Heartland Genealogy

Spring break just started and it is gorgeous out! Since it was too nice to be stuck inside scanning, I decided to try and fulfill some photo requests at the Seneca City Cemetery. Armed with a list of 16 requests from Find a Grave, I stopped by the City of Seneca office to pick up a cemetery map. From there, I went to the Seneca Free Public Library to check for lot numbers since some of the memorials were missing the lot number. [Nemaha County is very lucky since a native living in Ohio has indexed all of the cemeteries and placed copies of those indexes in the library.] My quest for pictures started in the older part of the cemetery, looking for Ridgway stones in lot 180. Unfortunately, no stones remain in the area of this lot. From there, I ventured to the Wells plot (lot 147) in search of Adolphus Wells (1832-1903). Several Wells family members are buried in this plot, but there isn't a stone for Adolphus. While in the older part of the cemetery, I also looked for Sally...

The tasks for Feb.28th thru March 5th centered around sharing -- sharing daily. I confess, I didn't meet the standard of daily sharing. However, I did get several family stories published on my blog . My blog is the newest way in which I'm trying to share my research with my family. Over the years, I have shared my work in a variety of ways, including my Heartland Genealogy web site with my sourced genealogy. Other ways in which I have shared with my immediate family: Photo album of family pictures CD containing copies of pictures Scrapbook pages covering key events Shared pictures in a Google folder This past summer, I started using Facebook groups to share photos. As I've been scanning the photo albums from both sides of my family, I've been able to make the digital copies of those photos available to distant cousins quickly and inexpensively. I recently created a group for the alumni of the local high school. Since the yearbooks were recently sca...

July 17, 2015 #Wk3GenealogyDoOver This is the end of week 2 and I don't feel like I've made much progress, so let's review: Cleaned off desk - my husband even noticed (now to keep it fairly clean) Wrote (at least started) interview of self Selected 'questions' for relatives and sent off to 'cousins' - Even received two back already! Switched focus of scanning - pulled out my scrapbook and started working from me back thru the family notebooks Discovered my baptism certificate - I hadn't had this info in my genealogy data before Investigated TNG software / configured site at www.heartlandgenealogy.com Want to be able to let cousin(s) have access to full research - this will meet that goal Still need to upload the media Need to check permissions - not sure they are set correctly Tried to create a wiki-tree - gedcom didn't go up Focused on using Roots Magic for genealogy software Began going thru documentation for myself and updating...

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...

It’s week two of Genealogy Do-Over (cycle 3) and time to get specific on some goals. Focus scanning project on family notebooks Check source citations for events appearing on a family group sheet to make sure they follow current standards (using Evidence Explained) Continue learning by reading blogs and participating in webinars Figure out tagging of files so that I don’t end up with multiple copies of the same file. #Wk2GenealogyDoOver

For about the past ten years, my genealogy research has pretty much stalemated. This summer, I decided to pursue a project that I had started over Christmas vacation – the digitizing of my genealogy files. This long, slow project is also giving me screen time to explore. During that exploration time, I stumbled across the concept of a ‘genealogy do-over’. Intrigued but not really wanting to start over, I signed up for cycle 3 of ‘Genealogy Do-Over’ on Facebook. One of the rationales behind a ‘do-over’ is that many genealogies contain data that was imported from other researchers without documentation to support the lineage. I have to admit that unfortunately, I did import another researchers tree in my early years. I learned from that mistake and have been careful about importing data since. This argument along with the valid point that some data may be in a genealogy file that doesn’t have sufficient documentation have caused me to seriously consider an actual do-over. However, the fo...

Another Master Genealogist user recently asked for URLs of genealogy websites generated with Roots Magic or Legacy software. Curious about the differences, I decided to do my own comparison. For this project, I created a gedcom with a limited number of people from my Master Genealogy data. I then imported that gedcom into a new file in both RootsMagic 7 and Legacy 8. In RootsMagic, I used the default configurations and generated a web site using RootsMagic 6 style website. In Legacy, I used the default configurations to generate an individual style website.  Please note that images do not transfer via Gedcom from Master Genealogist to RootsMagic or Legacy. I also did not take the time to reconnect the images to the individuals. Thus, the lack of images in the test site is my fault and not the fault of the software. Both RootsMagic and Legacy put the events into a list. RootsMagic Legacy Second Site generates a narrative report for the individual. Legacy only shows the documentation...