Tuesday evening’s DearMYRTLE’s Study Group here in Salt Lake came off without a hitch. One gal even travelled 55 miles round trip to participate. Here are some of the highlights:
UPCOMING FIELD TRIP
The September field trip is to the Family History Library to attend the free Utah Genealogical Association Fall Conference 12-13 Sept 2008. Find out more at: www.infouga.org. Since Ol' Myrt will be speaking and must arrive early, the DearMYRTLE Study Group members are invited to take TRAX and attend on their own. Myrt's topics include:
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective Genealogists - The class focuses on feedback from other genealogists who would do things differently if they were starting over from scratch. Handouts include research log, research checklist, a plan for filing paper documents, and information leading to proper source citation.
- The Winter of Our Discontent: 3 Months to Better Organization - We’ve heard about marathon runners? How about a marathon to finally get organized? Myrt quickens the pace of her 12-month program, and asks you to devote a mere 12 weeks to the process. You can do this! Includes sorting, filing, data input, scanning photos, documenting artifacts, & creating family history experiences for the non-genealogists in the family.
- Women Are From Venus: Finding Female Ancestors - Practical advice for locating elusive maiden names of our ancestors includes case studies and a checklist for likely source documents.
- Union Civil War Pension and Widows’ Files - Accessing these oft-overlooked genealogy gems focuses on three Union Civil War Pension case studies, and one widow’s file that culminated in three approved Daughters of Union Veterans membership applications.
BRITISH PARISH REGISTERS
Arlene is working hard on her line, and is down to land records, which are not likely to show the parents of her William STEERS, since they apparently didn’t following him from England to New York. William had been incorrectly tied, by a hired genealogist, to some Steers who lived in Virginia. The falsehood is quite evident when one notes the ancestors on both sides of that Virginia family hailed from Pennsylvania for several generations prior. Since mention of a parish in England has been made of William STEERS pre-1837 birth, Arlene will begin looking for his christening in the local church records. Hopefully they will be on microfilm at the Family History Library,
FINDING ONLINE DIGITAL VERSIONS OF BOOKS
Shannon reports “Oh, how I loved the meeting last night at Carrie's. I learn so much. I just can't thank you enough for spending your time with us. I am very grateful to you for sharing your knowledge. Today I worked on finding the Bishop book and I was able to find a digitized copy of it and printed most of it as it applied to my line. I am so excited about sitting down and reading the stories. My mother is listed in the descendant lines and her information is correct, so is my Aunt’s information, so I am going to sit down and enter the names into PAF -- YIKES!! I'll be busy for a while but loving every minute of it.”
If you are looking for online versions of books, try:
http://books.Google.com
The Family History Library Catalog (if it is digitized, there will be a clickable link.)
EARLY 1900s CANADIAN GERMAN IMMIGRANT
Susan wrote “I always leave your meetings so full of HOPE and more knowledge than I can process!” Indeed the group suggested Susan look at customs passenger list for the port of Galveston and New Orleans on microfilm at the Family History Library, since these were two rumored ports of entry for Traurtchen Schwendt who married John Kreiger. He died of TB. She married subsequently, and was the mother of 12. An alternative would be to look at Canadian marriage records for the widow’s second marriage. Fortunately, a review of the CanadaGenWeb site (during the end of our meeting) brought mention of the Saskatchewan marriage indexing project. The goal is to find her place of origin in Germany, and then locate info on her parents. Köln is much too general. The 1901 Canadian Census might also provide interesting info.
ROOTSWEB: FOR FINDING OTHER RESEARCHERS
Toward the end of the evening, after everyone had shared, we visited the new web address for RootsWeb, the oldest genealogy resource on the internet.
http://rootsweb.ancestry.com
We chose to ignore the search boxes at the top, and scrolled down to the MAILING LIST topic, clicking on the Index, and then chose the country of CHILE as our sample.
We discussed that one may subscribe to RootsWeb Mailing Lists for free, in either
list mode (1 posting = 1 email)
digest mode (multiple postings = 1 email)
We also discussed the advisability of using the BROWSE ARCHIVES & SEARCH ARCHIVES options for the mailing lists of interest, to avoid making a duplicate inquiry.
ELLIS ISLAND RECOMMENDS STEVE MORSE ONE-STEP
www.SteveMorse.org
NEW FAMILYSEARCH ACCESS
Though the LDS Church members in the Salt Lake area do not yet have full access to new.FamilySearch.org, Cathy explained she had been combining duplicates in New Family Search when visiting the Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake City. I mentioned that once all LDS have access, and most kinks are worked out of the site, the new FamilySearch will be made available to anyone. From our work, we can see that at least the following databases are combined, requiring combining duplicates:
- IGI International Genealogical Index
- LDS Membership Records (can only view deceased individuals' info)
- Ancestral File
- Pedigree Resource File
In Ol’ Myrt’s case, her uncle Jack was listed as a deceased female by another researcher. I was able to successfully dispute this information on my father’s brother, and add information on my father’s sister. My father is the only one of the three siblings to have passed away.
PAF REQUIRES BRIDGING PROGRAM
Ol’ Myrt here explained that PAF Personal Ancestral File, the free genealogy management program provided at FamilySearch.org will require a bridging program to share information back and forth with newFamilySearch. The following programs were discussed:
- Family Insight – a bridging program for PAF, currently called PAF Insight
- Ancestral Quest – a full-fledged genealogy management program that reads PAF files
- Legacy Family Tree – a full-fledged genealogy management program that reads PAF files
- RootsMagic – a full-fledged genealogy management program that reads PAF files
PS to DearMYRTLE's Study Group participant, Nadine: The book I'm reading is titled Mormon Resistance: A Documentary Account of the Utah Expedition 1857-1858 edited by LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen. I am up to page 193 and find this contains transcripts of selected US Army & Governor Brigham Young communications as "Johnston's Army" came to quash the rebellious Mormons.
Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt :)
DearMYRTLE,
Your friend in genealogy.
Myrt@DearMYRTLE.com
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© 2008 Pat Richley All Rights Reserved.
This and previous blog entries are fully searchable by going to http://blog.DearMYRTLE.com. Myrt welcomes queries and research challenges, but regrets she is unable to answer each personally.
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