African-American families can find out about the tools to search their genealogy at the Feb. 20 “Finding Your Ancestors’ Voices” Family History Symposium at the National Archives at Atlanta in Morrow.

The annual event, which is free, takes place 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It includes workshops, lectures and discussions lead by experts in family history searches.

Registration for the daylong symposium is available at www.blackfamilyhisto ryday.com or by calling 404-252-4864.

The symposium is part of the archives’ Black Family History Month observances that also honor individuals and organizations that have played a positive leadership role within Atlanta’s black communities.

It will be the closing event for the archives’ “Documented Rights” exhibit that ends Feb. 23. The exhibit of original documents and other records from slave ships opened in June 2009.

The “Finding Your Ancestors’ Voices” symposium is being held in partnership with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which runs the world’s largest genealogical library with records of more than 2 billion deceased people. It was created in 2001 in conjunction with the national release of the Freedman’s Bank CD that provides financial records of African-Americans following the American Civil War.

The LDS Church also helped release the Freedman’s Bank information in 2001.

The records include information on 480,000 former slaves who deposited more than $57 million in the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Co., which failed in 1874. The records have become a rich source of documentation for black family research because its thousands of signature cards contain personal information about the individual depositors: names and ages, places of birth, residence, and occupations; names of parents and siblings; and, in some cases, the names of former slave owners.

Registered participants for the “Finding Your Ancestors’ Voices” Family History Symposium will receive a free packet of materials along with a CD containing the Freedman’s Bank information.

Workshops will feature speakers and authors addressing tools for researching and writing one’s family history, snapshots of the King family’s genealogy, and a discussion of exciting new digitization projects that will provide even greater access to information, including 4,000 slave manifests from the Port of Savannah in Georgia. The slave manifests date back to 1790.  

Lecturers will include:

• Quinton Atkinson, “The African-American Collection at Ancestry.com.” Atkinson, who is director of U.S. Content Acquisition for Ancestry.com, will share details about the Web site’s partnership with www.fam ilysearch.org and the National Archives at Atlanta to digitize 4,000 inward coastwise Slave Manifests for the Port of Savannah covering the period from 1790-1859.

The manifests list names of slaves, slave owner, the shipper and port of origin. Digitization of the records will provide researchers with easy access to the names of 18,000 slaves for the first time in 150 years.

• Bryndis Roberts, “Basic Genealogy How-Tos.”

Roberts, who is a local genealogy expert, will share her knowledge about genealogy and will provide tools for starting your family tree.

• Steve Burton, “Maximizing Free Online Genealogical Research Tools.”

Burton, who is the field relations manager of www.familysearch.org, will present free online genealogical research tools managed by the LDS Church, including detailing the digitization project for about 400,000 World War II draft cards for Georgia.

• Ashley Judy, “From the Roots of a Tree: The Genealogy of Martin Luther King Jr.”

Judy, a National Archives at Atlanta researcher, will present her research on King.

• Ben Ridgeway, “Historical Snapshot of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.”

Ridgeway, educator and author, will share his historical snapshot of the nearly 125-year history of the famed church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. joined his father as co-pastor in 1960.

The National Archives at Atlanta is at 5780 Jonesboro Road. For more information, call 770-968-2100.