Preparing for a Cousin Visit

Preparing to deliver the books I blogged about a day or so ago. Thought I would share what information I am going to take with me to help fill in some blanks that I have in this branch of my family.





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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

How to Identify Civil War Soldiers

In honor of Memorial Day, I thought I would demonstrate how to create a list of men who may have served in the Civil War.








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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Family Book Creator - Second Book - Printing

A couple of hints about the book that I just created:

Family Book Creator - Second Book

The book I created was 109 pages with pictures. I wanted 5 bound books so that I could give the book to my 1st cousin 2x removed, the 7 year old. The quote was over $300.00. Oops, that's not going to work. Out of the 109 pages, less then 20 had colored pictures on them. The rest is text.

They are going to bind the book, double sided pages, with ONLY those pages with pictures will be in color. There are thumbnail pictures in the report, they will be black and white, but the photos on their own pages will be in color.

The price will be about $100.00 for 6 books. I added one, as the family picnic where I am going to deliver the book will have another 1st cousin, 2x removed. He might as well get one as well.

It has been suggested that I do a video on how to generate a PDF file, which I will, from within FTM2014, but for this Plug In, there are too many variables.

Also, please visit Randy Seavers Genea-Musing.com blog based on his experience with this plug in.

Family Book Creator - Post 1: Creating the Book

Family Book Creator - Post 2: My Ancestors Book - First Try

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Family Book Creator - Second Book

This is a follow up on using the Family Book Creator plug-in for FTM2014.

On facebook, a cousin told me her 7 year old daughter wanted to know about "where she came from" and who her Ancestors were. So, I wanted to put this plug in to real use and to be able to create a book that a 7 year old might be interested in.

In this video, I spend a few more minutes with some of the options. What I have focused on, is how you can EDIT a book, created with this plug in, to make adjustments to the content of the book that was created.





This book will not have Footnotes, Endnotes, nor a lot of detail on the person, but will have a Bibliography, Index of Places, and Index of People AND colored pictures that are in my family file.

I should also mention, that it was another "out of the box" book. I did not look at the User manual, nor have I fine tuned the book based on the developers documentation. Just trying to see how difficult it would be for me to just create and now edit the book.
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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Dear Randy: How Can I Avoid Updating My Tree in 5 Different Places?

Genea-Blogger and friend Randy Seaver did a blog post from one of his readers:

Dear Randy: How Can I Avoid Updating My Tree in 5 Different Places?

I would encourage you to read his response.

As I have been caught in almost the same place, multiple Online Trees and have recently blogged about MyHeritage, I thought about how I am going to handle this situation.

I totally agree with Randy, ONE Database. In my case FTM2014. I uploaded a GEDCOM from my master file. It's now on MyHeritage, Geni.com (now My Heritage, but a different and much older tree), Mocovo, and probably others.

Since FTM2014 works so well with my Ancestry Member Tree (ATM) that they have the same information and I do most of my research from within FTM2014 and update my  AMT. So, why would I use the others. One simple answer, different sources of Records and the fact that they also have other On Line Trees. My Heritiage's technology in SmartMatches and Record Matches adds to where I can search AND I get emails on a very regular bases of new matches.

But I also have other places to do my research. FamilySearch.org, Fold3.com, Newspapers.com; GenealogyBank.com, and others, just to name a few.

Back to the question about Updating. I don't, mostly for the reasons that Randy Mentioned. But at the same time, I am very much in favor of Collaboration.

Being simple minded, I try to handle each of these websites the same way. Look at the Hint from Ancestry.com; look at the RecordMatches from MyHeritage; search on the other websites for records, depending on what I am looking for and what my Genealogy Question is.

Any records, I bring into FTM2014, citing the courses, evaluating what I have and move on.

But what about the other online trees. As I have posted before, they are another source of information, not records, I enter the information in that other online tree into FTM2014 and Cite the source as being that online tree. I am looking for clues or hints to records I might not have thought about. If I pick that piece of information from that online tree, I'll go find that record myself.

I try to leave comments on those trees either confirming that we have a connection or sharing a record that the tree owner might want to look at, then move on.

For the moment, using our existing technology, I am not going to update one of these online trees with my file. I want those online trees for collaboration.

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

How to cite a Canadian Census Record - A Follow Up

How to cite a Canadian Census Record - A Follow Up to :

User Question: How to cite a Canadian Census Record

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

User Question: How to cite a Canadian Census Record

User Question: How to cite a Canadian Census Record?






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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Family Book Creator - First Book

Family Book Creator - First Book

Here is a quick review of the un-edited book that was created by the Family Book Creator plug in for Family Tree Maker









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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Family Book Creator - the First Plug In for Family Tree Maker

Yesterday I mentioned A Plugin for Family Tree Maker so now I will start describing it. I say start, because Books take some time to create. I have created 15+ books in Family Tree Maker since that feature was first introduced many years ago. I haven't blogged about that feature because "it's complicated". 

I have always asked the question "What is the purpose of the book?" "WHO is the focus person for the book?" and "Who is the audience for that book?" Those questions will drive the layout and information to be included.

This new plug in makes that much easier. HOWEVER, there is some up front planning required before you start the plug in.

I am going to walk through the screens that you will see, options to use, so that when the book is generated it will come out the way you want. Pictures, Charts, Footnotes, and more. 

This is not the first screen you will see, but I will walk through all of that later. This Blog post will show what you need to be thinking about before you start.

The Title Tab:

This is easy. the Program will "fill in the blanks for you" based on who the book will be about.

The < > are the indicators as to what the title of the book will be about. This can ALL be changed later, as the output of this program is an Rich Text Format (RTF) file that your word processor can open and you can edit.

The Colophon Tab:

Again, this is publication information and the program will "fill in the blanks". There are Header and Footer Options for you to choose from.

The Dedication Tab:

This is where the work begins. You have an option and should consider writing a Dedication for this book.

The Forward Tab:

Like the Dedication, a forward would be a good thing to have in the book. Again, this is one of the pre-planning items to consider before you start the book. However, the Family Book Creator does offer you some suggestions. It will also autofill the Author Name, Author Place, and the Current Date.

Table of Contents:

Actually, you can let this one go by, as it will be created when the book is created.

Introduction.

The program will offer a suggested Introduction. It also includes some file statistics. Don't rush to re-write what is there, as it pretty well explains that format of the book. As mentioned earlier, you can always edit this in your word processor.

Main part:

Where is where you have the choices of who and what to include. I'll not spend a lot of time here with this, but there is a tab for Individuals to include, Items to include, Options.

These options are much link what is already in Family Tree Maker.. You can limit the number of generations or All generations. Lots of flexibility

Indexes Tab:

Bibliography or list of sources.

You can have the Index of Individuals, with options there

And, you can include an Index of Places, with choices.

Down the left side are three more tabs. Book Items, which I just covered, Preferences and About.

I will cover them in another Blog Post.

I think that it is important to thing about what Items you want to include in the Book.

The output of the book, is worth the wait.

More details may be found at www.FamilyBookCreator.com. There is an evaluation version available for you to try. There is no Mac OS X Version available.

http://www.FamilyBookCreator.com

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - "Default" Report Settings

I want most of my Reports to have the Title of the Report, the Page Number, and the Date of Printing on each page.



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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

A Plugin for Family Tree Maker

I just received an announcement that we have all been waiting for. A Family Tree Maker Plug In.

The plug-in is called Family Book Creator.  I was asked to beta test this and found it an excellent tool. In fact, I met the developer at RootsTech 2014. I have created several books using this Plug In and it's very easy to use and install. 

I will create a book and blog about it shortly.

Family Book Creator is a Plug In for Family Tree Maker 2010, 2012 or 2014 which turns your research into a detailed personalized book with just a few clicks.

More details may be found at www.FamilyBookCreator.com. There is an evaluation version available for you to try. There is no Mac OS X Version available.

http://www.FamilyBookCreator.com

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Myrt's AmbushCAM: Duff Wilson Ancestry.com

+DearMYRTLE caught up with Duff Wilson. from Ancestry.com, at #NGS2014gen yesterday. Thought I would share this with you.



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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Myrt's AmbushCAM: Crista Cowan Ancestry.com

+DearMYRTLE caught up with Crista Cowan. from Ancestry.com, at #NGS2014gen yesterday. Thought I would share this with you.



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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Why do YOU do an Ancestry / Public Member Tree ?

On one of the Family Tree Maker email lists, there has been a lengthy discussion on who should be able to see what on an Ancestry Member Tree. I have shared here, some of "how I do things" but thought I would just ask the question

Why do YOU do an Ancestry / Public Member Tree ? 

I would like to hear / see YOUR answers to this question.

It wasn't until very recently that I made my working file Public. I didn't think that I was ever going to do that. The answer is simple:

It's all about Collaboration

Please post your comments and I will try to focus some blog posts on your responses.

Thank you,

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

Ancestry Member Tree Views

A Quick Review of the Roles one can have when invited to an Ancestry / Publish Member Tree. More details are in the Knowledge Based articles mentioned. Here is a link to them.

GUEST:  http://bit.ly/1fOXNTb

CONTRIBUTOR: http://bit.ly/1mBY2zq

EDITOR: http://bit.ly/1lXTeGk

Ancestry.com YouTube: http://bit.ly/1lXUmcQ

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - Places Workspace Views

This is a high level view of the Places Workspace and an example of how I use this Workspace



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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - Place Names - Person Migration Path

I try to keep my Places in the proper format to take advantage of the Place Name Authority. The normal use of the Places Workspace is to help make consistent the location. (list by Place). There is a second way to use the Places Workspace, that is my Person. You can track a person based on the locations where they had an event (Fact).

This is an example of a Civil War Unit, where the dates and places of the battles they were involved in were documented.







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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - How I resolve Place Names and handle an Address Fact

This is a follow up to the Resolve ALL video posted earlier.

FTM2014 - How to Resolve ALL Place Names

This will be a couple of individual locations to be resolved and how I handle the Address Fact.




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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - How to Resolve ALL Place Names

A Video on how I use the Resolve ALL Place name feature. This feature allows us to resolve many or all of the Place Names that are not in the format that FTM2014 wants. There are a couple of examples of when you do NOT want to resolve a place name.



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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

How to Upload and Link a New Ancestry Member Tree

This HOW TO will demonstrate how to Upload and Link a file from FTM2014 to a new Ancestry Member Tree.



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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

A Tour of this Blog

To help understand how this blog has been set up, here is a virtual tour of the Blog.




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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 and Ancestry Member Tree Settings

Its been a while since I talked about the Ancestry Member Tree from within FTM2014 and how you control the Privacy Settings. Here is a relative short video that will show both the FTM2014 Privacy Settings and how to set them from within the Ancestry Member Tree




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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

My Heritage - another mess to clean up

Based on my Upload to My Heritage, I received another email. This one was from Geni.com. Now, I have just been ignoring Geni.com because I had worked on that website, to share and to see how it worked, a while ago.

Then I remembered that Geni.com was part of My Heritage, as was discussed in the +DearMYRTLE  Genealogy Community. So, I thought I would look.

Oh no, another mess to clean up. If I am reading this correctly, I have a Geni.com account and a My Heritage account. When I logged in, I was asked to subscribe, but I just paid for a subscription AND the "name" on this account wasn't the same.

End User messed up. That be me.

Since I was there, I thought I would look to see what THESE

Good news, Geni found 1 new Tree Matches for you!

were all about. This time there were some helpful information.

What is a Tree Match?

Geni is a shared family tree which means that there should only be one profile on Geni for any individual. Using advanced technology, we constantly search Geni trees for duplicate profiles that appear to be for the same individual. We call these Tree Matches. You should merge these duplicate profiles to grow your tree and discover new relatives.

Tip: Merging profiles can add an average of 100 more people to your family tree!

Here is what I found.

68 Matches. OK. Now I need to see what "tree" is on Geni or what part of the tree I had uploaded from an earlier version of Family Tree Maker.

I thought I would look around a little more to see if I understood what was there.

It appears that I have 21 Tree Matches, 32 Record Matches, and 24 Smart Matches.

When I start to work on this, I can start from here. What is nice, that on a per person basis, I can see how many of those three categories that person has.

I am thinking that I am just going to delete this Geni.com tree and use the tree I uploaded onto My Heritage, as it would be more up to date.

Before I do any of that, I need to look around the My Heritage and the Geni.com website to see if they have some suggestions, articles, or blog posts about my "next steps".

Why am I talking about My Heritage on my Family Tree Maker Blog? Simple, 1) not everything is Online, 2) not everything is on Ancestry.com, and 3) from within FTM2014 you can capture information from other websites. That is very important to me, as I demonstrated in that Newspaper Article that I have only found on My Heritage. I do it ALL from within FTM2014.

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

First "confirmed" SmartMatch

OK, now my email is filling up with notifications from My Heritage. I am going to blog about the First SmartMatch™ result. As I look at what a SmartMatch is, its where there are Two Trees, online at My Heritage that have a match. I want to share the experience of the first one.

I get this email:

[ user name ] a MyHeritage member from Germany, just confirmed 2 Smart Matches between his family tree and yours, for the following people: 

Linus John Theis and Mary Elizabeth Theis (born Kessler) 

View these Smart Matches 

Recommended next step: click the above link to review these Smart Matches and confirm whether they're correct. 
This will help you learn new information about these people in your family tree. 

Tip: when you and the owner of another tree mutually confirm a Smart Match, it becomes fully validated. This is useful for distinguishing between correct and incorrect matches. 

If you have not done so already, view your Smart Matches and confirm all the correct matches. 

Have a great day, 
MyHeritage.com 

 This looks interesting. Not one of the names that I have looked at for awhile. So I clicked on the View these Smart Matches.

This is not the full page but I know THAT name and it says that the user "confirmed this match on May 1 2014 (today)

So, this USER has already Confirmed this Smart Match and All I need to do is to Confirm This Match. Well, lets see. You will see below that Mary Strode is marked in both trees, with the same birth and death DATES (years), BUT, and a really Big BUT, none of the relationships are right, at least in my tree.

My answer was No - reject this match. My database reflected NO 2nd marriage and the places aren't right.

After I clicked on the "NO" button I saw this:

I do have a chance to add additional information as to why I was rejecting this "match"

I was stunned a bit, because I thought "here we go again" someone "matching" trees with no documentation. As soon as I saw that there were not relationships and the place wasn't right, I stopped and will go onto the next message. I am not going to base my results on one SmartMatch™ and walk away. I'll work on another.

Guess I better get a score card out, like my Genea-Blogger +Randy Seaver at Geneamusings.com does, just to see what really happens.

I will now have to determine what a SmartMatch is really supposed to do. I did have a good result when I followed a Newpaper Article Hit.

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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - HOW TO:Import from My Heritage

From a SmartMatch from My Heritage into Family Tree Maker. The steps I took to capture an Obituary from a newspaper article that was found in my online tree at My Heritage [ www.myheritage.com ] and input that information, including the text of the obituary, the data, image and a citation, and putting that into my FTM2014 file.



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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington