Follow-Up Friday - Reader Comments and Tips

I have had several useful and informative reader comments and research tips over the past three weeks, including:

1)  On Tuesday's Tip - English Parish Registers on FamilySearch.org (posted 15 May 2012):

*  Geolover offered:  "For a great deal of information about what parish registers exist, together with dates, some publication data and links to many helpful websites, this site is invaluable: 
http://www.genuki.org.uk/contents/#Search

"Use and drill down into the location links at top of this gateway page. It is an extremely deep and broad site. One can search for specific locales and get lists of area churches, for example."

*  Catherine noted:  "...  last night I perused the Hampshire records, from here in South Australia, and not only had my suspicion on the parentage of my GGGrandfather confirmed but discovered another 4 of his siblings! Am smiling to think that his marriage certificate will arrive, by post, next week which certainly should confirm my on-line discovery :-) "

*  Howard Swain said:  " Diana Trenchard mentioned last Jan. on the Gen-Medieval email list that there is a new site with an update to the info on Hugh Wallis' site.  See: http://www.archersoftware.co.uk/igi/index.htm"

My comments:  Thank you all for the very helpful links.  

2) In Chronology Report in Legacy Family Tree 7.5 (posted 22 May 2012):

*  Tessa noted:  "I have added timelines to my Legacy program - including timelines for Newfoundland, Ireland, Nebraska, Washington and Oregon. You can add the "title," what appears in the Chronology Report, and then add as much detail/description as you want as well as your source citation (which does not need to print) for purposes of your Report. 

"It is important to add events/facts to your peoples because this will flesh out their story in the timeline. I find it very helpful for finding my holes and/or giving me ideas of new places or events to research.  I think we are all guilty of not taking the time to learn our software and certainly we are not aware of how robust these programs can be. Thanks for sharing how you do it."

My comment:  Thank you, Tessa, for the idea of adding to the Historical Events list.  I wonder if someone can show how to do this?  If not, I will try to do it in a future post.  Maybe when Geoff gets back from his cruise he can demonstrate it.

3)  In FTM 2011 Source Citations in Legacy Family Tree 7 - Mangled? (posted 19 January 2011):

*  Tenaciousone noted:  "I agree that the GEDCOM standard needs to be updated both from a technical and a technological standpoint. It also needs to be monitored and updated on a continuous basis. But the aspect that I haven't seen covered, (at least in this posting), is that standards need to be set for sourcing and equally applied in each free standing program. Being a Legacy user, I know that there Source Writer follows the Elizabeth Shown Mills standard. Having been at this for over 20 years now, I have learned the hard way the value of accurate sources. Having a preset model in place, without having to take the time to look it up each time I needed to cite a source, has made me a better documenter of facts. I understand that each company wants to be unique in its product offerings but this is one area where they should all comply."

My comment:  Source citation formatting is one of the problems we've been discussing for several years now.  My hope is that all involved - software providers, online tree providers, and users can agree on a GEDCOM-like standard that seamlessly transfer source citations created using a number of standards (e.g., Evidence! Explained).  

4)  On Surname Saturday - LEWIS (England > RI > NY > Canada) (posted 25 June 2011):

*  Mike Lewis commented:  "You forgot to mention that Jonathan Lewis, born 1658 in Westerly, Washington, Rhode Island, United States; was not only married to Jemima Whitehead but was later married to Deliverance Townsend. I am a descendant of Johnathan and Deliverance by their son Joseph."

My comment:  Thanks, Mike.  I didn't forget, but I didn't add it to this list.  For these Surname Saturday posts, I am showing only my direct line families with full siblings, rather than all marriages and all children of my direct line ancestors.  My choice...

5)  In Looking at Della's Ancestry Hints (posted 9 May 2012):

*  Russ Worthington offered:  "I think, sometimes, it pays to look at the Ancestry.com Knowledge Base website:  http://ancestry.custhelp.com/.  Search for article 4995. This statement "possibly match the individual in your tree", for me, is based on DATA within the Tree. (AMT or Family Tree Maker). Ancestry doing some searching for you.  That is very different, I think, then Doing a Search on your own. (no leaves involved).

"Hints are helpful, but only that Hints. WE need to go beyond the Hints.  To me it's like starting with a broad search and narrowing the search down, or starting a narrow search and removing some of the terms in the search.   To me, the Leaves are the Narrow Search."
*  Anonymous said:  "Ancestry's hints only catch the "low-hanging" fruit. Best to always do your own search to be complete."

My comments:  Than you for the comments.  I see another blog post coming up - what records did the Ancestry Shaky Leaves miss?

Some observation:  The knowledge of my readers complements my blog posts every week.  I thank all readers for making comments that help me, and other readers, perform better and more complete genealogy research!   Communication and collaboration are powerful tools!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/05/follow-up-friday-reader-comments-and_25.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver