Genea-Musings

SDGS Ancestry.com Family History Seminar Highlights

2009-11-14T20:07:00.000-08:00

I had an enjoyable day at the San Diego Genealogical Society (SDGS) meeting today - it was an Ancestry.com Family History Seminar at The Handlery Hotel and Resort in Mission Valley (in San Diego), from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. About 300 were in attendance (I heard that 170 were SDGS members, the rest were guests), including several from Orange County and Riverside County. The meeting room was packed wall-to-wall, and two projectors and large screens were used to show the Powerpoint and online presentations.

During the day, there were four presentations, along with the SDGS elections and announcements, a nice box lunch, document and photo scanning sessions, and door prize drawings. The four presentations by Suzanne Russo Adams of Ancestry.com were:

1. "The Best Strategies for Getting the Most Out of Ancestry.com"

This was a combination of two parts of the handout - "Getting the Most from Ancestry.com" covered the goals and vision of the company, Ancestry.com, and briefly described the site tools and products. The mission of Ancestry.com was "To help everyone discover, preserve and share their family history." Site content was described as Data Content (records, document images, etc.), Rich Content (photos, postcards, yearbooks, maps) and Member Contributed Content (Family Trees, Photos, Stories, Self-Published Books). Brief mention was made of the Learning Center and Expert Connect features on Ancestry.com.

The second part of the handout was "Best Search Strategies for Ancestry.com," and in this part of the first presentation, Suzanne described the Home Page, the different Search Strategies that can be used, and provided recommendations for doing a "Top down approach" and key pieces of a "Global ranked search." The inherent problems associated with name spellings, dates and ages, place names and relationships were explored. The use of search tools like Name Authority lists, Ranked searches using Soundex methods, the Lifespan filter, Location selection lists, Wildcards, Keyword exact phrases, and Family Tree leaves/hints were discussed and demonstrated. Searching within a category (e.g., census records, military records) and searching within specific data collections (e.g., the 1920 census, the New York Passenger Lists) were discussed. Only "New Search" with "Ranked matches" were demonstrated - no "Exact matches" or "Old Search" were shown, but were briefly mentioned. A show of hands indicated that very few (less than 5%) of the attendees even knew there was an "Old Search."

Based on a show of hands, I estimated that about 70% of the attendees were Ancestry subscribers, about 30% have Ancestry Member Trees, about 30% considered themselves beginners, about 50% intermediate, and about 20% advanced researchers.

2. "Tapping into the Ancestry and Rootsweb Community"

The handout for this talk included details about the Learning Center, the Collaborate features (Family Trees, Public Profiles, Member Directory, Member Connections, and Message Boards), RootsWeb features (My Account, WorldConnect, Mailing Lists, Hosted Websites, Databases, RootsWeb Guide to Tracing Family Trees, RootsWeb Review, etc.), but Suzanne focused her presentation on Mailing Lists, Message Boards, Family Trees and Member Connections.

Suggestions for effective mailing list and message board submissions were made. Ancestry Member Trees were described and demonstrated in some detail, noting that any registered person can have a Member Tree (either Public or Private) on Ancestry.com. These trees can be input one person at a time or a GEDCOM file, created by a software program, can be uploaded to Ancestry. One of the questions was about how long the Member Tree would be on the site, and the answer was "forever," even if the submitter ends their subscription or dies, unless the user deletes the tree. A non-subscriber cannot attach records from Ancestry.com databases to their tree, but they can upload images to their own tree, and can search Public Member Trees. The ability of a user to upload a tree directly from Family Tree Maker 2010, or download a tree directly to Family Tree Maker 2010, or to upload a GEDCOM file from another software program, and to download a GEDCOM file from Ancestry.com for any software program, was described. Where should a user keep their "master" file? Suzanne keeps hers on her computer, not online on Ancestry.com.

The Member Connections aspect of Ancestry.com was a major focus of this presentation. There are three main places to find Member connect on ancestry.com - on the enhanced image page (the user can see which users have saved, commented on or added to a certain database record or image); in Family Trees (the user can determine which persons in their family trees are shared with other users, can contact each other and share research); and the Recent Member Connect Activities list on the Home Page (the user can receive a list of information added to or copied from or to their own Member Tree). The user can communicate anonymously (if they wish) with other users via an online message system (subscribers only).

3. "The Ancestry World Archives Project"

In the third session, Suzanne briefly described the "journey of a record" from discovery, acquisition, digitization, indexing, data preparation to posting online. She showed several slides of books and records that needed extensive preparation before they could be digitized, including the Gretna Green, Scotland records and the 1851 UK Census for Manchester. The use of document forensics to bring invisible writing to visibility was shown. For some records, 25 to 30% of the images are indeterminate or illegible.

The Ancestry.com World Archives Project was discussed in much detail - the goals are preservation and accessibility of historical records. This is a volunteer project for individuals and societies or groups that can index imaged records using an Ancestry provided keying tool. Indexing is done by two different volunteers, and an arbitrator settles disputes.

SDGS is participating in this Project, and members are indexing California Naturalization Originals, 1795-1872 (25% complete) for San Diego (1883-1936) and Los Angeles Counties (1887-1942), and Southern California Naturalization Indexes (81% complete).

The Archives Project results in free indexes for everybody on Ancestry.com, and volunteers with high keying rates can obtain subscription discounts. If the society or group provided the records for scanning and indexing, then the society receives the index and a digital copy of the database for their own use.

Suzanne noted that projects are selected by the local societies or groups. The keying tool works on a MacIntosh computer if the user has a Windows simulator like Parallels. The Index arbitrator can decide to use either index result, or create their own. Ancestry.com is combining some indexes with FamilySearch for census and other records.

4. "Publishing and Printing Using 'MyCanvas' "

This session covered using the "MyCanvas" program, part of the Ancestry.com site tools, to create and print custom family history books, posters, and calendars to showcase your family history research and make gifts to share with your family. This is a "Print on Demand" system - you make it, you can print it, or you can pat for a professionally produced book based on your selected content. The process relies on your Ancestry Member Tree for the names, dates and places, and the user can attach photographs and document images to create the MyCanvas product. The steps to creating the work is fairly simple - choose a size and format for the book, choose a start person from your tree, import data and records from your tree, add stories, documents, maps and more, choose layouts, backgrounds, frames and embellishments, etc. The page order can be modified as the user wishes. Pedigree charts, family group sheets and timelines can be created by the program. Notes and stories can be added to text boxes by typing into the text box or pasting from another document.

Creating the book or other article is free to anyone - they can create the family tree, upload their documents and photos, add or edit facts, sources and notes, etc. Up to five generations from the selected person can be included in the book, up to a maximum of 250 pages.

The book or other article can be printed to the user's printer, but cannot be saved on the user's computer. The book is saved on the Ancestry.com computer system, and can be accessed and edited at any time, even by another family member invited to do so by the creator. If the user wishes to have the book published by MyCanvas, price estimates are available based on cover style, binding type, and then umber of pages in the book.

Suzanne spent considerable time in this session demonstrating how to create a book from an Ancestry Member Tree, and then she manipulated book content from a previously created book to show how easy it was to add content, edit content, move pages around, add backgrounds and embellishments, etc. The audience gasped at times by how easy it was to perform these tasks, but there is a learning curve involved!

Summary

This seminar ran like clockwork - right on time, all of the equipment worked well, and the business parts of the meeting were concise and informative. It was an excellent opportunity for Ancestry.com and SDGS to display their wares and opportunities. SDGS had tables at the back of the room to offer memberships, sell opportunity drawing tickets, sell books, sell snacks, and provide water glasses.

Ancestry.com offered the use of two scanning machines during the day to SDGS members to scan their documents and photographs and copy them to a member's USB drive. SDGS volunteers were trained to perform the scanning work, and many members had their precious family history albums, loose or framed pictures scanned during 15-minute sessions. Ancestry.com is leaving one of these machines for SDGS to use at the SDGS library for member use.

A box lunch was provided with a croissant sandwich, banana, chips, cookies and a soft drink. Folks ate in one of the nearby dining rooms or outside in several patio areas at the hotel. I shared a table with six other people and we talked about Ancestry.com and SDGS.

There were door prize drawings at each break for three books published by Ancestry.com, and for passes to the Marston House in Balboa Park donated by SOHO. At the end of the seminar, there was a drawing for an Ancestry.com world Deluxe subscription. Suzanne Adams will draw another World Deluxe subscription winner from the seminar evaluation sheets turned in at the end of the day.

All in all, this seminar was an excellent genealogy day - it was action packed, educational and entertaining. Thanks to Suzanne Russo Adams, Anastasia Tyler and Laryn Brown from Ancestry.com, and to SDGS President Marna Clemons, Program Chair Suzette Aprea, and many other SDGS board members and willing workers.

Needless to say, I could not capture every pertinent or useful statement made during the presentations, so I've tried to summarize, in some detail, the highlights from each session, based on my own notes and recollections. Hopefully, other attendees will report on their impressions and conclusions. If other attendees want to be a "reporter" for a day, I'll be happy to publish their reports on this blog. Please email me at rjseaver@cox.net with your submissions. I know that Chris on the San Diego Genealogical Society blog will also post articles or reports from other members also.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Nice Thing

2009-11-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

It's Saturday Night - time for lots of Genealogy Fun!

Here is your genealogy writing mission, if you decide to accept it (cue the Mission: Impossible music...):

1. What is the Nicest Thing another genealogist did for you, or to you, in the last week or so? (If you have no examples for this past week, go back in time - surely someone has done a nice thing for you in recent years!).

2. Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a comment on Facebook, or in a tweet on Twitter.

Here's mine (I have two from today):

1) Martin Hollick, author of The Slovak Yankee blog (you do read Martin's blog, don't you? It's excellent for New England researchers), commented on my NEHGS post yesterday, saying:

"Saw your comment on Eliza(beth) Horton Dill and read your postings on her. I was at the NEHGS library today and thought I would look into it. Thomas Dill leaves no probate at Barnstable Co. However, in 1821 a Thomas Dill was placed in guardianship for spendthrift. Didn't look at that although it could be that Thomas was getting senile and his kids had to reel him in. NEHGS doesn't have the Barnstable deeds but they exist after 1827 (when the fire happened), so a good quitclaim deed may be in the offing for you."

He continues with analysis of my Elizabeth Horton (Dill) Smith research problem, with expert opinion based on years of experience and knowledge. Very nice!!! I really appreciate Martin's effort, analysis and encouragement. It is often useful to have another pair of eyes stare at your research problem and analyze it for you. Unfortunately, I've searched the particular probate record and the land records, and cannot find anything that ties Elizabeth to that particular Thomas Dill of Eastham MA, although I'm pretty sure that he is her father. I'm still not tying her to Thomas and Hannah (Horton) Dill because of the conflicting evidence on her two death records naming her parents, which I cannot resolve yet.

2) Yesterday, for Follow Friday (another "official" daily blogging theme), Amy Coffin, who writes the We Tree blog (which now has a nice picture of Amy - it used to have a waffle image in the shape of Texas - I like Amy's photo much better) mentioned my name and Genea-Musings as worthy of being followed. Thank you, Amy. That was really nice of you. I appreciate it! I've enjoyed getting to know Amy at Jamboree and the FGS Conference.

P.S. would someone be nice enough to tweet the appearance of this post for me? I'm at the SDGS seminar all day today!

Surname Saturday - AUBLE/ABLE

2009-11-14T07:05:00.000-08:00

On Surname Saturday, I am posting my known family line for the selected surname in ahnentafel format (with myself as #1).

Today's featured Surname is AUBLE (and the earlier variant, ABLE) - pronounced by my grandmother as in "awe-bull."

Here is my AUBLE/ABLE line (with myself as #1 in the Ahnentafel list):

1. Randall J. Seaver (1943-....)

2. Frederick W. Seaver (1911-1983)
3. Betty Virginia Carringer (1919-2002)

6. Lyle Lawrence Carringer (1891-1976)
7. Emily Kemp Auble, born 19 August 1899 in Chicago, Cook County, IL; died 19 June 1977 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA. She married (1) Lyle Lawrence Carringer 19 June 1918 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA.

14. Charles Auble, born 31 October 1849 in prob. Newton, Sussex County, NJ; died 23 March 1916 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA. He was the son of 4. David Auble and 5. Sarah G. Knapp. He married 3. Georgianna/Georgia Kemp 19 June 1898 in Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, WI.
15. Georgianna/Georgia Kemp, born 04 August 1868 in Middleton Township, Norfolk County, ONTARIO; died 08 November 1952 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA. She was the daughter of 6. James Abram Kemp and 7. Mary Jane Sovereen. Child of Charles Auble and Georgianna/Georgia Kemp is:
..7...... i. Emily Kemp Auble, born 19 August 1899 in Chicago, Cook County, IL; died 19 June 1977 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA; married Lyle Lawrence Carringer 19 June 1918 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA.

28. David Auble, born 1817 in Stillwater, Sussex County, NJ; died 22 March 1894 in Terre Haute, Vigo County, IN. He married 29. Sarah G. Knapp About 1844 in Newton, Sussex County, NJ.
29. Sarah G. Knapp, born January 1818 in prob. Woodbridge, Middlesex County, NJ; died Aft. 1900 in prob. Bushnell, McDonough County, IL. Children of David Auble and Sarah Knapp are:
..........i. William A. Auble, born About 1845 in prob. Newton, Sussex County, NJ; died Bef. 24 January 1901 in Prob. Danville, Vermillion County, IL; married Mary S. Thompson 28 March 1880 in Terre Haute, Vigo County, IN; born May 1860 in IL; died February 1927 in Danville, Vermillion County, IL.
..........ii. Frances M. Auble, born October 1846 in prob. Newton, Sussex County, NJ; died 08 January 1917 in Terre Haute, Vigo, IN.
..14....iii. Charles Auble, born 31 October 1849 in prob. Newton, Sussex County, NJ; died 23 March 1916 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA; married Georgianna/Georgia Kemp 19 June 1898 in Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, WI.
..........iv. Katherine Auble, born October 1851 in prob. Newark, Union County, NJ.
.......... v. Anna Auble, born February 1860 in prob. Newark, Union County, NJ; married Henry S. Bunton 17 December 1888 in Terre Haute, Vigo County, IN; born March 1856 in IN; died Bef. 1910 in prob. Bushnell, McDonough County, IL.
..........vi. Cora Auble, born About 1862 in prob. Newark, Union County, NJ.

56. Johannes/John Able/Auble, born 11 March 1780 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ. He married 9. Anna Rau/Row 15 July 1804 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ.
57. Anna Rau/Row, born About 1787 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; died 12 June 1860 in Stillwater, Sussex County, NJ. Children of Johannes/John Able/Auble and Anna Rau/Row are:
..........i. Elizabeth Auble, born About 1814 in Sussex County, NJ.
..28...ii. David Auble, born 1817 in Stillwater, Sussex County, NJ; died 22 March 1894 in Terre Haute, Vigo County, IN; married Sarah G. Knapp About 1844 in Newton, Sussex County, NJ.
..........iii. William Auble, born About 1820 in Sussex County, NJ; died Bef. 10 September 1844 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA.
..........iv. Hampton Auble, born About 1827 in Sussex County, NJ.
..........v. Robert Auble, born 20 June 1830 in Sussex County, NJ; died 04 February 1920 in Blairstown, Warren County, NJ; married Ellen E. Hartman Bef. 1858 in NJ; born 25 June 1833 in NJ; died 25 July 1894 in Blairstown, Warren County, NJ.

112. Johannes Able, born About 1758 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ; died About 1818 in Sussex County, NJ. He married 17. Sophia Trimmer 30 January 1777 in Oldwick, Hunterdon County, NJ (CR).
113. Sophia Trimmer, born 1747 in Hunterdon County, NJ; died Bef. 1811 in Sussex County, NJ. Children of Johannes Able and Sophia Trimmer are:
..........i. Anna Maria Able, born 13 April 1778 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; died in (young).
..56... ii. Johannes/John Able/Auble, born 11 March 1780 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; married Anna Rau/Row 15 July 1804 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ.
..........iii. Anna Maria Able, born 11 May 1784 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; married Samuel Ogden 28 March 1803 in New Germantown, Hunterdon, NJ.
..........iv. David Able, born 10 January 1787 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; died 11 August 1858 in Beverly, Ontario, CANADA; married Mary Dineen Bef. 1813; born 28 February 1790 in NJ; died 22 March 1868 in Beverly, Ontario, CANADA.
..........v. Elisabeth Able, born 17 January 1789 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ.
..........vi. George Able, born 08 September 1793 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; died 06 November 1870 in Tompkins County, NY; married (1) Rachel Cripps 29 May 1813; born 1793 in NJ; died 1849 in Tompkins County, NY; married (2) Betsey Bef. 1855 in prob. Tompkins County, NY; born 1817 in NY.
..........vii. Jacob Able, born 21 April 1796 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; died Bef. 1837 in NJ; married Esther Moore 16 March 1816 in Oldwick, Hunterdon County, NJ; born 20 February 1791 in Hunterdon County, NJ.

224. Michael Able, born About 1719 in GERMANY; died 26 February 1791 in Roxbury, Morris County, NJ. He married 33. Christina Bef. 1757 in NJ.
225. Christina, died 1804 in prob. Roxbury, Morris County, NJ. Children of Michael Able and Christina are:
..........i. Andreas Able, born 13 August 1757 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ; died 09 August 1830 in Glen, Montgomery County, NY; married (1) Mary Christina Schuyler 26 January 1779 in Morris County, NJ; born About 1757 in NJ; died 05 September 1819 in Glen, Montgomery County, NY; married (2) Catherine Winne Aft. 1819 in Montgomery County, NY; born 12 April 1772 in Glen, Montgomery, NY.
..112...ii. Johannes Able, born About 1758 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ; died About 1818 in Sussex County, NJ; married (1) Sophia Trimmer 30 January 1777 in Oldwick, Hunterdon County, NJ (CR); married (2) Mary Cripps 17 April 1811 in New Germantown, Hunterdon, NJ.
..........iii. Matthias Able, born 28 February 1759 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ; died 08 March 1826 in Seneca County, NY; married Catharina Fritts 10 April 1781 in Oldwick, Hunterdon County, NJ (CR); born 23 October 1762 in Hunterdon County, NJ; died 18 December 1842 in Seneca County, NY.
..........iv. Mary Able, born 1760 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ; died 10 April 1829 in NJ; married William Fritts 28 July 1782 in Oldwixk, Hunterdon County, NJ (CR); born About 1759 in NJ.
..........v. Jacob Able, born About 1763 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ; died 1816 in Tewksbury, Hunterdon County, NJ, (gravestone); married Anna Gertrude/Charity Pickle 18 January 1794 in Oldwick, Hunterdon County, NJ (CR); born About 1774 in NJ; died 13 August 1862 in Tewksbury, Hunterdon County, NJ, (gravestone).
..........vi. Anna Elisabeth Able, born 1765 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ; died 18 November 1815 in NJ; married George Fritts 17 January 1786 in Oldwick, Hunterdon County, NJ (CR).
..........vii. Catharine Able, born About 1767 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ.
..........viii. Eva Able, born About 1769 in Roxbury, Morris county, NJ.
..........ix. Christina Able, born 17 May 1771 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; married Johannes Reinhardt 19 August 1792 in Oldwick, Hunterdon County, NJ (CR).

448. Andreas Able, born in GERMANY; died 09 April 1751 in Roxbury, Morris, NJ. He married 65. Maria.
449. Maria, died April 1771 in Roxbury, Morris, NJ. Children of Andreas Able and Maria are:
..........i. Mathias Able
..........ii. Paul Able, married Leany.
..........iii. Andreas Able, died 16 July 1782 in Fox Hill, Morris County, NJ; married Hannah.
..224..iv. Michael Able, born About 1719 in GERMANY; died 26 February 1791 in Roxbury, Morris County, NJ; married Christina Bef. 1757 in NJ.

I have posted a 6 generation Descendants of Andreas Able report in NGSQ format here.

Does any reader have any of these families? If so, please contact me at rjseaver@cox.net and let's compare our database information.

CVGS Research Group Highlights - 12 November 2009

2009-11-13T19:49:00.000-08:00

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society Research Group met on Thursday, 12 November at the Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library at 12 noon. There were eight avid story tellers and researchers in attendance,

Randy opened the session by noting that Family Tree Magazine has changed their cover design, and that the latest issue has a free CDROM of Family Tree Builder 4.0 software. He also noted that Ancestry.com is a publicly traded company and wondered if anybody owns stock in it yet.

