Saturday, December 1, 2012

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Dear Genea-Santa



Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 
 It's Saturday Night again - 
time for some more Genealogy Fun!!




Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. Here's your chance to sit on Genea-Santa's lap (virtually) and tell him your Christmas genealogy-oriented dreams:

1) Write your Genea-Santa letter. Have you been a good genealogy girl or boy? What genealogy-oriented items are on your Christmas wish list? They could be family history items, technology items, or things that you want to pursue your ancestral quest.

2) Tell us about them in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook status or Google Stream post.

Here's mine:

Dear Genea-Santa,

I tried so hard to be a good genea-boy this year. I worked hard speaking all over Southern California and teaching at OASIS, serving my local societies, writing my society newsletter, my FGS FORUM Genealogy 2.0 columns, my Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal columns, and over 1,100 blog posts, attending two genealogy conferences and a genealogy cruise, and helping several friends and colleagues with their research. In addition, I have added more names, facts and (especially) sources to my database.  

Thank you for last year's gifts - an Apple iPhone that I can use to read email, blog posts, Twitter, Facebook, play games with my grandchildren, and access my Ancestry Member Tree on.  Oh, it takes decent pictures and video, and I can call folks on it.  Linda got a Samsung Galaxy laptop that she hardly uses, so I get to use it too and use it as a wi-fi hotspot when necessary (heh heh).

I  still BELIEVE!!!!! Come on, Santa, all I want for Christmas in 2012 are:

* A notebook computer that is small and light and full of genealogy capability for my speaking,  research and conference adventures.  

*  A genea-robot that can work 24 hours a day on getting my genea-piles organized - that is so boring and there is so much to do ... but a robot would not have to sleep or eat or spend time with my wife (I promise!).  Maybe I could even train it to write blog posts.  Or enter Find A Grave source citations. 

*  A solid lead on the ancestry of William Knapp (1775-1856), Thomas J. Newton (ca 1800-ca 1840) and Devier James Lamphear Smith (1839-1894) would be welcome too!

Thank you, Genea-Santa, for listening to my pleas. I will leave a nice personal meat-lovers pizza in the freezer for you (you can heat it in the kitchen microwave), a rosy red apple and some delicious chocolate chip cookies on the fireplace hearth, and some eggnog (in the refrigerator) for you on Christmas Eve just in case you need fortification. You can get a yummy Dove chocolate ice cream bar out of the refrigerator if you'd like. Nothing's too good for Genea-Santa - mi casa es su casa!


Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver



Photo courtesy of footnoteMaven.

Surname Saturday - SANDERSON (England > Massachusetts)

It's Surname Saturday, and I'm "counting down" my Ancestral Name List each week.  


I am in the 7th great-grandmothers, up to number 543: Hannah SANDERSON (1689-1770). [Note: The 7th great-grandfathers have been covered in earlier posts].

My ancestral line back through three American generations of this SANDERSON family is:

1.  Randall J. Seaver

2. Frederick Walton Seaver (1911-1983)
3. Betty Virginia Carringer (1919-2002)

4. Frederick Walton Seaver (1876-1942)
5. Alma Bessie Richmond (1882-1962)

8. Frank Walton Seaver (1852-1922)
9. Hattie Louise Hildreth (1857-1920)

16. Isaac Seaver (1823-1901)
17. Lucretia Townsend Smith (1827-1884)

32. Benjamin Seaver (1791-1825)
33. Abigail Gates (1797-1869)

66. Nathan Gates (1767-1830)67. 

Abigail Knowlton (1774-1855)

134.  Jeremiah Knowlton (1745-1783)
135.  Abigail Pierce (1750-1775)


270.  Samuel Peirce (1712-????)
271.  Abigail Stearns (1716-1798)


542.  George Stearns, born Bef. 22 June 1690 in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States; died 26 June 1760 in Waltham, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.  He was the son of 1084. John Stearns and 1085. Judith Lawrence.  He married 23 October 1712 in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.
543.  Hannah Sanderson, born 31 May 1689 in Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States; died 21 May 1770 in Waltham, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.  
Children of George Stearns and Hannah Sanderson are:  Jonathan Stearns (1713-1758); Abigail Stearns (1716-1798); Judith Stearns (1716-????); David Stearns (1717-????); Hannah Stearns (1719-????); Lydia Stearns (1724-????); John Stearns (1727-????); Daniel Stearns (1729-1779).

