2018 Genealogy Goals

This week's 'Saturday Night Genealogy Fun' challenge was to create at least one genealogy goal for 2018. Thanks to DearMyrtle's Wacky Wednesday on Bullet Journaling, one of my goals for 2017 was to learn to use a Bullet Journal. I can truly say that I've accomplished that goal since I've been planning my 'journal' for 2018.

In the process of that planning, I've written several goals in my genealogy journal. Knowing that I need specific goals that I can check off (i.e. SMART goals), I have broken them down into smaller steps. Below are some of  my broader goals:

• Get my tree indexed on Ancestry!
• Reduce number of shaky leaves on Ancestry
• Use RootsMagic's link to FamilySearch to add sources for my direct line ancestors
• Connect with cousins on Facebook by sharing family photos
• Blog about my ancestors 
• SCAN -- I still have some photo albums to scan
• Clean up files (sadly I have duplicates of some photos and others that need re-scanned)
• DNA -- update my spreadsheet of matches
• Finish doing visual phasing with my brother's DNA results and then hopefully add a cousin or two 
• Attend a genealogy conference 
• Participate in genealogy study groups and round-tables

Perhaps I need to add a goal of tracking my progress!

RootsMagic Source List Bloat

My list of sources has a LOT of duplicates. The vast majority of these duplicated sources are coming from Ancestry.

My DNA Story

Ancestry recently made some changes to their Ethnicity display. I first became aware of this change during a webinar. I was reminded of this change this morning when I read "Ancestry Updates DNA Ethnicity Presentation" on The Genes Blog.

Thus, I decided to check out my Ethnicity screen.

The 'new' part of the presentation is the time line. As I began clicking thru the time line, it showed the migration from Europe to the United States.

I still need to learn about these maps and how they can help me with my paper research!

Learning to Use RootsMagic Research Log

My first 'research logs' were paper based and I was fairly consistent about keeping those records. However, when I started using software to manage my family tree, my diligence in recording what sources I had used began to slip. My software of the time, The Master Genealogist, had the ability to maintain a research log but I incorporated that tool into my research process.

Recently, webinars and blogs that I follow have emphasized the need to maintain an accurate log of sources used. Knowing that I was lacking in this area, I decided to try the tools within RootsMagic to see if I could improve my research process.

I first tried this logging process while on a trip to the Midwest Genealogy Library. I transferred data from my TODO spreadsheet into tasks on RootsMagic.

During my visit to the library, I was able to mark the task completed and transfer it to the Research Log. With the Research Log window open, I then entered the bibliographic information and transcribed data directly into the log.

At the end of the transcription, I noted where the images were stored.

I recently started using the IOS app, iScanner. This app allows me to group all images from a source into one folder. I can export the images as a .pdf file or as individual .jpeg files.

By using the Research Log in this way, it is harder for me to loose track of research notes. Once ready to input the data into RootsMagic, I can just copy/paste the transcription info and attach the .pdf file or individual media files.

Oct 31, 2017 -- This issue has been confirmed by RootsMagic support. Contrary to my theory, they found that the note stuck to the FIRST event. Until the update comes out, the suggest was to transfer these notes one event at a time.

Renaming Ancestry Tree & TreeShare

Historically, I have published most of my genealogy research under 'Heartland Genealogy'. When RM introduced TreeShare, I was having trouble getting a new tree established with that name. Thus, my TreeShare name is currently called 'Crawford-Briles'. For the sake of consistency, I would like my old tree name back. Thus, I asked the Facebook community if it was possible to change the name.

So, I'm going to try to change the name of my tree. I have closed my tree in RM and backed it up. Dropbox is in the process of syncing both the file and the backup.

On Ancestry, I opened Tree Settings and changed the name of the tree.

I then re-opened RootsMagic. In RootsMagic, my file is called Crawford-Briles. Hopefully, it will still link to my renamed tree on Ancestry - Heartland Genealogy. To test that, I clicked on the TreeShare icon. Thankfully, it is telling me it is connected to my Heartland Genealogy Tree.

RootsMagic TreeShare / Event Notes

Due to my tree not showing in a search on Ancestry, I'm learning more and more about how TreeShare works.

One of my observations is that I often have a 'note' at the bottom of my sources on Ancestry. One of those notes was a 'burial' note. Most of the time, they are titled, 'residence note'. Pictured is such a note on the record for George Mentzer in my Crawford-Briles tree.

TreeShare / Sources / Images

After working thru my 'study' of what happens to sources with TreeShare, I wondered whether an image gets downloaded multiple times when attaching a census source to individuals of a family.

In my previous post, TreeShare and Sources, I looked at the 1900 census for Paul Emory Mentzer. In that census, Paul was listed as a 4 year old son of Charles Mentzer.

Prior to accepting any Ancestry hints for the 1900 census for Charles Mentzer, I had one source attached to that event.

TreeShare and Sources

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle Ancestry hints, TreeShare and sources.

I have a fairly well sourced database that includes a lot of census research. Some of that census research dates back to the microfilm days. I tried to use the standards of the time to write citations for the data. My original citations would have been written in PAF as a NOTE. Some of those citations still exist in my current data. When I transferred from PAF to The Master Genealogist, I tried to go back thru my file and convert those NOTEs to facts. In the process, I also started using one of the citations templates provided by TMG: Richard Lackey's Cite Your Sources (c1980). Since the Master Genealogist community promoted the use of Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence! Citation Analysis for the Family Historian, I switched to that set of templates for my sources.

When my data was transferred from TMG to RootsMagic, I also participated in Thomas McEntee's Genealogy Do-Over. In the process, I soon realized that my source citations were not detailed enough and definitely short of the current standards. I also realized that when possible, I needed to add images of the source to the citation. Thus, I started working my way back thru my tree to update those older citations using Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained.

I was thrilled when RootsMagic announced they would develop the ability to sync my data between my RootsMagic database and Ancestry. Thus, I volunteered as a beta tester. From my experiences as a beta tester, I knew that I had to select either my Ancestry tree or my RM database. I also knew that there was an issue with at least one image in my database since uploading my entire database with images never completed. Thus, when TreeShare was released, I uploaded my RM database without images to Ancestry.

I recently discovered an issue with the way I was using TreeShare to accept the hints -- especially in regards to the sourcing of the events. Unfortunately, this issue affects the way my tree is handled by Ancestry.

To explain what is going on, I'm going to use the 1900 census event for Paul Emory Mentzer in my Crawford-Briles tree on Ancestry. All of my RootsMagic sources transferred to Ancestry but are listed under 'Other Sources'.

UPDATE - Tree Not Searchable (Ancestry / RootsMagic)

The verdict is in! 

 I need to accept hints on Ancestry in order for my tree to become searchable.

Ironically, my DNA 'shared matches' list was working even though I was accepting the hints on RootsMagic and not on Ancestry!

Not only do I have shared Ancestry hints and circles but the list of hints and circles has been growing.

Thus, I didn't think there was an issue with the way I was using RootsMagic!



Now, that I'm aware of the issue, I'm going to change my workflow.

• Accept valid hint on Ancestry
• Use RootsMagic to source that hint and manually add the image (as I was doing prior to TreeShare)
• Ignore pink sources and media on TreeShare

 In the meantime, I'm going back thru my 5 generation pedigree and

• Clicking confirmed sources and changing them to undecided within RootsMagic
• Accepting those sources on Ancestry

 Now, I wait for Ancestry indexing to pick up my tree.

I would like to thank the RootsMagic community (both Facebook and RootsMagic Forums) for helping me work thru this issue.

Ancestry / RootsMagic - Tree not Searchable

I work from RootsMagic.
I click on the lightbulb and accept the hints.
I write the citations within RootsMagic.
I then use TreeShare to upload my changes to Ancestry.

All of my citations transfer to citations -- but -- are listed in the 'other citations' area. Even though they are based on those accepted hints, they are not listed as Ancestry citations. Below is a link to Judson Foster Crawford on my tree:

https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/115166653/person/270137689801/facts

My tree (Crawford-Briles) has lots of sources attached.

Ancestry views my tree as having NO sources. Thus, it doesn't show in a search. [Try searching for Judson Foster Crawford died 1949 and look for the Crawford-Briles tree.]

Yes, this and the member connect issue are Ancestry issues.

BUT -- they wouldn't be occurring IF I didn't use the lightbulb to accept the hints.

Yes, I could avoid this issue by accepting the hints on the Ancestry side -- BUT

• I lose control of the citation format
• I lose control of where the media is stored
• I lose control of how the media is named

Right now, I don't like my choices:

• Continue my workflow realizing that my tree won't be searchable
• Switch to accepting hints on Ancestry and lose control over citations and images
• Quit using TreeShare so that I can have a searchable tree and control where the downloaded images go

I don't like any of those choices and am hoping that RootsMagic will work with Ancestry to resolve this.

Land on Sugar Creek / Mary Crawford

Mary Crawford purchased land from Richard Cave in 1791. Below is a transcription of that deed.

Crawford Research: Which James Is Which?

My ancestor, James Crawford, died in Preble County, Ohio in 1854. In 1821, he sold a piece of land to Wm Sellers. This Preble County Deed (Book 5, page 87), identifies the seller as James Crawford Junr and indicates that James was from Preble County, Ohio. The deed is signed by James Crawford and Sally Crawford. Sally's signature is significant since it identifies my James Crawford and not another James Crawford living in Preble County at the time.

DNA and NodeXL

The Facebook group, Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques, has provided lots of opportunities to learn how to use my DNA results to support my research -- and to break thru brick walls. Recently, Shelley Crawford has been posting links to her blog posts detailing how to use NodeXL and Microsoft Excel to find DNA connections. Yesterday, I followed the steps in her post, Visualizing Ancestry DNA Part 2 - Loading the Files. With my first attempt, I downloaded all of my matches and worked my way thru the instructions to get a 'blob'. I went back and rechecked my 'alternate' file to make sure I was skipping my siblings, my mother and 1st cousins (once removed). It took a while for the graph to appear but it was still a blob.

So, I started over and downloaded my matches for 4th cousins or closer. After creating a new file and again making sure the 'skip' information was included, I still had a blob -- just less dense.

Knowing this wasn't what it was supposed to look like, I dug thru her posts and the comments to discover that this whole process is more difficult with lots of data. One suggestion was to change the way the data was grouped. So I decided to try 'grouping by cluster'. That seemed to help since it separated the 'blobs'.

Even though it was still hard to visualize a DNA circle with the above graph, it was possible to click on a dot and see how that one dot was related to other dots (red lines). After some playing around, I figured out that the dark blue dots in the upper left contained a lot of my BRILES matches. So I'm wondering whether I can isolate certain branches of my tree by 'skipping' known matches from other branches of my tree.

Experiment #1: Isolating CRAWFORD line

• Sort Vertices by shared CM from largest to smallest
• Using data in 'notes', enter 'skip' in visibility field for known matches to other lines thru 150 matches
• Save file different name
• Refresh graph

 Group by Cluster

Unfortunately, that didn't clear out enough data to make it easy to see the 'circles'.

Since my experimentation (playing around) didn't produce a graph anything close to the example, I'm going to give up for now and wait for the next blog post of suggestions.

Citation Length - Using TreeShare to Modify

I'm experimenting again!

Can I use RootsMagic to modify an overly long citation and then use TreeShare to get that citation uploaded to Ancestry.

The first task is to locate the 'offending' citation in my list of sources. Since I know that this citation is associated with several facts for William Taylor Thompson, I'm going to use his screen to locate more info about the citation. When I look at the birth sources, I find the 'offending' citation.

From the info on this screen, I know the citation is listed under 'History-IA Wapello Portrait ...' in my list of sources. Since I only want to change the citation one time, I'm hoping that I will be able to use the Master Source List to make the change. After opening the Master Source List (Lists menu), I scroll to locate 'History-IA Wapello Portrait ...' in the list.

Having found the source, I click on the Edit button to make changes. I'm going to shorten the citation by removing the subtitle, 'Together with Portraits and Biographies of All of he Governors of Iowa and the Presidents of the United States.'

After shortening the title, I have a much shorter citation (but I haven't counted characters).

After clicking OK to accept the change and closing the window, I then opened William Thompson's window to see if the change carried over to his citations -- which it did!

Unfortunately, when I go to TreeShare, the program doesn't recognize the change in the citation since I didn't make the change on an individual's record.

 Nor does TreeShare recognize the difference in the sources when I go to William Thompson.

On Ancestry, I locate William Thompson's profile page.

I deleted the offending citations. His family now appears on the screen.

I re-open TreeShare hoping that the changes in Ancestry will produce prompts to upload the citation. William Thompson now shows on my list of changed people and the affected source citations are pink.

I select the first event and chose the UPDATE option.

I place a check mark in the box next to Sources and click OK

I repeat the process for the other 'pink' citations and then click Accept Changes. This should push those modified sources up to Ancestry -- and if I shortened the citation enough -- the screen should continue to display the family.

It Worked! The shorter citation is there and the family is still showing on the screen!

The next challenge is to figure out who all the citation is attached to and get the revised citation uploaded for them. Another option would be to keep track of citations that have been edited and then when the weird screen is encountered, use the list to determine which citation needs deleted and re-uploaded.

New Tree DNA Issues

On Wednesday (June 28), I uploaded my RootsMagic data to Ancestry, thus creating a new tree. Since I want to be able to utilize the TreeShare features of Ancestry, I want this new tree to be my primary tree in Ancestry. Thus, I attached my DNA results to this new tree.

I knew that when I switched my DNA to this new tree, it was going to cause some 'hiccups' in my DNA screens AND that it might take several days (weeks) for those 'hiccups' to go away.

However, I am seeing some strange, unexpected behavior that I'm trying to figure out the cause.

The first strange behavior is with the 'Shared Ancestor Hints'. I expected them to drop to zero and had documented those matches. Even though I can understand the few I have back, I can't figure out why I got those and not others.

The 5 shared Ancestor Hints are from my Briles (Broyles) / Rush line. I have circles for a couple of men on my Briles line and for my Rush line. However, these 5 people are not on the list of matches for the circles.

In trying to figure out why those I expect to appear aren't showing up, I discovered another strange behavior. I looked at my DNA match with my dad's first cousin. Since she has a tree and since I have accepted Ancestry hints for our common ancestor, she is one of the first people I expected to reappear on my list of shared matches. We also are grouped together in quite a few of my circles.

As indicated in the note, Judson Crawford is one of our common ancestors. Her DNA match screen shows that she has Judson Crawford in her tree.

My tree also contains Judson Crawford.

When I click on Judson F Crawford in my tree, a window opens showing his full name and birth/death information.

If I go back to her DNA match screen and look at her Crawfords, she has the same birth and death years for Judson Crawford that I have.

So, my question: Why is it only showing shared surnames and not a screen comparing our trees back to the common ancestor?

I plan to call Ancestry on this, but am wondering if anyone else with DNA attached to a new tree is having similar issues.

Ancestry Citation Length Experiment

Have you ever had the family disappear off of the profile screen in an Ancestry tree?

I'd experienced it before but when I recently encountered it, I decided to seek guidance from one of my Facebook communities.

Armed with that response, I returned to my tree and, sure enough, there was a citation that had been uploaded with the original gedcom that could be considered 'lengthy'.

When I clicked on 'view', I could see most of the citation.

Clicking the 'Edit Source' button took me to a screen where I could hopefully make some changes to shorten the citation.

So I decided the easiest way to shorten the citation without losing some essential information was to remove some of the subtitling.

I then scrolled to the bottom of the page to locate the button to save the source.

That's when I got the dreaded 'We're Sorry' page

I've tried editing the source multiple times and it always comes to this page.





So, now I'm playing with a 'test' tree to see what happens when I delete the source. If I click the View button for the source, the source window opens. On this window is a 'Remove' button

After verifying that I indeed want to remove the source, the screen immediately reverts to the normal profile screen.

So, my Facebook 'friend' was correct --

There is a limit to the length of a citation on Ancestry!

I have called Ancestry on this issue since I want to know what that limit is. The support person I reached had not seen this issue before. She was very thorough in reviewing the problem and discovered another, potentially related issue: The person's name could not be searched but was in the list of people. My case is being reviewed and hopefully, I will find out the maximum length for a citation.