Old Bones Family Research of New England: July 2014

28 July 2014

MGC Annual Seminar

The Massachusetts Genealogy Council (MGC) held their Annual Seminar this past Saturday in Mansfield, Massachusetts. As usual, there was a great crowd of genealogists from all over New England and a few "foreigners" from New York who I ran into. As members of the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (NEAPG), Kate Lowrie and I attended representing NEAPG as a Gold Sponsor. I also moderated a discussion group at lunch. My topic was learning interview techniques to build family history "right from the horse's mouth" so to speak!

The day consisted of a number of presentations from some highly respected genealogists. It's too bad we all couldn't attend every session. Although it was my responsibility to greet people and answer their questions about NEAPG, I snuck into 4 of the presentations right around the corner from our booth. I listened to Walter Hickey twice. He spoke about immigration and naturalization from a very informed view. He had a career at NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration, and could give us some interesting tips on getting to the right sources quickly. Later in the day, his presentation concerned census records. While I'm pretty knowledgeable myself in that area, he brought up some good ideas. Julie Michutka instructed us with her expertise in my next favorite software application, Scrivener. And finally, I always like to hear Morehead's DNA presentations. She had a very interesting analogy on distinguishing the role of Y-DNA versus mtDNA by comparing it to a space shuttle! The rockets represent the energy of the mtDNA driving the rest of the cell towards its goal of fertilization while the shuttle itself represents the Y and all the other autosomal elements. That's a really short version of her explanation!

Between Kate and myself, we talked with dozens of people who, we hope, will consider joining NEAPG! We were definitely a busy group!

Here's a shot up the lobby in between sessions.

It was a long day for me. I left Chicopee at 5:15 in the morning, got to the hotel to set up around 7. Non-stop until it was time to go home around 4:30.

I always appreciate the opportunity to "blend in" with my fellow genealogists. Always something to learn, to share, and to experience. Other than local events and meeting, the next "big one" is the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium's conference in Providence, RI affectionately referred to as NERGC or "NERK". That's in April of 2015. And the big news for me is that I'll be one of the speakers!

Speaking of speaking, I need to start getting ready! It'll be April before you know it! See you there!

Cousins united!

Every Thursday, you can find me at the Chicopee Library's Reference Department. The Library has set aside their computer lab for genealogy research. Myself and a few others "staff" the lab to help patrons with their research. Also, I get to conduct classes and workshops 4 or 5 times a year there.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that I've seen happen there, other than some amazing discoveries, was what happened this afternoon.

A woman walked in slowly, looking around the room. There were only about 5 or 6 people in there at the time. Since I'm the volunteer of the moment, I asked if I could help. "Yes," she said. "I'm supposed to be meeting my cousin here between 12 and 12:30." Her name is Ellen and she went on to say that she had engaged a professional genealogist in Poland. He informed her that she had some relatives right here in the area, a woman she had never met this woman! While we were talking about that, I had to pitch our "Western Massachusetts Genealogical Society" since she told me that where she lived and it's very close to out meeting location. Turns out, she's a former member and was interested in getting involved again. Needless to say, I handed her an application! I just happened to have about 50 or so apps in my bag...

Back to the story: As we spoke, another woman walked through the door and I immediately thought that although she looked familiar to me although I had never seen her at the Chicopee lab. It was Ellen's mystery cousin, Cathy! Ironically, they were both wearing a pink top! Small detail, but I found it interesting. Somewhat like long lost cousins who both like Caesar Salad! Cathy attended one of my classes a couple of years ago....another coincidence!

Here they are at their first meeting! On the left is Cathy with Ellen on the right....

09 July 2014

DDOS, sync'ing FTM and other genealogy subjects

Diagram of Stachledraht attack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The DDOS at Ancestry is behind us....almost. I was still having sync problems and the solution was to delete one and upload or download the remaining file to create a new replacement, a strategy that didn't exactly hold my interest. It's my "master" file which, today, has 40,004 individuals, countless photos and even more documents, notes and everything else you can thing of.

For those who are wondering, I un-linked my tree this morning, re-uploaded FTM to Ancestry and I now have a new "sync-able" data base, with a name that ends in "(1)".

So from here, I'm going to re-invite all my previous guests and see who stays and who goes. It's like this blog. I tried to make a shift from one service to the other and lost 3/4 of the content. I guess that means it's time for a fresh start in a lot of areas.

The only other thought that's on my mind tonight is my schedule. It has slowly crept up on me. For the first time, I had a minor panic attack thinking that as I was sitting here in my office I was supposed to be somewhere teaching something to someone!

Well, don't worry! It's next week, not this week. The rest of July has a few "engagements" but then August, September and October will be the busiest I've ever been. The Yellow House Center of Community Learning, Hitchcock Free Academy, Wistariahurst, 4 public libraries and a few other locations! On top of that, in response to "popular demand", I'm putting together an advanced genealogy program which I think will be 5 or 6 sessions in all. Should be interesting!

The big announcement for me is coming up in the spring. I'll get the details and post about that later.

03 July 2014

How would you find them without an index?

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English: 145-volume stack of the 1959 World Book Encyclopedia printed in Braille. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

How's that for a question? Back...way back...when I first began researching on the internet, there weren't

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Advertisement for Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1913 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

very many records that were "indexed." What that means specifically can be explained best by thinking back ....way back....when we had giant sets of books like the Encyclopedia Brittanica or World Book Encyclopedia. There were thousands and thousands of pages of articles that talked about everything you can possibly imagine. Have you ever used an encyclopedia? If not, I can tell you that they were usually 20 to 25 volumes, each of which contained 400 or 500 pages of information.

Now picture having an encyclopedia in place of Google. Except that this imaginary encyclopedia isn't even arranged alphabetically. Everything is just sort of piled in there, stuck every which way with the first article about watermelons followed by zebras then something else totally unconnected to what came before or what came after. How long would it take you to find the article about Hawaii? I can tell you, you'd be late for dinner! But these volumes were "indexed" so that you could go to the back of the book and look up your subject in an alphabetical index. That would send you not only to the right volume, but the exact page you needed....a primitive Google, if you will! No bells and whistles....just words and pictures.

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English: Google Logo officially released on May 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

Welcome to the world of un-indexed US Census records or un-indexed city probate files or un-indexed anything!. How is it that finding what we're looking for is so easy today? The answer is simple: indexing!

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Adriana Hernandez baptized 1925 (Photo credit: GoCal83)[/caption]

So who does all this indexing? Family Search just announced that they have a billion records indexed. That will sure help all of us in our diligent search for any genealogical records. But the mystery remains: Who does all this indexing? The answer is so simple, I'm sure you already know. It's you and me! Well, I can say "you" if you've ever signed up as a volunteer indexer. How did the search engines get the 1940 US Census up and searchable so fast? Indexers, volunteer indexers.

Here's my point: If everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY could find the time to get involved just a little imagine the amazing, mind-numbing volume of records could be indexed in a single day! Family Search has already had one "mass indexing day" back on 2 July 2012 when a total of nearly 50,000 indexers and arbitrators set a record for the most number of indexers working in one day!

Well they're planning on it again and YOU can help! On Sunday, July 20, 2014 at 9 PM eastern time and continuing for 24 hours, Family Search is challenging all genealogists to break that 2012 record and index as many records as possible. Have you been indexing right along? Then please be sure to participate in the "World Indexing Project" by indexing just one record...and more if you can! But they're only asking for 50,000 plus to help with just one record. That's all!

If you've never indexed records for Family Search, click on the "Indexing" tab on the home page and you'll discover how interesting it can be for a researcher to see how it all works. Here's the "Worldwide Indexing Event" page at Family Search and here's "Worldwide Indexing Event" at their Facebook page which was set up strictly for this project. If you've never been to the site, you'll have to establish a user name and password. But there's no cost, no membership fees, no worries!

Good luck! Give it a shot! No one starts out running, there's a short learning curve with plenty of on site assistance every

step of the way. Like the commercial, "Try it! You'll like it!!"