1086.  Jonathan Sanderson, born 15 September 1646 in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States; died 03 September 1735 in Waltham, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. He married  24 October 1669 in Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.
1087.  Abiah Bartlett, born 28 May 1651 in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States; died 13 September 1723 in Waltham, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.  She was the daughter of 2174. Thomas Bartlett and 2175. Hannah.
Children of Jonathan Sanderson and Abiah Bartlett are:  Abiah Sanderson (1673-1739); Jonathan Sanderson (1673-1743); Thomas Sanderson (1675-1759); John Sanderson (1677-1750); Benjamin Sanderson (1679-1735); Samuel Sanderson (1681-????); Edward Sanderson (1684-1766); Hannah Sanderson (1689-1770); 

2172.  Edward Sanderson, born 1614 in England; died about 1680 in Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.  He married 16 October 1645 in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.
2173.  Mary Eggleston, born before 06 January 1613 in Norwich, Norfolk, England.
Children of Edward Sanderson and Mary Eggleston are:  Jonathan Sanderson (1646-1735); Hester Sanderson (1652-1693); Ann Sanderson (1654-????); Abigail Sanderson (1656-1693); Hannah Sanderson (1658-1743).

The biographies and families of Jonathan and Edward Sanderson were ably covered by Page Sanderson in "Edward Sanderson of Watertown, Mass." published in The New England Historic Genealogical Register, July 1973, Volume 127, number 3, page 181.

The URL for this post is:

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Friday, November 30, 2012

Exploring RootsMagic 6 - Post 6: The "Enhanced Searching and Selecting" Feature

In Exploring RootsMagic 6 - Post 1, I covered the new features included in RootsMagic 6 genealogy software.

One of the features is the "Enhanced Searching and Selecting" feature.  The short description is:


Enhanced searching and selecting -- Search for people by the number of spouses, children, parents, or siblings that they have; Select people based on genetic lines (Y-STR and Mitochondrial)


I had to use the Help screen to figure out how to do this.  The Help screen for "RootsMagic Explorer says:

"Search by any information (Find):

If you want to find a person (or people) based on information other than the name (such as birth date, death place, etc.), click the "Find" button at the top of the Explorer window to bring up the "Search for information" dialog.  You can then use the "Prior" and "Next" buttons to move back and forth through the list using the search criteria."

1)  I started by clicking on the "Search" menu link and then the "Person list" link:



2)  That opened the RootsMagic Explorer window, with the list of every person in my database.


3)  I clicked on the "Find" button on the menu row for this window and the Search for information window opened.  There are two drop down menus on each search line - one for the search parameter and the other for the operator.  I wanted to see which persons in the database had more than 15 children.  I clicked the down arrow on the right side of the first search parameter field and chose "Number of children" as shown below:


There are many possible search parameters on the list.

The next task is to select an operator in the right-hand search field on each line - the choice is:  " equals" "not equal to" "less than" "Greater than" "less than or equal" and "greater than or equal":


I chose "greater than."

4)  I clicked on the "OK" button and the search was completed.  The RootsMagic Explorer window appeared with a person highlighted:



I checked the "Family members" area in the lower right-hand area of the window, and there were more than 15 children for Sarah.

5)  To find the next person that meets the search criteria, I clicked on the "Next" button on the menu line, and saw:


Thomas Ayre also has more than 15 children.  I had several more persons who met the criteria.

Note that it performs this search by Person, and not by Family, because I selected to search by "Person List."  You can not do this Search from the "Family List."

There appears to be no easy way to create a list of these persons from this Search feature.  A user can probably create a "Custom Report" with similar parameters, but I don't know how to do that yet.

There is probably a RootsMagic webinar that shows you how to perform this type of search - check on www.rootsmagic.com/webinars/.  #20 is "Search Techniques in RootsMagic."  I see that there is a Custom Report webinar also - I guess that's next on my list!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/11/exploring-rootsmagic-6-post-6-enhanced.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver


Follow-Up Friday - Helpful and Interesting Reader Comments from the Past Week

This was a pretty good week for comments from readers on Genea-Musings posts - so I'm going to pick and choose the ones to Follow Up on:

1)  On Pruning My Ancestry Member Tree Hints (posted 23 November 2012):

*  Diane B wished:  "Randy, how I wish we could sort the Ancestry.com hints by Record Collection. That would be so helpful to me. In fact, there are several sorting capabilities that I would like - for instance, pulling the hints up, sorted by birth date of the person - that would be great. Another wonderful option would be if we could just eliminate certain Record Collections from the hints entirely. Well, we can dream!"

My comment:  I seem to recall that there is a way to do this by editing the Hint URL to a specific database.  Someone described it back during the Ancestry Death Contest posts.

*  Taco Goulooze said:  "Hi Randy, even though I never add the Ancestry.com indexes as a source, they do let you know there is material out there that could provide more insight. I don't accept them as sources, and the same goes for the user trees, but they do contain a wealth of information; whether it's accurate or not is something to be researched. That brings me to this point: wouldn't it be nice if you could somehow store that information directly in your to-do list, or in some other way connect it to someone in your tree without adding it as a source straight away? In that way, you could create a sort of research aid set of records to go with each individual, family and/or event, and keep that separate from your actual source list. Does that make sense, or is it just the ramblings of someone that wake up too early and needs to go back to bed?"

My comment:  Different strokes for different folks here.  I use indexed databases as sources all the time, noting that they are derivative sources.  Every source has errors, and derivative sources probably have more errors than original sources.  But they are often the only source available that doesn't cost money to obtain.  I only chase original sources for my ancestors, not for  the collateral lines in my database. Of course, if original sources are found for the collaterals, I use them.  I mine the indexes for information on persons in my database.  If someone contacts me about it, then the index provides the means to find the original record.  

To your point about storing the information in a to-do list, did you mean right on Ancestry, or in a software program?  You can type, or copy and paste, the index information right into a To-Do list in your genealogy software.  It makes sense, and I'm sure that some researchers do that.  I do it on occasion, and should do it more often!  

*  Unknown commented:  "You can choose to hide all of the hints from Ancestry member trees, just leaving the hints from record collections or indexes. If I find an index, and don't already have the original record, I add that item in my to do list in my software."

*  Rorey Cathcart noted:  "I've used "Ignore Hint" extensively. It's particularly helpful in those instances where the Member Tree Hints are not actually a match. But I am with Diane B. Some serious upgrades to the hint functionality would be great.

"Taco, I do attach indexes as sources. But I like your suggestion alot. I've found the To-Do and Shoebox features becomes unwieldy over time. And I'm trying to decide how to incorporate them into my new database.

"I'm moving my primary database to RootsMagic from Ancestry. Attaching an index as a source allows me to pull up a list of all references to that source. That way, when I go to the original, I have a list of everyone I'm looking for in that record set. I realize indexes are not quality sources and weight them accordingly in my database, but they are sources until the original record is obtained. For my paying clients, where time is limited, these sources are frequently in the Research Recommendations portion of my reports."


*  Desta Elliott commented:  "The hints feature of ancestry.com are great, but they do demand a lot of work. I wish there was a way to eliminate all the the "family collections" data which are useless, since there isn't any source.  Also, the member family trees are of marginal value.  If I could suppress those two data types, it would make it a lot easier to troll those shaky leaves."

2)  On "How Can We Communicate 'the Right Way?'" (posted 26 November 2012):

*  Tamura Jones offered a great definition for the acronym GRUMBLE:  "You get a beginner's license when you pass the Genealogy Research Undergraduate Master Board Licensing Exam :-)"

*  Tim Forsythe noted:  " Let's not forget that we need to also get the manufacturers of genealogy software, particularly database editors and online tree generators to enforce or at least encourage best practices including the GPS."

*  Celia Lewis said:  "I'd love to see short genealogy articles in the local papers. After all, if they publish daily Astrology, surely they're open to weekly Genealogy tips. Wouldn't you think? Since the ones who might benefit most don't attend conferences, don't join genealogy societies etc.... we have to go out to find them. Love Tamura's GRUMBLE! And, at 70, I'm not about to spend time and money on any more edjimakashun!"

*  Dr. William L. Smith said:  "I really like Celia's suggestion. I've done some newspaper submissions. If each us who write a blog, would compose 5 short, appropriate Genealogy Tips, and send them to 1-5 of our local newspapers (especially weeklies that still exist), we all might be VERY surprised how many of them get published. The key is getting the information where the folks Randy described will see them... not the rest of us that are seeing his posts! ;-)"

My comments:  There are some print newspaper columnists who address genealogy - Sharon Tate Moody in Tampa and Jim Beidler in Pennsylvania come to mind, and then there are all of the digital Examiner columns.  You and I would read these in the print newspaper if they were available, but would the general public?  Only if they're printed on a page read by a lot of people, like the comics or the TV guide.  It's worth a try - I hope someone tries to write columns and submit them to a newspaper to see the reaction.  Another way to reach some of the target audience is to submit articles or columns to local genealogical societies for their newsletters.


*  Unknown asked:  "Have you checked the 1840 census for her parents? I know it won't mention her by name, but, if you know the other children, you may be able to narrow the dates. I would also definitely check for other children. That is a very large gap. In my own family, I have stumbled on children that were stillborn or died very young that were never mentioned in family records."

My response:  I have, and did not find either Thomas J. Newton or Sophia Newton.  I should have noted that in my post.  I'm in the process of looking for other Hildreth children - it was a fairly popular name in the 1800s.

*  Rorey Cathcart offered:  "Your conclusion on the birth year seems sound to me based on the evidence you have.  Given your conclusion of Sophia born in Vermont, you may want to focus on narrowing down when/why her family was in VT. In your event lists for her parents, locations favor MA heavily with no other evidence for VT. I think this conclusion needs more support.

"As an aside, are you not using the 'Quality' feature in RootsMagic? I'm curious that you editorialized the info here in your post but it is not reflected in your sources at your my.rootsmagic database. I ask because I'm in the midst of deciding to use them in my database or not. "


My response:  Sophia Newton's father was born in Maine according to all reports (except one census IIRC), but the Newton family was from the Southborough, Massachusetts area.  Her mother was born in Sterling, Massachusetts.  I didn't mention that the mother was widowed, and had two young children before she married Thomas J. Newton.  So we have a guy probably visiting family in Massachusetts, or looking for work, meeting and marrying a widow, and then they have two children.  I didn't mention the other child, a son Thomas J. Newton born before Sophia Newton.  His records say he was born in Cambridge, Vermont also.   I have searched through Cambridge town records and Lamoille County land and probate records for them and found nothing.

After I wrote the post, I noted that my Quality ratings were sadly lacking, so I spent some time adding them for my ancestral families.  Thanks for the reminder!  It worked.

*  Ida Skarson McCormick said:  "Have you checked the church records?"

My response:  No, I haven't.  It's a great suggestion.  Thank you.  Cambridge, Vermont, Sterling, Massachusetts  and Southborough, Massachusetts should be my first targets.  I will check the FamilySearch Library Catalog first.

*  Lisa Suzanne Gorrell offered:  "Have you looked at the siblings of Sophia Newton? You might find evidence of birth location based on where & when they were born?  Are there no town records to search?"

My response:  I have found marriage and death records for Sophia Newton's brother, Thomas J. Newton, and they indicate Cambridge, Vermont as his birthplace in 1832.  

There are town records for the towns - the Massachusetts town records just became available on both Ancestry and FamilySearch.  Ancestry has only the vital records and are indexed, while FamilySearch has more than vital records and are not indexed.  The latter is a fairly hard slog, and is an ongoing project.  I have looked through Cambridge, Vermont town records on microfilm and found nothing that pertains to this family.

4)  In "First Look at Newspapers.com Subscription Site" (posted 29 November 2012):

*  Michael W. McCormick said:  "I just noticed that the address of newspapers.com is the same as the address of Fold3 in Lindon, UT. As a side note, Fold3.com only currently has 9 newspaper collections. They are kind of obscure because of the military focus. Newspapers on Ancestry.com have been hard to search compared to their other historical records. Even though we already have the 6,400+ paper GenealogyBank I am happy to see Ancestry.com is working to make newspapers a more user friendly source. Based on their genius city directory search feature released this year, I hope their new focus on newspapers will set a new bar for user experience--although content is low so far."

*  Sharon noted:  "I was really excited to see a new newspaper source. When I checked the actual newspapers for the states I really need (New Jersey and Tennessee for example), they are the same very limited number of papers everybody else seems to have for those states. Too bad. But I'll keep my eye on it."

