Heartland Genealogy

Do you use timelines in your genealogy research? I'm guessing that most people who have been searching their family history for some time have used some sort of timeline. When I retired and starting spending more time researching my family tree, I created a spreadsheet for my Crawford family research. In the spreadsheet, I was able to color code the people, locations and time periods. All of this information was copied from my RootsMagic data into the spreadsheet. It wasn't until I read Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Make a Timeline Report blog that I seriously looked at the Timeline Report in RootsMagic. Thanks to his post, I started looking at the built-in timelines on Ancestry and within RootsMagic.

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...

Do you think of your genealogy research as a tree or a database? I realize many people fall into the 'tree' group, but I am in the 'database' group. Because I think of my data as a database, I want computer software to manage that data versus only using an online tree. I use RootsMagic to manage my database. You might say, 'but that's family tree software' and I would say you are correct. RootsMagic is great software to manage family tree based research. However, I don't just research my tree, I research their FAN club (Friends Associates and Neighbors) as well as potential lines. And all of this research ultimately ends up in my RootsMagic file. Since this is one fairly large database, I have to have a way to visually keep track of the various lines in my research. That's where the color coding feature in RootsMagic comes in handy. I started by assigning different colors to various lines of my research. Besides assigning a color to anc...

Have you discovered all of the resources available on the FamilySearch website? If so, then you know how they can provide that little 'nugget' of information that leads to major breakthroughs in one's genealogical research. If not, then you are missing out on some very valuable resources. My favorite group of sources is the land records. As a U.S. researcher whose various family lines moved across the country, these records help me place someone in a specific time and place and sometimes help me connect family members. When I login to FamilySearch (accounts are free), the menu gives me several options. The Wiki is a fantastic resource to learn about records available in a community. I often use the Wiki, but the Catalog is my 'go to' resource. On the CATALOG screen, I type in the name of the county and then select the one I wish to work with from the suggested list.

Do you ever have to do a 'clean-up' in your genealogy database? Whether you do or not, I know I do. I recently figured out that some of my citations did not 'convert' well when I moved my data from The Master Genealogist to Roots Magic. Thus, I have some 'bad' citations to clean up. Even though I knew these bad citations existed in my database, I had no clue how to go about finding all of them. Thus, I posted a query in the RootsMagic Users Group on Facebook. Although, it isn't possible to create a report listing these citations, a kind user posted some steps to try and locate those hints.

Have you used 'shared events' in your genealogy software? Michelle Simmons Lewis had a Facebook post today that is causing me to re-visit the concept of shared events. In her post, she indicated that she was using shared events to help with a one-name study in early South Carolina. This post caught my attention today for two reasons: My Crawford research in Kentucky is similar to a limited one-name study; I could be using shared events to tie the various members of my Kentucky FAN club together. Unfortunately, Michelle Simmons Lewis' post contained hints for Legacy Family Tree software and I use RootsMagic. Knowing that the software packages are similar, I looked for information on shared events in RootsMagic. I found a video by Bruce Buzbee explaining shared events in RootsMagic.

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), answer the question: 1)   Have you done a good job of citing your sources in your genealogy management program or online family tree?  How are you doing?  How many source citations do you have, and how many p eople are in your tree?  What is the sources to persons ratio? 2)  Which master source (e.g., 1900 U.S. census, Find A Grave, specific book, etc.) do you have the most citations for?  How many?  How did you figure this out? 3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a post on Facebook. Randy Seaver provides another interesting challenge thru his ' Saturday Night Genealogy Fun ' to look at my genealogy data in a different way. Since I use RootsMagic , I thought I'd show how I'm getting the answers to these questions as well as answer them.

Thanks to other geneabloggers, I have recorded statistics for both my RootsMagic tree and my Ancestry tree over the past year. Roots Magic Tree Heartland Genealogy Tree on Ancestry The numbers are 'nice' but for me to understand whether I have made progress, I have to compare them to where I was on January 1, 2018.

Do you ever take the 'easy way' to do something? Well, I do all of the time when it comes to writing about an ancestor. For quite a few years, I've been letting my genealogy software compose the narrative. I first learned to take advantage of turning the events into sentences and thus into a narrative while using The Master Genealogist . Second Site software would take my genealogy data in TMG and turn it into a narrated web site .

This morning, I watched part of the Wacky Wednesday episode: The Source Is Gone and hope to finish it watching it later today. During this presentation, Cousin Russ discusses how he is rethinking how he cites memorials on Find A Grave. During the presentation, Cousin Russ compared the suggested citation for a Find a Grave memorial to how he was citing the memorial in his software. This made me curious about my own citations and how they compare. Below is the suggested citation for the memorial of my second great grandfather, Washington Marion Crawford. When I looked at the footnote for the Find a Grave source in my software (RootsMagic), I found that the footnote was similar to the suggested footnote. My footnote is 'created' using a template to enter the information. The above template is a 'custom' template that I created. I often copy a built-in template and then customize the copy. I like using templates. They make it easy for me to remember to include the importa...