Geni.com - Everyone's Related?

I went to the Computer Genealogy Society of San Diego meeting today at UCSD and heard Keith McCarty speak about using Geni.com. He demonstrated the bells and whistles of the web site and fielded many questions from seasoned genealogists skeptical of the genealogical capabilities of http://www.geni.com/.



The "About Us" page at the web site says:

"Geni is a tool for understanding and staying in touch with your family.

"Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. You can expand your tree by adding relatives' email addresses. They will be invited to join your tree and can add other relatives. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives.

"Each family member has a profile which can be viewed by clicking their name in the tree. This helps family members learn more about each other and stay in touch. Family members can also share photos and work together to build profiles for common ancestors.

"Geni is private. Only the people in your family tree can log in to your tree and your profile. Geni will not share your personal information with third parties.

"We will not sell your email address or spam you. Users control which communications they would like to receive from us.

"Geni was founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe. It is backed by venture capital firms Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures.

"If you have any further questions, please contact us."

Keith took the group through most of the features of Geni.com in his enthusiastic presentation, using his own Geni.com web site as an example. He demonstrated the use of Geni to upload and share genealogy information, while providing a collaborative social networking site for families to share their photos, stories, videos, family news, birthday and anniversary greetings, etc.

I think that Keith's mission statement says it all - "His mission is aligned with Geni, which is to create a single family tree for the entire world. He also strives to introduce non-genealogists into the wonderful world of genealogy, through a fun and interactive environment."

To me, the benefits of Geni.com include:

* An easy-to-use online family tree that facilitates collaboration between family members, especially younger people who live in the online and digital world.
* The ability to search for specific surnames in public member trees.
* The advanced privacy options available to keep information within a family group.
* The ability to upload a GEDCOM file - up to 15,000 persons.

The drawbacks to Geni.com for genealogy researchers and/or family members include:

* Many trees are private and can be accessed only by invited family members.
* Requires the invited family members to be online, and to be able to upload text, photos, videos, news items, etc.
* The genealogy information requested and provided is not professional quality - this is not genealogy software capable of creating books or reports.

The last point was the one most questioned by the audience of about 55 computer genealogists. The problems with Geni.com as a genealogy tool include:

* Many trees are input with the married name of the wife of persons, rather than the maiden name.
* Dates are input and displayed as MM-DD-YEAR rather than DD-MM-YEAR.
* Sources must be put in the discussion fields as text.

The real benefits of using Geni.com are to connect with living relatives and to ask/persuade them to add information (names, dates, places, photos, stories, news, etc.) to the family tree. This is vitally important for all genealogy researchers.

While the emphasis on Geni.com is currently on the Family Networking side, the Genealogy Research side is where the potential development may occur as families connect deeper into their ancestral past. It is likely that families that share distant relatives will find each other, and merge trees together. It is probably that, in these cases, interest in genealogy research will deepen. All of that is good news for dedicated genealogy researchers.

Keith mentioned that Geni.com will have a premium service in a few months, and the company will probably jump into the business of creating family tree charts, coffee table books, and other products. He said they were investigating partnering with Ancestry, FamilySearch and other genealogy information providers to permit searching for ancestral information.

It seems to me that http://www.geni.com/ is a very useful tool for putting more families into the larger Genealogy Web, especially young family members who are online and digital savvy.

The Severed Arm and Hand Mystery

After the press release from Colleen Fitzpatrick that I posted yesterday, I went looking for news articles about the Severed Hand mystery. I found these:

The Anchorage Daily News - The mystery of flight 4422 by George Bryson

The Washington Post - 9 Years later, a fatal mystery solved by Frank Ruane

The Fort Mill (SC) Times - Forensic experts identify mummified remains

The Fairbanks (AK) Daily News-Miner - Mummified remains found in wreckage of 1948 plane crash identified

WDBJ7 (Roanoke VA) - Local investigators link remains found in Alaska crash to roanoke man

That's all that Google News found. There are probably others. The Anchorage Daily News story leads:

"It's said that dead men tell no tales. But a severed arm and hand that emerged from a Wrangell Mountain glacier nine years ago just might -- with the help of two pilots, several forensic and genetic scientists and a raft of state and federal officials.

"Their combined efforts, detailed at an Anchorage press conference Friday, have determined that the human remains belong to one of the passengers on board a DC-4 airliner that slammed into the side of Mount Sanford 60 years ago last spring.

"More specifically, they belong to Francis Joseph Van Zandt, a 36-year-old merchant marine from Roanoke, Va., who perished in the crash with 23 other sailors and all six crew members on a flight from China to New York via Anchorage on March 12, 1948."

There is not much mention of the genealogists who worked on the project to find living relatives for DNA matches. The last two pages of the Anchorage Daily News article say:

"That allowed the geneticists to confirm the conclusion by comparing their DNA samples with DNA from relatives of Van Zandt. The genealogists found two potential male relatives -- one living in New York, the other in Limerick, Ireland. Both DNA comparisons matched.

"Joining the teleconference from afar, Maurice Conway, the Irish relative -- having been granted legal custody of the hand and arm of his "second cousin twice removed" -- said he was passing those rights on to the U.S. to advance scientific research."

I hope that Colleen will provide more information as time goes on detailing the search process details.

CVGS "Discover Your Family History" Seminar on 18 October

To celebrate October as Family History Month, the Chula Vista Genealogical Society and the Chula Vista Public Library will present an all-day fall seminar:

DISCOVER YOUR FAMILY HISTORY

Saturday, October 18, 2008, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library Auditorium
(365 F Street, Chula Vista CA 91910)

FREE for all interested persons to attend.

GUEST SPEAKER: Jean Wilcox Hibben, MA, CG.

* Clue to Clue: Tracking a Family over Time and Miles -- Using various clues, you can piece together the life of an ancestral family.

* John Adam Hollaender: Survivor -- A Civil War soldier’s life story told in the first person by his wife, Caroline Maria Trapschuh.

* Bringing your Civil War Ancestor Back to Life: Songs & Stories of the War of the Rebellion -- Using music and stories to understand the events on the battlefield and the home-front.

Jean Wilcox Hibben, MA, CG, obtained her bachelors and masters degrees in Speech Communication and worked as a professor in the field for 13 years before leaving academia to pursue her passions: folklore and family history. She is currently working on her doctorate in Folklore.

A national speaker, Jean began giving presentations to the genealogical community in 2003 and has been doing public speaking for over 30 years. She also volunteers at the Corona CA Family History Center and trains Family History consultants.For information on past and future programs, comments about Jean’s work, ordering CDs, listings of her various topics, and more, see her website: http://www.circlemending.org/.

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

There will be a light lunch available at 12 noon – “make-your-own sandwiches” veggies, fruit, cookies, water, etc. We ask that people take their food into the nearby park to eat. A donation for the food will be appreciated.

RESERVATIONS REQUESTED: Please contact Virginia at 619-425-7922 or irishdoll@cox.net so that CVGS can plan refreshments and handout requirements.

Visit the Chula Vista Genealogical Society web site (http://www.rootsweb.com/~cacvgs2) or the Society blog (http://cvgencafe.blogspot.com/) or contact Randy Seaver (619-422-3397, rjseaver@cox.net) for more information.

I'm published in a genealogy periodical

I picked up the Summer 2008 (Volume 45, No. 3) issue of The Searcher at the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in June. I put the bag with all of the handouts and papers and periodicals that I obtained at the Jamboree in the corner to review it at my leisure.

Almost two months later, I found the bag of stuff (I was looking for the Legacy 7.0 CDROM, actually) and found The Searcher issue. I looked at the Table of Contents on the front cover, and noticed an interesting article there titled Online Family History Research Tutorial. "Hmm," I said to myself, "that looks like something to read."

I opened it up (pages 146-147) and immediately noticed that the author was Randall J. Seaver and the article was taken from my blog post The LearnWebSkills Family History Tutorial (but edited some by myself).

I remembered then that Paula Hinkel of SCGS had asked if they could reprint my blog post and I readily agreed. Frankly, I had forgotten that I had submitted this for publication. Hopefully, some readers of The Searcher found Genea-Musings as a result of the article.

My point of this post isn't to brag about being published in The Searcher, although that is important to me, but to point out to genea-bloggers and readers that print publications can be a way to garner new blog readers.

Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 17: Relationship Reports

I installed FamilyTreeMaker 2008 in early July and uploaded a large database to see how it worked. I also started a new database to test other program features. Please see the list at the bottom of this post for the earlier posts.

In this post, I want to display some pages from the Relationship Reports generated by FamilyTreeMaker 2008.

I'm using my 4th-great-grandfather, Benjamin Seaver (1757-1816), in my database as a starting point for these reports.

When you click on the [Publish] icon on the top menu, you see a list of the different Charts and Reports that can be generated in the left-hand panel. I clicked on "Relationship Reports" and got this screen:



There are five reports in this suite:

1) Family Group Sheet -- the FGS is a detailed report about a single nuclear family) two parents and their children) with names, dates, places, etc. A picture of the individuals in the family can be included.

For Benjamin Seaver, the FGS is eight pages long. The user can add any Fact in the Items to Include list to this chart. If you request Notes, you receive notes for all persons in the family. The first two pages are shown below:

The last page is shown below, and it has Sources below the Notes:

2) Kinship Report -- this report shows how individuals in the tree are related to a specific person.

The default option is for relationships to all persons in the tree (specifically, all persons related to the specific person - ancestral and descendants families). One of the pages of this report is shown below:

There are 55 pages to this report for Benjamin Seaver's relationships. The user can specify Immediate Family or Selected Individuals also. The user cannot add any Facts to this report.

3) Marriage Report -- names of husbands and wives, the date and place of their marriage, and the marriage status. I selected Immediate Family and received this screen:

The user can specify All Individuals or Selected Individuals also. Be careful here - when I selected All Individuals I got a 213 page report of all marriages in my database. The user cannot add any Facts to this report.

4) The Parentage Report -- displays each individual with the names of his or her parents, and the parents relationship to the child (e.g., natural, adopted, foster). I seelcted Immediate Family and received a two page report. The first screen looks like this:

The user can specify All Individuals or Selected Individuals also. Be careful here - when I selected All Individuals I got a 782 page report of all (over 20,000) individuals in my database. The user cannot add any Facts to this report.

5) Outline Descendant Report -- this report shows where everyone fits in the family. Starting with a relative in the past, it shows all descendants (and their spouses) of that person in outline format, indenting each generation.

The first page of the seven page report for Descendants of Benjamin Seaver is shown below:

The user can use the Items to Include button to add Facts to the report. The report can be formatted similar to the Genealogy Reports.

These reports are fairly standard, and FTM 2008 does them satisfactorily, with sufficient Fact inclusion and formatting capabilities.

Creating the Kinship, Marriage and Parentage reports for all individuals in the database can take a long time if there are a lot of persons in the database. I'm not sure that these "all individual" reports are useful to a researcher. I wouldn't print out a 782 page parentage report. I might print out a Kinship report for myself with specified individuals. for instance, I asked for a Kinship report for myself to All Individuals in my database - it was 419 pages. I requested a Kinship Report for Selected Individuals - only descendants of Thomas Richmond (1848-1917, my great-grandfather) - and the report was a manageable 5 pages with 161 individuals, which includes all of the known cousins on my father's side of the family.