My comment:  We need someone to do a comparison of the different sites as far as duplication goes.  My first reaction to the list was that the Ancestry collections might be the Small Town Newspapers collection (which was removed from Fold3 in the last year) plus other newspaper content (especially content that is free, like The New York Times).  Time will tell.  With only 10 to 15% of the number of newspapers and page count that the competition has, Newspapers.com has a long way to go.  

Thank you to all of my readers for their helpful and interesting comments.  


Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Thursday, November 29, 2012

First Look at Newspapers.com Subscription Site

After receiving the press release for the Ancestry.com announcement of the www.Newspapers.com subscription website, I signed up for the 7-day free trial.

1)  Here is the home page:


There are links at the top of the page for Home, Search, Browse, Papers and Clippings.

2)  I wondered how many newspapers, and from which states, there were in the collection, so I clicked on the "Papers" link:


There are currently 819 newspapers in the collection.  The small map on the left of the screen above shows coverage, with bright red in Texas apparently the most.  I clicked on California on the map and saw:


The list of California newspapers is in three columns on the screen above.

3)  I clicked on New York state on the map, and on that page, I entered "seaver" in the search field at the top of the page.  I also clicked on the "Show advanced" button and added a date range to the "Year Range" search field (trying to avoid pitcher Tom Seaver!).  I could have added a specific location name in the "Place" field:


4)  I clicked on the first search result on the list - an article from the New York Times in 1997:


5)  The small "What are you looking for" popup window notes how many matches to the search terms are in this particular newspaper page.  There are seven, and I clicked through to number 3 of 7.


Up at the top of the page, the newspaper name, issue date and page number are listed, and there are links for Find, Clip, Print/Save and Share.  I can Print all or part of the page, or Save all or part of the page to a file on my computer.

6)  I clicked on the "Clip" link and was able to draw a rectangle around the particular clipping of interest.  The Clipping popup window lets me annotate this clipping.  When I click on the blue "Clip" button, the clipping is saved within my account.  I can see it by clicking on the blue "See the clipping" button::


The clipping was added to the "Clipped by" listing on the right column.  It appears that each clipping has its own URL - the URL for the one above is http://www.newspapers.com/clip/220/.

I can Share the clipping on Facebook, Tweet on Twitter, or Pin on Pinterest using the social media icons on the title line of the clipping.  I can right-click on the clipping and copy the clipping, or save the clipping to a file on my computer.

This looks like a pretty good excellent Search, Clip and Save process.

My concern is that the holdings in this site are very limited at present.  There are 819 newspapers, with over 25 million pages digitized in the collection.  In the grand scheme of things, this is a really small collection.  GenealogyBank advertises over 6,400 newspapers with over 1.3 billion records.  NewspaperARCHIVE (which Ancestry.com includes within their historical records collection) has over 5,000 newspaper titles and 120 million newspaper pages.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/11/first-look-at-newspapercom-subscription.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Ancestry.com Announces New Newspapers.com Subscription Website

Ancestry.com sent this press release about their new Newspapers.com subscription website:

------------------------------------


ANCESTRY.COM LAUNCHES NEW WEB SITE NEWSPAPERS.COM
Online Newspaper Web Site Offers a High-Quality Collection of Digitized and Completely Searchable U.S. Newspapers Dating Back Centuries

(PROVO, Utah) – November 29, 2012Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM), the world’s largest online family history resource, today announced the launch of Newspapers.com, a powerful and affordable new web site designed to offer a historically rich collection of more than 800 U.S. newspapers dating from the late 1700s into the early 2000s. 

Comprising more than 25 million pages, Newspapers.com offers a trove of historical and present-day newspapers ranging from the New York Times to treasured small town and local newspapers throughout the United States.

Interested users will find centuries of amazing news articles and photos now captured online when browsing hundreds of years of breaking news headlines, searching for information about an ancestor or reading how the media addressed moments in history like the day Charles A. Lindbergh flew over the Atlantic, the opening of Disneyland or news from the fronts during World War I and World War II.

“We’re extremely excited about the launch of Newspapers.com because it offers historical value for people of all ages and areas of interest,” said Brian Hansen, General Manager of Newspapers.com. “Searching newspapers is like searching the Facebook footprint of the past. Not only can you find information on births, marriages and deaths, but you can also get a glimpse into what life was like during a specific era. We hope our users have fun making their own discoveries in this great newspaper collection that will continue to grow over time.”