* We were happy to have Martha back with us after her surgery. She has been accepted as a member of the Flannery Clan in Ireland and has the colorful certificates to prove it. More importantly, she has corresponded with a researcher in Ireland that has taken the Flannery line back to 1800 - it added several more generations to her line. Martha wanted to know how to access only Ireland databases on Ancestry.com - we told her to select "Irish Collections" in the New Search box.

* David has done no new research, but has noticed lots more Member Connect activity on Ancestry.com. Some of his research is being attached by other researchers.

* Dick sent a pedigree chart and family group sheets to two sibling cousins requesting help with family information. One sent it back filled out, the other is working on it. Dick has all of his genealogy data in Ancestry Member Trees, but downloads it occasionally to make reports and charts.

* Virginia went to Indiana last month to visit her sister and do research. She looked for her cousin's papers in a local museum - they aren't there yet. She did find a family reunion photograph from 1928 with about 50 people in it - all named on a separate sheet of paper.

* Ruth brought her six generation ancestors chart and talked about the one who was put in a well by his father. She met a new cousin and they are sharing lots of information, including about Elizabeth Jane, a child that was adopted out and was lost to her cousin's family. Ruth knows all about her! She wants to write books for Christmas and is thinking about doing a website.

* Gary has had some success with Ancestry.com "leaves" while doing Web Searches in FTM 2010 on his Roff family. He's now expanding his search to New England for his Roff surname line. He's working on a new project, which he'll unveil at the November meeting.

* John had a nasty computer virus that cost him two weeks of effort, but he recovered his files and email. He noted that some Ancestry.com family trees have bad information - so be careful what you bring into your online tree.

* Randy shared a San Francisco Funeral Home record, and his search through San Francisco Chronicle newspapers and city directories for ancestral death dates, occupations and residences. He also talked about his Y-DNA results through SMGF and GeneTree, and finding two other Seaver researchers with close matches.

The next CVGS Research Group will be at 12 noon on Wednesday, 9 December, in the Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library Conference Room.

Book Review: "Genealogical Resources of the Civil War Era"

2009-11-13T13:28:00.000-08:00

I recently read the book Genealogical Resources of the Civil War Era by William Dollarhide and really enjoyed it. It has a prominent space in my genealogy bookcase now because it is so valuable for both online and published resources!

In the foreword, publisher Leland Meitzler says:

"This book was not written as a guide to Civil War narratives as such, but a guide to the various records in which one will find the lists of names of both soldiers and civilians. Those lists include records created during the War, records produced immediately after the War, Veteran Censuses, State Censuses taken (1885-1945) with Civil War Veterans listed, and numerous Internet resources."

The major value of this book is that it comprehensively lists the online resources and the repository resources (books, libraries, archives, etc.) for twenty specific Civil War Resource Groups, and then lists the States for which these resources are available. The specific Civil War Resource Groups considered (in Part 2 of the book) are:

National Resources:

* Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System
* The American Civil War Research Database
* Official Records of the War of the Rebellion
* General and Organizational Indexes to Pension Files, 1861-1934
* 1883 List of U.S. Pensioners on the Roll
* 1890 Federal Census of Union Veterans
* Roll of Honor & Veteran Burials
* 1865-1867 Confederate Amnesty Papers
* Consolidated Lists of Confederate Soldiers & United Confederate Veterans Association
* Index to Compiled Service Records

Statewide Resources:

* Compiled Service Records (by state)
* Index to Compiled Service Records (by state)
* 1861-1869 State Censuses and any 1885-1945 State Censuses with Civil War veterans noted
* 1861-1869 Statewide Name Lists
* 1862-1869 Internal Revenue Assessment Lists
* Statewide Militia Lists
* Confederate Pension Applications. Pensioner Name Lists and Censuses of Confederate Veterans
* Indexes to Statewide Records
* Statewide Lists of Veteran Burials

* State Adjutant General Reports

For each Research Group, there is a description of the records - why and how they were created, with a visual example of a record page. A list of the states for which there are online databases or Family History Library (FHL) microfilm is provided, with the relevant page numbers. A two-page table summarizes the resource groups available for each state.

There are paragraphs for each State to define the online and published (book or microfilm) resources available in Part 3 of the book titled "Statewide Name Lists, 1861-1869 & Post-War Veteran Lists." The Online Resources for each state includes:

* The State Archives and/or State Library website; and any Civil War related databases available at that website

* Any Civil War website for the state

* Any 1861-1869 online name list or Post-War veteran list for the state

The Published Resources include:

* Any published Compiled Service Records, Militia Lists, Pension Records, or Veteran Records specific to each state

* Any statewide name lists 1861-1869, including State Censuses, Tax Lists, or Voter Registrations

* Any published guides relating to the Civil War for a state with resource lists.

In these state sections, website URLs are provided for online resources, and FHL microfilm numbers are provided for records microfilmed by the Family History Library.

Part 1 of the book provides a concise description of the Civil War Era - what happened, why it happened, where events occurred, etc.

Part 4 of the book lists "The Best Civil War Resource Centers for Local & County Research." It cites http://www.linkpendium.com/ as the most comprehensive locality portal site to identify local and county resources on the Internet. This section provides a detailed description of the top six Civil War era resource centers - the Family History Library in Salt Lake City; the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana; the Library of Congress in Washington DC; the Military History Institute, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; the Historical Research Center, Texas Heritage Museum, at Hill College, Hillsboro, Texas; and the National Park Service.

What is missing in this book about Civil War Era records? I can think of:

* Published books, manuscripts, and periodicals that are not microfilmed, but may be found in local, state, regional or national repositories

* State Archives resources that have not been published or microfilmed

* National Archives resources that have not been published or microfilmed (for example, the Civil War Invalid and Widows Pension Files come to mind)

Many more Civil War Era records will appear in online databases over future years as a result of, for instance, Footnote.com's digitizing and indexing of National Archives records, and the Family History Library's imaging and indexing of FHL microfilms and other records. It is likely that the content of this book will be expanded in future years to include newly digitized online databases and new publications.

All in all, this book is an outstanding effort by an expert in the genealogy research field. It should be part of every serious American genealogist's library and on the shelf in every local, state and national library as well.

The book is available from Family Roots Publishing Company, owned by Leland Meitzler. The retail cost is $32.95, but it is available through Christmas 2009 for $26.36 on their website.

William Dollarhide, Genealogical Resources in the Civil War Era, Family Roots Publishing Company, Bountiful, Utah, 2009, 191 pages.

Disclosure: I was provided a free copy of this book by Leland Meitzler for review purposes, but was not requested to write a favorable review. The comments and opinions given above are my own.

Check out The Beginning Genealogist website

2009-11-13T09:49:00.000-08:00

Professor Dru (Dru Pair) has highlighted a new website in her Find Your Folks blog in a post titled The Beginning Genealogist Website and Videos.

Professor Dru describes Angela Walton-Raji's new website, The Beginning Genealogist. Check it out!

Angela says on her site:

"I realize that many are anxious to find their ancestors and get started. Well, many I am finding have not learned the basic steps on researching family history and I want to share with you those basic steps, plus provide some guidance on where and how to do this."

Angela also produces the African Roots Podcast and the AYWalton YouTube channel.

I wish Angela luck, and look forward to reading her text pages and her video presentations. While the site currently emphasizes African- and Native-American ancestry, my guess is that the resources on this page will encompass general genealogy education for all beginning researchers.

Thank you, Professor Dru, for the information and links to Angela's work.

Follow Friday - The Ancestry Insider

2009-11-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

You know, it is hard to pick just one genealogy blog each week for Follow Friday. That's because there are so many good ones.

My choice this week is The Ancestry Insider, written by an anonymous suspender-clad gentleman with an excellent avatar (it even kind of looks like him!).

The Ancestry Insider provides a unique perspective among genealogy blogs - an insider's look at FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com. He is currently employed by FamilySearch and was previously employed by Ancestry.com. In addition, he has a computer background and is an LDS church member. That is quite a combination of knowledge and talent, and Mr. AI puts it to good use.

To top it off, Mr AI is a distant cousin of mine - his surname leads back to one of my Massachusetts Bay Colony immigrants. My guess is, that if he made his ancestry known, that we would find several other cousin relationships.

If you are not reading The Ancestry Insider blog, I recommend that you add it to your RSS feed, blog reader, or Favorites/Bookmarks and visit the site often.

October 2009 New England HistGen Register contains American Ancestors Journal

2009-11-12T15:07:00.000-08:00

The New England Historic Genealogical Society released the October 2009 issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, and it has an additional set of pages for the first issue of American Ancestors Journal.

The announcement noted:

"New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) announces the launch of a new scholarly publication, American Ancestors Journal, to be included in the October 2009 issue of The New England Historical and Genealogical Register.

This new annual supplement will include valuable information outside of New England, including New York state and other regions popular with families migrating out of New England. American Ancestors Journal is automatically included with NEHGS membership, and will be available in both print and paperless PDF formats.

"D. Brenton Simons, NEHGS President and CEO, said, 'The creation of this new vehicle for communicating valuable scholarship beyond New England will serve our geographically diverse audience with first rate content and, at the same time, broaden our institutional reach.'

"American Ancestors Journal will provide readers genealogical content of national scope, with an emphasis on New York State and out migrations from New England. This first installment is thirty-six pages and future issues may be longer. The editors are Henry B. Hoff and Helen Schatvet Ullmann, who are also the editor and associate editor of the Register, respectively."

The Table of Contents for the October 2009 issue (Volume 163, Number 4, Whole Number 652) of the NEHGR includes:

* page 243 -- Editorial
* page 245 -- Peter and Jane (_____) Freeman of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Their Descendants in Maine: An African-American Family, by Bruno Giles
* page 253 -- The Origin of Gabriel1 Whelden of Yarmouth and Malden, Massachusetts, by Jan Porter and Daniel F. Stramara, Jr.
* page 262 -- Identifying Anna Wheeler of Stonington, Connecticut (1675–1714), as the First Wife of Jeremiah Halsey of Southampton, Long Island, by Mary M. Thacher
* page 268 -- Nathaniel Porter (1692–1758) of Farmington and Bethlehem, Connecticut, and His Family, by Bryson Caldwell Cook and Janet Stacey Porter (continued from 163:182)
* page 273 -- Revised Ancestry for William Moulton of Hampton, New Hampshire, Including Some Revisions of the Early Ancestry of His New England Cousins, by Myrtle Stevens Hyde (concluded from 163:173)
* page 278 -- Humphrey Blake (1494?–1558) and His Descendants in New England and South Carolina: Blake, Richards, Selleck, Torrey, and Wolcott, by Clifford L. Stott (continued from 163:211)
* page 296 -- Hawks Family Record - Additions and Corrections
* page 297 -- Additions and Corrections
* page 300 -- Index of Subjects in Volume 163
* page 303 -- Index of Persons in Volume 163
* page 345 -- Annual Table of Contents of Volume 163

* page 349 -- American Ancestors Journal, First Annual Supplement to the Register, Table of Contents
* page 351 -- Editorial
* page 353 -- Revolutionary War Captain Cornelius Wiltsie of Pittstown, New York, by Abbott Lowell Cummings
* page 368 -- Jonathan Wood (1747–1820) of Little Compton, Rhode Island, and Dutchess County, New York, by Michael M. Wood
* page 372 -- The Tudor Family of Barbados, Boston, New York City, Newport, and Bermuda, by Henry B. Hoff
* page 380 -- Index of Persons

It is unclear to me if the American Ancestors Journal will be part of every issue of NEHGR or if it is a once a year addition. It certainly is worthy of being published on a quarterly basis as long as there is qualified material submitted for editing and publication.

My purpose in posting the Tables of Contents of this journal is to get the article titles on the Internet so that they can be found by search engines.

There are several articles of immediate interest to me - my Cape Cod ancestry of Elizabeth Dill (1794?-1869) probably has Gabriel Whelden in it (my problem is with Elizabeth's parents...), and several of the additions and corrections touch my Carpenter and Kent families, and perhaps Jones as well. I also checked the person index for Seaver, Sever, Dill, Hildreth and several other surnames, and saw nothing that I had missed earlier.
Disclosure: I am not an employee, contractor or affiliate of NEHGS, but am a fully-paid member of the Society. I receive my journals by PDF file downloaded from the NewEnglandAncestors website.

Treasure Chest Thursday - The Spoon Holder

2009-11-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

While my mother had been giving me family photographs over the years from 1988 (when I started my genealogy research) until she died in early 2002, she pretty much kept the "family treasures" hidden. It was only when we were doing the inventory of the house and personal property, and distributing treasures to the sons and granddaughters, that we found many "goodies." My brothers kindly allowed me to have the "family history" treasures.

One "family history" treasure that I found in the back of a closet was a spoon holder. It had eight spoons in it, each with a monogram on it, but two different sets of initials - six with "C.K." and two with "M.A.V.":

On the back of the spoon holder was a sheet of paper taped to the back:

The page says:

"These silver spoons are made out of the silver buckles worn on the velvet knickerbockers during the revolutionary period by descendants of Sir Isaac Newton - Date of spoons not known but over 100 years old.

"The spoons were given by Catherine Newton Knapp to Mary Auble - and later to her daughter - Bessie Auble Pentecost - grandniece of Catherine Newton Knapp - Now being passed on to another grandniece - Emily Auble Carringer.

"August 19th, 1945.

"The two spoons marked M.A.V. belonged to Lyle's great-grandmother, Mary Ann Vaux. They were made by Cogswell in Boston, Mass. in 1760 - They are coin silver. M.A.V. is Grandma Smith's mother."

The six spoons that have the initials "C.K." are the Catherine Knapp (1810- after before 1892) spoons. Catherine Knapp was the daughter of William Knapp (1775-1856) and Sarah Cutter (1785-1878), and never married. I have part of an obituary for Catherine Knapp, but don't know her death date or place. I can't find any information about her life in my database either...not even census records. Ah, a research challenge!

Another research challenge is the "family story" that the spoons were made out of silver buckles worn by descendants of Sir Isaac Newton. Did Sir Isaac have children and descendants? I don't know, but will try to find out. There was a man named Sir Isaac Newton (not the one of discovering Gravity fame) residing in the early 1800s in Vermont, if I recall correctly!

This is the first clue I have about the Newton middle name for Catherine Knapp. They lived in Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey. There is no Newton family in her mother's ancestry, but there could be in her father's Knapp ancestry (which I have not been able to determine to date).

The two spoons with the initials "M.A.V." were given by Mary Ann (Underhill) Vaux (ca 1815-after 1880), daughter of Amos Underhill (1772-1865) and Mary Metcalf (1780 - ????), and wife of Samuel Vaux (1816-after 1880).

I do not know when or where the wooden spoon holder was obtained by Emily (Auble) Carringer. She probably bought it at a store after she was given the spoons by her cousin, Bessie (Auble) Pentecost on her birthday in 1945.

Ancestry.com's Improved "Edit Search" Feature

2009-11-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

Ancestry.com announced last weekend that they were modifying the "Edit Search" feature in the "New Search" experience. See Anne Mitchell's post "Refine your searches in fewer steps in new search" on the Ancestry.com blog.

Before yesterday, the user had two ways to change the search field entries in "New Search" - click on each individual search field title and add or edit the entry information, or hit the "r" Hot Key to get a popup window with all of the search fields and their current entries to "Refine the Search." I really liked the hot key option and used it almost exclusively.

Now, Ancestry.com has eliminated the first method of clicking on each search field title, and has added an "Edit Search" button that brings up the popup window with all of the search fields and their entries, and the user can add or enter information.

Here is an example:

I was on the Military Collections page yesterday, and at the bottom of the page I selected the "Advanced Search" feature (I almost always use this advanced search) and checked the "Exact Matches" box (I almost always use exact matches too). I added my father's name, First Name = "fred*" and Last Name = "Seaver," in the search fields:

After clicking "Search," I got 122 matches in the Military Records collection:

Over on the left-hand column at the top, under "Searching for ..." is the current search parameters - only the name entries. The "Edit Search" button is in green (and below it is a link for "Start a new search"). I clicked on the green "Edit Search" button and the popup window with all of the search fields and my current search entries appeared as an overlay to the previous screen:

I refined my search by adding the Birth Year = "1911" and clicked on the "Search" button at the top of the box. I got only one match:

But that was the only one I was interested in. Actually, I was hoping that he would be in a US Navy Cruise Book, but they don't have them posted for World War II.

The "Edit Search" button brings up the same popup "Refine Search" window that the Hot Key "r" brings up (and that feature still works). The hot key saves a click - I find it easier and quicker to type "r" with my left hand than to move my mouse to the Search box and click it with my right hand.

So, THANK YOU, Ancestry.com for making the "Edit Search" box easier to use than the previous clunky list of search fields that had to be clicked individually (unless you used the Hot Key "r"). It is much more intuitive this way, I think, and the user still has total control over the entries in the Search fields, and can do it in fewer keystrokes or clicks, including whether to make each field entry exact or not.

And THANK YOU, Ancestry.com, for the "Search" button at the top of the Refine Search popup window. It's much easier to click on it there than to have to scroll down and click on it at the bottom of the Search box. Now, please, add it to the other Search boxes too!

These changes apply only to the "New Search" experience, and not to the "Old Search" experience. Of course, in "Old Search," the Search fields are all available on any Results list screen so the user only has to scroll to the bottom (or hit the "End" key) of the screen to see the current search field entries and to modify them to refine the search. The "Old Search" procedure now has more clicks and scrolls than the equivalent "New Search" procedure.

Most Ancestry.com users understand that, at some point in time, the "Old Search" experience is going to be eliminated and everybody will have to use the "New Search" experience. Hopefully, Ancestry.com will wait to do that until all of the kinks and quirks associated with "New Search" are ironed out (see yesterday's post for a major problem area which will, hopefully, be fixed soon).

Disclosure: I am not an employee, contractor or affiliate with Ancestry.com. I am a dully paid subscriber to the service. These thoughts and opinions are my own, and I have not been reimbursed in any way for this post.

SDGS on Saturday, 14 November: Ancestry.com Seminar

2009-11-11T09:16:00.000-08:00

The San Diego Genealogical Society monthly meeting is this Saturday, 14 November at 8:30 a.m. at the Handlery Hotel and Resort in Mission Valley. It is SOLD OUT, so if you don't have a reservation, don't plan on attending.

The seminar, titled Ancestry.com: "Everyone Has a Story -- Discover Yours," will be presented by Suzanne Russo Adams and Ancestry.com representatives. There will be four presentations:

* The Best Strategies for Getting the Most Out of Ancestry.com

* Tapping into the Ancestry.com and Rootsweb Community

* The Ancestry World Archives Project

* Publishing and Printing Using "My Canvas"

In addition, Ancestry.com will provide free photo and document scanning for SDGS members for those that have reserved a 15-minute time block.

There will be a drawing for a one-year World Deluxe Ancestry.com membership as well as books for sale.

The schedule for the day includes:

* 7:45 to 8:40 a.m.: Registration
* 8:40 to 8:50 a.m.: Welcome and Introductions
* 8:50 to 9:50 a.m.: "The Best Strategies for Getting the Most Out of Ancestry.com"
* 9:50 to 10:15 a.m.: Break
* 10:15 to 10:30 a.m.: Opportunity Drawing and Elections
* 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.: "Tapping into the Ancestry.com and Rootsweb Community"

* 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.: Lunch (in the Palm area and Garden Ballroom)
* 12:30 to 12:45 p.m.: Announcements
* 12:45 to 1:35 p.m.: "The World Archives Project"
* 1:35 to 1:50 p.m.: Break
* 1:50 to 2:50 p.m.: "Publishing and Printing Using 'My Canvas'"
* 2:50 to 3:00 p.m.: Opportunity Drawing and Closing

I look forward to attending and reviewing this seminar.

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday - Post 79: Veteran's Day

2009-11-11T09:06:00.001-08:00

On the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11 month of the year 1918, the guns fell silent. It was called Armistice Day then. Now, we commemorate our veterans on Veteran's Day.

I listed the veterans (of all American wars) in my ancestry in my post Veteran's Day - My Heroes.

The only ancestor of mine that served in World War I was my maternal grandfather, Lyle Lawrence Carringer (1891-1976). I posted a biography and muse about him and his life in Today is Gramps' 116th Birthday.

Here is a photograph of Gramps in his U.S. Marines uniform taken in about 1917 in San Diego.

I honor my grandfather and appreciate his service to our country, and his devotion to our family.

I have tremendous respect and appreciation for those serving in the Armed Forces today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. May God bless them all and bring them home safe.

AFL with "New Search" on Ancestry.com

2009-11-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

I have several reasons for not using the "New Search" capability on Ancestry.com - but the most important reason is that I cannot trust it to return matches that I know it should. Let me give you an example.

I went looking for Paul Schaffner in the World War I Draft Registrations for San Francisco, California tonight using "New Search" (I wanted to work with the new refine search tool). I didn't get any matches when I put "Paul" "Schaf* in for the name in the name search fields, and chose "San Francisco County, California, USA" for the Residence field, for the specific database. I checked the "Exact Matches" box. My thought was, "OK, he didn't have a registration for some reason." So I took out the "Paul" and just went with "Schaf* and got the same result.

Hmmm, that's strange - there should be someone named Schafer or Schafner in San Francisco. I wondered how many registration cards there are for San Francisco, so I took out the name and went with just "San Francisco County, California, USA" in the Residence field, as shown below:

I pressed "Search" and saw:

No registrations in San Francisco County? There must have been!!!

What about the whole state of California? Surely there were some? I reduced the Residence field down to "California, USA":

After clicking Search, I was rewarded with 852,456 matches for the State of California:

I wasn't going to look through thousands of results pages for a San Francisco entry, so I clicked on one of the entries, and eventually got to the list of Counties for California as shown below:

There's no entry for San Francisco County, of course. I clicked on "San Francisco City," and was rewarded with a list of Draft board numbers (I think). I chose one at random, and saw a fine list of draft card numbers, chose one of those at random, and was rewarded with this one:

Joseph Dagneau is not the one I wanted, but he'll do for this exercise. At this point I'm pretty befuddled by what has happened. I went back and put "Jos*" "Dagneau" in the Name field, and selected "California, USA" in the Residence field on the search box, and obtained a match:

So what went wrong here? It appears that "New Search" works with the whole state, but not with at least one county on the Residence selection list.

I changed over to the trusty "Old Search" and the 186, 982 matches for Residence State = "California" and County = "San Francisco" popped up immediately. So "Old Search" can find San Francisco entries, but "New Search" apparently cannot.

What about other counties? I went back into "New Search" and checked "Fresno County, California, USA," "San Diego County, California, USA" and several others - without any names in the Search fields - and they all came up dry - No Matches! A Residence = "Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, USA" worked, but "Los Angeles County, California, USA" does not. A Residence = "Los Angeles County" should find all entries for the city and the county, since the user may only know the county name and not if the person resided in the city or not.

I don't know if "New Search" for this database doesn't work for other counties or other states, but I think Ancestry.com, and my readers, can understand the frustration involved in not receiving matches to search queries that are perfectly good queries. The problem seems to be in the associations of the Residence locations with sets of database images. I don't know if this is the only database with the problem. This is not the first time I've encountered this problem in "New Search," and it seems to bite me almost every time I decide I'll join the crowd and use it because it should be as good or better than "Old Search." It isn't yet! Obviously..

I will continue to advise my readers, friends, society colleagues and students to NOT USE Ancestry.com's New Search. My preference is "Old Search" with "Exact Matches" checked, and using wild cards, name spelling variations, age ranges and localities to search and find my research targets.

I really don't like to complain about things like this, but my AFL* kind of boiled over after 15 minutes of floundering around trying to find ANY draft registration card in San Francisco, let alone Paul Schaffner's. For what it's worth, I never found it in "Old Search," either! That wasn't Ancestry's fault, or mine either.

Disclosure: I am not an employee, contractor or affiliate of Ancestry.com. I do have a paid US Deluxe Ancestry.com subscription that I utilize almost every day. This post reflects my experience and my opinions, and I was not paid to express them.

* AFL = "Ancestry Frustration Level."

Ancestry.com Has Military Collection FREE through 13 November

2009-11-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

I received an email today from Ancestry.com that announced the release of the U.S. Navy Cruise Books from 1950 to 1988. You can read the Press Release here.

That database is an excellent new 20th century resource for U.S. researchers.
The announcement also said:

"In honor of America’s military heroes, the entire U.S. Military Collection on Ancestry.com can be searched free through Nov. 13. To begin exploring your family’s military heritage, visit www.ancestry.com/military."

Now is a good time for all researchers to delve into the Ancestry.com military collection!! Honor your ancestors who served by finding their military records online.

This is an excellent opportunity to obtain useful information in the 964 (as of today) Military databases offered by Ancestry.com. You can see a list of these collections here.

If you are not an Ancestry.com subscriber, you will probably have to register for a free account in order to access the free databases.

I'm sending an email alert to all of my genealogy society members about this also.

Family Tree Statistics from MyHeritage.com

2009-11-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

The http://www.myheritage.com/ website recently announced that they could create 45 different sets of statistics for a family tree on their system. The email I received said:

"... It's a completely free feature that analyzes your family tree and displays 45 interesting statistics using beautiful graphs, charts and maps, including:

• what are the most common first names or last names in your family
• where were your family members born (displayed on maps)
• what's the life expectancy for men and women in your family
• what are the most common birth months and zodiac signs
• at what age do people marry in your family
• what's the average age difference between husband and wife
• the average number of children in a family
• and more

"You'll also find juicy anecdotes, like the top families where the husband or wife are much older than their spouse, the people who married youngest or oldest, had the most children, the shortest marriages that didn't make it, the oldest living people in the family, and much more. "

You know that I cannot resist seeing graphs and numbers and statistics. I have a Seaver surname database with about 8,000 persons on the MyHeritage site.

The first set of graphs is an Overview of the database - with charts of gender, living vs. deceased, relationship status, common last names, and common first names:

The next set is the location, by country, of Places contained in the database for places of birth and places of death:

Next up is Ages of persons in the database, based on birth and death dates - the charts show age distribution, oldest living people, youngest people, average life expectancy, lived the most, and lived the least:

The Births graphs consider birth months, zodiac signs and when people were born (by century before 1900, by decade after 1900):

The Marriages data is for number of marriages, married the most times, when they were married, age at marriage, oldest when married, and youngest when married:

The Children data is for number of children per family, family with most children, people with most children, age when having children, oldest when had a child, youngest when had a child, age difference between oldest and youngest child, largest age difference between children in a family, and smallest age difference between children in a family:

These charts, and the supporting statistics can be very useful to researchers. They may point out problems with data in the database (for instance, my database apparently has a male age 13 marrying a female age 34 - probably not!).

I checked RootsMagic 4, Legacy Family Tree 7 and Family Tree Maker 2010 and did not see comparable family tree statistics capability (did I miss them? If they are there, they are pretty well hidden). Family Tree Maker 16 has a limited File Statistics capability, but nothing like the MyHeritage statistics. I think that this type of statistics analysis should be a standard feature of genealogy software.

Lyle was Driving

2009-11-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

I don't know when the Austin Carringer family bought their first car, but it was probably by 1916. The picture below has Della (Smith) Carringer in the foreground, and Lyle L. Carringer at the wheel. I believe that it was taken in about 1916.

Which means that this automobile must have been manufactured before 1916. From limited studies, I believe that the automobile is a Ford Model T of vintage in the 1914 to 1916 time period, based on the fender design, the convertible covering, and the framing and wires between the body and the covering. I couldn't find any pictures that match the left-side spare tire, though.

Once the family had an automobile, the world of Southern California was their playground. Over to Point Loma or La Jolla for a day at the beach, to Balboa Park to visit the 1915 exposition buildings, out to Alpine for a day trip, up to Julian for apples, to Ramona to visit friends, and eventually to Orange County and Los Angeles County, especially to Whittier and Long Beach, to visit extended family.

In later years, after Lyle was married in 1918, he and Emily bought newer automobiles, which I don't have photographs of! However, I think that the auto repair shop and gasoline station at the corner of 30th and Ivy (on the northwest end of the block with their home) did a thriving business keeping Lyle fixed up with spare tires, tire patches, grease, oil, and gasoline.

In the 1930s, the family went further afield, driving all the way to Victoria, British Columbia in 1936 on a vacation that took several weeks. I have the rather mundane travelogue, complete with mileage and gasoline charges, in Lyle's account book of the time. Unfortunately, there are not too many pictures from this trip, so I can't display a true travelogue.

My earliest memory of my grandfather's automobile was probably a 1940's Hudson, with long running boards and a big-car feel. He was so proud of that car, and kept it for a number of years while I was a child. I may have taken my first trip to Disneyland in about 1955 in that car, but I cannot remember what it looked like. It was just a car - something to ride in, feel the wind blow in my hair (yes, I had hair then, short flattop, but hair!), and get us safely from home to wherever we went.

1940 U.S. Federal Census Information

2009-11-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

Joel Weintraub kindly forwarded a link to the U.S. National Archives web page for the 1940 census -- http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/census/1940/ .

The web page looks like this:

The big clock on the page counts down the seconds until the 1940 census is released by NARA on 2 April 2012. When I made the screen shot, there were 874 days, 15 hours, 48 minutes and 17 seconds remaining.

The page has links to five other pages:

* Part 1: General Information -- this page says:

"The 1940 census will be released digitally on April 2, 2012. The digital images will be accessible at NARA facilities nationwide through our public access computers as well as on personal computers via the internet."

The page provides the questions asked on the 1940 census, along with explanatory comments and notes. There are also links to a 1940 census template and a blank 1940 census form:

Note that, in the 1940 census, they asked persons #14 and #29 on each page additional questions about birthplaces of parents, mother tongue, veterans status, social security, usual occupation, class of worker, and marriage data for women.

* Part 2: How to Start Your 1940 Census Research -- provides a check list of things you can do to prepare for the 1940 census release.

* Part 3: Indexes and Other Finding Aids -- provides ways to find an address in many larger cities using enumeration district definitions. Note that name indexes will not be provided by NARA.

My assumption is that the genealogy indexing sites (e.g., FamilySearch, Ancestry, Footnote, and whoever else wants to do it) will start their indexing efforts on 2 April 2012, but I may be wrong. Joel pointed out to me that there is still the 72-year privacy rule in effect, so indexing may be delayed until the images are released. Another question arises - can the subscription sites capture the NARA images and provide them, or will they link to the NARA images? Joel points out that the images are not under copyright, being govenrment documents.

* Part 4: Videos -- there are four short films created by the US Census Bureau to train enumerators on their duties and responsibilities.

* Part 5: Informative Articles and Online Data -- there are a number census resources and links about all of the US census records on this page.

It seems to me like the National Archives 1940 census image website is going to be really busy for several weeks in April 2012. I know exactly where my ancestral families were in April 1940, so maybe I'll not even try to look until there are indexes available. I certainly won't try to do any one-name studies until after the indexes are available.

Did anybody else see the spelling errors on the template? What are they? The template was done in 2009, so this is our government bureaucracy in action!

My thanks to Joel for pointing me to the 1940 census page, and for answering my questions.

Calling San Diego Readers -- Dr. Spencer Wells at Natural History Museum on 11/11

2009-11-09T15:52:00.000-08:00

From email via the CGSSD list:

I would like to invite all society members to a special lecture at the San Diego Natural History Museum (1788 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101; (619) 232-3821) this Wednesday, the 11th, at 6:30 PM. Population geneticist, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Dr. Spencer Wells will be at the San Diego Natural History Museum to discuss his current research leading the Genographic Project – the global, anthropological research study to map humankind’s ancient migratory routes through DNA.

This special lecture coincides with the recent opening of an exhibit on the Genographic Project at the Museum of Man. Genographic aims to provide the first true ‘snapshot’ picture of how each of us moved out of Africa and around the globe 60,000 years ago.

ABOUT THE GENOGRAPHIC PROJECT……… Who are we? And where do we come from? The story of humanity’s journey can be found within each of us—encoded in our DNA. In 2005, National Geographic and IBM, with support from the Waitt Family Foundation, launched the Genographic Project, one of the most ambitious scientific research and public participation initiatives ever undertaken. With over a quarter of a million people already taking part – funding the Legacy Fund which supports indigenous cultural projects - the project is gathering and analyzing the world’s largest collection of anthropological DNA samples in the hope it will capture an invaluable genetic snapshot of humanity before modern-day influences erase it forever. For more information: www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic.

This sounds interesting! It's a great opportunity to hear a world renowned expert in the human genetics field

Square Pegs into Round Holes

2009-11-09T08:09:00.000-08:00

The Ancestry Insider produced a thought-provoking post last week titled The Genealogy Maturity Model (GMM) in which he assigned attributes to generic levels (Entry, Emerging, Practicing, Proficient and Stellar) for genealogists in the categories of:

* Sources and Citations

* Information and Evidence

* Conclusions and Conclusion Trees

The five generic levels to describe genealogy researchers in the GMM are:

* Entry -- Newly interested in genealogy

* Emerging -- Emerging knowledge of how to do genealogy

* Practicing -- Usually produces verifiable genealogy conclusions

* Proficient -- Produces verifiably correct genealogies

* Stellar -- Produces well-regarded genealogies

Please read all of The Ancestry Insider's post for the full discussion, and read the comments from knowledgeable people, who mostly disagreed with some or all of the effort to define the levels and attributes.

I was reminded of the recent APG Professional Management Conference presentation (which I did not attend at the FGS Conference - I have only the syllabus) by Natasha Crain titled "Who Pays for Research? Segmenting the Genealogy Consumer Base." Natasha segmented the paying customers, with a primary research interest of genealogy, into the categories of:

* Dabblers -- has limited curiosity, checks out online family trees, falls away.

* Casual Seekers -- has more curiosity, uses entry-level tools and methods, returns occasionally

* Affluently Curious -- Casual Seekers with wealth, want other researchers to do the work for them

* Targeted Seekers -- has objective to solve a family mystery, usually not interested in broad family history

* Avid Hobbyists -- has historical interest, loves the search process, regularly spends time doing research, belongs to groups

* Professional Genealogists -- Generates income from research work, writing or speaking.

Are these categories - both from The Ancestry Insider's and Natasha's lists -- attempts to put square pegs into round holes? Is it really possible to categorize any specific researcher accurately? And if it is possible, do we have the right levels and attributes for those levels?

It seems to me that there are these levels of genealogy researchers (I wrote about this three years ago in the post If Genealogy Interest is so high, why are the number so low?):

* Dabblers -- have some interest in "I wonder who my grandfather was?"

* Casual researchers -- tries to find out who their grandfather was, and earlier generations too, by looking for information in books or online databases

* Part-time researchers -- tries to learn more about how to do research, and then applys the knowledge in online and repository resources occasionally

* Active researchers -- does genealogy research on a regular basis in online and repository resources

* Networkers -- joins societies and groups to network with other researchers, learn more, and share experiences

* Teachers and speakers -- develops teaching and presenting skills

* Actively engaged -- are full-time researchers, take clients, have credentials, writers, editors, leaders.

Nearly every person I know in genealogy circles is at one level or another of this experience and capability ladder. Obviously, the earlier levels feed persons into the later levels.

I'm not sure how much I've added to the discussion started by The Ancestry Insider, but I wanted to get these thoughts on the table.

Your thoughts or ideas?

Checking out ourFamily*ology - Post 3

2009-11-08T20:53:00.000-08:00

I learned about the ourFamily*ology family tree web site last week, and reported on the signup and GEDCOM upload in the first post of this series. In the second post of the series, I explored the "Tree" tab on the Private Website page.

In this post, I am going to explore four of the Orange tabs at the top of the web page -- "People," "Content," "Analysis," and "Tools." When you click on the "People" tab you can input a surname or a person's name in the search field, or you can click on a letter of the alphabet. I chose to input the surname "Seaver" and was rewarded with a page of a long list of over 7,800 Seaver persons in my database (they show 25 names per page, and I captured the screen from the one with #651 to #675):

On this "People" screen, I could click on a name and information about that person would appear.

I went back to my grandfather's page, and clicked on the "Content" tab and saw the "Sources" information for him (I think because this is the first link on the list in the right-hand column):

All of the "Content" material seems to be similar to what we saw in Post 2 at the bottom of the "Tree" screens.

I clicked on the "Analysis" tab at the top of the page, and the Pedigree Chart opened:

There are other charts listed in the right-hand column - a descendants chart and a Bow-Tie Chart. I was more interested in the "Reports" link, so I clicked on that:

The "Reports" link on the "Analysis" tab has three selections - "Ahnentafel," "Family Fact Sheet" and "Individual." The screen above shows a three-generation "Ahnentafel" report for my grandfather - including a list of each family in his ahnentafel list by number - himself, then his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. The list included the children with birth-death years. The number of generations is controlled at the top of the report - the default value seems to be three.

The "Individual" Report" link on the "Analysis" Tab has all of the available information about the selected person and his family (two screens):

I clicked on the "Lists" link on the "Analysis" Tab, and the available lists are "Anniversaries," "Birthdays," "Descendants," Family Members," "Marriages" and "Warning List." I clicked on "Birthdays" and saw:

This list starts with January 1 and goes to December 31, 25 names at a time. For my "family" with over 13,000 members, it runs over 500 screens! The first 25 are shown above. I could print, save as an image, or export the whole list to Excel or to a PDF file. I didn't. I didn't see any way to get to a particular month or day other than by putting a page number in the box above the list. There should be a way to request a certain month and/or date.

The "Tools" Tab on the top of the screen has several options in the right-hand column - "Date Calculator," "Relationship Calculator," "Source Rating Calculator," "Map My Family," "Merge People," "Manage Your Locations" and "Research Links."

I worked with the first three links a bit, and they were pretty straightforward. I clicked on the "Map My Family" link and saw:

The Google Map shows the localities in my database for the events of all of the family members of my grandfather.

I clicked on "Manage Your Locations" and, after inputting a locality (I chose Westminster, MA) and "Birth and Death" events, saw:

The list contained all of the birth and death localities for the 182 people in my database with "Westminster" in one of the fields.

I clicked on the "Research Links" link and saw:

Without any search criteria, there are 1,007 links provided for websites with genealogy information from all over the world. The user can input a country, a source type, or a specific state, city, county or province to reduce the list. I input "United States" in the country field, and there were 634 sources of information. With "Canada" in the country field, there were 24 sources of information. I input "California" in the State field and there were 13 sources listed. It appears that there are no subscription databases in these links, but there are data portals, with links to subscription database sites. This "Research Links" appears to be a pretty good list of links - there are many for the USA, Canada and California that I have not used before.

I'm going to stop here with the screen shots and not spend any more time or bandwidth describing the website.

My conclusions, after spending about four hours working on the site, include:

* The site is visually beautiful

* The site is logically laid out, and navigation from one tab to another is fairly easy to perform, although it often takes a long time to complete.

* Navigation on the site from person to person is easy when a link to a person is available (e.g., parent to child, or person to spouse) but is really cumbersome to jump from one person to a distantly related, or unrelated person, in the database.

* Adding persons and events, or editing events, is easy to perform, but every operation takes a finite time to execute.

* Loading of pages is very slow when the program has to do some calculation or search. This is my biggest criticism of the site - it is very slow.

* The Charts online are visually good, but the printout of the charts is difficult to read - the print is too small and everything is cramped together.

* The Reports online are useful, but there is not nearly the variety of reports offered by desktop software.

* The Lists can be very useful, but it is cumbersome to move around a large list essentially using try-and-see methods.

* The Research Links look to be very useful, on first look.

It may be that some of my criticisms above are the result of having a family tree with over 38,000 persons in it. The site may work much quicker with, say, less than 1,000 persons in it.

Based on my relatively brief evaluation in these three posts, I don't see that the ourFamily*ology family tree system offers anything special compared to other online family trees, especially when many other family tree systems are free to use.

I will not be subscribing to this website when my 15-day free trial period expires next week.

Disclosure: I am not an employee, contractor or subscriber of this website, and I received no remuneration of any kind for providing this analysis.

Best of the Genea-Blogs - November 1-7, 2009

2009-11-08T12:07:00.000-08:00

Hundreds of genealogy and family history bloggers write thousands of posts every week about their research, their families, and their interests. I appreciate each one of them and their efforts.

My criteria for "Best of ..." are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy and family history, address current genealogy issues, provide personal family history, are funny or are poignant. I don't list posts destined for the genealogy carnivals, or other meme submissions (but I do include summaries of them), or my own posts.

Here are my picks for great reads from the genealogy blogs for this past week:

* Graveyard Rabbits Carnival – November 2009 Edition by Julie Cahill Tarr on The Graveyard Rabbit blog. This Carnival had the theme of "Write your own epitaph." Six bloggers accepted the challenge.

* Robyn’s 10 Key Genealogy Principles by Robyn on the Reclaiming Kin blog. Robyn shares her list of ten principles.

* The Genealogical Maturity Model by the writer of The Ancestry Insider blog. Perhaps the most important post of the year IMHO, for all genea-blogs. Excellent ideas. Read the comments too!

* Navigator, Undertaker, Carpenter, Survivor by Lee R. Drew on the Lineage Keeper blog. Lee has a fascinating and true story of the life adventures of his great-grandparents. He could write a book about this family history.

* Searching City Directories, part 1: Finding Frank Sharbrough, Searching City Directories, part 2: Browse problems, Searching City Directories, part 3: What Worked, and Searching City Directories, part 4: Annotation, Find, and a Footnote Page by Beau Sharbrough on The Unofficial Footnote Blog. Beau is an expert at navigating Footnote, and has written some very helpful blog posts about searching City Directories (and other OCRed works) on Footnote.com.

* Carnival of Genealogy - 83rd edition - Musical Instruments by Janet Iles on the Janet the Researcher blog. There were 26 entries in this Carnival about musical instruments.

* Footnote.com, Wikis, and the Possible Demise of Genealogical Journals by Martin Hollick on The Slovak Yankee blog. Martin opines about user-contributed data to websites and the future of genealogical journals.

* Kinship by Leah on The Internet Genealogist blog. Leah summarizes kinship theory for those of us bewildered by it, and explains it well, I think.

* Irish portraits: An "album" of stories by Lisa on the Small-Leaved Shamrock blog. Lisa presents the 16th Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture on the topic of Irish Portraits. There are ten entries in this Carnival.

* RSS Feeds for Rootsweb/Ancestry Boards by Taneya Koonce on Taneya's Genealogy Blog. Taneya shares the secret of receiving message board items in an RSS feed - this was new for me!

* Can You Say--Global Warming? by Cheri Hopkins (Girl #2) on the You Go Girls Genealogy Blog. Cheri humorously recounts the YGGG frustration with the early winter in Nebraska, which foiled the best-laid plans of the Girls. They coped...

* Common Sense Image Use by guest blogger Maureen Taylor on Thomas MacEntee's Geneabloggers blog. Maureen shares her thoughts and some guidelines about using images on your blog or website.

* Getting there by Pat Richley-Erickson on the DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog. Pat discusses how and why our ancestors migrated, and then how we can find them wherever they are! It's good to see her writing again!

* Shades Of The Departed - The Magazine by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog. The November 2009 issue of this online genealogy magazine, written by genea-bloggers, is stunning and excellent. Read and enjoy.

* A Thought: Could the 1890 Population Schedules Be Re-created? by Craig Manson on the Geneablogie blog. It's an interesting thought, and Craig has devised a way it could be done. What do you think?

* How do I do genealogy? by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog. James ponders how people search for things, like their ancestors. Naturally, he has some recommendations!

* The Value of Networking with your Peers by Angela Walton-Raji on the GenealogyWise African-Ancestored Forum. Angela recounts her experiences at the First International Black Genealogy Summit in Fort Wayne last week, and has wise advice for every researcher.

I encourage you to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add their blog to your Favorites, Bloglines, reader, feed or email if you like what you read. Please make a comment to them also - all bloggers appreciate feedback on what they write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me! I am currently reading posts from over 530 genealogy bloggers using Bloglines, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Surname Distributions!

2009-11-07T12:51:00.000-08:00

Hey, genealogy fans - it's Saturday Night, and time for some Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music...), is:

1) Find out the geographical distribution of your surname - in the world, in your state or province, in your county or parish. I suggest that you use the Public Profiler site at http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/, which seems to work quickly and easily. However, you cannot capture the image as a photo file - you have to capture the screen shot, save it and edit it.

2) Tell us about your surname distribution in a blog post of your own (with a screen shot if possible), in comments to this post, or in comments on a social networking site like Facebook and Twitter.

Here's mine (without editing the images):

I went to the Public Profiler site and entered "Seaver" in the Surname field, and saw a world map:

There is a handy list on the right with the top five countries, in persons per million with the surname.

You can "mouse over" the countries and click on a country - I chose the USA:

Then you can click on a state or province on the USA map - I chose California:

The colors on the map correspond to a range of "low" to "high" surname frequencies based on frequency per million (FPM) people. However, the "high" range for one surname does not necessarily mean it has the same FPM as another surname with a "high" FPM.

Read the "Frequently Asked Questions" page to understand the maps, and to determine the 26 countries for which this site has surname distributions.

The site provides lists of about ten top countries, top regions and top cities for the surname. For the "Seaver" surname, the top paces are:

* Top Country = Ireland (FPM = 24)

* Top Region = South Taranaki District, New Zealand (FPM = 259.24)

* Top Locality = Saginaw, Michigan, USA

Isn't that a neat web site? What uses can you find for a surname distribution map like these?

Surname Saturday - RICHMAN/RICHMOND

2009-11-07T07:15:00.000-08:00

It's Surname Saturday. I am listing my ancestral families in the order they appear on my Ahnentafel Chart. Today, I will list my RICHMAN/RICHMOND Families.

The line from myself backwards in time through the Richman/Richmond line is:

1. Randall J. Seaver (1943-....) - moi!

2. Frederick W. Seaver (1911-1983) married 1942 3. Betty Carringer (1919-2002)

4. Frederick W. Seaver (1876-1942) married 1900 5. Alma Bessie Richmond (1882-1962)

5. Alma Bessie Richmond, born 16 February 1882 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 29 June 1962 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA. She was the daughter of 10. Thomas Richmond and 11. Julia White. She married 4. Frederick Walton Seaver 21 June 1900 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA. He was born 09 October 1876 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA, and died 13 March 1942 in Lawrence, Essex County, MA. He was the son of Frank Walton Seaver and Hattie Louise Hildreth.

10. Thomas Richmond, born 16 June 1848 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 09 November 1917 in Clinton, Worcester County, MA. He was the son of 4. James Richman/Richmond and 5. Hannah Rich. He married 11. Julia White 20 June 1868 in Elmville, Windham County, CT. Julia White, born 08 September 1848 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 04 October 1913 in Putnam, Windham County, CT. She was the daughter of Henry A. White and Amy Frances Oatley. Children of Thomas Richmond and Julia White are:

........ i. Anne Frances Richmond, born 13 July 1869 in Westerly, Washington County, RI; died 06 July 1939 in Clinton, Worcester County, MA; married Walter Pickford Bef. 1890 in prob. Putnam, Windham County, CT; born August 1864 in ENGLAND; died 02 July 1918 in Clinton, Worcester County, MA.
........ ii. Frederic J. Richmond, born 1870 in Westerly, Washington County, RI; died 1875 in Putnam, Windham County, CT.
........ iii. Everett Glens Richmond, born 24 July 1875 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 04 January 1917 in Putnam, Windham County, CT; married Ethel Pierce 07 December 1896 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA.
........ iv. Grace L. Richmond, born August 1876 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 1963 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA; married (1) Alfred Shaw About 1907 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA; born 1884 in ENGLAND; died 1919 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA; married (2) Moody Aft. 1940.
........v. Emily White Richmond, born 06 January 1879 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 23 July 1966 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA; married George Russell Taylor 10 April 1901 in Leominster, Worcester, MA; born 06 September 1865 in Stamford, CT; died 12 September 1945 in San Diego, San Diego, CA.
........vi. Charles Percival Richmond, born 25 May 1880 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 29 April 1910 in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, CA; married Jessie Brown About 1908 in prob. Santa Barbara County, CA; born 13 August 1882 in CT; died 27 October 1947 in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA.
..5 ...vii. Alma Bessie Richmond, born 16 February 1882 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 29 June 1962 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA; married Frederick Walton Seaver 21 June 1900 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA.
.......viii. Edwin Thomas Richmond, born 07 December 1883 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 23 April 1935 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA; married Alice B. Corey 11 June 1905 in Danielson, Windham County, CT; born 07 October 1884 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA; died 07 January 1979 in Leominster, Worcester County, MA.
........ ix. James Henry Richmond, born 16 November 1885 in Killingly, Windham County, CT; died 1913 in Clinton, Worcester County, MA; married Ethel Judson 30 November 1911 in Danielson, Windham County, CT.

20. James Richman/Richmond, born Bef. 08 April 1821 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 20 December 1912 in Putnam, Windham County, CT. He was the son of 40. John Richman and 41. Ann Marshman. He married 21. Hannah Rich 07 September 1845 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND. Hannah Rich, born 14 April 1824 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 07 August 1911 in Putnam, Windham County, CT. She was the daughter of John Rich and Rebecca Hill. Children of James Richman/Richmond and Hannah Rich are:

..10... i. Thomas Richmond, born 16 June 1848 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 09 November 1917 in Clinton, Worcester County, MA; married Julia White 20 June 1868 in Elmville, Windham County, CT.
........ ii. James Richmond, born 06 January 1850 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND (baptism); died 18 May 1929 in Fairfield County, CT; married (1) Jane White 1869 in (divorced 1871); married (2) Sarah Bigwood 29 May 1878 in Mapleville, RI; born 09 November 1855 in Frome, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 11 January 1932 in Fairfield County, CT.
........iii. Ann Richmond, born About 1851 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND.
........iv. Louisa Richmond, born 1852 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 1940 in Putnam, Windham County, CT.
........ v. Elizabeth Ann Richmond, born August 1854 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 1931 in Putnam, Windham County, CT; married Abram Sykes 1876 in prob. Putnam, Windham, CT; born January 1851 in RI; died 1905 in Putnam, Windham, CT.
........ vi. Emma Richmond, born 06 July 1856 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND (baptism); married Arthur Lucius Fitts 15 November 1881 in Putnam, Windham, CT; born 11 January 1856 in Pomfret, Windham, CT.
........ vii. Hannah Rebecca Richmond, born 1859 in Burrilville, Providence County, RI; married Frank W. Smith.
........ viii. John Henry Richmond, born May 1865 in Burrilville, Providence County, RI; died 1947 in Putnam, Windham County, CT (burial); married Mary Ann Ramsey 1891 in prob. Windham County, CT; born August 1866 in ENGLAND; died 23 May 1954 in Putnam, Windham County, CT (CT DI).
........ ix. Charles Edwin Richmond, born 16 September 1866 in Grosvenordale, Windham County, CT; died 25 August 1951 in Groton, New London County, CT; married Lavinia Guerten 1895 in CT; born 05 September 1870 in Emilville, CANADA; died 26 February 1936 in Manchester, Hartford, CT.

40. John Richman, born About 1788 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 25 April 1867 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND. He married 41. Ann Marshman 08 February 1811 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND. Ann Marshman, born Bef. 20 June 1784 in Devizes, Wiltshire, ENGLAND (baptism); died About 1856 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND. Children of John Richman and Ann Marshman are:

........ i. Elizabeth Richman, born 1812 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; married Thomas Hogan.
........ ii. Sarah Richman, born Bef. 03 April 1814 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; married James Thompson.
........ iii. John Richman, born Bef. 13 February 1816 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 01 June 1884 in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; married Maria Mathews 11 October 1835 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; born About 1816 in Hilperton Marsh, Wiltshire, ENGLAND.
........ iv. Ann Richman, born Bef. 08 March 1818 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; married John Hall.
..20...v. James Richman/Richmond, born Bef. 08 April 1821 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 20 December 1912 in Putnam, Windham County, CT; married Hannah Rich 07 September 1845 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND.
........ vi. Thomas Richman, born Bef. 22 June 1821 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died 11 September 1844 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND.
........ vii. Mary Richman, born Bef. 22 June 1823 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND (baptism); died Bef. 1825 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND.
........ viii. Mary Richman, born Bef. 23 March 1825 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND; died Bef. 22 May 1825 in Hilperton, Wiltshire, ENGLAND.

That's as far as I can go with my Richman line. The Hilperton Parish Registers seem to be incomplete before about 1800. There are several John Richmans in the parish records before 1800 that may be #40 above, but there is no clear definition of which one #40 is.

As you can see, the fmaily changed its name from RICHMAN to RICHMOND after James and Hannah Richman migrated in 1856 to New England. The RICHMAN family in Wiltshire kept the family name.

Checking out ourFamily*ology - Post 2

2009-11-06T16:20:00.000-08:00

I signed up for the ourFamily*ology family tree web site earlier this week, but ran into a snag, as reported in the first post of this series. They apparently solved my snag problem, and now the site works well for me.

In this post, I want to go explore the Tree features of the web site. I uploaded a 38,420 person family tree the other day, and all of the information seems to be in their system.

I did have one problem - my #1 person has the name "(Unknown)" and is the third wife of Robert Seaver (1608-1683). I figured out how to navigate to more recent people but every time I click on "Home Person," it goes to my miss Unknown. There should be some way to change the Home Person in the family tree. Every other program has that feature.

Here is the "Home" page after I logged in, which tells me that I have a family tree with almost 14 mb of storage used (out of the 25 mb allowed in the first level of subscription):

I clicked on the orange "Tree" tab across the top of the screen (two screens below with overlap) and navigated to my grandparents, Frederick and Bessie (Richmond) Seaver (this was not intuitive, after trial and error I found that clicking the orange "People" tab on the page permitted me to select a person):

This is a pretty nice visual representation of the family. The husband and wife are in different colored outlines, with a place for a picture, and with their vital information, plus links for their parents above their names, and their marriage information below their names. One of the parents is outlined in green as the highlighted person in this family with content shown below. The children are listed with their vital information, and the user can click on a child's name to make that person a parent of another family. The user can click on an "Edit" link to modify or add information for any of these persons. The user can click on the "Add Children" to add to the children's list.

Down at the bottom of the screen, there is a "Content" area with another set of tabs, for "Sources," "Score," "Media," "Notes," "Tasks" and "Events." We'll look at some of those in a minute.

I saw no easy way to print out this "Family View" chart other than to go to File > Print on the Windows menu. The printout is not wonderful, but it does have all of the information on one sheet of paper in a font size almost too small to read.

In the top right corner there is a box titled "Progress Rating Chart" which shows a small box for the eight great-grandparents, the four grandparents, the two parents, the outlined person, and his/her children as a box. The boxes have light blue (males) or pink (females) outlines around them, and are filled if there is information known about that persons parents. One of my boxes is not filled it, because I don't know the parents of Thomas J. Newton. If you run your mouse over the box, you can see the name of the person represented. This is an interesting tool once you know what it is - it tells you if you know the ancestry of the highlighted person.

On the right side, below the "Progress Rating Chart," is the "Smart Menu" which has links for "Family View," "Pedigree View," "Descendants View," and "Home Person View." I was in "Family View" above, so I clicked on "Pedigree View" and saw:

The user can choose the number of generations to view - the chart above is for three generations. If you change the number of generations, then the screen view gets wider. The printout of this page is not wonderful, or readable to my eyes, either.

The next link on the "Smart Menu" list is for the "Descendants View":

This is an interesting presentation - I've never seen it done this way before - with fields for each generation. The user can select more generations and columns are added. The birth and death date and location for each person listed is shown. The left-right scroll bar is at the bottom of the frame. The "Sources" Content is shown at the bottom of the page on all of these "Smart Menu" items.

I went back to the "Family View" and clicked on the "Score" tab on the Content area at the bottom of the page:

I'm not sure what all of that means -I got a green check for my grandfather because I had his name, birth and death data, links to a spouse and a parent in the database, I guess.

I skipped over the "Media" Content, since I don't have any media attached yet. The next Tab over is "Notes" and when I clicked that tab, the first three lines of my notes for my grandfather showed in the box at the bottom of the Content area:

I pondered how to see "all of my notes" since I knew that there were more than three lines. I clicked on the "Edit" link and a popup window opened:

There they are, all of my Notes. All jumbled together. I had them in paragraphs, with bullets highlighting each person in the census records. I could edit the Notes in that popup window, and if I had, I would have clicked on the "Update" button.

I passed over the "Tasks" tab also, and clicked on the "Events" tab:

The Facts that I had for my grandfather - in terms of "Person Events" and "Marriage Events" - are listed with the source citation in the right-hand column (such as they are!).

After navigating through the "Tree" functions, my impressions of the program include:

* It is visually beautiful on the website.

* The printouts are poor - has appropriate information but print is too small and printed page is pretty drab.

* The program takes a really long time to load a page - often 30 seconds or more for any of the pages shown above from my database. No one in their right mind would enter data one person at a time. The desktop genealogy programs have spoiled me to want an instantaneous change from one screen to another or one field to another for editing or adding information.

* Navigation from one person to another works by clicking a link on the page onscreen, but going to a different family is not easy - you have to use the "People" tab.

The next post will look at the other major program Tabs at the top of the screen, including charts and reports.

Three APG/PMC Presentations Available to View

2009-11-06T12:39:00.000-08:00

Do you want a peek at some of the presentations made at the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) Professional Management Conference (PMC) in September 2009 at the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) conference in Little Rock?

Check out the PMC Webcast page on the APG site. The site says:

"As a result of a trial partnership with FamilySearch, APG is making available three presentations from the 2009 APG Professional Management Conference, which took place on September 2 at the FGS Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

"Lectures by Heather Henderson, Mary Penner, and Elissa Scalise Powell, are available, free of charge, to APG members and the public as a "trial balloon" to see how well this rich professional educational opportunity is received. In the future, we will explore options for pay-per-view, live streaming video, and other possibilities so that more of our members and prospective members can benefit from the PMC when attending the conference isn't possible."

The three presentations available include:

* Bull's Eye! Planning and Delivering a Winning Mark by Heather Henderson

* The Bachelor: Reconstructing a Solitary Life Using Obscure & Far-Flung Records by Mary Penner

* Get Paid for Your Passion: Becoming a Professional Genealogist by Elissa Scalise Powell, CG.

I watched Elissa Powell's presentation last night and enjoyed seeing what I had missed.

The presentations are webcast showing the speaker in a small window and the PowerPoint slides in a larger, more readable, window. The listener can even speed up the presentation (I used 1.4 x normal speed to cut the presentation time from 70 minutes to 50 minutes, without missing anything).

Although the online listener cannot interact with the speaker using this webcast format, there is a benefit to hearing and seeing the speaker while observing the slides.

This is one way that genealogy researchers can receive genealogy education from conference programs that they cannot afford to attend due to time conflicts or financial reasons. There is a cost associated with producing these webcasts. The website indicates that a fee-per-view will be pursued, and that seems fair, both to the speaker, the conference and the webcast provider.

Hopefully, the cost for a one-hour presentation will be reasonable - my own price point is probably in the $5 to $10 range. At the FGS Conference, there were 21 time periods where an attendee could hear a speaker, and the conference charge was in the $200 range. The additional costs of traveling to the FGS Conference (airfare, car rental, hotel, food) made the five day event a $2000 cost for my wife and I (note that the pre-FGS and post-FGS travel to see friends and to sightsee increased our overall costs significantly. If I had traveled by myself to Little Rock for five days, it would have cost about $1300.). So the webcast option, even if it cost me $200 for 20 presentations, would be a significant savings over the cost of attending the Conference.

The issue, of course, is that if all presentations were made in a webcast, then there would be no more large regional or national conferences with exhibit halls, fancy dinners and social networking. Those factors are important to the attendees, but for the other 99% of genealogy researchers who don't attend conferences, they are not really a factor. There would still be local and regional society programs and day-long seminars with speakers. These events could be used to create the webcasts. The speaker's syllabus could be emailed to the online attendees after they paid the webcast fee.

I appreciate the effort by FamilySearch and APG/PMC to create these webcasts, and hope to see more of them. Now I need to watch the other two webcasts that are available. They both sound really interesting!