Sending A Spouse to Rootstech

What if you can’t make it to Rootstech? What if your spouse is in Salt Lake City on business that week? Send the spouse!

I put together a binder for him to bring. It included:

• His electronic receipt for the keynote / vendor hall ticket
• A list of the vendors, with notes about which ones to visit
• His pedigree chart
• His line of descendancy from Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins

My guidance for him was to check out the new products, take pictures and check out the product offerings and special sales.

While he walked around the vendor hall, he sent pictures. He also called to see if I needed the items on sale, or needed more information. The calls and pictures really were the next best thing to being there.

He followed those instructions, and collected a bag crammed full of information, bags and items given away at the vendor tables. He clearly enjoyed his time in the vendor hall.

Perhaps he was inspired by the beautiful family charts when he bought a printer capable of printing 12″ x 12″ sheets.  He mentioned that it would be good for printing fan charts and other family history. Is it possible he is hooked?

5 Questions with the DC Metro Rootsmagic User Group Leader, Dr. Margaret Ezell

Recently I asked Dr. Ezell to answer a few questions about her favorite genealogy software program, Rootsmagic.

 

1. Why should a genealogist use a genealogy software program?

My biggest reasons for using a genealogy software program are:

• Good software programs like RootsMagic make it easy to share information. Some also have iPad, or Smartphone versions.
• The mistakes in my database are my own, and all changes are mine.
• I decide when something is proven, when I have enough sources, and who is related to whom.

There are two types of genealogy/family history programs, those that run in the cloud and those that run on your home computer. Example programs on the Cloud are Ancestry, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage. They are easy to share with others. Example software program that run on your computer (PC or MAC) are RootsMagic, Legacy, Family Tree Heritage, Family Tree.

When I use collaborative online family trees, such as Family Search, other users can change the entries. Example: My great grandfather’s name was James Reeves Watson, the Clerk of Court in Claiborne Parish, LA. Every document we have has his full name. One of my unknown relatives decided to wipe out his full name and put in just JR Watson. I had to go back into FamilySearch and put in his full name, documented. He could have had a nickname of JR, but my mother at 99 had never heard her grandfather called that. She had been very close to him.

The same thing happens when you use any of the online program and you don’t make your file PRIVATE! But you don’t want to make it private so you can find new relatives and researchers. That is the oxymoron for researchers! So have your own copy offline!

 

2. What genealogy software programs have you used?

RootsMagic (several versions including the latest: RootsMagic 7). It works with Windows 10, 8, 7, 2000, and Mac OS X

Broderbund Family Tree Maker

Legacy

PAF (Personal Ancestral File), which is no longer supported by FamilySearch as of JULY 15, 2013.

 

3. Why do you recommend using RootsMagic?

It works/synchs/searches/imports directly with FamilySearch and soon it will with Ancestry.

Later this year, RootsMagic users will have access to Ancestry’s huge collections of records and members’ trees. With this new association, comes the ability to use the hints (Shaky Leaves). This will be in addition to the Hints from FamilySearch and MyHeritage.

 

4. Is there a great feature of RootsMagic that people should be using and don’t?

There are several that I love besides the HINTS:

Color Coding people and lines. You can use the color coding to highlight those who want work on or highlight you problem people for whom you need more documentation.

Switching Views from Pedigree to Family to Descendants to People, WebSearch, Timeline.

 

 

5. How can participating in a user group help a genealogist?

You can ask your specific questions or ask for a demonstration from other members. A current example topic is: Help for moving data from Family Tree Maker to RootsMagic.

Each month our RootsMagic User Group tries to have a lesson of some type. Researchers new to RootsMagic 7 may have challenges learning how to enter source citations into RootsMagic, so I thought I would show how I enter a new source and then create a citation, with the Evidence Explained source templates, and with a free-form template (in a later post in this series).This past month we were going through lesson on Creating Source Citations in Rootsmagic 7 from Randy Seaver’s Blog at Genea-Musings. You can view these blog posts here.

 

About the Metro DC Rootsmagic User Group

The Metro DC RootsMagic User Group meets at Washington DC Family History the 2nd Saturday of each month at 9:30 a.m. except when major Genealogy Conference are the same weekend. Everyone is invited to attend.  After the RootsMagic / Ancestry announcement there have been a lot of new users, so we have gone back to a lot of the basics at the meetings.  We have a free-for-all question session after the lesson.

 

Margaret P. Ezell, Ph.D.

 

As far back as Margaret Ezell can remember, she was taken to research libraries, courthouses, and to visit family members to gather family history information. Margaret’s mother, Mildred Ezell – (who died in 2015 at 99 yrs. and 10 days) became a genealogy enthusiast more than 63 years ago. Margaret remembers at about age 9, going to courthouses in Georgia and South Carolina. “There was one bare 40-watt bulb dangling from the ceiling, damp walls, boxes of stinky old records, and bug parts in the basement room where Mom copied records (no Xerox machines then). We took our own lightbulb -100-watt. Mom had me copy records until lunchtime when the movie matinee opened and I ran like the wind to get out of the courthouse.”

Having stood with her Mother for 3 days at the copier straight at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Wilson Library Manuscript Room, she is now glad to have so many digitized online records. Her computer skills were used to train her Mom to use the computer at 70 years of age. She wrote more than 15 genealogy books that Margaret edited, formatted and prepared the text and photos for camera-ready copy for publishing. The books are all on her family – mainly southern roots – Corry, Brodnax, Watson, Cain, Seab, Swint. She and her Mom submitted over seven (7) thousand records to the FamilySearch.

Margaret has a Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Family Finance and has worked in the financial and information technology arenas for over 15 years. Margaret is a Seneca Stake Family History Consultant and one of the founders of the DC Metro RootsMagic User Group which meets the 2nd Saturday of every month at the DC Family History Cente

Google is shutting down Picasa

Google is shutting down Picasa in favor of Google Photos

Yesterday Google announced that it is shutting down Picasa in favor of Google Photos.
Standby, the changes will begin starting May 1, 2016.

Here are your options:

1) Login to Google Photos and your pictures will be there.

2) If you do not want to use Google Photos, there will be a new place created for you to access your Picasa Web Albums data. You can view/delete/download your albums from this new place, but you will not be able to create/organize/edit your albums. That means you will still be able to access them, but you cannot manipulate them.

For those using the Desktop Picasa application, it will no longer be supported after March 15, 2016. That means it will still work on your desktop, but the program will not be updated in the future.

You can read the announcement at:
http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2016/02/moving-on-from-picasa.html

Get Children Involved: Revolutionary War

My son had to do a PowerPoint presentation for his social studies class about the Battles of Lexington and Concord. His Father’s family has been involved in many of the military conflicts throughout the history of the United States. I recalled one ancestor in Massachusetts, so I dug out the details.

I looked at the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) Membership Applications on Ancestry.com. The application I found included both John Fife and his Father-in-Law, Return Strong.

Sure enough, John Fyfe (Fife) had been a minute man in Groton, CT, and appears on the Lexington Alarm Roll. They marched on 19 Apr 1775 from Groton. (The Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought on 19 April 1775.

 

 

My son recognized the name of Col. William Prescott from his research of the event.

How amazing it is to be able combine his family history with what he is learning in school!

But let’s dig a little deeper.

I searched the DAR Ancestor (Patriot) Index.

Select Genealogy in the upper right.

Under Genealogical Research (GRS), select Ancestor Search.

Alternately, you can go to the DAR Descendants Search page.

I searched the DAR database for Fyfe, and it was suggested I try the alternate spelling of Fife. There he was, with a reference.

 

 

I searched for the book that was used as the source on Google, using the search terms:

massachusetts soldiers and sailors volume 5

The pdf with the Guide to Sources on the American Revolution looks interesting, so I will try that, too. It has background information about Maryland’s role in the American Revolution.

The Internet Archive has a copy of the Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors Volume 5.

 

The book could be downloaded, so I chose the pdf format.

 

 

After I downloaded the pdf and began searching for Fife. Naturally that brought up fife players, so looking at the format of the names, I searched for: Fife, John

On page 664 of the book (page 658 of the pdf document) we find the correct John Fife.

I wanted to be able to find the file when I searched for it, and to know the page number. I saved the file with the filename:

massachusettssoldfoymass – rev war p664 (658) – Fife, John

This is the John Fife who matches the details on the SAR application. The SAR application also gave the lineage, so I could match it against what I knew about the family.

 

 

Note: This volume had Duarell – Foys

Then I went back to the DAR Descendants Ssearch page to look for John Fife’s Father-in-Law, Return Strong. There are several listings for that name.

There is a Return Strong listed with no ancestor number. His wife is Elizabeth Andrus.

Ancestor #: A111710 This Return Strong’s wife is Elizabeth Andros. I have seen her family name spelled in a variety of ways.

Ancestor #: A111712 This is a different Return Strong. His wife is Hannah Harman.

You can click on the name (shown in blue) and see the Descendants. By clicking on the icon next to a Descendant’s name you can open the Descendant’s List. The Descendant’s List is the submitted lineage, but the webpage does not include the proof documents. Those would have to be ordered from the DAR.  See the “Associated Applications and Supplementals”.

My son looked up the information about the trip from Groton, CT, to Lexington, MA. According to Google Maps, the trip is at least 109 miles by car. He clicked the walking icon and learned that it is 100 miles when walking, and that the trip takes approximately 33 hours. We will need to learn more about how John Fife traveled, but now we know more about the routes.

 

Armed with this knowledge and a tricorn hat, he did well on his presentation.

Reprieve of Family Tree Maker and More

Ancestry.com made an exciting announcement of interest to Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic alike.

1) Family Tree Make will live on! Software MacKiev, the six-year developer of Family Tree Maker, will be taking the software line into the future on both Mac and PC platforms.

2) By the end of 2016, Rootsmagic will be able to connect Ancestry.com for hints and searches. You will also be able to sync your tree on Ancestry.com with your desktop RootsMagic program.

To read more:

New Family Tree Maker Options

RootsMagic and Ancestry: Working Together at Last