The search capabilities on Newspapers.com are specifically designed for newspapers enabling users to easily search by keywords, location, time period and newspaper name. From the 1784 Newport Mercury newspaper to a 2009 edition of The Gettysburg Times, users may find old advertisements or job listings, laugh at comics, retrieve family history clues or learn about famous events through the eyes and words of the time period.

The user experience is also enhanced by an image viewer that serves up crisp, high-quality images of the newspapers. Once discovered, newspaper images can easily be clipped, saved and shared via social outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. 

Within this growing newspaper collection are a myriad photos and stories that provide unique perspective on history. Examples include:

·        Abraham Lincoln – Abraham Lincoln’s death is noted as “Our Great Loss” in the April 16, 1865 edition of the New York Times

·        Interesting People – The first baby picture of John Jacob Astor VI, whose father perished on the Titanic, is posted among other photos including one of Andrew Carnegie in the 1914 New York Times section labeled “Interesting People Seen Through the Camera’s Eye”

·        Price Changes – See how costs have changed over time, for example the New York Times cost one cent back in 1852, a paper that today costs $2.50 for its weekday edition

·        Marilyn Monroe – A Parade article featuring an exclusive interview with Marilyn Monroe in 1952 talked about how the famous actress saw herself

·        Man on the Moon – In 1969, the first U.S. astronaut on the moon as highlighted in the Iowa Estherville Daily News

·        St. Valentine’s Day Massacre – The day after the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, articles all across America followed the story including The Daily Independent
In addition to the historical view this newspaper collection provides, it also peers into the pop culture of American history. Learn about Lita Grey’s marriage to Charlie Chaplin on November 24, 1924 in the Ohio Zanesville Times Signal. Skim vintage advertisements, such as those by Sears, offering customers the opportunity to trade in old tires for a credit toward new ones in a 1952 advertisement in the Arizona Sun Times. Read your favorite comic strip from years ago, like Peanuts, Hi and Lois and even a 1947 Lil’ Abner comic strip where Daisy Mae laments not being a comic strip character.

Newspapers.com provides an affordable glimpse into the past with a yearly subscription rate of $79.95 for subscribers and $39.95 for Ancestry.com or Fold3.com members. Newspapers.com also offers a 7-day free trial that can be activated at www.newspapers.com.

About Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with approximately 2 million paying subscribers. More than 11 billion records have been added to the site in the past 16 years. Ancestry users have created more than 41 million family trees containing more than 4 billion profiles. In addition to its flagship site, Ancestry.com offers several localized Web sites designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.


Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements include the benefits we expect subscribers to obtain from the Newspapers.com collection and our ability to grow the collection. Risks and uncertainties include our inability to attract subscribers; our ability to satisfy customer’s expectations as to the content of the collection, now and in the future; and our ability to make the products and services easy to use. Information concerning additional factors that could cause results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements is contained under the caption "Risk Factors" in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2012, and in discussions in other of our SEC filings. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date and we assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

------------------------------------

On the site, I saw no way to indicate the $39.95 for Ancestry.com or Fold3.com subscribers.  Perhaps I missed it, or I have to call the phone number.  

I signed up for the 7-day free trial so I can poke around in it.

More Information about Geni.com Changes

In Dear Randy: Geni.com is now (Not All!) Free! (posted 28 November 2012), I did not correctly interpret the selective information in their press release and email...and I updated my post (several times) to say:

"What is really FREE and not FREE on Geni.com is not easy to define. There are times when it wants me to pay for something.  I can upgrade from a Geni Basic account (free) to a Pro Account for $7.95/month (for two years) to be able to have instant tree matches, search profiles, upload unlimited media, premium support, and add unlimited relatives. "

I showed this graphic from my Geni.com account:



I received a comment on the post today from Noah Tutak, CEO of Geni.com:

"Hi Randy - thanks for covering our exciting news! I'm sorry that there was some confusion about the announcement and I'd like to set the record straight.

"Here's what we did – we took a number of features that used to require a paid subscription (merging profiles, adding unlimited profiles, extended relationship paths, family tree charts, hiding ads) and made them free for all users. We think this is a pretty significant step that has great benefits for all of our users, including our paid subscribers, and for the World Family Tree.

"Geni remains a "freemium" service, which means that the basic version of Geni is free and members can choose to upgrade to a paid subscription if they find value in the additional features. There is just more "free" in the "freemium" now :-).

"Everyone here at Geni is really excited and the response so far from our user community has been fantastic. Thanks again for the post and please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions."


I appreciate Noah responding to my post complaining about "it's not all free."  Those new "free" features are useful, but there are still significant limitations for Basic account (free) users like me.

I do not have a paid account for Geni.com at present because I found it was too difficult to add persons to the database without a GEDCOM upload or a synchronization program (and I know that AncestorSync offers one, but it's still in Beta, I think).  Therefore, the 2,000 persons that I uploaded some time ago when Geni.com had a GEDCOM upload are still there, but I cannot easily add content to the site whether I'm a subscriber or not.  I can add persons one name and one fact at a time, but this is not time efficient for me.  In addition, the searches I did in the database earlier, when Geni.com provided a free Pro account for me, did not reveal anything "new" for me.  I did like poking around in the World Family Tree.

Without a Pro account, I cannot:

*  Tree Matches: achieve faster tree growth with instant tree matches while you browse

*  Enhanced Search: search over 100 million profiles to find possible relatives

*  Unlimited media:  Upload unlimited, photos, videos and documents

*  Premium Support:  Communicate directly with our expert support staff

*  Family Tree: add unlimited relatives

Apparently, I cannot access the World Family Tree without a paid account.

Those are, of course, what many people come to an online family tree to pursue - who also has my ancestors and do they have information that might add to my family tree.


Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Treasure Chest Thursday - 1870 U.S. Agricultural Census Record for Henry Carringer in Iowa

It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the 1870 United States Agricultural Census record for Henry Carringer, my 3rd great-grandfather, in Columbus City, Louisa County, Iowa:

There are two pages for these records, and they are on two different images on Ancestry.com.  Here are the two images:



Henry Carringer is in Line 34 on the first image on the right-hand page, and his agricultural information carries over on Line 34 the left-hand page on the second image.

Here are the headings and Henry's information (Line 34) on the first page:



The headings and Henry's information (Line 34) on the second page are:




The information on the first page is (by column number):

1.  Name:  Henry Carringer
2.  Acres of land - Improved: 40
3.  Acres of land - Unimproved - Woodland: 10
4.  Acres of land - Unimproved -  Other: 0
5.  Present cash value - Of farm ($): 2000
6.  Present cash value - Of farming implements and machinery ($): 200
7.  Total amount of wages paid during the year, including board ($): 0
8.  Live stock, June 1, 1870 - Horses: 3
9.  Live stock, June 1, 1870 -  Mules and Asses: 0
10.  Live stock, June 1, 1870 - Milch cows: 4
11.  Live stock, June 1, 1870 - Working Oxen: 0 
12.  Live stock, June 1, 1870 - Other Cattle:  1
13.  Live stock, June 1, 1870 - Sheep:  9
14.  Live stock, June 1, 1870 - Swine:  8
15.  Live stock, June 1, 1870 - Value of all live stock ($):  607
16.  Produce during the year - Wheat, Spring (bush):  160
17.  Produce during the year - Wheat, Winter (bush): 0
18.  Produce during the year - Rye (bush): 0 
19.  Produce during the year - Indian corn (bush): 150
20.  Produce during the year - Oats (bush): 110
21.  Produce during the year - Barley (bush): 0
22.  Produce during the year - Buckwheat (bush): 0
23. Produce during the year - Rice (bush): 0
24.  Produce during the year - Tobacco (bush): 0

And on the second sheet:

