taken me back over 150 generations in 5000 years to King Solomon, Rameses and many others including Adam.

Who knows if this is all true? We know the Internet never lies!? All it takes is one incorrect linkage which is easy to make with all the Scandinavian names with the suffixes - son or dotter. If there is no mistake in the first 25 generations, the royal records and archeology discoveries make the rest more believable. But it has been fun and given me a greater appreciation for history.

In this presentation I will discuss the online genealogy tools and Mac, iOS and Windows apps that I have used in my research. My workflow and exchange of data between the tools will be discussed. I plan to demo some of these tools and help you get started on a trip into your family history.

• Other