Genealogy Assistant Browser Extension

I love time saving browser extensions. I have several I use daily. Earlier today, I saw a post on Fortify Your Family Tree about a browser extension by genea.ca called Genealogy Assistant. Based on the post, I was super excited to get home and try it out! 

The extension can be installed in Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. It's quick and easy to install, and pretty much works right out of the box. There isn't a lot you need to do to get started with it. The developer offers a free trial, allowing ample time to decide if you find it useful and want to continue utilizing it. Should you decide you want to keep it, it's $2.95 per month, or a single payment of $29.95 for a lifetime license. 

I'm not going to go into all the various features. There are tons of them! Many have been created to enhance the experience on Ancestry. Some simply make current features on Ancestry a little more visible and quicker to access (see the images of profile headers below). Some are designed to minimize clutter to improve the tree viewing experience. There are many enhancements to make working with DNA matches easier (on multiple sites). Some tools make exporting data to CSV very simple. From the website:

"Genealogy Assistant adds over 100 custom features to popular genealogy websites like Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, FamilyTreeDNA and more!

Get access to all of our tools in an easy to use, one-click install. All features are automatically updated and new tools are added regularly."

One feature I'm really excited about is the advanced search capability. This little extension makes searching across various websites a breeze! The snip on the left shows the advanced search options. As you can see, most of the major sites are included. Personally, I find the search experience on MyHeritage less intuitive than on Ancestry, so I tend not to take the time to search there. No extension is going to make searching entirely painless. After all, the thrill of genealogy is searching for, and finding, the records we need! But it does make the experience faster and easier, and may motivate me to do more cross-site searching than I usually do.

I did notice with all the potential features enabled, the header on a person profile is expanded. 

I tend to keep my notes open on the right sidebar, and this changes the layout to look like this:

You'll notice the header is "taller" in this specific view, with notes open, but the advanced search features, while still there, are collapsed.

With the recent advent of the collapsing headers on Ancestry, and with notes open, as I scroll my header shrinks to look like this:

Aside from these visual changes, working in a person profile, accessing gallery and hints are all the same as usual. You can also access the advanced search by clicking "Ctrl + /" from any page on the website.

For those who spend a lot of time working with DNA matches and ThruLines® you'll find the extension plays well with some of the Pro Tools features. It also enhances working with DNA matches on GEDMatch, MyHeritage and FTDNA. I've long wanted to be able to easily hide and unhide matches already connected to my Ancestry tree - and now I can!

As a creature of habit, it takes me a few days to get accustomed to visual changes and enhancements. But I'm intrigued enough with just a few minutes of use, I've already purchased the lifetime license for $29.95. In my mind, it's a small price to pay for productivity and it supports the developer so he can continue to expand the features offered. While the lifetime price is equivalent to 10 months of monthly costs, there is always a possibility Ancestry (or any of the other sites) could find away to block the extension with no notice. I certainly hope this never happens, but I'm willing to take the chance and go all in with this extension. If Ancestry is smart, debatable at times, they might do well to consider acquiring this extension and integrating it as a part of their offering in the future. 

The developer also has a free extension called Genealogy Blurring Tool. For blogging or presenting, it's a hassle free way to blur sensitive data automatically, for cleaner looking screenshots or presentations. In fact, you can see it in action in the headers above, where my tree name has been automatically blurred. (I don't mind my tree name being public, I was just testing out the tool).

If you'd like to learn more about the Genealogy Assistant extension, you might enjoy watching the features video (about 15 minutes long). It moves quickly, but it's a very good overview none the less.

I've also added a link to the website in my Genealogy Toolbox under Online Tools and Browser Extensions. If you decide to test it out, comment or connect with me on socials and tell me how you like it!

FamilyTreeNow.com Offers Up More Free Public Information

In the past, I've written about finding those living relatives using FamilyTreeNow.com. This is a 100% free site to use. In recent months, they've expanded the displayed information. For anyone born after 1920 or so, and who died after about 1980, or is still living, there's a reasonable chance of finding them on the site. I should point out this site only provides information about those in the United States. I certainly don't rely heavily on the specifics they provide, but I use it as something of a "confirmation tool".

Derived from public records, FamilyTreeNow.com typically shows a considerable amount of data. Not only does it display addresses, but other names a person has used, month and year of birth (critical to verifying you have the right person), possible phone numbers and email addresses, as well as potential family members and associates. These sections have been the backbone of their offering, and for most entries, you'll find this basic data.

I've noticed some additional enhancements recently. First, more entries show a Google map for the current address, and potentially property details. "Possible Primary Phone" has been added as well. They've also started indicating "Potential Spouse" in the Possible Relatives section. While some of these spouse suggestions have turned out to be helpful, I've also noted they don't necessarily distinguish between a current spouse and an ex spouse. In one person I spot checked, his ex-wife is listed as a possible spouse, and his current wife is simply shown as a possible relative. This definitely doesn't replace doing your own research....but it could provide breadcrumbs to work with when the trail is otherwise cold.

Today, I noticed they've added Employment History and Current Neighbors. In my own record, employment history was accurate. In the case of my ex, it's absolutely wrong! My current neighbors appeared fairly accurate. Historically, neighbors might have been worth knowing about. But today, this information is far less valuable (if it has any value at all). I don't really consider it useful, but who knows? Maybe someone out there has a need for it.

Not every entry has all of the more recent additions displayed. It seems to be hit or miss as of now. And while I value the potential information as a whole, I'm not about to take the time to enter so much unconfirmed data in my tree. I don't even print a copy to save. First off, the information changes as more public information becomes available. More importantly, there's too much room for error. Names may be conflated and there's no easy way to verify the accuracy of any of the data presented. I don't know about you, but when faced with unnecessary intrusive questions, I'm not beyond putting 555-1212 as a phone number or "123 Any Street" as an address (especially if I'm creating a login for a website I probably won't ever use again). Further, many people keep a "disposable" email they use specifically to avoid giving out their real email. This random information can and does show up. 

Still, I did create a source for FamilyTreeNow.com, on Ancestry, and I will link it solely to the person's name fact. At some point, for more recent relatives, I generally pop over and do a quick check to see if a person is on FamilyTreeNow.com. If I can find them, I save the link in my citation so I can refer back if I need to. This is the extent of data I choose to save from this site in my tree. You could also use Web Links on Ancestry, but those don't sync to Family Tree Maker, whereas a source will. 

Another valid reason to use the site is disproving records on Ancestry. Quite often, I come across public records where the given and surname appear correct, but there's no middle name the address seems a little off (the state may be okay, but maybe the city is one with no other known records). Most often, if I can find the person on FamilyTreeNow.com, I'll discover they have a completely different middle name. It's not a slam dunk for disproving, but I have found it useful quite a few times.

Final Thoughts: FamilyTreeNow.com is a tool, but one best used with an abundance of caution. Always keep the pitfalls in mind, and when in doubt "throw it out". Breadcrumbs can be valuable research starters, but relying solely on unverified public information is no better than copying without verifying. 

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

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

Using OCR for Transcribing Newspaper Articles

Newspaper articles and obituaries can provide a lot of information. You're likely to find names of relatives and friends, possibly birth/death dates and places, residence, occupation/retirement or even cause of death. I personally like to transcribe newspaper clippings so I can easily work with the details...but transcribing can be a time consuming process depending on where you find the image. Enter optical character recognition (OCR). It's not perfect, but it can make the job a lot easier.

The majority of newspaper clippings are .jpg images (photos) so it's not as easy as copy/paste. If you're finding the image on a newspaper archive site, there's a reasonable chance an OCR transcription is already provided. Those are typically able to be copied and pasted (but you can't edit out errors directly on the webpages). Be sure to read both the source document and the transcription. Computers aren't infallible, and sometimes they have trouble with certain characters, old/faded images or when column borders exist. If you accidentally "transcribe" the column border, or catch some random characters from the next column, you'll have a lot of i's and l's and other gobbledygook where it doesn't belong. Articles spanning multiple columns may need to be transcribed in separate steps for each column. No matter how you cut it, OCR speeds up the process...just don't expect it to be perfect.  Once copied/pasted, you can feel free to make any necessary edits before saving in your tree or using to mine the details.

If you don't have a "built in" transcription with the image, there are tools to make the job easier. My new favorite is the build in Windows Snipping Tool. Windows users can search for the app on their computer, and I highly suggest pinning it to your taskbar for easy access. OCR was added in the last few months. Open the image you want to transcribe, and select the area with the text. Then, click the OCR button as shown in the image. All the text will be highlighted and you'll see an option to Copy All Text. This will put the text on your clipboard and you can paste it into the program of your choice (notepad, Word, Google Docs, etc.). For additional information on using Windows Snipping tool for OCR please watch the video linked at the end of this post. The biggest caveat is all the text needs to appear on your screen before snipping. Snipping Tool won't let you scroll to capture text. This can be problematic with longer articles/obits when the text becomes too small for the computer to "read" it. 

If you have a longer article, where the text is too small for Snipping Tool to work well, try using Google Docs! (Yup, it works! I use it all the time.) Simply upload the .jpg from your computer to Google Docs. Right click it, select Open With and choose Google Docs. You'll see the image at the top, and when you scroll down, the OCR transcription will be below. You can edit the transcription as needed right in Google Docs. More detail on using Google Docs for OCR can be found here.

If you happen to be lucky enough to have a PDF of the document you're working with, but can't just copy/paste the info (thank you Adobe and other PDF editors for locking down some documents), you can use the same Google Docs trick. You can also open PDFs in Word (though I've had mixed success) or you can use the PDFCandy.com OCR tool for free (though you are limited to how frequently you can use it at no charge. See my previous post here for the limitations.)

We all use transcriptions a little differently. There's no right or wrong way to go about it. If you like to do it old school and enjoy reading, then typing, then reading, then typing, then....well, you get the idea...that's fine! I personally prefer to let the computer do the heavy lifting, then I'll just do a little housekeeping to tidy up the text. Please keep copyright in mind if you're planning on posting/sharing any transcriptions, and always credit the newspaper, poster, etc. appropriately. If you have another suggestion for OCR transcription, connect with me on my socials. I'd love to hear how you handle transcribing from images and PDFs. 

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5tDJCLnShw

Effortlessly Working with PDFs

PDFs have been around since 1993. It's a format we all know. You may find you occasionally need to edit these files and sorting through the hundreds (if not thousands) of websites and programs to find a decent one may feel overwhelming. I've found PDFCandy.com (offering an amazing 47 online PDF tools) is a great free option! 

I prefer the PDF Candy Chrome Extension but you can also go directly to the website at PDFCandy.com. This site allows you to convert 20+ file formats to and from PDF, compress, edit in numerous ways, merge, split, even extract text and/or images. The only drawback is the tools are all individual and not in any particular order, so you may have to scroll to find the one you need, but the site interface is simple and straightforward. Resulting files in the free version are available to download for 120 minutes with no login/signup required. The one caveat is you can only perform 1 task per hour for free. If you need to do more than one task, to keep it free, you'll have to return to the site a few times or use multiple browsers to get around the limit. But if you're like me, the need is occasional (such as combining multiple PDFs into a single file, or converting a PDF to JPG) and one task may be all you need to accomplish your goal.

If you're a power user, there are pricing plans as low as $6/month cancel anytime, $4/month if you sign up for a full year, or $99 for a lifetime license. If you find you need to do a lot of editing at once, but only for a limited time, $6 is a bargain and then you can cancel. If you work with files on the regular, the lifetime price is less than just a few months at other sites.

Next time you need to work with PDF files, give PDFCandy.com a try!

Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay

Liking Linkclump

Linkclump is a browser extension for Chrome. (Firefox users can download it here). It's one of the handiest tools in my Genealogy Toolbox, Developed by Benjamin Black, it's a free extension with over 300,000 users. The developer does not collect or use your data. It makes opening, copying or bookmarking multiple links at once a snap! For genealogists it's a huge time saver.

When you open a record on Ancestry.com, you've undoubtedly noticed the additional Suggested Records on the right hand side of the page. Sometimes it's just a few, and sometimes the list is quite lengthy. How many times have you wanted to look thru them all to see what might be new, check for what's not included in your New Hints (not all of them are!) or find out if you've already saved a particular record, but the thought of all that clicking is just plain annoying? Enter Linkclump! 

Simply drag and draw a box (shown in red in the image) using the left mouse key + Z around the links you want to open and Linkclump does all the clicky work, opening them all at once in new windows or tabs (depending on how you set it up). I changed my action key to be "Ctrl" instead of "Z" because I can remember it easier. Customizing is super simple. 

I use it to open all the Ancestry.com Suggested Records (and I haven't encountered any issues no matter how many links I've selected), then I click thru them and close the ones I already have saved. Anything remaining I either review on the spot or copy the URL for future research. I've learned from experience, just because something shows in your new hints today doesn't mean it will be there tomorrow. It's best to save any URLs you may want to research later using whatever system works best for you. I use iDailyDiary by Splinterware as detailed in my previous post.

I personally haven't used the copying or bookmarking features, but they're easy enough to set up right in the extension if you want to give them a try. Once you use Linkclump, you'll wonder how you ever survived without it! Because this is a free extension, there is no support per se, but there is extensive information on GitHub if you encounter any issues. I know not everyone is a fan of browser extensions, but this is one you should definitely give a time saving try. It truly makes opening bunches of links at once a breeze!

For a quick tutorial check out this YouTube video.