Previous posts in this series:

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 1: Loading. Installing the program and uploading an existing database file.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 2: Exploring. Looking around the uploaded database file to see what the different views look like.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 3: The Menus. Most of the menus were itemized and described.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 4: Starting a New Tree. I started a new tree and added some people demonstrating the program options to do this.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 5: Adding a Source. I added sources to the Facts that I previously entered.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 6: Adding Children to a Family. I added children to a family.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 7: The Person Menu. I described the items in the Person menu and attached a spouse to a person.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 8: Finding a Person in the database. I described three ways to Find a person.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 9: Places I. I explored the vagaries of the Places icon.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 10: Places II. The different map types are discussed and displayed.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 11: Places III. The method to Resolve many places with standardized place names is explored.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 12: Charts I. Introduction to Charts and examples of pedigree and descendants charts.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 13: Charts II. Examples of Hourglass, Relationships and Vertical Pedigree Charts.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 14: Charts III. Examples of large wall charts created by FTM 2008.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 15: Genealogy Reports. Description and display of Register (descendant) and Ahnentafel (ancestor) Reports.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 16: Person Reports. Description and display of 5 different reports, including Individual Reports and Custom Reports.

The next post will cover the Places Reports available in the [Publish] menu.

Forensic Techniques used to identify hand from 1948 plane crash

Colleen Fitzpatrick sent this press release to me late last night:

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

Cutting edge forensic techniques identify hand from 1948 plane crash

Researchers and scientists using specifically-developed forensic science techniques have finally identified an arm and hand found buried in an Alaskan glacier 60 years ago. It took nine years of cutting edge DNA and fingerprint research and genealogical studies to identify the remains of a Roanoke, Va., native. The 1948 plane crash killed all of its passengers – Merchant Marines returning from China. In 1999, the crash site was located within a glacier, and the preserved arm and hand were discovered. A fact sheet is available with more detailed information.

A teleconference will be held tomorrow August 15 2008, at George Washington University with researchers and experts in Alaska and D.C. Present will be:

* Edward Robinson, prof at GWU who did the fingerprint identification,
* Odile Loreille, PhD from AFDIL who did the DNA identification,
* Colleen Fitzpatrick, PhD, the forensic genealogist who found the family reference for DNA comparison,
* Kevin McGregor, one of the pilots who discovered the arm and hand. McGregor will have with him the ring found close to the hand and parts of the plane crash.

NPR did a 45 minute interview with Geoff Bleakley, Historian at the Wrangell Saint Elias National Park, in August 1999 when the remains were first discovered.

If you are unable to attend and are interested in the story, we can arrange interviews for a later time. Time and location of the press conference are below. Let me know if you have any questions.

Friday, Aug. 15, 2008; 2pm
George Washington University
Rome Hall, Room 351
801 22nd St., NW
Washington DC

Colleen Fitzpatrick
cfitzp@aol.com
(714) 296-3065
www.forensicgenealogy.info

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

This sounds interesting. Colleen said in her email that the TV networks would be covering this story in a big way. I look forward to reading more about the details of Colleen's search for the matching family.

My Genealympics - Days 3 to 5

I'm competing in the Genealympics (well, the Genea-bloggers Group Games) - see the details here.

Unfortunately, I've neglected to detail my meagre achievements over the last three days, so I'm going to summarize them here:

3. ORGANIZE YOUR RESEARCH

B. I created a new filing system for my digital files - one where each family has a file name (by ahnentafel number) and with sub-directories for different types of digital records - vitals, census, military, probate, reports, etc. I need to transfer as many digital files already on my computer into this reorganized filing system.

D. I added over 30 family photographs to my digital photo files, and changed the file names to something descriptive. I'm still learning how metadata, tags and the like happen.

5. REACH OUT AND PERFORM GENEALOGICAL ACTS OF KINDNESS

C. I invited Debbie Atchley, Dean Richardson and Harold Henderson to join Facebook. Debbie and Dean were already on Facebook, and members of the Genea-Bloggers Group too, but I didn't know it. Harold is on Facebook, and said he would join the Genea-Bloggers Group. I invited three, does that count toward the medal?

So my status in these two events are:

3. ORGANIZE YOUR RESEARCH

A. Not Started
B. Started, Incomplete.
C. 55% complete
D. Completed
E. Not started
F. Not started

5. REACH OUT AND PERFORM GENEALOGICAL ACTS OF KINDNESS

A. Completed
B. Completed
C. Completed (I think)
D. In work
E. In work
F. Not started

I really do my best work when I'm up against a deadline...

Checking Out WebTree.com - Post 2

This is the second in a short series reviewing the http://www.webtree.com/ family tree web site that is part of the FamilyLink.com genealogy "empire." My first post, which introduced WebTree.com with words and screens, is here.

I uploaded my 20,000 plus person family tree to http://www.webtree.com/, and it seemed to load without a hitch.

In order to see My Tree, I clicked on the [My Trees] tab in the top menu line. Here is what I saw - my "Ancestors of Randy Seaver" tree - it says I have 20,733 individuals in this tree. I could Edit, Update or Delete the tree using the buttons on the right.


I chose to look at my tree by clicking on the name of the tree - "Ancestors of Randy Seaver." Here is the resulting screen:

In the screen above, it opens on the [Index] tab, and a box with all of the letters of the alphabet. If you click on the [Search] tab, you can search this database for a specific person or surname.

I clicked on the letter A, and the next screen showed a list of surnames with the number of entries for each surname in parentheses. I scrolled down to "Able" and clicked on it, and a list of persons with surname "Able" was listed in the right-hand column, as shown below:

I scrolled down (using the scroll bar on the right-hand side of the table, not of the entire screen) and found my 4th-great-grandfather, Johannes Able (1759-1818), and clicked on his name on the list.

The screen for Johannes Able (1759-1818) is shown below:

This is an [Individual] view (note the chart type below Johannes Able's name), and lists his name, birth and death date, spouse's name(s), marriage date(s), and children names. The names are links to the individuals. Below the family members, there is an "Events" section (which seems to have only Burial as a Fact, and "last modified" information about the individual) and then a "Notes" section where the notes I have for this Johannes Able appear.

I wanted to see what it would show me for the Ancestors of Johannes Able, so I clicked on the [Ancestors] link below the name Johannes Able. The screen below came up (only a partial view of the web page):

A four-generation pedigree chart appeared with names of ancestors of Johannes Able in beautiful yellow boxes. If you run your mouse over the name in the box, the birth and death dates/places appear for that person. I clicked on the [Chart Options] button in the middle of the screen, and found some editing options. I can change number of generations, change box color, font type, font size, and add/delete a drop shadow. I could not change the box background image, however. This may be a later enhancement.

One thing I noted was that some of the female ancestors did not show up on this and charts of other persons. A bug? Perhaps. Easily fixable, hopefully!

What about the Descendants of Johannes Able (1759-1818)? Back on the [Individual] page, I clicked on the [Descendants] link below the name [Johannes Able] and this chart appeared:

The web page created was fairly large, so what I've shown above is in the middle of the web page. Four generations of descendants are created in a tree format. The same Chart Options can be applied, and the birth and death data appear when you run the mouse over each individual's box.

I wondered about Printing the chart. Apparently, there are no program capabilities to do this yet (probably a later enhancement). I clicked on [File] [Print Preview] and got the screen below (with three pages shown, shrink to fit):

Print Preview said that there was 56 pages for this Descendants chart! I'll wait for the "good one" that I'm sure is coming.

So far, I like the capabilities and the presentation on http://www.webtree.com/. It is fairly simple and intuitive to use - that's good, since there are no Help pages (yet?). My preference is to be able to see the birth, death and marriage dates and places right on the tree charts, rather than have to run the mouse over each person. Perhaps they can make that an option for traditionalists like me.

I will have at least one more post in this evaluation, since I just discovered more descriptive notes and some sample pictures on the web site.

CVGS Research Group Report - 13 August 2008

The August meeting of the Chula Vista Genealogical Society Research Group was yesterday at the Library. There were 8 attendees at this meeting, and they all had something to share. We started with a brief review of some of the Genealogy News highlights for late July and early August. The sharing included:

* Bob has been checking his wife's great-grandmothers who were from Ireland and Nova Scotia. There was a long discussion about the different sets of Census Records available on Ancestry, HeritageQuestOnline and FamilySearch. It was pointed out that HQO has other resources, including PERSI, the Revolutionary War Pension files, and many out-of-copyright books.

* Dick is investigating his aunt, who was in the Foreign Service and Women's Air Corps during WW 2. She died in 1961. He had no success from the NPRC in St. Louis on her military records. While working in FamilyTreeMaker, he clicked on Web Search and found a passenger list entry for her in the 1950's.

* Shirley is indexing La Vista Memorial Park burials, and is finding interesting causes of deaths in the 1869 to 1887 records. She's also been adding images to her new genealogy computer filing system, and is helping with FamilySearch Indexing.

* Penny is back from a month in Cornwall. She's been active on www.FindAGrave.com. A message board post about her father's brother's adopted name resulted in children of her uncle contacting her and they are sharing information.

* Frances has been writing stories of her family members - she has a notebook almost filled up.

* Dearl has been battling his computer gremlins, which has a date/time problem. He's ready to consult an IT shop.

* John went to the FHC and found a book for a PA County that had information about his Phillips family. The information led to the books Torrey's New England Marriages before 1700 and Austin's Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island on the CVPL shelf, which had much more information about the earliest Phillips generations.

* Randy described his experiences on WorldVitalRecords and Footnote, and passed some examples from their databases around. He also passed the latest Discovering Family History magazine around the table.

The only research problem discussed was Randy's Project M - his friend is searching for information on his father. The friend was born in Chattooga County GA in 1927, but his father left the family in 1930 and the last time he saw his father was in 1943. Randy has found a 1930 US Census record (an Army private in Oklahoma), Georgia Death Index record and an SSDI record - both provided a birth date and death date and probable death locality (Irwin County GA). But what should he look for between 1930 and 1969? There may be a second (or more!) family for this man, who might help the friend understand his father's life. The group suggested military records (a discharge record), obtain the SS5 application, obtain a death certificate, look for an obituary to identify survivors, look for cemetery records, look for probate, land, tax, directory and voter records. Some of these might be obtained from a local historical or genealogical society or library in the death location.

The CVGS Research Group meets every second Wednesday at 12 noon in the Conference Room at the Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library. Sharing genealogy news, research techniques, family history successes and advice on how to solve elusive ancestors is one way that genealogy societies can reach out to all of its' members, and to community persons interested in and/or frustrated by their family history. The CVGS Research Group is in its' 6th year of meeting monthly.

Genea-Bloggers Favorite Photographs

The 4th Smile for the Camera - A Carnival of Images, titled My Favorite Photograph, was posted by footnoteMaven on her excellent, digital magazine quality, Shades of the Departed blog yesterday. What a wonderful variety of favorite photographs from 40 contributors.

My own contribution was an oldie but goodie - that of John Richman (1788-1967) which was embedded in my blog post about my second great-grandparents, John and Ann (Marshman) Richman of Wiltshire in England. I chose this photograph because it was of the earliest-born person that I have in my collection.

The next Smile for the Camera - A Carnival of Images topic is Crowning Glory. Show us those wonderful photographs of hairdos and maybe even a few don'ts. Don't limit yourself to just hair fashion through the ages, got a great photograph of a hat, helmet, bonnet, or some other interesting headgear?

Share!Choose a photograph of an ancestor, relative, yourself, or an orphan photograph that is the epitome of Crowning Glory and bring it to the carnival. Admission is free with every photograph!

Your submission may include as many or as few words as you feel are necessary to describe your treasured photograph. Those words may be in the form of an expressive comment, a quote, a journal entry, a poem (your own or a favorite), a scrapbook page, or a heartfelt article. The choice is yours! The deadline for submission is midnight (PT) 10 September, 2008. See footnoteMaven's post for directions on how to submit your entry.

I have just the picture! Can you guess which one it is?