Genealogy

 A family member has been hard at work scanning pictures and letters for some time. I certainly can't tell you what is where. I am familiar with an album that was shared with me. As we looked at sharing it with other family members of the family we knew the question of who are these people would come up. Once again I start from a perspective having done this elsewhere first, Aperature running on a mac. Tagging faces was easy as was searching on those people. It would pull other pictures in and ask if they were the same person. Slick. I have yet to attempt to restore that anywhere and see if it works without that software. That was before I remember easy access to apple information on the cloud. I first started using google photos when I got some Android phone. I blame that on my dad, as I had to know enough about his devices to support him. I failed to sell him on a cell phone or an iphone. I am no curious as to what motivated assorted family members to use it... My family member r...

Once again I am using this blog as a way to organize my struggles, in the hope i will figure out a solution,  or at least phrase the problem, in a way that others may help.  I started with one of the physical file I inherited,  based on my correspondence  with someone in Germany trying to connect our ancestors. There is other information on the region and family in the file. There should be a document tracking the effort and comparing the church data to familysearch. This is a recent process with a proliferation of such documents, because I keep getting preempted. An overview is needed. It's a pity I can't use Google docs to build an index with cross referencing other documents. Do I want to switch tools? Naming convention  I hope they are all somewhere under the genealogy folder.  This file is one of many that I inherited and am calling dad's archive. I have started a finders aid in a Google doc outlining the contents. I feel like it makes sense to print o...

 Yesterday I noticed a facebook post in Thomas' Genealogy Treehouse. It mentioned a new familysearch collection. In the thread was mention to the original database outside familysearch. Down the garden path I go. As I come up for again I wonder when this came into being and how it compared to previous stuff. I still start at Cyndi's list, despite the familysearch wiki. https://www.cyndislist.com/us/social-security/ssdi/ still mentions Stephen P Morse, https://stevemorse.org/, and there it is NUMIDENT, https://aad.archives.gov/.   Started with a search on the family name Drilling down into death records, I had already gleaned that information, but I found starting a general search easier. Going down into applications instead, I cherry picked, to find  found the parents of a wife that I did not know the maiden name of. Clearly there is more on that page and other lines on the first page to drill down into. I used google docs to author my working report with l...

I have been scanning and transcribing letters. I have started thinking of gathering them with a TOC and index. Google Docs is where the result of that are, however it does not support embedded documents; Neither does Apple pages. Microsoft Office 365 might be a last resort, but I remembered another. My family tree software, GRAMPS, supports reports in LibreOffice. Found some documentation showing it could do some of the things I am trying for. (Please forgive me for overlapping with my previous blog entry. ) help  https://help.libreoffice. org/7.4/en-US/text/swriter/ main0503.html?&DbPAR=WRITER& System=WIN writers guide  https://books. libreoffice.org/en/WG73/ WG7315-TOCsIndexesBiblios. html#toc27   Created a template with Title, Copyright, TOC, Chapter, Index, header/footer. The TOC seems to work. Went back and played with an early page break, using insert instead of ctl+enter  to ignore page numbers on title pages. Created a master (book)  magically wi...

As I make progress scanning in these old letters, I am trying to figure out how to best organize the letters for myself and others within the family My first thought is to organize just sequentially. However I am now wondering if what I see as family newsletters should be separated from the private hand written letters. And what of those few that came from a different family member? I have a bunch of files named by YYYYMMDDdesc. The pictures are on one drive and have Google docs with images and text transcriptions. I had hoped sorting these by name would put them in chronological order. Not sure why that failed. Second of all not all of the letters were dated - since a tilde seemed like a bad idea in a filename I used ish. I tried to guess based on content, or even what the letters before and after were. Sigh. A nice thing about the Google docs, is I have been sharing (comment) with the archive owner, who is appreciative of my effort. Having both images and text seems redundant. For hi...

Post under construction... As the weather gets less inviting, I am willing to spend more time at the computer again. Have not yet reviewed my blog entries from last spring for To Dos. What  sticks out in my mind? Recovering from a computer failure is more than  just finding files, but also the environment to understand them (And cds become unreadable). I have been grateful for every paper report generated. Anybody have a Mac with reunion? Waiting for the pro to be released with an m1 chip. I spent time populating family search with records. I have learned that stuff on the web can change/dissappear.  I should  copy these records out to somewhere I control. I spent time searching the web to prove people were dead. I do not like the gramps sources document to pull the information back out. (Have not tried the variant someone announced this summer.) Also desire a matrix with people/events and level of proof. How does the blogger app not have lists? (cool started draft o...

 A family member stumbled across a file of correspondance with my grandfather and knew that I would be interested in reading them and sharing them with others in the family. :)  I am still wondering what happened to grandpa's archives, which I have found referenced (not just in my head). "Last week, when filing away the past year's Tattlers... We have accumulated six great volumes of our letters and thier replies" -- JCP April 2, 1984 Here it is a nice summer day and I am home in my office. defensively citing rumors of jellies. sigh. Did actually go to bed at a recent hour. Reading about grief and estates seemed like a good stopping point.  (To be fair there were bits that made me smile too.) Besides I was reading ahead. Trying to use my curiosity as a goad to scan the files. Besides part of the fun may be reminiscing with others over things like preserving food, celebrations, ... So how to best take advantage of the short term loan? I do not have a good process in p...