25.  Produce during the year - Cotton (bales): 0
26.  Produce during the year - Wool (lbs):  35
27.  Produce during the year - Peas & Beans (bush):  0
28.  Produce during the year - Potatoes - Irish (bush):  20
29.  Produce during the year - Potatoes - Sweet (bush):  0
30.  Produce during the year - Orchard products ($):  20
31.  Produce during the year - Wine (gallons):  0 
32.  Produce during the year - Produce of market gardens ($):  0
33.  Produce during the year - Dairy products - Butter (lbs):  400
34.  Produce during the year - Dairy products - Cheese (lbs):  0
35.  Produce during the year - Dairy products - Milk sold ($):  0 
36.  Produce during the year - Hay (Tons):  7
37.  Produce during the year - Seed - Clover (Bush):  0
38.  Produce during the year - Seed - Grass (Bush):  0
39.  Produce during the year - Hops (Lbs):  0
40.  Produce during the year - Hemp (Tons):  0
41.  Produce during the year - Flax (Lbs):  0
42.  Produce during the year - Flax seed (Bush):  0
43.  Produce during the year - Silk cocoons (lbs):  0
44.  Produce during the year - Sugar - Maple (Lbs):  0
45.  Produce during the year - Sugar - Cane (1000 Lbs):  0
46.  Produce during the year - Molasses (Gallons):  0
47.  Produce during the year - Bees - Wax (Lbs):  0
48.  Produce during the year - Bees - Honey (Lbs):  170
49.  Produce during the year - Forest products ($):  0
50.  Produce during the year - Value of home manufacture ($):  0 
51.  Produce during the year - Value of animals slaughtered or sold for slaughter ($):  247
52.  Total value - Estimated value of all farm production ($):  670

From this, we can see that Henry Carringer's 40 acre farm produced 160 bushels of spring wheat, 150 bushels of Indian corn, 110 bushels of oats, 20 bushels of Irish potatoes, $20 worth of orchard products, 400 pounds of butter, 7 tons of hay, 170 pounds of bee honey, and $247 worth of animals slaughtered, with a total farm production of $670 in the year ending June 1, 1870.  Presumably, the rest of the farm production was used on the farm itself or traded for other commodities with other producers.  It appears that he had no hired workers during this year.

Isn't that a great record?  It;s a snapshot of the possessions and livelihood of one man and his family for one year.  

Don't we all wish we had information like this for all of our ancestors?  I need to look for more Agricultural Census records for my farmer ancestors in the Midwest.


Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Exploring RootsMagic 6- Post 5: the Find Everywhere Feature

In Exploring RootsMagic 6 - Post 1, I covered the new features included in RootsMagic 6 genealogy software.

One of the features is the "Find Everywhere" search feature.  The short description is:

Find Everywhere -- Find every record containing text you enter; Find people, families, events, notes, sources, places, to-do items, research logs, media items, and more; Edit any found record directly from the results screen

Here is the process I used to find all of the information in my RootsMagic database about a specific place:

1)  In any RootsMagic View screen, click on the "Search" menu item and select the "Find Everywhere" link:



2)  The "Find Everywhere" window opened, and I entered "Killingly" into the first search field:


Note that I could have entered up to 6 search terms in the fields available, and could have chosen "And" or "Or" as the search operation for the 2nd through 6th terms.  The search terms can be names of persons, place names, source names, etc.  If you want only a capitalized word (e.g., a name that also has a common definition), be sure to check the "Match case" box.

3)  I clicked on the "OK" button and saw:



The list starts out with a list of People whose name or Note contains the search term.

Further down the list is more categories - for Families, Places, Sources, Multimedia, etc.


One of the features of this search is that everything in blue is clickable - I can go to the Edit Person window for the person by clicking on the "edit" link next to his name.  I can also click on anything in blue on the screen above - the Note, the Citation detail, the Footnote, the Caption, etc. 

What might I do with this report?  I could use it to find all instances of a specific source which mention a name or a place (e.g., an author name and a place name).  Or all instances for a specific place name (like above) to see which events are not sourced.  Or misspellings of a surname (by using all six fields).

I like the report - how can I save it or print it out?  The report above was 17 pages, and my preference is to Save it to my computer so that I can refer to it.  There is no Print or Save button on the Results page above.  There is no "Find Everywhere" Report on the Reports > Lists > All Reports menu.  There should be!  I hope that they add this Report to the list soon.

I right-clicked on the Results window in my Chrome browser, and had the option to Print the file, or Add it to Evernote 4.0.  I can print it as formatted from Evernote 4.0.  In the Print screen, I can Print it to a file, but my system only permitted a .pm file...which I cannot open with Notepad or anything else I know of.  I could highlight all of the text, hit Ctrl-C to copy and then Paste it into a document.

What uses have you found for this "Find Everywhere" report?  

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/11/exploring-rootsmagic-6-post-5-find.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver