FTM2014 - Ancestry Member Tree Connection - Part 2

Note: This blog is part of a series, but this specific one will not include any features of FTM2014. The work documented here, WILL lead to data entry into FTM2012.

Part one of this series: FTM2014 - Ancestry Member Tree Connection - Part 1 I talked about how I Planned my research trip to Little Egg Harbor Friends Meeting and Burial Grounds. All of the planning worked out, GPS took me right to where I needed to turn. But Meeting house was NOT visible from the street, but there was a sign at the street, the same sign I saw on Google Maps, street view.

I was very lucky to have two cemetery helpers with me, my daughter Carrie and husband Patrick. I'll have to take them again. They knew, from my print outs who we were looking for, at the Surname Level, which is what I wanted. They spread out over the cemetery and all I could hear was "I got one" while I was taking a picture of the Sign of the Burial Ground and of the Meeting house.

The first photo I always take is that of the Cemetery sign. I know that the next pictures are from this Burial Ground.

 

Next the Meeting House:

 While I am walking between the Sign and where I could take a picture "I found another one". Two extra set of eyes is always a plus.

One stone that was very important was just to the left of the Meeting house, toward the back of the building.

"In unmarked graves here were buried many of the pioneer settlers of Little Egg Harbor at the end of the seventeenth century and during all of the eighteenth century -- In the main they represented a noble type of manhood and womanhood devoted to the good of the world and to the service of God."

Hmm, Unmarked graves. But then echoing through this quiet space "Another one...."

I took 70+ pictures of the headstones. We had a successful trip. I did not try to do any work there, only that I took most of the photos of stones that were readable, and probably some that I couldn't read there.

My Post Visit process is to transfer the images from my point-and-shoot cemetery camera to my computer, where I use Picasa 3. I use the Export feature of Picasa so that I can retain the original image, untouched, and put a copy of the pictures I want to use, and export them to a Cemetery Folder on my computer. The export function does two things. Reduces the file size, but allows it be acceptable on a website and put a copyright label on the pictures.

Now for the detailed fun of taking the Camera Filename and making it useful for FTM2014.

I look at the image in Picasa and it would look like this

 or this

 

They are pretty readable and I can use them for uploading to Find-A-Grave or adding it to my FTM2014 Family File.

I have about 1,000 headstone pictures, so I need a way to keep track of what I have, and how I use them. 

Find-A-Grave has an EXCEL Template that can be used to upload data to their website.

Find A Grave Spreadsheet Template

I use a modified version of this template to meet my needs, but this section of my file IS THIS piece.

I open Picasa, go to the folder for this cemetery and view the stones, as seen above and Transcribe what I see on the stone into the EXCEL Template.

The expanded columns I add allow me to sort of filter the information for later entry into FTM2014 IF it is someone in my file. Not ready for that yet, I want to Rename the files. to something that is helpful to me.

I enter the State, County, Cemetery Name, a Find-A-Grave Cemetery Number, and the new filename. In this case:

NJ-Ocean-Friends-Tuckerton-BartlettJHenry

State-County-Cemetery-Location-SurnameFirstNameMiddleName

In this case, I used the Cemetery Name that Find-A-Grave uses. As there may be another Quaker Burial Ground in Ocean County, I added Tuckerton to remind me which Burial Ground. That Filename Column (X) will be the filename of the image.

I transcribed the Name, and in these two cases, the birth and death year and the inscription. (yes, there are two typos below, but fixed in the file)

This screen capture, has Picasa behind it and Windows Explorer in front where I will copy the filename from EXCEL into the Rename feature in Windows Explorer (right click on filename). I copy the Filename (column X) from EXCEL into the Windows Explorer rename field.

 

I checked my family file, and don't have a Charles A Barlett yet, so I don't need that photo, but I wanted to see if there was one on Find-A-Grave. The headstone ICON says that there is a photo already online.

Going to that Memorial I see this.

What is nice about this memorial, is that it lists his parents names. His mother is a Leeds. Another surname from my file. But, I don't have either of them in my file (YET).

I will repeat this process through all of the photos that I can read and rename. Will check to see if any of my photos need to be uploaded to Find-A-Grave.

My next step, will be to see if Crista has any of these people on her Ancestry Member Tree. That will be in a follow up post.

Yes, this can be time consuming, its down to some details. But the pay off will be, for me at least, that IF I find one of my people in these pictures, I can then add these photos to my file. That will also be another blog post.

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Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington