Saturday, November 29, 2008

Saturday Night Fun - Who's Number 1000?

It's Saturday night, and I'm sitting here wondering who else is pecking away on his/her keyboard not having any real fun. So, let's play a little game with our genealogy software:

GOAL: Find out who is Reference Number 1,000 in your genealogy software.

Sounds like an easy task, right? Well, not if you have over 20,000 persons in your database like I do. I worked with Family Tree Maker 16 for almost 30 minutes trying to figure it out this afternoon, and failed. I must be looking for RINs in all the wrong places - the Help file didn't really help.

Then I tried Legacy 7 and it was fairly easy to do - [Search] > Search for [Individual], Where to Look [Individual RIN], How to Look [Equal To], What to Look For [1000] and click [Find First]. This solved in less than one second.

I tried Family Tree Maker 2009 and it was fairly easy to do also - [Edit] > [Find Individual] > put [Reference ID] in first box, put [1000] in second box, and click [Find]. This took over 30 seconds to solve, since it found not only #1000, but #10000, 10001, etc - all instances of 1000.

Family Historian 3.1 (the free trial version) can do it, but it wasn't intuitive: [View] > [Standard Lists] > [Record Identifiers]. In [Record ID] column, search for [1000]. This took about 5 seconds to solve, since I had to scroll down.

In RootsMagic 3 (I have the free trial version), it is relatively easy: [Search] > click on [Ref #] button at bottom, enter [1000] and click [OK]. This took less than one second to solve.

In Family Tree Maker 16, it turned out to be similar to FTM 2009: [Edit] > [Find Individual] > Search [Reference number] and for = [1000], click [Find Next]. This took less than one second to solve.

So who is my #1000? Fortunately, he is the same in all of my databases loaded into the different programs.

William Simonds (born 15 April 1651 in Woburn, Middlesex, MA, USA, died 7 June 1672 in Woburn, Middlesex, MA, USA, son of William Simonds and Judith Pippen.)

wasn't that fun? Aboutl ike having your wisdom teeth out, eh?

Can you find your #1,000? If you don't have 1,000 persons in your database, then try to find #100.

Tell me who they are in Comments, or blog about it yourself.

If you are using a different software program, tell me how to do this task in your program, or blog about yourself.

8 comments:

Henk van Kampen said...

In PAF 5.2 I defined a filter (RIN Range from 1000 to 1000), which took me a few seconds.

Number 1000 is Willem van Kampen (1844-1922), a first cousin of my great great grandfather Barend van Kampen.

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

Thanks Randy, it took me 20 minutes just to figure out that I hadn't turned on reference numbers in FTM2005! LOL

My # 1000 is Benjamin Bargewell and I'm not even related to him. He was the father of Matthew Bargewell 1833-1881 who married a distant cousin, Miriam Rogers 1832-1920.

We know we're related through the Towne line so I wasn't surprised to see other names from my file. In my file I have them with alternate spellings, William Symonds and Judith Phippin. But again, not related! Their daughter, Judith 1644-1704, was the first wife of my 8th greatgrandfather, John Barker, 1645-1709.

Anonymous said...

"GOAL: Find out who is Reference Number 1,000 in your genealogy software.
Sounds like an easy task, right?"

Sounds easy, because it is easy.
PAF is not feature rich, but it does have the Search | Find by RIN/MRIN menu item.
Just type in the number of the individual or "marriage".

I continue to be surprised by the many programs that don't offer this handy menu item :-(

Number 1.000: Christina Misbeek, b. 1784, d. 1849
Number 10.000: Harmken Hobbelink, b. bef 1698
Number 100.000: J. Hulshof, b. abt 1905

Cherie, too said...

In my file, number 1000 is James Dennis, the husband of my 4th g-grandfather's sister.

I have FTM 16, and it was easy to find the reference number. I went to "Edit/Find Individual" and scrolled thru the drop-down list until I found "Reference Number" and searched for 1000.

Tex said...

I blogged about mine at www.allmyancestors.com/blog. It's Merriman Landrum Cooper, an easy find in my Master Genealogist database. He's one of four brothers who perished in the Civil War.

Drew Smith said...

Celestia Minora Boddie, my fourth cousin 3 times removed. She was born on 23 October 1850 in Nash County, North Carolina, and died 27 March 1931. Great name, don't you think?

Julie said...

I blogged about mine at: http://genblogjulie.blogspot.com/2008/11/who-1000.html

Taneya said...

Here's mine!
http://www.taneya-kalonji.com/genblog/?p=477