Heartland Genealogy

Have you seen DearMyrtle's challenge ? When I first saw the challenge, I thought I should be in pretty good shape. After all, I scanned the family photos and attached them in my The Master Genealogist software several years ago. Since I've worked my way thru 5 generations of data review, I figured I should be set. That was until yesterday when I was verifying descendants for a thru-lines DNA match on Ancestry. As I was working with a known first cousin twice removed, I decided to check FamilySearch to see if there were any additional sources attached to this cousin. To my surprise, I found a slightly different set of parents than expected. I expected to find John Frederick Mentzer and Anna Wells Mentzer as the parents of a family of 8 children, including Mildred Mabel Mentzer. Instead, I found Fred Mentzer and Anna Wells Mentzer as the parents of one child, Mildred Mentzer. After digging thru my Mentzer records to verify that John and Anna did have a daughter named Mil...

What's in your genealogy tool cabinet? Do you ever experiment with various software tools until you find one that fits your needs or thinking process? Well, I have experimented with various tools. One of those tools I'm experimenting with right now is Tony Proctor's program to create what he calls a ' Buddy File '. This is being discussed in Dear Myrtle's Facebook group . My Buddy File post describes my learning process. At least one of the comments discussed whether the time involved in creating the text file was worth it. I have to admit that was my initial thought as Tony made his presentation last week.  Since I want to use the 'buddy file' for transcriptions, it dawned on me this morning that I likely already have the information to put in a buddy file. I just need to copy/paste into Notepad and save the file.

Do you ever find yourself looking for a picture of an individual in a group and not finding it? Or, do you struggle to find a digital image of a document that someone witnessed? I know I struggle with this issue. That's why Tony Proctor's presentation regarding indexing off file names during last Monday's session of Monday's with Myrt proved intriguing. ( Organizing More Resources ) Tony developed a simple program to attach a 'buddy file' to the image. As he was presenting, I kept thinking, about the time involved to add this information to each and every photograph. Then, Hilary commented that she has been using Tony's program to attach transcriptions to a digital image. With the transcription attached to the image, I would be able to search my files for a member of an ancestor's FAN club and find records they were mentioned in. That makes it worth the time to learn how to do this.

This week I've been transcribing the audio from one of the interviews I did with my father who passed away almost ten years ago. As I was marveling at the family stories contained in one recording I realized that I owed a BIG THANK YOU to two people: Thomas MacEntee and Pat Richley-Erickson ( Dear Myrtle ). Without them I would be doing sometimes genealogy and never going back thru what I already had. Genealogy Do-Over on Facebook . I 'officially' started the do-over in July claiming I was doing a go-over. However, I spent most of my time taking advantage of all of the prompts, resources and tools to re-connect with the genealogy world and bring my skills up to current standards. Unfortunately, I'm still not consistent about using a research log -- even though that was a skill I learned in the early days of my research and I have my original log to prove it. That changed last spring when I discovered the The Genealogy Do-Over provided a chance to rediscover...