The 2012 Georgia Family History Expo, Day 1

     I just got home from day one of the 2012 Georgia Family History Expo. It was a great day!  Like the last two years, the event was held at the Gwinnett Center in Duluth Georgia (only 10 minutes from home!).  I attended as a Blogger of Honor and have been tweeting throughout the event (@ValerieC84).  Here's a rundown of day one:

• I arrived early and checked in and met up with Linda, Tonia, Dru, Stephanie and Christa. 
• One of the ladies there with Ask-the-Pros had roots in Elbert County. Her (I think) Uncle married a Craft. I'll have to meet up with her again tomorrow - we're probably cousins of some sort.
• The Keynote Speech was by the ever entertaining Robert S Davis. He survived the lights fading up and down twice and his mic going dead. What a trooper!
• First Class: Georgia Land, Maps and Technology by Jennifer Dondero. She gave a lot of great places to find Georgia Maps, some of which I knew, others that I did not. I've used the Georgia Archives' Virtual Vault many times, but after this class I realized that I hadn't even scratched the surface of their Map collection! She also gave tips on using Google Earth that will be very useful.
• Second Class: Recording, Preserving, & Sharing Your Family's Oral History by Harvey Baker. This class was something of an introduction to the website, SavingMemoriesForever.com. I'd heard about this site/app before, but never really looked into it. It looks like just the thing I need to organize my audio files.  
• He also gave a lot of tips on why you should use audio to record your family's history. 
• Consider this: sometimes folks don't want their photo taken, so they certainly don't want you to record a video of them. However, with audio it doesn't matter how they're dressed or if they have a food stain on their shirt from the family reunion picnic. 
• Also think about audio files. They are almost always MP3. What about your video files? The formats vary and are often changing. You can convert them, or you can stick with audio.
• Video is often distracting. Not only are your subjects self conscious, but your viewers might get distracted by the visuals and miss out on the actual content.
• Lunch Break. Mom had picked up some brochures from the Gwinnett Visitor's booth in the expo hall and we had a discounted Chick-fil-A dinner!
• Third Class: "Non-Genealogy" Tools to Help Your Family History Research by Tonia Kendrick.   Boy did I learn a lot! Tonia introduced me to mind-maps and helped me figure out how to better use spreadsheets in my genealogy research. I'd tried some before with little success, but I'm going to try again. She mentioned a website called CensusTools.com that I've just got to check out. She also gave a brief intro to Evernote and OneNote that had me experimenting during the class. She also promised to put up copies of her FAN Club and Research Log spreadsheets on her blog.
• Fourth Class: Crossing the Great Divide: Little Known Federal Sources for Place of Birth before 1850 by Robert S Davis.  This class was just chock full of helpful information on finding information in places you've never heard of. He also explained why the information is there; the original purpose of the record. It was a bit complex, but he explained it well and I have new places to look for my ancestors.
• I bought a book from the Georgia Genealogical Society, "Georgia Research: a Handbook for Genealogists, Historians, Archivists, Lawyers, Librarians, and Other Researchers," by Robert S Davis and Ted O Brooke.
• I talked to the gentleman at the booth for GenealogyWallCharts.com. They have some great conference prices and I'm planning to take a Gedcom file tomorrow and see about buying a (few?) chart(s).

     Today was over much too quickly and I'm looking forward to tomorrow. If you didn't attend today, and you are in the area, I recommend you attend tomorrow. The first class is at 10am and a one day registration is $60. 

Me, Mom, my sister, Sarah

Finding DNA Cousins with AncestryDNA

     I first explored the features available on AncestryDNA (reviewed here) and then started looking for matches.  Really getting into the system and exploring my matches expanded my "wish list" of features.

     Of my top 19 "Fourth Cousin" matches, there are no obvious connections.  I then clicked through the "Distant" matches on the first three pages of my results and quickly found three matches! I found two matches that had Shared Ancestor Hint, both of which seem to be correct.  Here's a screenshot of one of them:

     You'll note that we have a common ancestor. As in one person, not one couple. I don't know why the system would decide to only pick one person when both members of the couple match across both trees.  If both members of the couple show up in both trees (aka: no step-families), both members of the couple should be recommended as the common ancestors. The match does get you where you need to go though, so it's enough for now.

     You can click on any of the names of these ancestors to see how they appear in each family tree. Clicking on the common ancestor takes you to your own tree. This is helpful, but I would prefer to see a side by side comparison of this ancestor as shown in both family trees.

     A great feature is the relationship label. For each person in the tree, aside from yourself, there is a relationship given. So I know that the match is my 5th cousin, 1x removed and that our common ancestors are my 5x Great Grandparents. This is a feature not available on ftDNA nor 23andMe.

     As I mentioned before, there isn't really anywhere else to go from here. You can send a message to your match and converse with them, but all the work is done for you. It's a bit anticlimactic actually, as I'm used to there being more features available on other DNA websites. Some features I would like to see here include:

• Chromosome/Segment viewer
• Ability to see matches in common with other matches
• Ability to add notes
• Ability to agree/disagree with Shared Ancestor Hint or mark a match that is not suggested

     I also found a match with a user that did not have a Shared Ancestor Hint. As you can see from my notes in the image below, my Daniel Rich is the son of their Stephen Rich. However, I did not have Stephen listed in my tree. However my ancestor, Daniel, is listed in their tree. I wonder: Can the site only find connection on direct line ancestors? It did not connect my ancestor to their collateral line relative.  

     When I went back a few days later to review the matches I'd found, I found one other obvious feature that is missing: search.  There is no way to do a search (member name, surname) for a match. I've been marking my found member connection by "starring" them and keeping a list of matches on Thoughtboxes. If I don't do something like this, it will be very difficult to find a single matches out of 1000+.

     I still haven't fully explored the mapping features, which I think look promising. I'll talk about those soon.

"The Oral History Workshop" by Cynthia Hart with Lisa Sampson

I always keep an eye on the genealogy reference section at the local bookstores for interesting new offerings. A little bit ago, I noticed The Oral History Workshop by Cynthia Hart with Lisa Sampson. As a genealogist, interviews are a great way to obtain family history stories and information, so I've been interesting in this book. Today, I finally decided to buy it and I would recommend it to any genealogist or family historian.

The book is organized into advise and tips for before, during and after the interview. The book includes great tips for preparation, including how to make yourself and your interviewee comfortable, different ways to record the interview and the pros and cons of those techniques, ways to keep the interview ethical, and even tips for self-interviewing. Next up, the book includes a large amount of interview questions for just about any situation. From the generic to the very specific, I found a large number of question ideas that were new to me and made we want to grab my recorder and find someone to interview. Finally, this book will also help you to figure out what to do with all the information that you'll collect, from storage and backup copies to indexing and editing to creating books.

The authors obviously have diverse experience with interviewing and have great tips to share. They've organized the book very well and I especially loved the charts filled with quick reference information, such as "recording 101" and "the terrific twenty [questions]" and "a few of their favorite things." Overall, the book is written in an easy style and great tone that makes the book flow seamlessly.

As someone who has done a good number of interviews with family members, I found that this book still offered a lot of great information to offer. After reading it, I asked my mom a few of the questions and got great responses. I even got some information out of my dad, who is makes an interview like pulling teeth. It turns out that, although the only thing he had to say about his wedding was "We went down to the courthouse and got married," he still remembers the exact outfit that my mom wore (which was not a white dress).  I'm looking forward to trying out more of the tips and interview questions from this book in the future.

This book is available from Amazon.com for $10.36 or from BN.com for $11.07.

Waking Up To Ancestry.com

Yesterday, the Ancestry.com Blog announced that the new image viewer would be available for certain collections "sometime" today. Well, by the time I woke up, the new image view was up and running - and so was member connect. I'm very excited about some of these new changes.

First thing I noticed when I arrived at the ancestry.com home page was a new box, titled "Recent Member Connect Activity." I'm loving this. I can see that documents that I'm interested in (attached in my tree?) are being saved to individuals in other users' trees. So, for example, I can see that a researcher has attached the death record of my Great-Uncle Evoid Britt to their tree. It's now easy to view their tree and contact this researcher. By clicking "See more activity" I can see days worth of previous activity on documents that I'm interested in. Looks like a great way for Ancestry to get its users to use its trees.

Also, under the "Member Connect" section under "Collaborate" you can do a basic search for members doing similar research. The search seems to be a basic "fuzzy" tree search.

The new image viewer is pretty spiffy too - though a big buggy. The biggest change is probably the index listing each individual at the bottom of the page. You can see each person on the page on this page, instead of having to keep another page open which only showed one family record anyway.

Also, it is now crazy easy to "fix" a transcribed listing. In the image below, you can see that in the index section, Rossie is bold and highlighted. This is because I "fixed" the transcription. All I had to do was click on the first name (that had read "Sossie") and, in a pop-up box, tell it that I wanted to change the name due to a transcription error. Immediately I saw the new listing. I don't know if anyone else will see this yet - but it looks good for me! And so many fewer clicks!!!

And I said it was buggy - when I tried to re-size the image the screen went blank and I had to refresh the page to retrieve the image again. But, it was re-sized after that.

There's also an updated member connection area in the family trees. It seems to me like a glorified "hints" section, so I'm "ehh" about that new feature.

Overall, I'm very excited about these new features.... unlike the comments on the ancestry.com blog announcement. Many users are very negative about ancestry trees. They make true comments that very many trees are copy/paste versions of other trees that contain no documentation. Personally, I appreciate any chance to make connections with others researching my family - even if they don't pan out. I've made connection with distant cousins many times. These cousins have provided me with wonderful photos and documents that I've added to my research. I think these new features will help me continue to do that. Unlike "new search," if you don't like these features, you can easily ignore them. Move the "member connect" activity off your page and ignore the area. Simple.

Ok, I'm off to play!

I use Reunion

I use Reunion - and I really do love the program. As a Mac user, choices in genealogy software are more limited than those using Windows. This was especially true a few years ago when I first went looking for software. At the time, I choose Reunion and, at $99, it was actually a Christmas present that I could not afford on my own! I've been happy with the program and the consistent updates and upgrades that have been offered. I'm currently running Reunion 9.09.

Here's a view of the program:

There's a lot that's customizable about this program. For example, the screenshot above can be completely customized. I can change the colors, the sizes of each section, which fields I want to display, date formats, how children and parents are listed (list/buttons), and more.

There are also a lot of great features available.

I can create all sorts of reports and charts, which can then be customized. I can add photos, re-arrange the direction of the chart and how the lines flow. It took a bit of exploration, but now I can create a descendent, pedigree, fan, timeline, or relative chart and customize it with ease. Here's a simple one that I did, that looks nothing like it did when I started (click to see larger):

Another feature I like is the "Ages" button. With one click I can see how old a person was when a life event occurred. In the example below, I can see that Leverett was 18 when he married, 21 at the age of his first child, 46 when his mother died, and 68 when his wife died. This feature has been a quick check for finding how information at a glance. For example, I can click and see that my parents have been married for 30 years and 266 days as of today. You can also add historic events into the timeline, such as Presidents and Olympic events.

Another great feature is the ability to create web pages. This feature has given me a little frustration - but that's because I wasn't using it right. Now, I can easily maintain and update my own family website. See it here.

Other great features include an easy to use index, photo and media attachment to individuals and sources, book-style reports, birthday reminders, address books, speed names, and a good help manual. I also recommend checking out the community at the leisterpro website, where other uses have posted great tips and tricks.

Overall, I really do recommend Reunion to Mac users and, personally, prefer it over MacFamilyTree.