Rabbit Holes With Randy -- Sketches for Relatives in my Family Tree

 This may be a really deep rabbit hole.  

1)  I have written, and continue to write, genealogical sketches for most of my ancestors back through the 7th great-grandparent generation in the 52 Ancestors Biographies series.  I write those sketches using the "Individual Summary" report in RootsMagic (now Version 9).  The 52 Ancestors sketches include the name(s), parents, events, spouses, children, notes and sources I have for the particular ancestor.  The Sketch Notes and Sources then are added to the Person Notes in the RootsMagic profile for the ancestor.  Each Sketch takes from 2 to 8 hours to prepare, first in RootsMagic getting the event information written (name used, dates, places, facts, details, etc.), the sources tagged to the events, the "Individual Summary" written, and then copied and edited in the 52 Ancestors post sketch.  

2)  I've just started sorting out how I want to write Stories or Sketches for my relatives in my family tree - after all, they are my relatives and worthy of having a sketch or story written up (since no one else in the family seems to be interested!).  I could do the same 52 Ancestors style Sketches for my relatives (siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) for several generations back (I'm thinking back through 2nd great-grandparents but that would be about 150 more sketches).  So I've been experimenting with how much and what information to include in these Relative Sketches (or Stories).

3)  My geneablogging colleague Marian Burk Wood has been writing short sketches ("Bite-Sized Bios") about her relatives - see a discussion about them in Bite-Sized Ancestor Bios: Ideas from #GenChat.  That really lays out the issues very well.

4)  I've been considering short "just the basic facts" sketches about my relatives.  They would include name, parents, children, spouses, birth, baptism, marriages, death, burial, and at least one unique event (e.g., education, occupation, religion, military, immigration, probate, land, memories) - and creating a stand-alone sketch, probably without source citations.

I've also been considering longer "all of the facts" sketches - using all of the events in my RootsMagic family tree.  That would include all of the facts (e.g., birth, baptism, marriages, deaths, burial, dates, places, education, occupation, residences, religion, military, immigration, probate, land, etc.), perhaps with transcribed information.  I could create a narrative report for the person, and then copy, paste and edit the report and create a stand-alone sketch with source citations.  

In RootsMagic 9, or another genealogy software program, I can use the Narrative Report" for the person to create a one-generation descendants report to use in either the "Short Sketch" or "Long Sketch" - I just need to edit prudently!

5)  Here's an example of both sketches for one person in my family tree:

a)  I selected my aunt Marion Frances (Seaver) (Braithwaite) Hemphill (1901-2000) as my test sketch.  Her Person Page in RootsMagic 9 looks like this:

There are a number of events, names, dates, places, and check marks for Notes, Sources and Media on the Fact (Event) List.  

b)  On the RootsMagic "Publish" menu, I can select "Narrative Report" and the program will use the embedded "Artificial Intelligence" magic (we've had it since the 1990s in genealogical software!) to create the report in seconds:

This is the "Narrative Report" with the option to put all Facts in one paragraph.  Another option is to put each of them in a separate paragraph to make it easier to read, but longer in page count.  There were five pages including sources and an index.  There were 42 source citations for the four persons in this report.

I can save this report to a Text or PDF file on my computer.  I want to use Text because I need to edit whatever I end up with.  I could use Notepad or my word processor on my computer.

c)  Here is an image of the top of the text file in Notepad on my computer (the text lines are up to 255 characters).

d)  I can then copy this text file (including the sources, but editing out the preparer) from Notepad to the Person Note in RootsMagic, and edit it as needed:

As you can see, I chose to separate the Facts into paragraphs for each one.  That makes it longer but easier to read, and doesn't increase the size of the RootsMagic file very much.  Now I have a Note about all of her Facts.  If I add a Fact in the future, or find a new source, I will need to edit the Note and whatever Sketch I publish on my blog or in an online family tree.

e)  I can then copy/paste information from the text file to create my "Short Sketch" in my word processor, edit the sketch, add a title, and proofread it.  I chose to save it as an RTF file, and I can then create a PDF in the word processor and save it to my computer. Here is the "Short Sketch" PDF:

I had to edit the copied text a bit but it provides the basic Facts I wanted in the "Short Sketch."  Note that I took out the Source citation numbers.

f)  I can also copy/paste information from the text file to create my "Long Sketch" in my word processor, edit the sketch, add a title, and proofread it.  I can then create a PDF in the word processor and save it to my computer.  Here is the first page of the "Long Sketch" PDF:

This is a four-page PDF.  Note that it has the source citation numbers (I probably should put them in brackets - I don't want to mess with superscripts).  It has all of the information from the Short Sketch but has the other Events that are in my RootsMagic Person profile.  Here is the start of the Source Citations on the second page:

The source citation list in Notepad lost the italics when I created the Text file.  I could  italicize the needed text before I make the PDF file.  However, I will probably skip using Notepad and copy the sketch text to my word processor and save it as an RTF file so that I keep the italics, and any hypertext links would be highlighted as shown above.

6)  So now I have to decide which Sketch to use - "Long" or "Short."

a)  A "Long Sketch" would include all of the Facts and have source citations but would be four pages long in this case.  This is definitely not bite-sized!!  But for a blog post, or a Memory attached to a profile on my Ancestry Member Tree and/or to a profile on the FamilySearch Family Tree, or a FSFT Life Sketch, it would provide significant information to a person interested in reading it.  I could include one or more photographs of the person.

b)  A "Short Sketch" would include only the basic Facts without source citations, and would usually be less than one page long (unless they have a large number of Facts and/or children).  It might be appropriate for a Find A Grave memorial, a WikiTree and/or Geni profile, as well as an Ancestry Member Tree Memory, and/or a FamilySearch Family Tree Memory or Life Sketch. I could include one photograph of the person. 

c)  Other desktop genealogy software - including Family Tree Maker 2019 and Legacy Family Tree 9, may do a better job of creating the Narrative Report (the AI part of the task above).  I need to evaluate them.

7)  What do my readers think?  Is the "Long Sketch" too long?  Should I add source citations to the "Short Sketch" (which would require renumbering the sources - another edit job)?  Where is the "sweet spot" for family sketches?  

What have you done to write sketches for your ancestors and/or relatives?  

I really need more carrots for this hole - it's a big task.

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