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Archive for December, 2010
News from around the web.
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If you want a great family history conversation starter for the Christmas holidays, mention that Ancestry.com now has almost 100 years’ worth of Sears catalogs online—and keep a pen and paper or a recorder handy.
I gave the collection (and the conversation) a trial run with my family over Thanksgiving. I mentioned that we had the catalogs coming online, asked if my grandparents had ever bought anything from them, and that was all it took.
Clothes and shoes were the big purchases for my dad and his siblings, who grew up in a small farm town. My brother said the garden tractor he’d had restored ought to be in the 1960 catalog (it is).
You could find a Brass King washboard like the one down in the basement…
or a roaster like the one that had cooked our turkey earlier in the day…
or maybe the folding campstools my other grandpa had in his garage (on sale for 88 cents!)…
or the washtub that hung on the old house up town.
But they were just getting started. My grandmother’s been gone for 15 years, but my aunts started talking about how much she loved her first washing machine. And remember the glasses that used to come in the laundry detergent? There were probably still some in the cupboards out in the kitchen. And how many S&H green stamps had they licked? And what about Aunt Eva and the family who had stayed in Star Valley? They had probably ordered a lot more from the catalogs. And did anybody remember actually putting the catalogs to their final, practical use before the indoor plumbing…
The Sears catalogs aren’t traditional records full of names and dates, though I could probably use them to put a price on just about anything in the house and a picture to so many stories from the past: the old ice box,
my great-grandfather’s buggy and horse tack, the crock Grandma used for her legendary pickles, Mom’s dancing gown and shoes. What those catalogs are actually full of are memories—and they can make a great starting place for jogging old ones and generating some new.
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We all wish we had an unlimited amount of time to work on our family history. But since none of us do, it can be frustrating when the software you’re using seems to get in the way instead of helping. If Family Tree Maker starts running more slowly than you expect, here are six steps you can take to increase the software’s performance:
Verify that your computer meets the minimum system requirements
Make sure that your computer meets or exceeds the minimum requirements. You can find them listed in the packaging and documentation that came with your software. Also, keep in mind that the more information you enter, the greater the amount of free hard drive space and available RAM you will need.
Make sure you are using the latest version of the software
Periodically, Family Tree Maker releases updates that fix various software bugs and issues. Make sure that the Family Tree Maker software is up-to-date by going to the Help menu and choosing Check for Update. A message alerts you if you need to update the software.
Run the Compact File tool
The Compact File tool re-indexes your file, removes unnecessary data, and optimizes your tree’s performance. You can learn more on this blog post.
Check your tree for duplicate individuals
Duplicate individuals can increase the overall size of your tree and make running reports, creating charts, and navigating your tree inefficient. Periodically you’ll want to make sure you’ve merged or deleted any unnecessary people. You can find detailed instructions on merging individuals in the Family Tree Maker Knowledgebase.
Work offline
If you have a day where you’re simply entering information and not using the Web Search or virtual maps, consider temporarily disabling your Internet connection within Family Tree Maker. This can really speed up your system, especially if you’re working in a large tree.
To work offline, go to the File menu and select Go Offline. To reenable Internet access, go to the File menu and select Go Online.
Disable Fastfields
Fastfields speed up data entry by automatically filling in repetitive data as you type. For example, if you type “San Jose, California” into a location field, then go to another location field and begin to type “San,” Family Tree Maker will recognize the similarity and suggest “San Jose, California.” Disabling this feature can increase performance, especially in large databases.
To disable Fastfields, go to the Tools menu and select Options. Deselect the checkboxes in the “Use fastfields for section” and click OK.
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Online registration
is now open for the National Genealogical Society (NGS) 2011 Family History Conference.
The conference will be May 11–14 at the North Charleston Convention Center in Charleston,
SC.
Registration for the full event ranges from $175 to $245, depending whether
you’re an NGS member, whether you make the early bird deadline (March 11), and whether
you want a printed syllabus. You also can register for a single day of the conference,
which costs $95 to $115.
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Tickets also are on sale for the Who
Do You Think You Are? Live! 2011 show Feb. 25-27 in London. This event, affiliated
with the British version of the “Who Do You Think You Are?” tv show, draws about 10,000
attendees. To save a little on tickets, follow the discount
code link Kimberly Powell gives on her About.com Genealogy blog.
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Family networking site MyHeritage.com has
launched Family Tree Builder 5.0, the latest version of its free genealogy software.
New features include to-do lists, a Tree Consistency Checker (helps find mistakes
in your family tree data by automatically identifying errors and inconsistencies in
40 categories), improved privacy settings, support for your DNA test results, custom
reports, and the customizable
family tree charts announced recently.
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The New England Historic Genealogical Society, which announced its new AmericanAncestors.org site
in August, has officially deactivated the NewEnglandAncestors.org website (the old
URL redirects to the new site). You can get a tutorial on searching the AmericanAncestors.org
databases in the March 2011 Family Tree Magazine, on sale Jan. 11.
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The
next round of Family
Tree University
> classes start Monday, Dec. 6, including a new one from instructor Nancy Hendrickson: Organize
Your Photos: Preserve Your Family’s Pictorial Legacy
>.
In this course, Nancy (who also teaches our popular course Organize
Your Genealogy
>) will offer advice on sorting through massive amounts of photos, creating a
log to keep track of your images, and devising a system that can grow with your collection.
Here’s what she has to say about determining what photos to keep and what to give
away or trash:
By nature, genealogists are hoarders. The thought of getting
rid of any old photos could very well send shivers down your spine. But the truth
is, most of us have photos that aren’t worth keeping. Your first task is to do a rough
pass through all the photos. You’re not organizing them yet. This time, you’re just
making piles of images you want to…
- keep and organize
- scan and organize
- discard
- give away
- or use in a scrapbook
As you sort into piles, you may find yourself torn between keeping something and throwing
it away. For example, one image I have is very poor quality, and couldn’t be improved
upon even with expert photo editing.Did I keep it? Yes. Why? Because it’s the only photo I have of my grandfather with
all of his children and their spouses. This is why considering the content of a photo
is important when it comes to a culling your collection. Even if a picture is of poor
quality, it may be the only one you have of a certain person or place.NOTE: I want to stop here and point out that keeping or discarding an image is a matter
of personal preference. Your choice may be to never discard an image, regardless of
quality or subject matter. When it comes to editing photographs, you have to decide
what’s right for you.
If you register with the coupon code FTU111, and
you’ll get 20% off your December classes plus a free 2011 calendar! Learn
more about Organize Your Photos: Preserve Your Family’s Pictorial Legacy and sign
up here.
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Subscription genealogy site Archives.com has
added more than 40 million new digital records and 110 million scanned newspaper pages
dating back to 1753.
The new record collections now available on Archives.com include:
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40 million indexed vital records from states including Texas, Florida, Ohio, Minnesota,
Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and Utah. These represent a 25 percent increase in the site’s
US vital records. Information you’ll get varies by state, but generally includes the
child’s name, sex, birth date and place, and parents’ names.
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110 million newspaper pages from Newspaper
Archive, dating back to 1753 and containing billions of indexed names.
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300,000 indexed burial records through a partnership with cemetery mapping company Names
In Stone. In the search results, users can view burial information and click the
View Full Record link to see supplementary fields and a cemetery map on NamesInStone.com
(no additional payment or membership required).
Since its July 2009 launch, Archives.com users have spent more than 2 million hours
on the site and performed 50 million searches. Users can search all records, search
by record type (such as marriage) or state, or search by collection name. A subscription
costs $39.95 per year; a seven-day free trial is available.
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Did your ancestors spend time in the Empire State? Plenty of our forebears did, including
many immigrants who arrived at New York City’s Ellis Island (and Castle Garden before
that) and ports on the Great Lakes.
Our next webinar, New
York Genealogy Crash Course: Find Your Empire State Ancestors, will help you pick
out your kin from the hustle and bustle of cities and rural farmlands. It takes place
Tuesday, Dec. 14 at 7 p.m. Eastern time (that’s 6 p.m. Central, 5 p.m. Mountain and
4 p.m. Pacific)
The state’s stages of development—early days under Dutch rule, an English Colonial
era dominated by large landowners, a time as a pathway for people leaving New England,
and the era as home to the nation’s busiest port of entry—can make research here difficult.
Presenter James M. Beidler, a New York genealogy expert and frequent contributor to Family
Tree Magazine, will offer advice on finding vital, land, court and other records.
He’ll also discuss ethnicity-based records your immigrant ancestor may have left,
as well as the best websites for New York research.
Your webinar registration includes:
- Participation in the live presentation and Q&A session
- Access to the webinar recording to view again as many times as you like
- A PDF of the presentation slides
- A PDF of our New York State Research Guide
Through Dec. 3, you can save $10 on your registration with our early-bird discount. Learn
more about the New York Genealogy Crash Course webinar and register at ShopFamilyTree.com.
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The polyester bow-tie blouses. The high-waisted pants. The corduroy jumpsuits?
In subscription site Ancestry.com’s
new database of Sears catalogs from 1896 to 1993, I couldn’t resist browsing the
early 1980s doorstoppers of my childhood. As a kid, I’d “shop,” choosing one item
per page, and use the toy sections to create impossibly optimistic Christmas lists.
But for genealogical purposes, you’ll probably want to look at catalogs further back
in time. Of course, you won’t find ancestors. But if your family farmed in the 1940s,
for example, you can keyword-search catalogs from that era for equipment they might’ve
used. If you fondly remember Grandma making cakes with her rotary egg beater, you
can learn when she might’ve bought it and see an illustration. This one cost 30 cents
in the Fall 1929 edition:
Need to date a photo? Search the catalog database for the dress style or an object
in the photo. I entered shirtwaist, and among the results was this illustration
from the Spring 1905 catalog:
Your searches find keywords in the catalogs’ product descriptions, so you may have
to experiment with search terms to find a drawing that matches what’s in your photograph.
The Ancestry.com
blog suggests using the catalog pages to spark stories and reminisce with relatives—another
handy way to gather family clues.
You can learn about the history
of the Sears catalog, which began as a simple mailer in 1888 and has
been called one of the most-commonly read books in rural areas, on
the Sears website.
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This advice for doing reverse genealogy—a great technique for dealing with a genealogy
brick wall—is from Lisa Louise Cooke’s Reverse
Genealogy course, part of Family
Tree University’s December session. (The December session starts Dec. 6 and runs
five weeks to give you extra time over the holidays.)
It’s easy to get tunnel vision when researching an ancestor. But your research is
best served by considering your focus ancestor as part of a community. (Emily Anne
Croom, author of the best selling genealogy guide Unpuzzling Your Past, call
this “cluster genealogy.”)
Not only is your great-grandfather a member of his nuclear family, but also of an
extended family. When you do reverse genealogy, you go a step beyond him and then
research forward, broadening your search to his relatives and even friends. Any of
the folks in your ancestor’s “cluster” could have provided him with housing, worked
for him, asked him to witness a document or attended his funeral.
Here’s how this can work in a real-life research situation:
Several years ago, I was trying to locate my great-grandfather in the 1880 US census
on microfilm without success. I found his parents and his siblings who were still
living at home. Since Great-grandpa was 17 at the time, I expected to find him there,
too. I searched for his future wife thinking perhaps they married younger than I thought.
But she was living with her parents. Great-grandpa was nowhere to be found.
In an attempt to find him, I traced great-grandfather’s father back to the 1860 census,
where he was listed in the household with his parents. I noted everyone in the household.
Then I systematically researched forward, locating each sibling in the 1870 and 1880
censuses.
Sure enough, in 1880, I found my then-17-year-old great-grandfather living with his
uncle (his father’s brother) in a neighboring town. Because of a variation in his
name spelling, I probably never would’ve found him in online censuses.
Take a look at this picture of an ancestor’s potential family “cluster.” Every one
of these relatives has the potential to help you make progress on researching that
ancestor.
Click here to search or browse
all the Family Tree University December course offerings.
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Today, Nov. 29, is Cyber Monday, a day known for the last several years as a great
time to shop online. You can get deals on genealogy stuff, too. A few we found:
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Today
at our own ShopFamilyTree.com, offer code SFT133 gets you 20 percent off your
ShopFamilyTree.com order (some exclusions apply, including VIP membership, subscriptions,
and products that ship directly from our retail partners). You also can choose a FREE
digital download with your purchase. Choose from:
1. Beginner’s Guide to Genealogy download
2. Discover Your Roots download
3. 101 Brick Wall Busters: Solutions to Overcome Your Genealogical Challenges
download
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Subscription records site Footnote is offering 50 percent off an annual all-access
membership today only, for a total of $39.95. Click
here to get started.
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Family Roots Publishing is discounting all products by 15 percent on Cyber
Monday. See details on the Genealogy
Blog.
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Genetic testing service 23andMe is offering a $99 DNA test sale (normally $499)
that ends today. Details at 23andMe.com.
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Through tomorrow, Nov. 30, the Utah Genealogical Association (UGA) is giving a free
UGA membership to registrants for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (taking
place Jan. 10-14). Learn
more on Renee’s Genealogy Blog.
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On Cyber Monday, you’ll receive 15 percent off Elyse Doerflinger’s e-books Conquering
The Paper Monster Once and For All and A Mini-Guide to Being a Part-Time Genealogist. Details
at Elyse’s Genealogy Blog.
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Genealogist Michael John Neill is offering a 20 percent discount on the Casefile
Clues weekly how-to newsletter today only. Details
at the Casefile Clues blog.
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You’ll find discounts on several items at JMK Genealogy Gifts Store. See
details and coupon codes here. -
A late addition to our list: Now through the end of the year, you can book a virtual
presentation by Thomas MacEntee of High-Definition Genealogy for your genealogical
event at 33 percent off normal rates. Details
at the High-Definition Genealogy blog.