FamHist

Genealogy Publishing and LDS Ancestor Resources

2011-03-23T22:01:00.000-06:00

I’ve written about publishing your family history work in the past. In the past few months, I’ve helped several people conceptualize the book layout that they hoped to create for their own families.

Any of us can be a published author with little to no cost by using online digital publishing companies. You create the pages on your computer and then upload them to the online sites. They all offer tools to help you create wonderful family history publications that your family will cherish for years and years..

Here are two of the sites to consider: Lulu.com and Blurb.com. Take a look at the books others have created, read user comments and check out the pricing on the sites. There are other sites available, so be sure to find the one that best fits your situation and expectations.

A thumb-through of existing genealogy books on the sites, will help you both visualize your book and give you some ideas of what makes a good family genealogy book. Here are examples from a publication on each site:

Example book on Blurb: http://www.blurb.com/books/1752245
Example book on Lulu: http://bit.ly/hR94j9

You can see the different styles of writing genealogists use when writing their books. The Barber book (Blurb.com) was written by someone who was gifted at writing family stories and then supported his text with reports from his genealogy program, photos of people, places, their environment and their tombstones. The few preview pages of the Batten book (Lulu) show that the author used reports from their genealogy program sprinkled with photos.

The focus of the two books differs in that the Barber book focuses on a limited number of generations while the Batten book covers many more generations but looses the detailed story text represented in the Barber book.

The choice of writing styles depends on the amount and type information that the author wants to convey to their readers. What style will you choose for your project? It all depends on your audience and the information you are trying to convey to them.

Close and extended family constantly ask me for a report of their lineage. Depending on the ancestral lines that we have in common, the book type reports may be several hundred pages to 4,000 - 5,000 pages long. I use Legacy software to create the reports and send them as .pdf file attachments on emails rather than printing them to hard copy. The reports are “OK - to - great” depending on how much time I take to interject written stories, text, photos, documents and other information as compared to the basic formatting from Legacy. The same files can be used in publishing a book from one of these vendors.

Using one of the on-demand publishing companies will save you a lot of money in setup costs and you don’t have to make a minimum purchase out of pocket. Pricing of the books automatically covers the printing costs and any additional profit you decided to include can help fund continued research.

We all encounter hard-to-read documents in our research. Handwriting Tutorials from BYU are online for no cost in English, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

If you have Scots ancestry and struggle reading the old handwriting, visit the Scottish Handwriting site and read their tutorial. When you finish, you’ll be a Scots handwriting Wiz or at least substantially more proficient in reading them.

If you have Mormon ancestors, be sure to check out all of the sources and reference information on the Mormon History site at BYU. Subject Librarian, Mike Hunter, has assembled an impressive collection of resources to help using our research.

Continuing with the Mormon ancestor research theme, be sure to look for your ancestors on the Mormon Migration passenger list. Also, remember to look for them on the Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847-1868, and on Mormon Pioneer Census Search.

Lastly in this focus group, we’ll round out the Mormon list with the Mormons and Their Neighbors site and the ever impressive Early Latter-day Saints site.

Site Pick of the Week: The Library of Congress Digital Newspapers. I worked on digitizing newspapers for this site for a few years and intimately know how much work goes into creating these great records. A few years ago, I interviewed the last Editor of the American Fork Citizen, Lehi Free Press and Pleasant Grove Review about his years of working at these locally “newsy” papers. When I mentioned that I’d always wanted copies of all the issues of the Citizen because so many of my ancestors were mentioned in it, he stated that all of the copies of all three of these publications were put in the trash can when they were purchased by a national newspaper company.

He was sick about it. We commiserated that he and I had not gone dumpster diving to retrieved them. Even though many of the issues are found in the BYU library, a full collection is almost impossible to find. At least it was hard to find until the LOC published them recently on their site.

Searching these wonderful old, often “chatty” publications for information about your family should be an integral part of any ancestral research effort.

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Research Tips,Publish,LDS

Google Docs Comments and Discussions in Genealogy

2011-03-16T19:41:00.000-06:00

Genealogy research teams should seriously consider using the collaborative features in Google Docs to share and document their assignments and progress in collaborative research.

A research plan using Docs is available to your team members any time and in any place that they have Internet access and no special services are required other than a Google account.

There are two collaborative tools you’ll want to use with a research document:

Comments and Discussions.

A comment has been commonly used by most of us for years when we insert a comment into a shared document. Discussions associated with a document are new. The discussions stream can obviously trace its lineage back to Google Wave. While it does not include all of the features of Wave, its usefulness in collaborative research documents is undeniable.

Team members will find these tools simple to use:

Create a research document in a Google Documents and then share it with everyone on the research team giving them edit rights. They can be notified of document creation and updates using any email or other contact address, but they will need a Google account to view and participate in collaborative additions to the document. Login by going to https://docs.google.com The document will automatically show in the document list for anyone who has view or edit rights.

Comments can be added to the document by anyone on the team. The comment entries list both a time stamp and username of the person creating them.

Insert > Comment

A Discussion is an ongoing separate dialog that is linked to the document. They are created by clicking on the “Discussions” button at the top of the page.

The Discussion is viewable in a floating frame over the document.

Other team members viewing the document are announced when they open the document.

Teams can create a never-ending research document for a common ancestor, a family, history of an ancestral home town, etc. Add photos, movies, links, drawings, or any other discoveries found during the research process.

Comments stay with the document unless they are deleted. They will print with the document, so you may need to copy the document to a new doc or delete the comments if you don’t want them on a printed document.

If team members don’t want to receive email notes when changes are made to the document, they can turn them off in the Discussions > Discussion Notification Settings. Sharing settings are found in the Sharing > Sharing Settings.

Collaborative research plans and results tracking are extremely useful and productive tools for research teams. Active teams invariably produce far greater research results than the success of any single member of the team.

Create a plan and give it a try for your research teams. It works .. very well.

Using Discussions in Google Docs

Will My Genealogy Records Survive Me?

2011-03-14T13:30:00.000-06:00

I followed the earthquake of 22 February 2011 in Christchurch, New Zealand closely because a fairly large contingent of extended cousins live there or nearby. As far as I’ve been able to determine, all survived but many experienced damage to their homes and businesses.

One story caught my eye on the evening of the first day, when it mentioned two teenagers who were trying to find their mother, Donna Manning, a producer and presenter for Canterbury TV. She and fifteen of her colleagues along with forty or more foreign students and teachers were in the collapsed CTV building.

The six-story building was literally flattened. Only a couple of survivors were eventually rescued from the wreckage.

The earthquake struck at 12:45 p.m., during the lunch hour. Earlier in the morning, Donna hosted one of her weekly shows and it was posted on YouTube during the hour of the earthquake. I watched the video not knowing if Donna had survived or not. I then switched to a live video stream from Christchurch that showed the CTV building and seriously doubted that she had survived.

Little did Donna know that in less than 120 minutes after completing her morning show, she would be dead. The video captured some of her last minutes in mortality. Rescue teams later confirmed that none of the trapped folks in the CTV building survived.

The story ends on a many sad notes. Donna didn’t survive. Her children not only lost their mother but their home was structurally destroyed too. Thieves looted their home while they waited at the pile of debris that was the CTV building hoping to hear of Donna’s recovery. Their records and possessions had been stolen.

Hopefully, their photos and records survived.

Stories with similar losses of lives, records, hopes and dreams are a constant in the history of our ancestors and of the world due to wars, acts of men and of nature. We know that devastating events will happen in the lives of those now living and in those coming behind us. From a genealogical perspective, what can we do to mitigate the effects of disaster or the eventual loss of of our own mortal life?

Several activities should be part of our regular genealogical activities:

1. Digitize our paper documents and records.

2. Regular backups of our data and digital images. What is Regular? Simply determine your threshold of pain when considering the loss of your records. That should firmly establish a frequent backup cycle in your mind.

3. Keep a copy of our backups in two or more locations off-site, one of which should be online with a digital company like Mozy, Carbonite, etc. The second should be housed with a relative or close friend who lives in a different part of the country. You may want to trade with them and keep a copy of their data to reciprocate.

4. Add a codicil or section to our wills and trusts that specifically instructs the transfer and hoped for survivability of your genealogical records and data. See an example of the verbiage here in one of my earlier posts.

5. Talk to your family now so they know your wishes from you personally, to both reinforce your wishes and to make arrangement for their transfer. You may want to enhance or encourage their involvement in your genealogical research and activities right away. Which one(s) of them wants to take up your ancestral quest? Resolve questions and associated issues about your genealogy data and work with them now, while you can still talk to them.

6. If you have websites, blogs, etc., be sure to include their URL’s and associated user names and passwords in your package. Detail exactly how you want to announce your passing and include an example statement that details how or if the site or your contributions to a site will continue in the future. I was surprised to find that I own or am a significant contributor to a large number of blogs and websites. Will my family take over in my place? We’ll have to talk about it and decide.

7. Keep your codicil and lists of pertinent ownership, subscription, password and other data current along with your detailed instructions up to date. Will your spouse and children be able to understand and find all of the domain registrations, hosting agreements, settings, programming and data storage sites that you have and use? Do they realize that you have over thirty email accounts and what online personas they represent? Do they realize that you are an editor, moderator, or have other key roles on many sites that are owned by other persons or entities that have depended on you doing my job?

8. Think of the ways you interact with your data and others online. Does your family know all of your social media personas? Does they or an eventual guardian of your data know how to claim all of your submissions to FamilySearch, Ancestry, etc.? FamilySearch and Ancestry are designed to allow others to contact you to both question your data and to ask for assistance or copies of your research. They can’t do that if you are gone and your succession plan hasn’t transferred your account to their management.

9. Do Something. Now. You can put this work off, but delay will inevitably bite you and the survivability of your data. This isn’t a question or supposition but rather is a statement of fact. The preparation will take a few hours work and ongoing tweaks and updates, but the investment in time and effort will pay remarkable dividends. Don’t let your extremely valuable genealogical work be lost.

Technorati Tags: genealogy,data backup,will,codicil,succession plan

Home Town Celebrations

2011-02-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

The early morning murmurings of birds and insects was interrupted by the 6:00 a.m. blast of a cannon on the road outside my bedroom window. It was Home Town Day!

That wasn’t the name of the celebration, but the activities of the day could be transposed on about any small town in America with a comfortable fit.

Folks in town didn’t have much money, but they had a lot of spirit and they knew how to use the resources at hand to maximize their innate but usually unseen “fun” content.

The old hay wagons were wrapped with crepe paper streamers of red, white and blue. Old wood chairs were set on the sometimes warped floor so the folks in the town band would have a perch on which to balance as the horse team pulled them on a tour through town and later on the parade route.

When the cannon shot went off by our home, the fellows would watch the curtains in my bedroom window for the certain rapid movement and emergence of a scruffy looking red head in the window frame.

I was chosen to be “Uncle Sam” in the parade a couple of times. The size of the horse increased in successive years. My physical grown also necessitated my mother having to find a larger costume or modify the costume that some other patriotic symbol had worn in years past. You didn’t build these garbs yourself, you borrowed them from a town newcomer that had been suckered into making it the first year they were in town.

The parade route was short. Very short. It was only about 3 blocks long but even at that length, it passed by all of the commercial, city and church properties in town. Of course, its length differed based on your perspective. It depended on your age or if you were an entrant as compared to watching from alongside the road.

When I was four, my brother-in-law made a herd of wooden rocking horses for one of the floats. We rocked our way all the way through town. That was a lot of rockin’ and wavin’ for young cowboys and cowgirls.

A carnival of small booths created by putting planks on 55-gallon drums was sited in the park just south of the church. Bean bag and ring toss games, fish ponds and grab bag stations filled the newly established blocks of space. Pronto pups and cotton candy booths were behind the church.

The recreational hall in the church was full of residents and visitors from all over. Quilting and other crafts were on exhibit. Chairs were set up as gathering spots for old friends to sit and visit.

A wonderful lunch was offered in the lower level of the church that had been prepared by the ladies in town. There were a lot of men who helped but the ladies did most of the work. Men were just underfoot and were usually only good for washing dishes and setting up and taking down the tables and chairs, although there were several hidden chefs in the group.

An evening program presented representation from the talents of residents and surprisingly, some of them really had talent.

There was always one corner somewhere in the church where folks would gather and talk genealogy. Everyone would receive the latest updates for the extended families of residents. Folks would proudly tell of linkages and photos that they had discovered in their family tree during the past year. I loved listening to these discussions.

There are still celebrations like this in some small towns today. They don’t and can’t exist in larger cities. If you haven’t visited one before or imbibed in the warm glow and conviviality of these gatherings, put it on your summer schedule. Find one, then go visit. Get a taste of the celebration of life as it used to be enjoyed in most communities across America.

Small Town Parade in Gagetown - 1959

Technorati Tags: Celebration,Small Town,Genealogy

Using Springpad for Genealogy Research

2011-02-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

A research plan and related notes are required for any successful genealogical research project. Each of us has a method or methods that we use with some level of success.

Some of us use our laptop or smartphones to reference research plan files. Others use paper notes that they carry on research trips. I use the tasks that I’ve created in my Legacy database. That tool has worked well for me over the years and I’ll continue to use it. However ….

Recently, I found myself unexpectedly stopping at a library without my laptop, my notes and apparently without a functioning memory tool in my brain. The library had ‘stuff’ that I really wanted but I couldn’t remember exactly what I needed and time was limited.

Even though the library had Internet access, I couldn’t get to my files at home because I don’t run server apps on my home servers that can be accessed from the outside world. Without my research plan and notes, I had to guess at what I probably wanted. The fact that closing time was near only added to the pressure of finding what I hoped to obtain if I ever visited this location.

Lesson learned. There had to be a way to access my research notes and images from any computer in the world via the Internet. Posting the data in private directories on one of my websites was an option but I didn’t want to take the time to install and customize a CMS or other application just for these notes.

Evernote came to mind, but it didn’t have some of the functions that I wanted to use. I’d heard about Springpad and decided to give it a try. It was a good choice.

Springpad is accessed directly through your browser or on your smartphone. Creating an account is free. You can use your login credentials from other entities such as Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook or you can create a user account directly on the site.

Springpad can be used for a large variety of useful applications, but let’s look at it from a Genealogical Researchers point of view.

Create New Notebook

Click on the “+” icon on the desktop to create your new Genealogy Research Notebook. Name it, change the color, etc., to make it meaningful to you.

Create A Note

Add the details, links, images and other information for each person or activity you want to follow in your plan.

Create Task

Tasks function as your ToDo entries. Add details, links, images, due dates, alarms, etc., for each of them. I have my tasks send me reminder email messages a few days ahead of the due date that I’ve established to complete the task.

Take a few minutes and create tags for each entry so you can search for them later. Set flags and permissions. Springpad allows you to share each Note or Task with others if you change the permissions accordingly.

Click on the “+” on the top right corner of the screen to create another Note or Task. I title them using the surname of the person associated with them and then sort by name. Example: Logie, Rosa Clara ……

You can add images, links, movies, etc., to your Notes and Tasks. Just add the URL link path to them. Images will need to be posted on your Picasa, Flickr or called from another online site.

Inside each Note or Task you can add additional Notes, Tasks, etc. Use them to keep track of your related progress and comments. If you are working with others, you can instruct Springpad to send email to them and grant them access rights to your post.

When you complete a Task in your Research, click on the Task icon to mark it completed. It won’t be deleted until you mark it for deletion.

Springpad also gives you a “Board” (think post-it board) in each of your Notebooks. Use it to post notes, maps or other items like you would on the wall board by your phone at home.

I’ve created a separate Notebook with a list of Genealogy related links and another one for Technology links and notes, in addition to those used for family and social activities.

Give Springpad a try and see if it meets the needs of some of your genealogy research and note taking / storage activities. Leave a comment here or make a blog post about how you are using Springpad in your family history quest.

Once you spend a little time with Springpad, you’ll undoubted find it to be very useful in many aspects of your daily life too.

Here’s Jeff Janer, CEO of Springpad, showing Springpad to Leo Leporte and Amber MacArthur on the twit@night show.

Jeff Janer showing Springpad to Amber MacArthur and Leo Leporte

Disclaimer: There is no disclaimer. I’m just a happy user of Springpad.

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Research Tips,Springpad

Transcript For Genealogy Transcriptions

2011-01-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

We all have favorite utility programs that we use without even thinking of them. They add a dimension of functionality and time savings that are not only measureable but exciting if we stop to think about them.

One of my favorite genealogy utility programs is Transcript that was written by Jacob Boerema. It is free for personal use but any donations would certainly be welcomed by Jacob as he works to extend the functions in the program.

I use Transcript constantly. Like Pavlov’s dogs, I’ve self-trained myself that whenever I see an image on the screen that needs to be transcribed I automatically launch Transcript without apparent conscious thought.

Here’s why Transcript will quickly become a favorite application for you too:

1. You can see an image and transcribe it in the same working frame.

With a census document:

2. Transcript has a very full set of tools for text, including every type of setting that I’ve ever used for genealogical transcriptions

3. There are a functional set of image tools that meet the need of improving the readability issues encountered by genealogists in the old, gray, grainy, smudged images of documents from days of yore.

The application offers many more tools than I’ll mention here but you can see them on the Transcript site here.

As a community, we owe Jacob a big THANKS! Try Transcript to transcribe some of your research document images and I’m sure you’ll also feel the same way.

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Transcribe,Transcription

A Ghost On The Back Stair

2011-01-11T02:44:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, I was contacted by a lady that lives in a home that was built on the rear-most part of my ancestors property in New England. She enjoys genealogy but her current quest is the result of a ghost that lives in her home and sometimes says “Hello” to her family in a clear intelligible friendly voice when they are climbing the back stairs.

Those occurrences prompted her to start a search of the genealogy of her property through the years. My ancestors owned the land her home sits on for four or five generations of the family and are hence candidates for the possible source of the friendly ghost.

I can’t image them hanging around the property all these years. They were never idle in life and I doubt if their personality has changed in the afterlife. I suppose a passing “Hello” wouldn’t be out of character though if they were in the neighborhood.

We all have unusual or unique experiences when we are engaged in family history research. If you are like me, you too sometimes hear someone speak to you when you are deep in uffish genealogy thought or hot on the trail of that final piece of evidence that will open the door in an ancestral brickwall.

It happens. It is so common place that it hardly bears noting in our research lives. The arrival of unexpected snail or email with genealogy data and records attached is expected. The longer we engage in genealogical research, the more common the experiences become in our quest.

Their frequency and magnitude seem to be directly proportional to several factors: New researchers earnestly working to find their ancestral trees and more seasoned researchers who post, share and ‘do something’ with the data they find in their hard-won research victories.

Were I to record the thousands of unique assist experiences I’ve enjoyed over the years, my fingers would long tire of typing and another large storage drive would be required to hold all of the data bits from the stories.

No, I’m not advocating that you start recording the silence around you to hear unseen or unheard voices, nor do I advocate anyone seeking contact with the spirit world. I’m just appreciative when an unexpected contact, data attachment or the occasional pat on the head happens just when it is most needed in my ancestral quest.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to say “Good Night” when you close down your workstation in the wee hours of the night. Who’s going to hear you except those helpful ancestors that are watching over your shoulder….

Remembering Yesterday

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Research,Unexpected Help

Distance Teaching in Genealogy

2010-12-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

Experienced genealogists constantly receive requests for help to teach others how to do family history research. Teaching is nothing new to them. We all do it if we can. The time spent helping others is just a way of paying it forward or paying it back.

Over the years, my audience has extended to reach around the world. Extended cousins and friends don’t all live within a 50-mile radius of my home.

I’ve used a number of different software packages to aid in the teaching process across the distances. Most of them have failed to provide a stable platform or have increased in price to the point of being retired. After all, we typically aren’t being paid to teach and commercial packages can put a hole in our research budget.

Mikogo is my choice of desktop sharing now. It is free, stable and always seems to work. Coupled with Skype or Google audio calls, teaching folks in faraway places is a snap.

A plugin version of Mikogo is available for Skype, but I don’t like it. The desktop image is extremely low-res and is basically useless. Instead, install the standalone version of Mikogo and your students will be delighted with the clarity and crisp response of the image on their screen.

If you don’t have two monitors on your computer or if you have low bandwidth, don’t launch a video call, just voice. If you do, the bandwidth requirements of the video connection and the Mikogo broadcast will almost immediately swamp your connection.

To start, go to the Mikago site, download and install the application for your Microsoft or Apple operating system. There isn’t a version for Linux at this time.

Before you launch Mikogo, be sure to close all applications or pages that you don’t want others to see, otherwise they will see everything on your screen.

Upon launch, you will be asked what type of a connection you want. Chose to share your screen.

When you start the session, the session information screen will launch. Send it the URL and session ID to your students via e-mail. The first time they use Mikogo, they will need to download a small executable file which is the screen viewer for Mikogo.

At least one attendee must sign into the session within 15 minutes of its initial start or it will close. Tell your students to go to the site at join.mikogo.com, fill in the session ID number and their name. Up to 25 participants can be in any meeting.

Minimize the session window on your machine and start your class.

Click on the Mikogo icon on the bottom right of your screen to access the whiteboard, swap presenters, send files, etc.

You’ll want to practice with the tool before you teach your first class so you can master the tools and learn how to stage the programs and applications you’ll use in your classes. Perhaps your spouse will enjoy listening to your practice sessions on another computer.

After the practice sessions, you’ll be ready to teach your first class; even when they are far away and the snow is up to your knees outside. Your students will be impressed with the quality of the video in your presentation. The rest is up to you.

Using Mikogo

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Software,Distance Learning

There’s One In Every Family – The Tinkerer

2010-11-30T19:02:00.000-07:00

Every family has fellows who love to tinker with stuff. If there is something in the home that they think they can improve, its sanctity is lost.

With tools and pocketknife in hand, the pristine factory casing is cracked and its interior is inspected, scrambled and tweaked. Tim Taylor on Home Improvement has nothing on these guys.

Of course, sometimes, we, (yes, I’m one of tinkerer’s too), actually do make a worthwhile improvement. Case in point: My great grandfather, David Lewis Drew, moved to Copperopolis, Calaveras County, California from Plymouth, Massachusetts during the Gold Rush. Eventually he married and a family was started.

David and Helen Drew Family

A house full of kids requires a LOT of water in everyday living. Folks in Copperopolis either had wells that required a drop bucket or if they were lucky, had a windmill to pump the water out of the ground up to the surface. Of course, that meant that you still had to haul a lot of water when needed or you had to have a cistern. You still had to haul the water into your home by hand. Work. Lots of never-ending effort and work.

Tired of drudgery, David put his tinkering skills to use and built a greatly improved home water system.

The family windmill was several hundred feet behind their home and about 40 feet upslope from the home elevation.

Gravity is free, powerful and always on. With this knowledge, David built the first and only gravity-fed, pressurized water system in town.

David Drew Water System

After constructing a tower outside of the kitchen, he topped it off with a large metal tank. Next, a hard-won trench was dug through the extremely rocky soil from the tower to the windmill. Piping, like that used in the surrounding copper mines, brought the water from the windmill to the tank.

It sounds like a simple project until you try to build one yourself, especially in the 1800’s. The gravity fall of the water produces a lot of pressure. At about 8 1/2 pounds per gallon, a 1-inch column of water several hundred feet long, results in a great weight and pressure that must be contained.

The David Drew water system was designed with a float valve in the tank to turn the water on and off when needed against the pressure of the water and associated windmill pumping pressure. The height of the tank above the ground partially offset the incoming pressure thus reducing the requirements on the valve. I don’t know where he obtained or if he made the valve, but it worked.

Without the tank, the home would only have flowing water when the wind was blowing. With it, the family always had pressurized water in their home thanks again to gravity.

David Drew Home Water Tank

Great grandma was the envy of all of the ladies in town. Water for cooking, washing and cleaning with a simple twist of the wrist … right at her kitchen sink.

Sometimes, life is pretty good when you are married to a tinkerer.

Technorati Tags: Copperopolis CA,Drew,Genealogy,Water

Death Certificates and Other Research Tools

2010-11-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

The resources available for family history researchers has never been greater with another 30+ million records added to the FamilySearch.org site in the past few months. Volunteer Indexers like you and I are constantly working to add indexed information and images to the FamilySearch site, so as grand as the number of records are now, wait a few months and the number will drastically increase again and again and again.

FamilySearch Indexing I hope you are one of the volunteer indexers who are bringing the wealth of the records in the granite vaults to light in the digital world.

Check out the records collections on the FamilySearch Beta site and see how many records you find on your own ancestral families. Save this link and check back often.

Find-a-grave An amazing amount of ancestral data and records can be gleaned from the pages of Find-a-grave. Folks are linking the memorials of their ancestral families together on the site with a seemingly frantic pace. I constantly find information about our ancestral families and extended cousins on the site. Missing dates, spouses names and their families are the reward for spending a few minutes on the site.

Births Marriages Deaths Some of you may have ancestors or extended family that lived in Australia and New Zealand. Both countries have great sites that offer indexes to births and marriage as well as very easy to use document ordering pages. I’ve obtained marriage and death certificates from both countries and it couldn’t have been easier.

While on the subject of Death Certificates, be sure to check for family death certificates on the sites of many states that offer them online at no cost. Just copy the image and save it to your hard drive for printing and use in your genealogical sources.

Many folks aren’t familiar with the great Special Collections and Family History records available online from BYU-Idaho. I’m constantly surprised at the records that I find on the site.

Family History records make a great Christmas present for family members. Share the wealth of your work with them this year.

Technorati Tags: Death Certificates,FamilySearch,Find-a-grave,Genealogy

Ink in the Worst Places – on Photos and Rice Paper

2010-11-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

Scanning old photos always brings a cry of despair from my lips. My mother and those before her, had a propensity to write on the face of photos. I’m happy to have the names and places, but oh how I wish they would have written on the back of them in pencil rather than with the acid-rich ink they seemed to all use.

The images are permanently defaced. Hours and hours of work with Photoshop helps in some cases, but in most situations, the old grainy small black and white or brown images were too small to allow a decent clean up on a digital copy.

I’ve entertained the offers of professionals, graphic arts students and others who profess an intimate relationship with Photoshop and other graphics programs, but alas, their results are little different than my own efforts. In fact, none of them can or will spend the tens of hours that I do in the effort nor could I afford to pay them to do so to make the images ‘perfect’ again.

Years ago, I found the photo album of a cousin in a box tucked away at the back of the top shelf in a closet at a historical society in California. I was absolutely delighted to find it. The odds were beyond random chance.

Apparently, when my cousin died in the early 1900’s, her precious photos were given to her step children who had no interest in them. The photos survived until the early 1980’s somehow, passing from one person to another, until they were rescued from the garbage by a sharp-eyed volunteer at the historical society who slammed on her brakes, jumped out of her vehicle in traffic and plucked the old album from the top of a garbage can.

The photos in the book included the old family home in Plymouth, Massachusetts, its rooms, contents and inhabitants. No living member of the family had ever seen them or had been to the home. The images were of my ancestral family and homestead! Additionally, the images showed photos of old family homes in California and events in the lives of the family. I didn’t recognize the faces of most of the folks in the images and wondered who they were …

Unfortunately, my cousin wrote the names on the rice paper pages of the album. Eighty years later, the pages now contained fine paper-free engravings where the ink used to reside. Sometimes the script outline was legible, sometimes it could be read when projecting a light source thorough it and studying the surviving image as it stuck black paper, but frequently, the holes surround the missing text looked like survivors of a young man’s work with a magnifying glass on a sunny day.

The photo identities were sorely missed, but the old photos were relatively intact and greatly appreciated.

Even with the old ink, smears, acid etching and crumbling layers, the photos are a precious, highly treasured part of our family history records.

In our generation, let’s do a better job of passing quality images on to our descendants. Don’t forget to embed the names and locations in you photos in the EXIF and Comments of our digital images. Don’t write on hard copy images. Store them in archival storage sleeves and boxes in a cool dark environment, and for your digital images, backup, backup and backup your files in numerous locations on archival quality disks in .TIFF or a subsequently newer universally accepted archival digital format.

For more information about preserving digital copies of your photos, read Gary Wright's excellent "Preserving Your Family History Records Digitally" white paper.

Restoring an old photo with Photoshop

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Old Photos

FamilySearch and BYU Genealogy Resources

2010-11-03T16:11:00.000-06:00

The past few weeks have marked a dramatic interest surge in the LDS Church’s FamilySearch resources and products. The folks at FamilySearch invited a group of genealogy bloggers to Salt Lake where they were given excellent presentations about the projects that are offered to the public free of charge.

While most people had heard of the records Indexing project, few of them were familiar with the user driven and written FamilySearch Wiki that contains literally tens of thousands of excellent articles to help genealogists be successful in their research quests. Even if you have visited the Wiki in the past, you will undoubtedly find new articles on it now that will help you find your ancestral families.

The bloggers came away from the presentations in awe at the size and scope of the projects underway at FamilySearch and have been blogging and posting notes about it on Twitter since that day.

One of the items learned is that the FamilySearch Pilot site is no longer being updated with new records. All of the records on it are now included along with all new updates on the Beta site. Many of us do not like the search field placement on the Beta site as well as it was designed on the Pilot site but the layout is being reviewed and will hopefully see some tweaks in the future. If you have comments about the new FamilySearch sites, don’t hesitate to click on the ‘Feedback’ links and pass on your thoughts. The folks at FamilySearch are listening to the user community like never before and are working hard to make FamilySearch the best genealogy portal on the web.

The design of the new FamilySearch site looks deceptively simple until you start clicking on links that take you to ever expanding lists of their online resources. Writing and talking about it doesn’t paint the picture of the depth and scope of the resources and offerings. You have to sit down and explore to actually understand how massive the resources are. Don’t worry if you become distracted by some interesting records, articles or training along the way. We all do it. Just bookmark the page you are on so you can start from there again later. Family history researchers who visit the site often feel like they’ve wandered in to a magic genealogy candy store.

There are excellent ‘How To” online training courses on the FamilySearch site. I highly recommend taking the time to listen to the video training lessons that will help in your quest.

Additional excellent free training courses are available from BYU’s Independent Study site. I’ve viewed and / or have taken almost every course on these sites and highly recommend them. My wife wouldn’t let me build a bowling alley in our basement so I could ‘ace’ the Bowling course offered on the Independent Study site but other than that, I have a drawer full of ‘Successful Completion” certificates in my office to impress our grandchildren. (Humor is intended here.)

Between FamilySearch and the various family history related offerings at BYU, the LDS Church has made a Herculean effort to help us find our ancestors. Not every record we’ll need in that quest is online or available (yet), but it is being worked on by good folks from all over the world who are donating their time and efforts in the Indexing project of FamilySearch. While many records associated with the Indexing project are on the sites of other entities, those organizations are working with FamilySearch so the records are indexed and links to them are in place allowing researchers to find them after instigating a search on the FamilySearch site.

This truly is a ‘great time to be alive’. The only thing stopping us from being successful in much of our ancestral quest is ourselves – by not using the resources that are now available.

Technorati Tags: FamilySearch,BYU,Genealogy,Family History

Premier Membership on FamilySearch

2010-10-08T13:19:00.000-06:00

Not everyone is aware that there is a “Premier” membership level on FamilySearch. Users with the Premier level membership can see all of the document images that are available on the site. Those without it, can see many, many images but some are reserved due to licensing and other contractual agreements.

Readers of Science Fiction novels will recognize the initials “TANSTAAFL”. They apply to FamilySearch as well.

“There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”

A great deal of money and time is required to acquire, license, digitize and host family history records. Someone has to invest up front and in the long term to bring the myriad of resources found on FamilySearch to us.

The primary investor is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They along with their partners in the project and folks like you and I who spend time as volunteers indexing records for inclusion on FamilySearch and related sites, round out the group.

A quick search for “Premier” on the Help page of FamilySearch provided a link to the Premier Membership Document that explains the program and the details of how we can obtain a “Premier” membership level ourselves.

The cost is certainly right. All we have to do is volunteer indexing. Earning 900 points every quarter gives us premier membership level access. That certainly makes sense. Investing about a half-hour of our time a week indexing the records that we use to help in our own ancestral quest is not only a ‘light fee’ but a ‘right fee’.

Indexing is easy and rewarding work. If you don’t already have login credentials for FamilySearch, you’ll need to create an account. The credentials extend to the Indexing section of FamilySearch.

Once you have an account, take 2-minutes to view the Test Drive of the Indexing tool and process. The site notes that No Special Skills are Required and that is the truth. Even the young folks in our family can easily run the indexing tool.

As a family history researcher, you’ll be used to reading the majority of the birth, marriage, death, census, church and other documents that you’ll see as you index.

The folks at FamilySearch and its partners already have and continue to Pay-It-Forward. Now it’s our turn. We all benefit from the Indexing, both now and in the future as Free Searchable Indexes are created that we can access in our PJ’s from home. The related images online are frosting on the cake.

Scroll to the bottom of the Indexing page to see the lists of Current, Completed and Future projects. You may also want to scroll through the historical records on the FamilySearch Beta site to get a flavor of how much indexing has already been completed and of the scope of this worldwide project.

Below is the Premier Membership document from FamilySearch that explains the program in detail.

I’m sure that we’ll see each other in the glow of our monitors as we spend a little time Indexing each week, doing the right thing for the right reason.

Document ID: 109840

Premier Membership Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions:

What is FamilySearch premier membership?
- Premier membership gives you access to view information (images and indexes) in some record collections on FamilySearch.org that might otherwise be unavailable or that you might otherwise have to pay to view. While FamilySearch does not charge for viewing this information, sometimes the record owners do.

Why does FamilySearch require premier membership to view these images?
- Since we do not own all of the collections we publish, and some record owners require compensation to maintain their collection, this method enables more collections to be available for research. FamilySearch invests in private archives by preserving records and making these collections searchable.
  FamilySearch and some of these archives have agreed by contract to allow access to those who make a significant contribution to this process. Without premier membership, you can usually search the indexes of these restricted collections; however, the images may not be freely available.
  There are currently (as of June 2010) no collections that should require premier membership to view images. If you see records that require premier membership, please report that through the Feedback link.

How do I become a premier member? Are the benefits available to everyone?
- Yes, they are available to everyone through any of the following methods:
- - Index records and earn 900 points within a calendar quarter.
  - Belong to a sponsoring organization, such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or another company or society that sponsors FamilySearch.
  - Additional methods of contributing to FamilySearch may also qualify you for premier membership in the future.
- In the future, family history centers located around the world will receive access to these restricted collections as well.
Why do members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints receive premier membership status?
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the largest sponsoring organization of FamilySearch. Funded by the contributions of its members, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invests in records and resources for family history research. Access to these resources is extended to the general community whenever possible.
What is the difference between being a “member” and being a “premier member?”
- A member is anyone who has registered for a FamilySearch account. Some collections will require the researcher to at least be a member in order to view the information in the collection. A premier member is someone who has qualified based on the guidelines indicated above.
Are there ever collections that a premier member cannot view?
- Indexes for most collections will be available to premier members; however, some archives require that you view the images on their Web sites, and at times they may charge to view those images.

Indexing Specific Questions:

When do I have to earn points to extend my membership?
- You must earn 900 points during a calendar quarter. The first quarter of the year is January through March; the second quarter is April through June, and so on.
- Once you earn 900 points, your premier status is immediately given for the rest of the current quarter and the next or following quarter. For example, if you index 900 points during July, you will earn premier membership that will last through December.
- At the end of every quarter, the qualifying points are reset to zero, much like a cell phone plan that does not carry over minutes between months.
Why is my expiration date “Never”?
- If the expiration date is “Never,” you are a member of a sponsoring organization that does not need to earn points for premier membership.
Why don’t the names indexed add up to what the points are?
- Points are calculated from the number of names indexed, and they are given based on the difficulty of the record. Projects that are easier to index are generally worth fewer points, but at least one point is given for each name indexed.
How much do I have to index to earn 900 points?
- Indexing for approximately a half hour every week would usually earn the qualifying 900 points in a calendar quarter.
Where do I find out how many points I currently have?
- Sign in to the indexing Web site, and click My History on the left to see your statistics. It will inform you how many points you have and how many are required for you to attain premier membership; or if you are already qualified, it will tell you how many points you need to earn during this calendar quarter to retain your premier membership for the following quarter.

Definitions:

Calendar Quarter

Three (3) months of a year; the four quarters are defined as: January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December.

Collections

A group of similar records that is searchable on Record Search, such as England birth records, for example.

Restricted Collections

Collections in which either its index or images cannot be viewed without being a FamilySearch member or premier member.

Member

Someone who has registered for a FamilySearch account.

Premier Member

Someone who has qualified to gain additional access to record collections due to indexing 900 points in a calendar quarter or being a member of a sponsoring organization.

Technorati Tags: FamilySearch,FamilySearch Indexing,Pay-It-Forward,TANSTAAFL

Shades of the Departed Genealogy Magazine

2010-10-05T21:01:00.000-06:00

Like most folks, I tell others in my circle about “Great Buys”, “Feature Rich”, “High Value” items that I encounter in my daily life. Word of Mouth continues to be the most effective selling tool in the world.

We don’t pass our praises out lightly because our reputation and veracity are inextricably entwined with the words and actions that emanate from our being.

With that in mind, I highly recommend Shades Of The Departed digital magazine to any and all persons interested in family history and genealogy.

I am not involved in the publication other than faithfully reading each issue but believe me, this is a “Great Buy”, “Feature Rich”, “High Value” publication.

I would be seriously remiss in not passing on the knowledge of this gem to my family and friends.

To date, the publication is free. Just go to the Shades site in Issuu and plan on spending an hour or two of enthralled reading and notetaking for each issue.

The Grand dame, originator, publisher, artist and heavy lifter is none other than the footNote Maven, a well-known author, speaker and genealogy expert who lives in the Pacific Northwest. Joining her with monthly articles are the well-known genealogy and subject matter experts: Denise Levenick, writing under the nom de plume “Penelope Dreadful”, Vickie Everhart, George Geder, Denise Olson, Sheri Fenley, Caroline Pointer, Rebecca Fenning, Craig Mason, Heather Rojo and Donna Pointkouski.

Shades is a world-class publication, full of insightful, interesting and extremely informative articles that will help and instruct anyone interested in family history as well as being an excellent read for those poor souls who haven’t been bitten by the genealogy bug -- yet.

I’ve been involved in genealogy research for over fifty-five years and thought I knew a lot of ‘stuff’ only to have the truth ratified yet again after reading the first issue of Shades …. I don’t know much, but the writers in Shades are ready and able teachers, willing to teach even old dogs new tricks.

Family history fans … read Shades.

There, by my count, I’ve said or implied that you should read Shades of the Departed three times.

How does the saying go? …. I tell you once, I tell you twice … I tell you three times… Amen to you on that subject.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and read the issues of Shades. You’ll love the content, masterful design and presentation. If you haven’t moved into the world of digital magazine publishing before … Welcome! … You just crossed over.

Technorati Tags: Digital Publishing,Genealogy,Shades of the Departed

UFO Over Wellington Square – Nottingham

2010-09-30T14:37:00.000-06:00

I frequently use the Street View in Google Maps to look at the property where my ancestors lived long ago. Sometimes, I’m rewarded with a view of their house that has survived the centuries.

Although the buildings and properties have experienced changes in the intervening time in cosmetics, construction and destruction, my digital excursion is worth the time.

I’m fairly sure that the home my 2nd great-granduncle, Edwin Vanini Smith died in at 7 Wellington Square in Nottingham, England still stands. At least the building appears to be old enough to have been in existence before his death in 1901.

During these digital, no passport required, journeys, I always take the time to digitally ‘walk’ through the neighborhood to get a sense of what it looks like now and may have resembled way back when.

In many locations in England and other countries, where homes have been around for ‘a while’, are close together, near shopping areas or rail lines and, I can almost hear the sounds of the neighborhood, smell the bread being baked down at the bakery and see the neighbor lady hanging out her wash to dry.

Imagine my surprise today, when just a few steps down the street at 16 Wellington Square, I looked up and thought that a UFO had been captured by the Google filming vehicle.

It’s shape reminded me of the curved wing of the space craft used by invaders from Mars in the old War of the Worlds movie.

A UFO over the home of my 2nd great-granduncle? That would make a great family history story!

But alas, it wasn’t to be. Sliding the view further up and down the street revealed the UFO to be a small gouge, bubble or ding in the plastic dome that covers the Google cameras.

It is either that or the UFO is tiny and keeps pace with the camera vehicle and slides along the 2nd story walls of buildings when it isn’t in the sky.

So, the family history story that I hoped to tell our grandchildren went the way of most UFO stories. Explainable. Fun for a second. A natural element caught in a photo from a viewpoint that accentuates the image of something different than the truth.

It would have been a great story though. I hated to let it go. I hope that there aren’t other ‘stories’ in my family history research that are just that, …. ‘stories’, not proven facts, that I’ve interpreted as fact from my ‘point of view’.

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Facts,Whimsy,Family Stories

Oral Interviews – Still Going Strong

2010-09-28T23:06:00.000-06:00

The art of interviewing ancestors and family members has not died in America. At least that is the indication from the flurry of requests for help and interview question lists that I’ve received this week.

The requests have come from students who attended my family history classes over the last several decades and have lost their notes. Others came from folks I’ve never met but were referred to me.

There is nothing magic in the lists. They are simple but help prime the thought processes as the prospective interviewer prepares for their interview sessions.

The good news is that folks are still conducting family history interviews.

Over the years, I’ve been repeated told that the promptings in class to “go interview your family” - “soon” has been excellent family history advice.

As often as not, the first person or two that comes to mind is a parent, aunt or uncle that is old, or at least old enough to have lived through a lot of family history and whose ‘expiration’ date may be on the horizon.

The lucky interviewers acted on their prompting quickly and invariably learned far more about their family history than they had anticipated in their wildest dreams. Additionally, they came home with both audio and video files of their family member telling family stories, explaining living conditions as well as shedding light on family secrets or at least on forgotten tales.

Of course luck had nothing to do with it. The interviewers made their luck by engaging. Quickly. Very quickly - after the prompt surfaced on their temporal lobe.

To a degree, they tell me that the interview almost acted like a triggers in the decease of the person that was interviewed. Of course, the interview itself wasn’t the trigger. It was the age or health of the family member and hence the reason they were probably on the top of the interview list.

Those who act on the prompting were rewarded and came away with great stories that they delight in repeating to family and friends. Those who think that they’ll interview their family just as soon as they can get ‘round to it’ almost always end up sad. Time and disease stay true to their course and the family member moves to the deceased column on their genealogy chart.

Their stories, memorized lineage facts and voices are stilled. Lost. Gone.

The law of ‘Round to it’ holds true to its physical image. Round. No edges. Nothing protruding to lift the covers of time and expose the foundation, song, feel and flavor of family history.

Capture your past soon. Don’t become a ‘round to it’ causality too.

Technorati Tags: Family History,Interviews,Oral History

After Everyone is Gone

2010-09-19T15:54:00.000-06:00

The funeral of an uncle in a family of faith is both a sad and yet a happy affair. With a strong belief in life continuing after exiting a mortal body, stepping through the veil it just one more event in our eternal progression.

We weep at the loss of contact, advise, laughter, touch, feel, smell and idiosyncrasies of our deceased loved one but not as a result of any thought that they are permanently lost. After all, the end of mortality is actually a graduation day. It is all part of the plan. Part of the process.

Family and friends gather at the funeral memorial to offer condolences, statements of love and to honor his life and good works.

In our community, a member or two of the family usually speaks at the funeral along with a church leader in an hour long program They offer memories and funny anecdotes from the life of the deceased, finishing with statements of faith and eternal plans of growth and life.

Then the transport of the body to the cemetery and its burial moves forward.

We line our cars in a funeral procession, light our headlights and slowly drive in a half-mile-long train winding our way through the city behind a slow hearse and police escort.

Well, normally …

I hear his voice in my head saying, “ Oh bother. More uncomfortable suits and ties. More flowers than any man could reasonably want or enjoy. More ceremony to appease the living …. Hey! (wink and chuckle) There are a lot of good looking women here.”

I laugh at the thought. His kids did make a lot of effort to remove some of formal stodginess out of the burial process. Except for his wife and daughter, the limos and motored procession of mourners is left at the cemetery gate to find their way to the grave on foot.

His body arrives in style in a caisson transport. The team pulling it could be better, but there aren’t many matched teams in use today, so you do the best you can.

The caisson is pure class though. White, beveled glass windows that sparkle, and here in the west, the top hat is replaced by a cowboy hat.

I verbally salute him, “You did it! This is cool! The Caddy body hauler is still parked in the garage where it belongs waiting to carry the fairer sex, not a manly man.”

His casket is borne by sons and grandsons to its final resting place and carefully set in place. The sons carefully escort their mother to her chair near the grave. They remove their boutonnieres and place them on the casket saying one last goodbye, briefly laying their hand on its finished surface before moving back to their own families so the proceedings can continue.

Everyone gathers close. The officiator nods to the Veteran detail and a 21-gun salute rings through the winter air. The commander of the local Veteran group is assisted by another member in carefully folding the flag that has covered their compatriot’s casket. They respectfully present it to the grieving widow.

The grave is dedicated by the officiator, who then thanks all for attending and finishes saying the family would like all to return to the church for a meal of funeral potatoes, ham, salad, green Jello with shredded carrots in it and red Kool-aid.

The family reunion slowly moves away to continue their conversations, well wishing and photo taking back at the church … but I stay … alone. I walk over to the city crew who will lower the casket and vault lid into the ground and tell them that they are burying my uncle. That I’ll stay and watch. That I have a great interest in the level of respect they afford his remains.

They look at me like I’m a little nuts, but my demeanor does not brook disbelief or misunderstanding.

Twenty minutes later, the pile of dirt is gone. It hasn’t even left a stain on the surrounding grass. The chairs and astroturf are gone. The noise of the backhoe has been silenced.

I stand by the effusive display of flowers and speak to my uncle. “Well, they got you here ok. I loved the caisson and 21-gun salute. Your grandkids enjoyed letting the flotilla of white balloons gain their freedom in the sky. Sorry about the flowers, but they won’t be here too long. Your body is safe and honorably buried. I’ll stop by later to make sure your headstone is well placed.”

I’ve missed the meal back at the church. That’s ok. My duty was at the grave. I’ll see the family another time.

A short three-step-stroll takes me to the graves of my grandparents. I nod and say “hello” … and … “I’ll be back in a second”. Three more steps take me to the graves of my great grandparents. I touch their stone and say “Hi” knowing that none of them are here listening. They are all talking to my uncle, catching up on events.

However, I grin knowing they’ll all glance my way and laugh … who can resist watching me do a cemetery soft shoe shuffle before I turn with final nod and wave as I start the hike back to my car..

Technorati Tags: Funeral,Caisson,Burial,Cemetery,Family,Tombstone

The Quilt in the Corner Closet

2010-09-08T02:48:00.000-06:00

It all started with me looking for blanket in the linen closet downstairs. It was cool sitting down while working on my server in mid-January and I finally had to admit to myself that even tough old dad’s legs get cold at times.

Not immediately spotting a manly colored blanket, I began looking through the shelves for something with a hunting scene or even one of our now long-married sons old blankets with trucks on it from their youth.

Lifting a foot or two of the stack of blankets exposed a decidedly old faded blue material to the light. Ugh. Old. Ugly color. Why did we have something like that in the closet?

Curious, I uncovered more of the quilt thinking I’d ask my wife if it could be used for camping or covering the tomatoes during a frost.

And then from somewhere, way back in the dusty vaults of my memory, I remembered holding this slick material in one hand and a stuffed bear in the other.

It was the blanket from my early life. I’d forgotten that my mother had given it to my wife decades ago.

Why did that knowledge change my opinion of the attractiveness and value of this old collection of vintage cloth?

Memories. Reference points. Love. All embodied in a child-sized blanket that probably qualifies for landmark status under historical laws in many communities.

My wife makes memories out of cloth today. Her blankets aren’t plain. They are beautiful. When she makes them for our grandchildren, they are designed with each specific grandchild in mind. They wouldn’t be ‘right’ for someone else.

Our daughters and daughters-in-law make quilts too. Their skills are approaching those of my wife. As time and age slow her down and make it more difficult to sit at a sewing machine or bent over quilting frames, the younger generation will overtake the productivity of grandma.

She’ll be there keeping her hand in the mix. You couldn’t keep her out. Much of her time will be spent teaching her granddaughters the quilting and knitting skills she learned from her mother and grandmother, just like she did with her daughters.

Our granddaughters have already picked up the quilting bug. The wall above her sewing machine is covered with mini-wall hanging quilts that they have made for grandma. The wee lasses started early. Some of the creations were completed when they were two. Looking at the wall, one can see the progression of time representing the ages of the girls in the neatness of their stitch.

The offer of a Picasso to replace the scene on the wall would be summarily shunned. The little wall hangings are treasure to grandma. They have both real and intrinsic value in her world.

Grandma’s quilts will eventually be stored away in the homes of the mature women who once were young sewing crafters. They’ll be taken out from time to time and shown to their daughters. “See – grandma’s label is on the back.” “She made this for me when I turned eight or when I moved into my new bedroom or when I graduated from high school or when we got married.”

They’ll have value both real and intrinsic in the worlds of these ladies too. The fabric of the day may look different but the gold offered still wouldn’t buy them.

You can’t put a price on memories and reference points and love.

Seeds of Never-Seen Dreams from Kayann Short on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: Quilting,Family History

Lives Intertwine ~ Small Town Doctors

2010-08-30T15:38:00.000-06:00

Tracing ones lineage often uncovers forgotten facts and interrelated events in the lives of individuals and their families throughout the ages.

While transcribing thousands of death certificates for my ancestors and their extended family, the signature of one doctor, John Franklin Noyes, rose to a level prominence in my mind.

As one a couple of group of doctors in early small town Utah, Dr. John Franklin Noyes was usually present at significant events in the lives of my family. He certified the deaths of scores of the family. He was present at the time of many of their deaths and at many births in the family.

Dr. John Franklin Noyes	His surname was readily identifiable due to his clearly written signature. The name of his son, Kenneth Noyes, was prominent in my memory too because he was the doctor that delivered me and later administered shots to my tiny quivering fanny. Well, it wasn’t always tiny, but whenever I visited his office and he had me stand on a stool, drop may pants and would say, “I hope the bees don’t sting anyone here today”, it did quiver.
Dr. Kenneth Eugene Noyes	Dr. Kenneth Eugene Noyes, served as the family doctor during my life. He sewed my fathers thumb back together after he ran it through a table saw. He sewed my scalp back together after it caught a thrown hammer. He patched, prodded and prescribed our bodies for many years. The surname ‘Noyes’ was burned into my basal memory.
John Franklin & Siddie Chipman Noyes Tombstone – Am. Fork, UT	When taking volunteer photos for Find-a-grave, I encountered the tombstones of both of these doctors and their families. When I later posted the days photos to the FAG site, I was surprised to find that no one had posted photos to their memorials yet. These men were ‘institutions’ in town for three or four generations of families.
John Franklin Noyes marker	Later, while scanning photos for family histories, I came across the photos of each of these doctors that my mother had clipped from newspapers. Looking at them brought back memories from my youth and spurred interest in the Noyes ancestry.
Kenneth and Leona Field Noyes tombstone -American Fork, Utah	Surprisingly, I found that some of their ancestors lived in the same small area in Leeds, Ontario, Canada at the same time as my ancestors. Both families joined the early LDS Church and moved to Nauvoo, Illinois just in time to be persecuted by mobs and driven out of their homes in the dead of winter. Their ancestors survived that experience. Several of mine did not.

The unusual death certificate. Dr. Noyes certifying the death of his father, Dr. Noyes.

Both families eventually settled in the same small town in Utah. Children from the families intermarried, but over the years and generations that history was forgotten.

These families had survived the same causality events, but their occupational paths diverted. One became farmers the other doctors.

How many people do we encounter in our lives that have ties to us? When filling in the ‘color’ of the stories in our family history, there are probably more than any of us realize.

Technorati Tags: Death Certificate,Findagrave,Causality,Genealogy,History

Find-a-Grave Gold

2010-08-28T18:59:00.000-06:00

Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of hours taking photos of tombstones for my genealogy research and to post on Find-a-grave. At times, some of the tombstones have turned out to be those of relatives that I’d yet to discover.

The hours spent taking tombstone photos and later cropping and massaging them has been an effort but I’ve been well-paid as I learned a little about the people they memorialized and the communities of their time. Life was different for them than we enjoy. Repeatedly seeing families with numerous infant deaths witnesses that fact, but the family groupings also witness family strengths as generation after generation are buried within a stones throw of each other.

Posting photos of the tombstones I’ve visited on Find-a-grave has been a great way to Pay-it-forward and thank others for their help in my ancestral quest. They live in locations I can’t visit and have taken time to post similar photos on find-a-grave, work on indexing for FamilySearch, etc., and I’ve benefitted from their efforts. Similar activities on my part just add to the reference pool that all of us can freely access.

These resources have become an integral part of my research routine. Family linkages, photos, documents and data being posted on find-a-grave at an ever increasing rate has turn the site into a ‘must search’ in my research quests.

Recently, I spent an evening looking through my records specifically searching for extended family members whose existence has been all but impossible to prove.

Searching find-a-grave for them provided three positive hits in succession. ‘Hits’ is a mild descriptive compared to the data about that branch of the family that had been posted on the site in recent months by someone paying-it-forward too.

Tombstone photos, person photos, vital record documents and text told the stories of the lives in this family. Moves eastward rather than westward surfaced as did the shift in spelling of their surname. No wonder we hadn’t been able to find them for so long. They had indeed ‘faked’ us out with their jigs and jags.

If you haven’t already included find-a-grave in your research plan, add it. Don’t hesitate to add information and images to the records of your own family members on the site. If you didn’t create the memorial, ask the creator to add the data and make the links you send to them. Sometimes, they will transfer the memorial to you if the record isn’t part of their own family.

Over time, we’ll undoubtedly see a lot of additional data added to the site. Be sure to check back. Users of the site almost universally feel a need to take the time to link family records together. I’ve linked my own ancestors records and families together for many generations to help my cousins in their own ancestral quest even though I have their records on my own websites.

You’ll find yourself doing the same thing when you work on your own family memorials on find-a-grave. Bet you can’t link just one…

Technorati Tags: find-a-grave,familysearch,genealogy

Cemetery Tours – The Stops Are Worth It

2010-08-01T22:52:00.000-06:00

In my younger years, the goal of any on-road excursion was to arrive well under the forecast travel time. Then one day I got smart.

With a lifelong interest in genealogy, I’ve always spent a lot of time walking through cemeteries looking for information about my family. Consequently, even the concentration associated with ‘fast’ trips could not keep my eyes from searching out groups of tombstones along the way.

I remembered the names of all the little towns and waypoints not with road signs but with images of their cemeteries in my mind.

Finally, I succumbed to the desire to pull off the road and wander among the tombstones, regardless of how much time it would add to the trip. It was the best driving decision I’d made in years.

After a quick drive through it to plan my walking route, I parked and tour began.

The stones told stories of many mothers who had died young. Heartbreak leapt off the markers of many of the children. Inscriptions written by parents, children and siblings evidenced their emotion in poems, scriptural quotes and statements describing the valiant lives of their lost loved ones.

The sweep of diseases that swept through town were chronicled in the old markers. Humor was found on the stones of jolly grandfathers and favorite uncles.

The story of the town emerged during my short visit. Inscriptions read early in the tour had added relevance as they tied to obvious disasters that afflicted families and friends throughout the cemetery. At times, I retraced my steps to find the markers with common themes. Other steps were retraced as family relationships became evident and I built their family trees in my mind.

My wayside cemetery tours have always been time well spent. Now when I motor by the communities, I don’t envision the Gas-and-Go pit stops, nor the clutter of junk along the highway. Instead, my minds eye sees the town as it used to be. The citizens of earlier days stroll down the streets. I see the families that used to live there. I spot the old surnames on the mailboxes of today’s residents.

Sometimes unique surnames on the boxes will allow me to think, “Yes, I know your “Loving Mother, Confidant and Friend” and your Father, “Beloved” who said “Death Has No Hold On Me.”

Take the time in your own journeys to really get to know the places along the way. Spend a little time in their ‘histories in stone’ and enjoy the lessons of history, love, humor and faith written in stone. You’ll arrive home with memories of places and times that you never knew but reside in the ‘favorites’ folder in your memory.

Technorati Tags: Cemetery,Genealogy,Tombstones

FamilySearch Pilot and Beta – Manna from Heaven

2010-07-26T15:11:00.000-06:00

I continue to rave about the records that are appearing on the FamilySearch Pilot and Beta sites thanks to all of the volunteer indexers worldwide and the LDS Church.

Brickwall after brickwall in my ancestral tree have fallen in the past few months because of the records. I’ve turned into a sourcing maniac too.

Many, many decades ago (rocks were still dirt) I started my personal ancestral quest. The idea of adding complete sources to your records was an odd notion at best.

Way back then, you’d jot down research notes on your tablet with a charcoal stick and possibly include a tracing of the writing if you couldn’t readily read it at the Family History Library in Salt Lake. Sometimes, you took the time to write down the name of the book or film you were using but typically, that wasn’t a consideration.

It wasn’t a problem until I was thirty and someone challenged my information about a sixth great grandfather. I couldn’t give them references to prove the accuracy of my old handwritten note. My data was correct, but finding the original source took hundreds of hours and considerable cost.

Lesson learned. Genealogy data without sources are just ‘nice’ stories but not anything to be taken seriously.

Since that day, a large percentage of my time has been spent ‘proving’ my own research. I’ve only found one error so far, but even evidential sourcing wouldn’t have resolved the problem created by a town clerk two hundred years ago.

The effort has been worth it. I am passing on proven information to our descendants as well as sharing it with the world.

The advent of online documents has been a boon to all researcher. I’ve certainly benefitted from it since almost day one of the DARPA project that created the ‘Internet’.

Today, I revel in the documents and data being posted in the various FamilySearch online databases. I’ve used and loved most of the commercial genealogical venues since their first publication but FamilySearch documents are the ‘sweet spot’ in providing the exact information needed to break down my ancestral brickwalls.

I don’t have to travel too far to get to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and have spent untold hours perusing the films, books and documents available there, but none of that time and effort produced the information needed to solve the mystery of those particular problems. Worse, I had to wear slacks and fit the library hours into my schedule.

FamilySearch Beta and Pilot let me work in my old comfy pj’s during the wee hours of the night when the dust of the day has settled. Given enough time at the library, I would have probably found the same documents but the online record searches are so fast and fruitful that my visits to the library will be limited to specific hard to find records and other visits associated with teaching my family history students and grandchildren how to use the wonderful resources of the FHL.

Records continue to be indexed and posted on the FamilySearch site at record setting levels. That effort will only grow as time goes on until all of the documents in the ‘Granite Vaults’ that can be published online are published. I hope I live long enough to see that milestone become reality. If I think I’ve had success in breaking down brickwalls using the FamilySearch sites already, wait until that day arrives!

FamilySearch records already serve up a genealogy Christmas morning every day. The records that are continually added to the sites will stretch that feeling onward for years to come.

We know that the Pilot and Beta sites will eventually migrate into the newly written FamilySearch.org site / portal. The inclusion of all of the other family history resources into a single site will make the combined resources that much richer.

Thanks FamilySearch! Thanks to all of the other volunteer indexers worldwide. You are “making our days” both collectively and individually, now and in the foreseeable future.

Technorati Tags: FamilySearch,FamilySearch Indexing,FamilySearch Pilot,FamilySearch Beta,Family History Library

Faulty Memories and Death Certificates

2010-07-19T10:59:00.000-06:00

Death Certificates are usually excellent primary sources for death and burial dates because they were created so close to the time of those events. They often greatly err in the record of birth dates, places and parents names.

Most death information is provided by someone other than the spouse or parent of the deceased. There memory or knowledge is typically off a little or completely incorrect.

Case in point: The parents names listed in the death records of Charles Joseph Gordon Logie are: Charles Logie and “Emily James Logie”.

The name of is father is correct, but the name of his mother was actually, Ellenor Chalan. His grandmother’s name was “Emma Elizabeth (nickname Elenore) James”. The family member who provided the information remembered the surname of their great grandmother and added a first name that started with the correct letter of the alphabet.

Stress at the time of death and the dubious data in the memory of the informant are always huge factors in the accuracy of any data they give about events prior to death and burial dates.

This example is oft repeated in my collection of death certificates and records. I was relieved to see that I had provided the correct information on my mother’s death certificate. A quick review of all of the documental information for which I was the source was found to be accurate. Whew! I easily could have joined the ranks of those providing misinformation to official documents.

I’m happy in this instance that I didn’t need the information on grandpa’s death record to assist in the search of his ancestry. If I had counted on it, I could have wasted a lot of time in the quest. I may even have been mislead and have unknowingly traced a false ancestral tree.

We all need to be careful when using data on any record that wasn’t created at the time of the event. (yes, there are errors in the dates and places associated with the current event at times too, but with much less frequency).

If possible find as many sources as possible to confirm data on records. Even primary sources documents should be considered as ‘best informed guesses’ of the events surrounding the cause of its creation. We all know and recognize this fact. It’s just that we forget it from time to time and detour down the yellow brick road to the land of OZ and end up paying double or triple fare in wasted time and expense getting reoriented back to a known starting point.

While you are looking through your own records for evidence of this error, click on this link for the full Norah Jones Concert at the Bonnaroo Music Festival. Soft sounds to keep you cool in the event that you find an error that has misled you in your own ancestral quest.

Technorati Tags: Death Certificate,Errors,Genealogy

Grave Witching

2010-06-25T11:37:00.000-06:00

I’ve heard from a number of folks who read my earlier posts about Grave Witching to find lost or unmarked graves in cemeteries, farms and other locations. All of them are active ‘witchers’ using the craft to locate lost graves of loved ones, military burials and lost graves in old cemeteries.

As noted in the earlier posts, I’ve used ‘witch sticks’ to locate buried water and power lines for decades as a matter of need, without thought that the activity may seem strange to folks who haven’t seen it done.

Growing up, I frequently saw people bend a couple of metal rods or lengths of wire into short handles and then find the water lines to their corrals, homes, churches, etc., and then toss the sticks and start digging. The rods were just a tool so they could dig in the right spot and not waste any time and effort, without any more thought than grabbing a circuit locator to find wiring in our walls today.

I never thought of using witch sticks to find lost graves until articles started to show up in smaller news publications around the world in recent years.

Wondering if I could locate ‘bodies’ – alive or dead, I made a pair of sticks and then did a search for the giggling bodies of some of our granddaughters scattered across the living room floor. Sure enough, every time I came to one of them, the sticks crossed and then opened again after I passed by the wee lasses, so the ‘alive’ part of the question was answered. What about finding the ‘dead’ in their burial locations?

Knowing that I still have the ‘touch’, I’ll take a set of sticks up to the old burial grounds of my ancestors this summer and find the exact location of their graves.

Jack Robinson told me that he frequently uses sticks to find the lost graves of veterans in his efforts to clean up their burial locations. He also brings and buried tombstones up to the current level of the soil. Read about his project on his site, Resurrection Mission ~ Protecting Endangered Cemeteries.

No all folks use witch sticks to locate lost graves. Robert Nichols, cemetery sexton of the First Presbyterian Church of Rockaway, New Jersey, enlisted the high-tech help of Ithaca College to search for unmarked graves. Read the article here. (It loads slowly. Be patient.)

If you haven’t seen someone using witch sticks to find lost graves, you’ll enjoy the three videos below. They are followed by a video of the folks from Ithaca College using their ground penetrating radar equipment with the same goal in mind.

Are you going to give it a try yourself? You may find the burial spots of some of your ancestral family members on the old homestead too. Good Luck!

Click on this link to view the video of Ithaca College students using ground penetrating radar to find unmarked graves.

Technorati Tags: Cemetery,Cemetery Restoration,Dowsing,Graves

FamilySearch – Portal To Many Wonders

2010-06-10T02:07:00.000-06:00

Long enamored with the films, books and documents at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I’ve lived long enough to enjoy the library coming to me.

I first visited the library as a youngster when it was in the office of the LDS Church Historian on 58 East South Temple in Salt Lake City.

My mother and I used to make regular day trips to search for our ancestors. At first I enjoyed the photos in the books but was soon filling out family group sheets and pedigree charts with the information I’d gleaned from the books.

Learning to use the library catalog wasn’t difficult, but I seemed to spend more time looking through it than through the books that referenced my family.

When the library moved into the Church Office Building in 1971, the card catalog was still in existence but the years of training at the old building had made the finger-walking quest much easier.

When a dedicated building for the library was built in 1985, I frequented it constantly. Eventually, the catalog migrated to a digital format. The quest for ‘That’ record was shortened dramatically. Life was good. Very good.

Then the books and films entered the digital library domain. I don’t visit Salt Lake very often now. Increasingly, the Library comes to me on the monitors in my office at home.

FamilySearch has become a portal to all things genealogical. New titles and record groups seem to arrive to the portal daily. The Pilot pages of FamilySearch have become a favorite friend. http://pilot.familysearch.org

This week, I’ve reveled in the Massachusetts Death and Burials pages. Death information about my ancestral families has emerged from the pages. I thought I had covered every source document related to this area, but new information is pouring off my screen.

Decades of microfilming records by the folks from the the Library is now is being followed by the digitization, indexing and publication of the records on FamilySearch.

Genealogists everywhere benefit from this work. New records are added to the site daily. If you haven’t visited for a while, do yourself a favor and stop by today. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Life today is not just good -– It’s Great! –- Thanks to FamilySearch!

Technorati Tags: FamilySearch,FamilySearch Pilot,FamilySearch Indexing,Genealogy