Yep, it’s terms-of-service season at the genealogy websites, and this year — not surprisingly — there’s a clear showdown going on between major content providers on one side and the agents of artificial intelligence on the other.

And yep it’s absolutely going to impact our individual research and research methodologies as well — even if we can’t quite be sure just how just yet.

Sigh…

So… to put this into context, remember that terms of service (TOS) — or terms and conditions or terms of use or whatever this happens to be called at a particular website — are the limits somebody who owns something you want to see or copy or use puts on whether or not he’ll let you see or copy or use it. These are limits that are different from copyright protection, since the law says what is and isn’t copyrighted and you can own a thing without owning the copyright. So this isn’t copyright law; it’s contract law — you and whoever owns the thing you want to see or copy or use reach a deal. Yes, it’s a take-it-or-leave type of deal, but the law says — sigh — that’s perfectly okay. You either accept the terms, or you don’t use that website.¹

First up in this year’s AI-limiting terms for genealogy was MyHeritage, which updated its terms and conditions last month, adding this language:

Restrictions on AI Harvesting and Interaction: The use of AI agents, bots, automated systems, or any other artificial intelligence technology (“AI Tools”) to access, scrape, crawl, harvest, or collect data from the Website or Service (including but not limited to family trees, historical records, photographs, and DNA results) is strictly prohibited. Furthermore, you may not use AI Tools to interact with the Website’s features, automated workflows, or messaging systems. You are expressly forbidden from using any content, data, or information from the Website or Service to train, develop, improve, or operate any artificial intelligence model, machine learning system, large language model (LLM), or similar technology.²

Prohibition on AI Proxies and Gateway Accounts: You must not facilitate access to your MyHeritage account by any AI Tool or third-party automated interface. This includes, without limitation, arranging for an AI Tool to access the Service to provide a derivative service, search function, or data summary for yourself, other users, or any other third party. Using your account as a “gateway” to provide AI-based insights to non-subscribers is a material breach of these Terms, intended to protect the proprietary nature of our database and the subscription-based access model of the Service. Any use of the Service that bypasses our subscription requirements or facilitates unauthorized access to our database via AI-mediated tools is a material breach of these Terms and will result in the immediate termination of your account and potential legal action.³

Then it added to its general license language (“You are hereby granted a license to use the Service and the Website solely for personal use”) some limits that had not been there before. That section now reads: “You are hereby granted a license to use the Service and the Website solely for personal, non-commercial, and human use…”⁴

It’s clear these terms bar users from handing over their log-in credentials to an AI agent. It isn’t clear, at least not yet, what limits MyHeritage might try to enforce if a user personally gathers information from the website content and uploads it to an AI platform — nor is it entirely clear how MyHeritage intends to limit use of its web content by professional genealogists working for clients.

Ancestry joined in with a terms-and-conditions update today, updating its limits on AI-based agents. Previously, it barred “use of any artificial intelligence, bots, crawlers, spiders, data-miners, scrapers or other tools that facilitate rapid and bulk data collection.” ⁵ That section now provides that users may not “access, acquire, copy, or monitor any portion of the Services by any manual, automated, or programmatic method that exceeds the intended standard human use of the Services; or to use any data or content from the Services to train, develop, or fine-tune any machine learning model, algorithm, or artificial intelligence system.”⁶

Once again, how much use will be considered manual acquisition of content remains to be seen.

Two other notable changes were made in the Ancestry TOS, not AI-related but worth paying attention to. First, after last year’s brouhaha about whether a ban on using Ancestry for use in any judicial proceeding — which had genealogists who work in probate cases concerns, the terms were amended to limit the ban to using Ancestry’s DNA service “in any criminal judicial proceeding.”⁷ At the same time, Ancestry’s Privacy Statement was amended to bar not just law enforcement use of the service to investigate crimes or to identify human remains but use by “anyone working on their behalf.”⁸

And, second, Ancestry has expressly provided for a method for users to designate someone to gain control of their account as a future beneficiary. The provision reads:

Legacy Accounts and Named Beneficiaries. To help preserve your family history, you can designate a “Legacy Contact” in your Account Settings to receive access to your account if you can’t use it anymore. If a transfer request is made, we will verify the Legacy Contact’s identity and require proof of the qualifying event (such as a death certificate) before granting access. Upon verification, we will share your account access and Personal Information with your designated contact. They will then assume ownership of the account.⁹

To access that feature, users can go to their profile, choose Account Settings from the dropdown menu, then scroll down to Legacy Contact and enter a name and email.

There are of course a whole host of other relatively minor language changes in the terms — mostly to accommodate changes in the laws in countries around the world. But these spring 2026 changes suggest that the big battle in the future will be between content providers like the genealogy websites and content acquisition systems driven by AI that we as individuals want to use to assist with and streamline our research methodologies.

Fasten your seatbelts.

It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Image generated by Google Gemini, 12 May 2026, in response to this user’s prompt.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “AI meets TOS,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/ : posted 12 May 2026).

SOURCES

It is Mother’s Day here in the United States, and The Legal Genealogist is thinking once more about the pluses and minuses of testing every available older member of the family if we want to incorporate DNA — and particularly mtDNA — into our genealogical research.

Mitochondrial DNA — mtDNA for short — is the kind of DNA we all inherit from our mothers, but that only the daughters pass down to the next generation. Testing our mtDNA gives us a way to look back at our direct maternal line — our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother.¹ It’s particularly valuable in answering specific research questions, such as which of two wives is the mother of a particular child.²

Looking at this image of my own maternal line, I’m struck by the fact that — going forward — there won’t be many representatives of these women available to test.

My own mother had seven children — four boys and three girls. Not one of her daughters has a daughter who has a daughter. From an mtDNA perspective, that line has ended.

Ten of the children of my grandmother Opal lived to adulthood — five boys and five girls. In total, those five girls bore 11 girls, granddaughters to my grandmother. But those 11 granddaughters only produced three great granddaughters who, in turn, have produced only two second great granddaughters. Of my grandmother’s five potential female-descended lines, three have ended.

My great grandmother, Eula, only had the one daughter, my grandmother Opal. Her other three children were boys.

And it doesn’t get any better when we go back to my second great grandmother, Martha Louise, who had eight children, including three more daughters, after Eula. Tracing those daughters down to today, there is one — one! — direct female line descendant that we know of.

And Martha Louise herself was an only daughter.

Think about that for a minute.

With all the generations from Martha Louise on down, and all the female children born in those generations, we’re down to just a handful of potential candidates for the mtDNA line going forward.³

Test that older generation.

Do it now.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “A Mother’s Day caution,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/ : posted 10 May 2026).

SOURCES

Mayday!

Well, at least May Day.

The first of May 2026 already.

And lots of things coming up that, as always, The Legal Genealogist invites you to come along on.

First and foremost, we headed towards the start of the summer institute season. Whether virtually (GRIP in June, IGHR in August) or in person (GRIP in July), there’s likely a course that’s tailor-made for you.

And one that’s come up virtually in June that I’m particularly fond of is the course I coordinate for the GRIP Genealogy Institute. Running June 22-26, it’s Women and Children First!: Research Methods for the Hidden Half of the Family.

I’ll be joined by a stellar faculty — Blaine T. Bettinger, Catherine Becker Wiest Desmarais, Alec Ferretti; Michael S. Ramage, Richard G. Sayre and Ari Wilkins — as we examine all the ways to find and document the women of our families—mothers, sisters, wives—and the children they bore and raised. From the obvious topics of school and work records to the way these family members were disguised behind tick marks in the census, from clues hidden away in manuscript collections to the clues hidden away in our very genetic code, the resources and skills highlighted by this course will answer the question of why we should—and how we can—research women and children first and help us recreate our family trees far beyond the father-to-son-to-son bloodlines of genealogy past.

It’s a fun course, it’s an important course, and it’s a course where — every single time it’s offered — students make breakthroughs in their research that give them amazing insights into their own families.

For more information, see the course page at the GRIP website, and use this link to register for virtual courses.

And of course there’s more coming up:

May 2026

• Saturday-Sunday, 2-3 May: The Genealogical Society of Nova Scotia is hosting its 2026 Virtual Conference with a terrific line-up of speakers covering a wide variety of topics ranging from AI to genealogical methodology. I’m honored to be included, presenting Dowered or Bound Out: Records of Widows and Orphans at 1:45 p.m. AT (12:45 p.m. ET) on Saturday. For more information about this event and to register, see the the conference website.

• Wednesday-Saturday, 27-30 May: The National Genealogical Society is hosting its 48th annual Family History Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This year, as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, the theme of America at 250 will focus on understanding the nation’s past and preserving its records for the future. I’ll be presenting twice: on Friday, 29 May, at 9:30 a.m., on Twenty-Eight Volumes of Gold: U.S. Territorial Papers; and on Saturday, 30 May, at 11 a.m., on Occupants, Owners or Nations: Native Rights to Land. For more information about this event — which does include a virtual option for access to session recordings, see the the conference website.

June 2026

• Saturday, 13 June, 11 a.m. EDT: The Hudson County (NJ) Genealogical & Historical Society is hosting the virtual presentation Doing Time – Prison Records as Genealogy Resources. For more information about this Members-Only event (and to join!), keep an eye on the Upcoming Society Events page.

• Monday, 15 June, 11 a.m. 7 p.m. EDT: The North Hills (PA) Genealogists are hosting the presentation From Blackstone to the Statutes at Large – How Knowing the Law Makes Us Better Genealogists in a hybrid setting (I’ll be virtual, but you can be there virtually or in person!). For more information and to register for either format, see the Meetings & Events page.

• Monday-Friday, 22-26 June: As explained above, the GRIP Genealogy Institute holds its first session of the summer in a virtual format, and my course, Women and Children First!: Research Methods for the Hidden Half of the Family, will be part of that week. For more information, see the course page at the GRIP website, and use this link to register for virtual courses.

Come on out and join us, if you can, for one or more of these events and note, in some cases, that registration will be free or at a reduced cost to members of the host society — and some are limited to members only… There are some reaaaaaaally good reasons for joining genealogical societies… Just sayin’…

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Coming up: May-June 2026,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 1 May 2026).

Hard to believe we’re already into April of 2026, Easter is just around the corner, and The Legal Genealogist is hard at work catching up from a milestone-birthday-trip that shoulda been a Nile cruise but — given world events — turned into a 4500km trip to South Australia and Victoria instead.

Having just gotten back, I may not be entirely sure what time zone I’m in — or even what season this is (Australia is going into fall as the United States goes into spring) — but there’s a lot coming up and, as always, I’d love to have you come along, to the extent possible, on the trip.

April 2026

• Wednesday, 8 April, 2 p.m. EDT: Legacy Family Tree Webinars is hosting the virtual presentation Advertising the Law: The Gems in the Legal Notices. For more information and to register, see the webinar page.

• Saturday, 11 April, 10 a.m. EDT: The Bucks County (PA) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation NARA Mythbusters: Your Family IS in the Archives. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Tuesday, 14 April, 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT): The Tacoma-Pierce County Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation Polls, Personalty and Property – Making Sense of Tax Lists. For more information and to register, see the society’s events page.

• Thursday, 16 April, 7 p.m. MDT (9 p.m. EDT): The Virtual Chapter of the Utah Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation In That Case: Using Published Court Cases. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Saturday, 18 April, 10:45 a.m. CDT (11:45 a.m. EDT): The Genealogy Friends of Plano (TX) Libraries will host the virtual presentation Inventing America: Records of the U.S. Patent Office. For more information and to register, see the Saturday Seminars page.

• Monday, 20 April, 2 p.m. CDT (3 p.m. EDT): The Mid-Continent Public Library Midwest Genealogy Center branch is hosting the virtual presentation Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How of American Divorce. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Saturday, 25 April: The Virginia Genealogical Society will be hosting its virtual 2026 Spring Seminar, The Eve of Independence: Colonial Research in Virginia from 9:50 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. ET. I’m one of three individual presenters, with the topic From Crown to Commonwealth: A Revolution in Virginia Inheritance. Barbara Vines Little leads off with From Jamestowne to the Commonwealth, 1607-1776: Virginia’s Surviving Records and What They Can Tell Us, and Craig Scott adds The Virginia Colonial War Experience. There’s also a terrific panel discussion on Lines of Descent: Standards and Strategies for Colonial Era Lineage Applications, with Nicki Peak Birch, Lyndon H. Hart III, and Kimberly Ormsby Nagy. Details and a registration link can be found on the society’s events page.

May 2026

• Saturday-Sunday, 2-3 May: The Genealogical Society of Nova Scotia is hosting its 2026 Virtual Conference with a terrific line-up of speakers covering a wide variety of topics ranging from AI to genealogical methodology. I’m honored to be included, presenting Dowered or Bound Out: Records of Widows and Orphans at 1:45 p.m. AT (12:45 p.m. ET) on Saturday. For more information about this event and to register, see the the conference website.

• Wednesday-Saturday, 27-30 May: The National Genealogical Society is hosting its 48th annual Familly History Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This year, as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, the theme of America at 250 will focus on understanding the nation’s past and preserving its records for the future. I’ll be presenting twice: on Friday, 29 May, at 9:30 a.m., on Twenty-Eight Volumes of Gold: U.S. Territorial Papers; and on Saturday, 30 May, at 11 a.m., on Occupants, Owners or Nations: Native Rights to Land. For more information about this event — which does include a virtual option for access to session recordings, see the the conference website.

Come on out and join us, if you can, for one or more of these events and note, in some cases, that registration will be free or at a reduced cost to members of the host society — and some are limited to members only… There are some reaaaaaaally good reasons for joining genealogical societies… Just sayin’…

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Coming up: April-May 2026,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 2 April 2026).

So… just how much did it hurt last week, sitting there at home and watching all those posts — photos, videos and more — of genealogists getting together in person at RootsTech in Salt Lake City?

To The Legal Genealogist, seriously, it seemed like days and days of a major family history lovefest — a whole host of folks seeing old friends, meeting new ones, learning all kinds of new things…

And we were at home.

Sigh…

But missing one opportunity like RootsTech doesn’t meet missing out entirely on the personal touch, and particularly not the personal touch in genealogical education.

Because there is that one genealogical institute — that one weeklong immersive dive into a topic of our choice — that is meeting in person this year. In July. In Pittsburgh.

The GRIP Genealogy Institute — formerly the Genealogical Institute of Pittsburgh — has an entire week of in-person classes scheduled for July 13-17 with the opening social on July 12th, on the beautiful campus of the University of Pittsburgh.

And registration is open now at the GRIP website. (The registration button for GRIP In-Person will ask you first to log in if you’re a member of the National Genealogical Society or to create a free account if you’re not.)

Think about it. A whole week with people who won’t roll their eyes if you talk about your fourth great grandfather. Who’ll understand instantly if you lament the loss of the 1890 census. Who are your tribe. Yours… and mine.

I’m actually going to be there as a student in July this year — there’s a course I’ve wanted to take for ages — and there are some really good options: eight courses in all. Some neat new stuff like Surrogates and Substitutes – the 1890 US Census Exemplar, co-coordinated by Cecelia McFadden and Kate Townsend, or Skill-Building Practicum for Genealogical Research Success, coordinated by Sunny Jane Morton, or Advanced AI Techniques for Genealogists: Expanding Your Research Skills, coordinated by Mark Thompson.

But you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I mention one that’s near and dear to my heart not just because I’m teaching two sessions but because it’s just so darned important to so many of us as researchers: Records Loss: Overcoming Destroyed, Missing, or Non-Extant Records, coordinated by Kelvin L. Meyers.

Working around the problems of records loss in fires, floods, wars and even from plain human neglect is a huge problem in genealogy. Knowing where to look, what alternatives might exist and how even to use things like DNA is crucial to breaking through the barriers thrown up by records loss.

The whole class is a favorite of mine, and I’m honored to be part of the instructional team. Read more about it here.

If that doesn’t float your boat, get the personal touch in one of the other courses this July.

Now, if you just can’t — and I get it, travel is expensive!! — check out the June virtual courses. They run June 22-26, and again there’s a great course list (including — koff koff — my own Women and Children First!: Research Methods for the Hidden Half of the Family, where we’d love to see you via Zoom).

But if what you want is that personal touch, well, maybe I’ll see you in class in Pittsburgh in July.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “For that personal touch,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/ : posted 12 March 2026).

Rabbit rabbit rabbit!

It’s the first of March (even if this email doesn’t go out until the 2nd because of a tech glitch!), a day on which The Legal Genealogist expected to be explaining gleefully that, no, she wasn’t going to be at RootsTech this year and, in fact, there wouldn’t be many upcoming events this month — all because of a long-planned milestone-birthday-bucket-list trip to Turkey and Egypt culminating in a Nile cruise.

Sigh…

There still won’t be many upcoming events this month… and at the moment I’m not 100% sure the trip will be happening either. The cruise company is communicating optimistically but notes that’s based on “hoping the situation de-escalates quickly.”

Sigh…

Okay, pity party done. Let’s talk about what is coming up on the schedule because, as always I’d love to have you come along, to the extent possible, on the trip.

March 2026

• Monday, 9 March, 6:30 p.m. EDT: The Ashtabula County (OH) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation Silent Storytellers: A Genealogist’s Guide to Cemetery Photography. For more information about this event, see the society’s Facebook page, and to join, see the society’s website.

• Wednesday, 11 March, 3 p.m. PDT (6 p.m. EST): The Wenatchee Area (WA) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation When Worlds Collide: Resolving Conflicts in Genealogical Records. For more information about this event, see the March presentation page, and to join, see the society’s website.

April 2026

• Wednesday, 8 April, 2 p.m. EDT: Legacy Family Tree Webinars is hosting the virtual presentation Advertising the Law: The Gems in the Legal Notices. For more information and to register, see the webinar page.

• Saturday, 11 April, 10 a.m. EDT: The Bucks County (PA) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation NARA Mythbusters: Your Family IS in the Archives. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Thursday, 16 April, 7 p.m. MDT (9 p.m. EDT): The Virtual Chapter of the Utah Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation In That Case: Using Published Court Cases. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Saturday, 18 April, 10:45 a.m. CDT (11:45 a.m. EDT): The Genealogy Friends of Plano (TX) Libraries will host the virtual presentation Inventing America: Records of the U.S. Patent Office. For more information and to register, see the Saturday Seminars page.

• Monday, 20 April, 2 p.m. CDT (3 p.m. EDT): The Virtual Chapter of the Mid-Continent Public Library Midwest Genealogy Center branch is hosting the virtual presentation Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How of American Divorce. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Saturday, 25 April: The Virginia Genealogical Society will be hosting its virtual 2026 Spring Seminar. Details and a registration link will be forthcoming later this week on the society’s events page.

Come on out and join us, if you can, for one or more of these events and note, in some cases, that registration will be free or at a reduced cost to members of the host society — and some are limited to members only… There are some reaaaaaaally good reasons for joining genealogical societies… Just sayin’…

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Coming up: March-April 2026,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 1 March 2026).

Upcoming presentations

Rabbit rabbit rabbit!

It’s the first of March, a day on which The Legal Genealogist expected to be explaining gleefully that, no, she wasn’t going to be at RootsTech this year and, in fact, there wouldn’t be many upcoming events this month — all because of a long-planned milestone-birthday-bucket-list trip to Turkey and Egypt culminating in a Nile cruise.

Sigh…

There still won’t be many upcoming events this month… and at the moment I’m not 100% sure the trip will be happening either. The cruise company is communicating optimistically but notes that’s based on “hoping the situation de-escalates quickly.”

Sigh…

Okay, pity party done. Let’s talk about what is coming up on the schedule because, as always I’d love to have you come along, to the extent possible, on the trip.

March 2026

• Monday, 9 March, 6:30 p.m. EDT: The Ashtabula County (OH) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation Silent Storytellers: A Genealogist’s Guide to Cemetery Photography. For more information about this event, see the society’s Facebook page, and to join, see the society’s website.

• Wednesday, 11 March, 3 p.m. PDT (6 p.m. EST): The Wenatchee Area (WA) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation When Worlds Collide: Resolving Conflicts in Genealogical Records. For more information about this event, see the March presentation page, and to join, see the society’s website.

April 2026

• Wednesday, 8 April, 2 p.m. EDT: Legacy Family Tree Webinars is hosting the virtual presentation Advertising the Law: The Gems in the Legal Notices. For more information and to register, see the webinar page.

• Saturday, 11 April, 10 a.m. EDT: The Bucks County (PA) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation NARA Mythbusters: Your Family IS in the Archives. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Thursday, 16 April, 7 p.m. MDT (9 p.m. EDT): The Virtual Chapter of the Utah Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation In That Case: Using Published Court Cases. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Saturday, 18 April, 10:45 a.m. CDT (11:45 a.m. EDT): The Genealogy Friends of Plano (TX) Libraries will host the virtual presentation Inventing America: Records of the U.S. Patent Office. For more information and to register, see the Saturday Seminars page.

• Monday, 20 April, 2 p.m. CDT (3 p.m. EDT): The Virtual Chapter of the Mid-Continent Public Library Midwest Genealogy Center branch is hosting the virtual presentation Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How of American Divorce. For more information and to register, see the event page.

• Saturday, 25 April: The Virginia Genealogical Society will be hosting its virtual 2026 Spring Seminar. Details and a registration link will be forthcoming later this week on the society’s events page.

Come on out and join us, if you can, for one or more of these events and note, in some cases, that registration will be free or at a reduced cost to members of the host society — and some are limited to members only… There are some reaaaaaaally good reasons for joining genealogical societies… Just sayin’…

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Coming up: March-April 2026,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 1 March 2026).

Ordinarily, about this time of the year, The Legal Genealogist would be joking about how it could possibly be February already and moaning about where the time has gone.

But The Legal Genealogist lives in Virginia.

In the part of Virginia that got a kazillion inches of sleet and freezing rain on top of snow.

Which means The Legal Genealogist hasn’t even been able to step out on the deck to feed the poor birds for forever already yet for fear of sliding off, down the hill and onto the ice of the pond.

In other words, thank heavens it’s February because January had to be 8,462 days long.

With that whine out of the way, it’s time to look at the real calendar and take a look at what’s coming up on the schedule. As always I’d love to have you come along, to the extent possible, on the trip.

February 2026

• Wednesday, 4 February, 11 a.m. EST: Your DNA Guide is featuring a special virtual class — Terms & Conditions May Apply: DNA Testing Websites — through its Study Group. Study Group classes are currently wait-listed but for more info and to join the waitlist, see this page.

• Saturday, 7 February, 10 a.m. MST (noon EST): The Colorado Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists is hosting the virtual presentation Staying Out of Trouble-The Rights and Responsibilities of Today’s Genealogists as part of its annual meeting. For more information and to register, see the Annual General Meeting page.

• Saturday, 14 February, 11 a.m. EST: The Hudson County (NJ) Genealogical & Historical Society is hosting the virtual presentation Breaker Boys and Spinner Girls: Child Labor Laws and their Records. For more information about this Members-Only event (and to join!), see the Upcoming Society Events page.

• Saturday, 21 February, 7 p.m. MST (9 p.m. EST): The Legal Genealogist is Texas-bound, as the Genealogical Society of Kendall County will be holding its 22nd Annual Hill Country Family History Seminar at St John Lutheran Church Family Life Center, 315 Rosewood Ave, Boerne, TX. I’ll be presenting four topics: Linking the Generations with Court and Land Records; NARA Mythbusters: Your Family IS in the Archives; After the Courthouse Burns: Rekindling Family History through DNA; and Where There Is – or Isn’t – a Will. For more information and to register, see the seminar page.

March 2026

• Monday, 9 March, 6:30 p.m. EST: The Ashtabula County (OH) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation Silent Storytellers: A Genealogist’s Guide to Cemetery Photography. For more information about this event, see the society’s Facebook page, and to join, see the society’s website.

• Wednesday, 11 March, 3 p.m. PST (6 p.m. EST): The Wenatchee Area (WA) Genealogical Society is hosting the virtual presentation When Worlds Collide: Resolving Conflicts in Genealogical Records. For more information about this event (and to join!), keep an eye on the news and events page.

Come on out and join us, if you can, for one or more of these events and note, in some cases, that registration will be free or at a reduced cost to members of the host society — and some are limited to members only… There are some reaaaaaaally good reasons for joining genealogical societies… Just sayin’…

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Coming up: February-March 2026,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 4 February 2026).

Today, the 27th of January, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.¹

And today The Legal Genealogist received an email from Jennifer Mendelsohn and Dr. Adina Newman, Co-Founders and Lead Genealogists of the Holocaust Reunion Project.

A project whose mission is to “harness the power of commercial DNA testing, combined with expert genealogical research, both to reunite Holocaust survivors and their children with living relatives and to illuminate the family history that has been lost to genocide.”²

This is a project I support 100% and have personally contributed to.

Please read their words:

Today we pause to mark the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and recognize International Holocaust Remembrance Day. But with each year that the Holocaust gets further and further in the past, the Holocaust Reunion Project’s resolve to make family connections for survivors only grows stronger.

 

Last week, the Claims Conference reported that there are now approximately 196,600 Jewish Holocaust survivors living in 90 countries around the world. More than 23,000 survivors have passed away in just the last year.

 

We at the Holocaust Reunion Project are keenly aware of the international reach of our efforts to help survivors and their children locate missing family and rebuild their shattered family trees.

 

Just recently we have reunited:

 

• The children of survivors in Baltimore and Boston with a first cousin once removed in Australia. He, too, is the child of survivors. Neither had any idea of the other’s existence.
• The daughter of survivors in Connecticut with her first cousins once removed in Uruguay. She had a faded letter her survivor father had received from his sister in Montevideo but had no idea how to track down the family. We made it happen.
• An 89-year-old survivor in Israel with her first cousin’s son in Georgia. The survivor knew she had family somewhere in the U.S.; they were instantly connected via a DNA test provided by the Holocaust Reunion Project.
• A 95-year-old orphaned survivor in Texas with relatives in Portugal and Australia.

Today we reflect on the almost incomprehensible human tragedy of the Holocaust. We mourn those lost. We honor the courage and strength of survivors. And we renew our pledge to continue this holiest of work, helping broken families heal.

I share this email with you to ask that you join me in reflecting, mourning, honoring — and supporting this effort to help broken families heal.

The contribution link is here: https://holocaustreunions.org/donate/

Together, on this day, in a tangible way, we can remember.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “On this day, remember,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/ : posted 26 Jan 2026).

SOURCES

Here, in 2026, on this federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., there is an apology worth repeating.

It begins with a story from some years ago. The Legal Genealogist‘s first cousin once removed just couldn’t understand the whole notion of genealogy when it came up in a conversation years ago.

He could not for the life of him wrap his head around the idea of wanting to get to know distant family members … or what he thought of as ancient family history.

I remember trying to explain to this man who had walked my mother — his first cousin — down the aisle at her wedding to my father. “Some people collect coins,” I remember telling him. “Others collect stamps. Me? I collect relatives.”

Everyone laughed.

Then his face grew very serious. “What do you do,” he asked, “when you find one that … well … you’d rather not have?”

“Throw him back,” I said. And I remember smiling — not really believing I would ever find such a one.

Until I did.

A fifth cousin. One I never met. One I never wanted to meet. A fifth cousin whose acts were so abhorrent and so incomprehensible to me that — as hard as I have tried — I simply can’t come to terms with having him anywhere in my family tree, even at the far distant remove of fifth cousin.

Fifth cousins means we share a pair of fourth great grandparents. William Killen and his wife — name unknown — were both alive in 1830;¹ neither can be found in 1840. The different children of theirs that we descend from were born in the 1790s.²

That’s a long time ago. And there’s been a lot of water under the bridge separating my branch of the family from my fifth cousin’s branch of the family. Until I really got into genealogy, I’d never even heard the name.

But the evidence still says that Edgar Ray Killen of Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi, was my fifth cousin.

Now… I don’t need to “throw him back.”

Life took care of that for me, eight years ago now, when he died in Parchman, Mississippi.³

Parchman.

Where the Mississippi State Penitentiary is located.

And where Edgar Ray Killen died, at the age of 92, after having spent only the last 12-plus years of his life in prison for a crime that is just unthinkable.

Edgar Ray Killen, you see, was a Baptist preacher — and a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan in the Philadelphia, Mississippi, area. He was the Klan’s chief recruiter in that area. And one night in June of 1964, he sent a bunch of Klansmen out with a Neshoba County deputy sheriff to waylay three young civil rights workers who had come to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer drive to register Southern black voters.⁴

Those three young men disappeared that June night. Their bodies were found weeks later buried under an earthen dam. Their names were Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner. Goodman was just 20 years old when he died; Chaney was 21; Schwerner was 24. Their deaths were investigated by the FBI under the case name MIBURN — Mississippi Burning,⁵ a name that inspired the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning” — and pushed forward the cause of civil rights in the United States.

Killen wasn’t with the Klansmen when the young men died. Other Klansmen said he’d arranged to go to a local funeral home to attend a wake in order to set up an alibi. When he originally stood trial in federal court in 1967, one member of the jury held out and caused a mistrial — she said later she could never vote to convict a preacher. He wasn’t brought to justice until 2005, when the State of Mississippi finally indicted him for murder.⁶

Because Killen hadn’t been at the scene, the jury returned a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder. But the trial judge sentenced him to the maximum 20 years in prison for each of the three deaths with the sentences to run consecutively — a total of 60 years in prison for a man then 80 years old.⁷ It was clear he would die in prison, and die in prison he did, eight years ago this month.

So… what do you do when genealogy leads you to a relative like this one? When you find one that … well … you’d rather not have?

When you know that this fifth cousin died miserable and alone in prison, rather than spending his twilight years at home, but you also know that that doesn’t begin to make up for the fact that his actions directly contributed to the deaths of three young men who were doing no more than exercising their rights as Americans — and encouraging others to do the same? When you know that nothing can make up for the fact that those young men died a horrific death — while he lived, free and clear and an outspoken unrepentant racist, for 41 years to the day after the crime before the law finally caught up to him?⁸

I don’t know how others will choose to deal with it. I only know how I will choose to deal with it, here on this Martin Luther King Day in 2026, eight years after the death of Edgar Ray Killen.

I can’t make it right. I can’t make it up to the families of those young men. But there is one thing I can do that, I can hope, may prove to be some small comfort to the members of those families.

I can let them hear something from a member of Edgar Ray Killen’s family. Something, I suspect, they’ve only heard once before in the going-on-62 years since the Freedom Summer of 1964. Something that, perhaps, they particularly need to hear now in this troubled time in which we live, even if just from me once more.

To the families of the victims, Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner, from this member of the family of this perpetrator, Edgar Ray Killen:

I am so very sorry for what my family did to yours.

May you know that their lives were not in vain.

May their good deeds be remembered.

May their memories forever be a blessing.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “An apology worth repeating,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 19 Jan 2026 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 19 Jan 2026).

Original post: Ibid., “A long overdue apology,” posted 12 January 2019.

SOURCES

There’s no doubt about it.

The very best part of genealogy is the stories.

Stories in The Legal Genealogist’s family take us back a long way in America on the maternal side and in Germany on the paternal side.

Stories that begin, in this country, in the late 1600s. Stories in Germany that we can take all the way back to the late 1500s.

Some of them, astoundingly, given my family’s tendency never to let the truth get in the way of a good story, that may even possibly be true.

And some of the possibly-true ones — that is, the ones that I’ve managed to document with something other than a marginal note that one of the family storytellers told me so — had very big milestones in 2025 or will have big milestones here in 2026.

These “big milestones” are events that were exactly 50 or 100 or 150 or 200 or 250 years ago — or more! — during the year.¹

And they’re the kinds of milestones that we shouldn’t allow to pass without pausing to reflect.

Looking back

In 2025, for example, there was good documentation of a 300-year milestone: the birth on 6 January 1725² of my sixth great grandfather John Pettypool.³ In the 200-year milestone category, a death, of my fifth great grandmother, Mary (Boswell) Buchanan, died 7 October 1825 in what is now Mitchell County, North Carolina.⁴ In the 100-year milestone category, the single most powerful event of my own ancestry: the emigration from Germany to the United States of my paternal grandparents, Hugo Ernst and Marie (Nuckel) Geissler and their then-three-year-old son (my father), setting sail from Bremen on 26 January 1925 and arriving in New York on 6 February 1925.⁵

Looking forward

In 2026, we have some milestones coming up as well.

In the 300-year milestone category — with good documentation even! — there’s a death: my eighth great grandfather William Pettypool died in early 1726 in Prince George County, Virginia. His will, executed in 1721, was admitted to probate on March 14, 1726, by his widow Elizabeth. In the will, he named his wife Elizabeth, sons William (Jr.) and Seth (my seventh great grandfather), daughters Anne Massey (recorded as Mercy) and Mary Broadway, and grandchildren, Anne’s two children, William and Martha. Elizabeth declined to serve as executrix and son William served instead.⁶

In the 250-year milestone category, it’s particularly appropriate in America’s Semiquincentennial year that the choice be another death: this time a fourth great grand uncle, Richard Baker. He was born 23 December 1753, most likely in Culpeper County, Virginia. As far as we’ve been able to determine, he was the 10th of 13 children born to my fifth great grandparents, Thomas and Dorothy (Davenport) Baker.⁷ He was serving with his older brother, my fourth great grandfather David Baker, in the 3rd Virginia Regiment of the Continental Line when Washington’s Army began to cross the Delaware just after dark on Christmas Day 1776. They were headed to what is known today as the Battle of Trenton. And it was there, David reported in a pension application decades later, on the 26th of December 1776, that Richard Baker was killed in that action.⁸

In the 200-year milestone category, we’ll go with a marriage: on the 27th of October 1826, my third great grandfather Johann Heinrich Hüneke and his first wife Rebecca Schrader were married in Bremen, Germany. Both bride and groom were shown as age 23, and he was shown as a cigarmaker.⁹ Rebecca had two daughters before she died in 1833.¹⁰ He then married my third great grandmother Dorothea Mahnken in December 1834,¹¹ and their daughter Johanna Henriette was my second great grandmother.

In the 150-year milestone category, we have to go with another marriage: on the 26th of October 1876, in Cherokee County, Alabama, my second great grandmother Martha Louise (Shew) Baird married Abigah C. Livingston.¹² It was his first marriage; it was probably her second, though no record of her marriage to my second great grandfather Jasper Baird has ever been found. My great grandmother Eula was Martha Louise’s only child by Jasper, but Abigah fathered a whole host of kids to fill the house and was the only grandfather Eula’s children — including my grandmother — ever knew.

In the 100-year milestone category, there’s no contest, and it has to be a birth: my mother, Hazel Irene (Cottrell) Geissler was born on March 21, 1926, in Midland, Texas. Despite the fact that that date was 23 years after Texas began statewide recordation of births, there is — sigh — no birth certificate that was ever filed for my mother, which is why I usually end up citing her death certificate.¹³ One of these years, and I suppose a centennial year would be a good choice, I’m going to order her passport file from the State Department, since I understand that my grandmother filed an affidavit to help my mother get her passport.¹⁴

And in the 50-year milestone category, once again no contest and a birth: my niece Gina, whose details shall not be further published without her permission since she is, I am glad to report, very much alive for us all to celebrate this milestone birthday.

Each of these, a story of its own, to find and to tell — each, in truth, one of the real reasons why we do genealogy at all.

Why I write this blog.

Why I have to tell the stories.

To make sure that those I remember aren’t forgotten… that these milestones continue to be remembered down through the generations.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Milestones, 2026,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 11 Jan 2025).

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