Pressing Pause

Due to unexpected circumstances, I will not be posting on a regular schedule. I hope to continue sharing sporadically, when I'm able. I want to thank everyone who's visited my pages and taken time to read my posts this past year, I truly enjoy sharing my genealogy journey and interacting with everyone. I hope, in the future, to be able to pick back up again. But for now, blogging has to take a backseat to other priorities. 

Image by AndyPandy from Pixabay

5 Star Posts Week of 07/14/2024 - 07/20/2024

Staying abreast of happenings in the genealogy community is vitally important to me. There are hundreds of posts each week to sift through, on a wide variety of relevant topics. I'm so thankful to all the geneabloggers (and other content creators) who educate, enlighten and entertain me by sharing not only their stories but information I need to know.

Below are a few of the posts I think deserve "5 stars" this week and I'd like to share them with you.

New: Relationship Diagram Now Supports Very Large Family Trees by Daniella on MyHeritage Blog

Are Ancestry Pro Tools Worth the Money? by  DiAnn Iamarino Ohama on Fortify Your Family Tree

Same Family, New Tree: MyHeritage Brings Its Family Tree Tools to FamilyTreeDNA by Katy Rowe-Schurwanz on FamilyTreeDNA

Bad Words In Genealogy by Will Moneymaker on Ancestral Findings

Posts other Geneabloggers liked this week:

Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of 14 to 20 July 2024 by Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings

Friday Family History Finds by Linda Stufflebean on Empty Branches on the Family Tree

This week’s crème de la crème — July 20, 2024 by Gail Dever on Genealogy à la carte

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

A Small But Useful Change to Custom Facts on Ancestry

Ancestry Custom Event

I'm a big fan of custom facts/custom events in my Ancestry tree. I use them for marriages (when I'm not researching the spouse), obits, draft card, interesting facts, newspaper articles, stories and the list goes on. I probably have around a dozen or so custom labels I routinely use. One of my pet peeves was when I was attaching facts to a source, the fact itself was in the list of available items to attach, and the date, locations and description would show, but the label wasn't displayed. 

It seems like a small thing, but when I'm attaching facts, I often have a checklist to be sure I've added every type of fact saved for the particular record. It was slightly annoying, as when I had multiple custom facts, I had to be careful to make sure I was selecting the proper one. I had no labels to help me. I've long wished the title/label on the fact would be displayed.

Last night, I added an Obituary custom fact to one of the people in my tree. When I went to attach the facts to the source, imagine my surprise! I could see the title - Obituary! I was so surprised, I thought perhaps my eyes deceived me! So I added a custom "test" fact (shown below):

Then, I randomly went to a source and clicked on Associated Facts. When I scrolled down, I was SO happy to see this!

I truly hope this is a permanent change and not just a limited beta test! It makes using custom facts a bit easier for those of us who use them regularly, and perhaps the algorithms will eventually learn the common types of custom facts we're using. Maybe one day, some of them will become standard options. In any case, I know I sometimes complain about Ancestry, but in this case, it's a small change they got very right! Thank you Ancestry!

Atlas of Historical County Boundaries

Using maps isn't the first resource to jump to mind when I'm researching my ancestors. Sure, I often pop over to Google to see how far apart a couple of cities may be, but I don't really enjoy using maps as a whole. I also frequently plug in a zip code and ask Google to tell me the county it's located in. But this only tells me where the cities or zip codes are now. Often, it's more helpful to know where they were in the past. There's no denying boundaries have shifted over time and having a research tool to assist when questions arise is important. One site I've visited, with easy to use features for the United States, is the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries from The Newberry Library (Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture). This site is totally FREE.

From the website:

The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries is meant to be a resource for people seeking records of past events, and people trying to analyze, interpret and display county-based historical data like returns of elections and censuses, and for people working on state and local history projects.

The core of the site is the interactive map (conveniently located on the homepage). You can easily explore historical boundary changes over time, as well as find much more detailed information on these changes. There are detailed instructions (along with videos) on using and navigating the maps. And there's a FAQ section for additional information. They also provide downloadable GIS, KMZ, and PDF files with explanations on the uses of these files.

Searching is simple and straightforward. Just click on a state from the map on the main page or use the search box to select one. You'll be presented with maps, indexes, chronology, sources, commentary and downloads. Each section is clearly indicated and they're all displayed on one page for easy access. Within the maps, you can further select a time period for the historical borders you want to learn about (one of the best parts of the site!) Using my home state of Maryland as an example, I could see boundary changes ranging from 1638-1997. I can't fit all the date changes into a single image because there are so many it needs a slider, but this gives you an idea of how it appears. (For such a small state, we sure had a lot of boundary changes.) Having all this information in a single, easy to use place is just the kind of tool I need! 

The county chronologies include dates of creation, name changes, and boundary adjustments. This helps genealogists and family historians identify where records may be located over differing time periods. This can be helpful when searching for censuses, land deeds, probate records and much more. Each state has a historical commentary section providing context and further explanation for boundary changes. Understanding why boundaries changed may offer further insight into historical events impacting your ancestors lives (including why they may have migrated to other areas).

Maps will probably never be my favorite research tool. But as with all tools, it's important to know they exist and the times we may want to use them. One could search for ages for records in a given area, but if the particular location wasn't the same in the past, all those search efforts may be in vain. Finding a city shifted counties in the past could potentially be a brick wall buster! By utilizing the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries (linked in my Genealogy Toolbox under Mapping) you can enhance your family history research, gaining a clearer picture of where to find historical records and understanding the geographic context of your ancestors’ lives.  

Image by pinkzebra from Pixabay

5 Star Posts Week of 07/07/2024 - 07/13/2024

Staying abreast of happenings in the genealogy community is vitally important to me. There are hundreds of posts each week to sift through, on a wide variety of relevant topics. I'm so thankful to all the geneabloggers (and other content creators) who educate, enlighten and entertain me by sharing not only their stories but information I need to know.

Below are a few of the posts I think deserve "5 stars" this week and I'd like to share them with you.

Facing uncertainty by Daniel Loftus on Dan's Thinktank

DNA and Law Enforcement by Kitty Cooper on Kitty Cooper's Blog

Southern Militia Ancestors Hiding in the Bush by Kathleen Brandt on a3Genealogy

While We're Melting by Jacqi Stevens on A Family Tapestry

The most ancient human genome yet has been sequenced—and it’s a Denisovan’s by Ann Gibbons on Science.org

Posts other Geneabloggers liked this week:

Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of 7 to 13 July 2024  by Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings

Friday Family History Finds by Linda Stufflebean on Empty Branches on the Family Tree

This week’s crème de la crème — July 13, 2024 by Gail Dever on Genealogy à la carte

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Pursuing Knowledge in Genealogy and More on ThoughtCo

While I'm not a professional genealogist, I know how crucial it is to continue learning. Knowledge is power (so said Sir Francis Bacon). So how about a great site you may not have heard of before? It's not a research site, but it is an educational site. ThoughtCo "is a premier reference site with a 20+ year focus on expert-created education content." And guess what? They have so many articles on genealogy! And guess what else? It's FREE!

While the link I've included above takes you directly to the genealogy section, if you go to ThoughtCo's homepage, you can select from many, many other categories and topics. Genealogy is found by clicking on Humanities > History & Culture > Genealogy.

They offer articles on genealogy basics, researching in specific areas, tools and how-to's, working with photos, DNA, reunions and the list goes on and on. There's even one article on The Cherokee Princess Myth I wish I'd read before I started my journey. Articles link to additional sites as well as other articles on ThoughCo, so you can continue to expand your knowledge. The writers for this site have advanced degrees in their subject areas, and collectively they've written over 40,000 articles! 

Once you start reading, you may find yourself clicking through to all kinds of interesting topics! Expand the Genealogy section and you'll find subtopics of Basics, Surnames, Genealogy Fun and Vital Records Around the World. Each section has dozens upon dozens of articles. Conveniently, they also have a number of history sections from specific places to time periods. Combine this with the genealogy articles, and you may find yourself tumbling down the rabbit-hole for hours!

I've included ThoughCo.com in my Genealogy Toolbox under Articles, Tips/Tricks, Guides. I hope you'll take a few minutes (or hours if you have time to spare) to check ToughtCo out. Leave a comment or connect with me on social media and let me know what you think of the site.

Image by Pablo chaves from Pixabay

Comparing Text

I've read posts by others about comparing text from two different sources to identify the differences. I certainly saw the benefit of doing this, but never had a big reason to do it myself - until now. 

The other day, I was working with an ancestor who had several different obituaries published (in different newspapers and online). Obits can be substantially the same or they can be vastly different. Since they take a long time to mine details from, I wanted a way to see the differences. It they were identical (without having to read a few words at at time to compare), I'd know I didn't need to "re-mine" a particular version of the obit. And if the copy I worked from contained all the pertinent details also shown in another version, linking it would be much faster as I wouldn't need to create additional new facts (though I'd still need to link all the matching ones). 

I set off to find some free online tools for making the comparison:

• Diffchecker.com  - Compare text, images, Word, PDF, Excel to a like file. Differences are highlighted for easy recognition. While additions and deletions are highlighted, it takes looking at both to spot all the differences.
  
  
  
• GoTranscript - Easy to use, offers option to ignore capitalization and punctuation. Additions and deletions are clearly identified by color in one spot, making it easier to see the differences.
  
  
  
• SEO Magnifier - Allows comparison of text via copy/paste, URL or documents. Accurate, and easy to spot deletions, but additions are slightly less pronounces.
  

All three free options get the job done without much fuss. For the task at hand, straight up text comparison, I actually preferred GoTranscript for the visual simplicity. The results were the most natural for the way my brain processes. It happens to be the site with the least bells and whistles, but it's my top pick.

Diffchecker offers other comparison options beyond just text. It includes comparison of images, documents (Word and PDF) and Excel. This could be helpful for a number of different tasks. It also has a desktop version available (but I did not install or test it). SEO Magnifier offers a considerable number of additional online SEO tools content creators may find helpful. The average genealogist may not be interested in SEO, but those who create for others may very well find SEO Magnifier offers additional benefits.

Of course, I've included links to these sites in my Online Tools section of my Genealogy Toolbox. So,  next time you encounter the need to compare two sets of text for differences, hop on over and give one of these sites (or all of these sites!) a try!. 

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

5 Star Posts Week of 06/20/2024 - 07/06/2024

Staying abreast of happenings in the genealogy community is vitally important to me. There are hundreds of posts each week to sift through, on a wide variety of relevant topics. I'm so thankful to all the geneabloggers (and other content creators) who educate, enlighten and entertain me by sharing not only their stories but information I need to know.

Below are a few of the posts I think deserve "5 stars" this week and I'd like to share them with you.

Ancestry ProTools - Family Tree Fan Chart by Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings

Top 5 DNA Genealogy Testing Sites by Diane Henriks on Know Who Wears the Genes in Your Family

JULY TECH MOMENT: SNAGIT by Linda Stufflebean on Empty Branches on the Family Tree

Who provides the most value? DNA testing and Beyond by Valorie Zimmerman on South King County Genealogical Society

Power-Up Your DNA Analyses by Leah Larkin on The DNA Geek

Pennsylvania Genealogy Research Guide by James M. Beidler on FamilyTree

Posts other Geneabloggers liked this week:

Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of 30 June to 6 July 2024 by Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings

Friday Family History Finds by Linda Stufflebean on Empty Branches on the Family Tree

This week’s crème de la crème — July 6, 2024 by Gail Dever on Genealogy à la carte

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Share Your Journey This Independence Day

I wish everyone a very Happy 4th of July! 

On this day when many are gathering with family and friends to celebrate the holiday, take time to share about your genealogy journey. Yes, yes, I know - some eyes may glaze over as you speak, but don't give up! Talk to the children and regale them with interesting stories you've discovered. Show them pictures from times gone by. Listen, so the older generations might share their stories with you. Record them if possible or take notes so you can write their recollections down for future generations. One day, you'll be very glad you did. Share new discoveries with your elders. They may be thrilled to hear the stories. And, it may spark memories you've never heard before.

This is a day to celebrate our country, our independence and most of all, our family journeys. Many of us have traced far enough back in our lines to discover ancestors who fought for independence. We owe these ancestors a great debt of gratitude. Other families immigrated to a this country later, leaving all they knew behind. It doesn't matter from where your ancestors came, or when they came, today we celebrate together!

Remember all those who've bravely served their country. If possible, thank them for their service. For those no longer with us, say a silent thank you to honor their memory and the sacrifices made to ensure the independence we enjoy today.

Today is a day to be grateful for all who came before. It's a day to be thankful for all the resources available so we can uncover and discover our ancestors. Today, I'm deeply thankful I embarked on my genealogy journey and for all the wonderful discoveries I've made (and have yet to make). Happy Independence Day!

Image by free stock photos from www.picjumbo.com from Pixabay

OCD and the New Hinting for Ancestry Member Trees

I've written before on my opinion on The Value in Other Member Trees. I still feel they have merit (personal opinion). I know many people don't care for them. But I have a HUGE gripe about the way Ancestry recently changed the hinting for these trees.

I was fine getting three member tree hints in one. I'd check the first one for parents, siblings, spouses and children to be sure it looked like I had everyone. Then, I'd accept all the trees, but I always unchecked all the boxes so nothing was added to my tree other than the source. It was fine. It let me have a quick double check and gave me some future sources if I needed them. Occasionally, another member tree hint would pop up randomly for someone, but it was absolutely manageable.

Now, they pop up like Wheat Thins....one after the other! (For those of you who remember the Sandy Duncan commercials...Oh, how I'm showing my age!) For someone with OCD this is absolutely maddening. I happen to like numbers (preferably even numbers, but 3 hints in 1 was ok). When I set out to research, I generally try to drop my hints by 20 per day, as it's also a way to remove one full page of hints (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't). But I have a goal - one fitting into the time I have to spend on Ancestry in the evening. One I can usually attain in a few hours. I usually flip between types of hints, but when I'm running out of steam, I'll pop over to member trees for a quick way to reach the magic number and cross the daily finish line.

 

Now, I accept a member tree, only to be presented with another, and another. So it takes me three times as long to work thru what appears to be 20 of this type of hint. It's ridiculous! Over on the Facebook group, there have been numerous complaints. Supposedly, Ancestry did research and found one by one had the best interaction. (Of course it will if there's no other choice...sigh.) I don't know who they were talking to, but I don't know anyone who prefers to do something 60 times rather than 20. If they actually contained truly relevant and different information, sure. But they don't. The last two hints are typically the same as the first and since information is often unsourced, they're best used for reference only. 

I suspect they're trying to get more users to click thru to other member trees. Guess what? I check the first one and I just plow through the next two. It's no different than before in this respect, I'm just angry while I'm doing it. Sure, I could ignore all these hints entirely, but I actually do want them in my tree. And guess what else? If you look in your sources, Ancestry apparently doesn't want to store three times the data. They merge it into one source where you still click the same link to see all three trees. All they've done is increase the work and frustration for users of the platform. And I rather suspect, more people will turn them off completely (or totally ignore them) to avoid the hassle. 

If they're angling to have a slowdown in use, so they can justify removing them entirely - then just do it. If they really want them to be valuable enough for users to spend three times the time on them, then check the accuracy and validity of the trees. Don't just present me with user trees with no documentation (or only other member trees as sources). How about Ancestry uses them there Top Tree  badges they've created to filter out the less helpful trees and give us something worthwhile. I might praise the change if they did so, as it might actually point me to where some of the (currently) unsourced information comes from. 

I know I can be awfully opinionated at times. But really? This is what they're using our membership fees for? How about some new collections. Or how about a full text scan on unindexed collections, like FamilySearch released. How about doing something to improve user experience with member trees? And I can't help but wonder, is this change what's causing the hinting feature to be unavailable so often? The last week or so (right about when this change rolled out to me) I started spending a lot of  time endlessly refreshing trying to get hints to load. Maddening! Maddening I say!!  

Image by Patrisia Novianti from Pixabay