The Friday after Thanksgiving…

The Legal Genealogist will freely admit it.

I hate shopping.

Totally unAmerican, I know, but the whole idea of going out into that crush of humanity on the Friday after Thanksgiving strikes terror deep into my heart.

So it’s with glee that I find myself, this morning, looking at a number of sales I’d actually be interested in … all available without ever leaving home.

For example, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society has a special sale today on memberships — $10 off a two-year membership. Even if you don’t have New York ancestors, a NYG&B membership carries with it a lot of benefits — most particularly a subscription to its fantastic publication, The Record.

Or, if you’d prefer, Family Tree DNA has dropped the price of its Family Finder test — that’s the cousin-finding how-much-Irish-estimating test it offers with all the cool tools for analysis — down to $39, and there are other offers too, through November 26.

Or, if you don’t want the tools for analysis, AncestryDNA has a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale on its test, down to $49 plus shipping, through November 26.

There are a lot of these offers out there today — all available online, for books and software and DNA tests and so much more — but there is one that is truly one of those “if you haven’t already, you need to now” deals.

It’s a 50% off deal on annual subscriptions — both new and renewals — to Legacy Family Tree Webinars.

Now… let me stop here and do my truth-in-promotions bit. I am a presenter for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. Right now I have 21 webinars in the webinar library there, ranging from That First Trip to the Courthouse to the latest, The Discriminating Genealogist: Telling Good Evidence from Bad. I have more coming up in 2019, including one I think is critically important to all of us as we struggle to incorporate DNA into our research plans: on January 2, I’ll be presenting DNA Rights and Wrongs: The Ethical Side of Testing. I am paid by Legacy Family Tree Webinars when I present, and I get paid a royalty when people tune in to one of my webinars at any time.

Other than simply being a presenter, I get no benefit if you click on the link to Legacy Family Tree Webinars and take advantage of this offer. This isn’t what’s called an affiliate link; I only get a personal benefit if you actually watch or buy one of my presentations.

Got that? Good.

And I truly believe I can say this with total honesty: I would be recommending this offer even if I didn’t present for Legacy Family Tree Webinars at all. It’s that good a deal, and frankly it’s that good a deal even at full price. (Full price, by the way, is $49.95 a year, or $9.95 a month. The Black Friday – Cyber Monday deal — which lasts through Monday, November 26 — takes the price down to $24.98.)

The subscription gets you unlimited access to hundreds and hundreds of hours of genealogical instruction, with on-demand online access on a 24-hour-a-day-seven-day-a-week basis. Right now, this morning, there are 819 webinars in the webinar library on just about every topic you can imagine: from how to conduct research overseas to DNA. That’s 1,065 hours of webinars and more than 3,500 pages of handouts — all for just about two bucks a month. It doesn’t get a whole lot better than that.

The categories range from webinars specifically designed for folks just getting started, through how to best use websites and tools like FamilySearch or Google, methodology, getting organized, evidence analysis, copyright and so much more.

The presenters are true experts in their fields: next Wednesday, November 28, for example, you can hear Paula Stuart-Warren talking about Railroad Records and Railroad History: Methods for Tracking. Or, in the webinar series hosted with the Board for Certification of Genealogists, tune in on December 18 for Nancy A. Peters on Proving Identity and Kinship Using the GPS: Finding a Freedman’s Family. If you need help with DNA, you can start with Blaine Bettinger’s five-part Foundations in DNA series and move on from there to any of his 10 other webinars, or other offerings by Nicka Smith, Diahan Southard, Thomas W. Jones and more.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea here.

If you have just one thing on your genealogical day-after-Thanksgiving shopping list, this should be it.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars, half price, even for renewals.

You’re welcome.