GenealogyAtHeart – Page 42 – GenealogyAtHeart.com

Knocking Down Nicknames

Knock, Knock
Who’s there?
Al
Al who?
Al give you a kiss if you help me break through this brick wall!

Yes, that is truly a dumb knock-knock joke but it makes me think of what I’d do if I was able to identify some folks by their given names.

Who’s Al? Is he Alvin, Albert, Alfie, Alexander, Alexa, Alfred or someone else entirely? Although Al typically is a male name, I’ve known a female that used it.

Why do we even use nicknames? Wickipedia states hypocoristic, a synonym of nickname, is an “affection between those in love or with a close emotional bond, compared with a term of endearment.”

I completely understand the use of endearments but nicknames cross over into the public realm and for genealogists, can be a nightmare! I speak for myself; Lori is my nickname. Why my parents didn’t place that name on my birth certificate I don’t understand. I asked! The response was, “I don’t know.” Geez. My formal name wasn’t a family name so there was no reason they couldn’t have. My mom said she was going to name me Patty, after her friend, but when I arrived I didn’t look like a Patty and my birth certificate name just came to her. Wonderful! She never could explain to me what a Patty looked like.

I seriously considered even getting my name legally changed a few years ago when government requirements tightened and I had difficulty proving who I was as none of my legal documents matched. Hubby goes by a nickname, too, but his official records all used the same name so he had no problem. He has successfully kept his nickname out of public records.

My problem began before I was out of diapers – my parents applied for a social security card for me using my nickname. I had no problem obtaining work (or paying social security all my working life!) under that name until 10 years ago when the laws changed for license renewal. To beat the system, I had to add “aka” on my bank accounts, mortgage and credit cards and place my birth certificate name on my official records. I’m so paranoid about being identified correctly that when I did my burial pre-planning a few months ago I made sure I included my given and nickname on the document. Problem was, my name is too long so I had to use whiteout and try again. Nothing like a genealogist messing up their own record!

Even though we took great pains to name our children so they wouldn’t have the nickname dilemma, nicknames are now back in vogue. Did you know there are online generators to help you select your own nickname? Who knew! Reasons for giving yourself a nickname are because you think your birth name is boring, there are too many people with your given name in your social group and you’re being confused, your name is too long or it’s difficult to pronounce. Some folks are even changing their names as they begin a new life experience. I can only imagine how much fun this will be for future genealogists to correctly identify individuals!

On the flip side, these sites could help you in figuring out the birth name of your brick wall person. Check these out if you’re stuck identifying someone in your family tree:

1001+ Cool Nicknames
The Origins of 10 Nicknames
Common Nicknames
800+ Nicknames
Nicknames for Boys
Vintage Nicknames for Girls

Photo Preservation for Genealogy

I found it interesting that four of Legacy Family Tree’s top 10 webinars of 2016 revolved around photography (Dating Family Photographs – 1900-1940 by Jane Neff Rollins; Enriching Your Family History through Pictures and Stories by Amie Bowser Tennant; Scrapbooking & Journaling for Family History by Amie Bowser Tennant; and Share, Store, and Save Your Family Photos by Maureen Taylor). I guess you could even make a case that a fifth one also involves photos (Crowdsourcing with Social Media to Overcome Brick Walls in Genealogy Research by Amie Bowser Tennant) since FaceBook and Pinterest are valuable genealogical tools to find photos.

I love discovering photos and when I perform Client work I try to add them to a project. Staring into the eyes of an ancestor elicits emotions like no other item can!

So, that’s why I’m worried about the present habits we have developed (no pun intended!) regarding preserving our photos. Our smart phones and other devices have made preserving memories incredibly quick, easy and inexpensive. I use my phone’s camera for recording anything I want to refer back to, such as a whiteboard that was used during a brainstorm session in a meeting, two garments I might purchase to see which would better match the shoes I left at home, and of course, family events. I take more photos now than at any earlier stages of my life. I also have a horrible habit of not preserving those photos I take.

As I walk throughout my home I noticed that most of the framed photos I have on display were taken by a professional. Back in the day, having a photograph made was an event in and of itself. First you had to find the studio, then book an appointment, make sure everyone was dressed and ready to go and finally, return days later to view the proofs to select which you wanted to purchase. Another trip was necessary to pick up the final product. No wonder most of those photos are still around. So much time, effort and cost was involved the photo was determined to be valuable.

Today, not at all. Snap, click, delete if it wasn’t to everyone’s liking or share if it was. We don’t print out photos like we did in the past. Right after the “Years of the Hurricanes” in Florida in the early 2000’s I would have said it was a blessing not to have more photos to lug during an evacuation. CD and Cloud technology seemed like such a great idea. It was the hurricanes that forced me to scan and save my family’s photos – those from the 1800’s to the recent scrapbooks I had created as my children grew up. I thought I was being so smart when I saved to CD’s and gave them out as Christmas gifts to various relatives. My thought was to spread them around to increase the likelihood that they would be preserved. Have a wildfire in California or a twister in the Midwest? No worries, the CD will live on in New England. I never thought about CD’s going away or family members who misplaced them.

When Cloud technology came out I simply transferred everything online. How convenient to be able to access those photos from anywhere! But the program I used, Picassa, became defunct. So I transferred them to Google Photos and Dropbox and Ancestry.

It just hit me I’ve preserved the past but not the present. I’m not saving my current photos at the rate that I did before. Our family’s Thanksgiving pics are still in my phone, along with birthdays and other events I’ve recently attended.

Just as I calendar in a monthly day to download my gedcom from Ancestry to save to software (Legacy and RootsMagic7) on my hard drive, a stand alone hard drive and in the Cloud (Dropbox) I need to also be saving my pics. Yes, I am paranoid but I’ve invested so much time I would be heartsick if all of those were lost.

What I need to do is to get in the habit of cleaning out the photos and preserving them. My plan is to delete those that didn’t come out well and send those I want to keep to my computer. I’ll back those up like I do the gedcom. This is being added to my New Year’s Resolutions!

We’re Related – What to Do if Your Tree is Too Large for the New Ancestry.com Ap

Recently I wrote about my inability to get “We’re Related” – the new Ancestry.com ap working. Every time I tried to switch my Main Tree to yes I’d get an error message. I surmised that it was because my tree was too large and I’m still going with that theory. I figured out a work around and if you’re interested, here’s what to do:

I created a new database in RootsMagic7 (Click File – New) and made the file name: Lori’s Lines. You name yours whatever you want! I disabled WebHints and clicked “I know where the file is.”
Next I dragged myself from my Main Tree gedcom that was already uploaded in RootsMagic to the click person location. A pop up asks what you want to drag and drop and I selected “Ancestors of myself.”
On this new database, I then went to File – Export and unchecked LDS information, addresses, multimedia, note formatting and extra details because I wanted to make the new gedcom as concise as possible. I clicked “Privatize living people” and then clicked ok. I saved the gedcom on my desktop.
Clicking on the ribbon “TREES” on Ancestry.com, I used the drop down menu to click “Create & Manage New Trees.” At the bottom, I clicked “Upload a Gedcom file.” I chose the file sitting on my desktop and named the tree the same as the Gedcom. I also made the tree private. Why? Because I only want people to use my Main Tree on Ancestry and not this subset tree. Back in the day, I had several lines separated and when people would email me, I never knew which tree they were referring to. I will never be doing anything with this newly uploaded tree other than using it for the ap so I also went to settings and made sure I turned off the hints. I DO NOT want more email telling me they found something! (Personally, I’m really tired of seeing the “Direct Bloodline” and pics of red crosses. To me, those aren’t hints and I wish there was a way to filter that stuff out.) Then I clicked the little box that I accept the submission.
You’re almost done! Now, open the We’re Related ap on your phone. (If you haven’t downloaded it go to Google Play Store on Android or whatever you do on IPhone and install it). I then selected the newly uploaded tree – “Lori’s Lines” and slid the no to yes. I selected myself as the person in my tree. It stays on and works!

I decided to do the same for my husband’s lines and followed the same process above. I did have to select myself as him on We’re Related because I wasn’t an available choice. Remember, I had pruned these new Gedcoms to bare basics -on my tree only my direct ancestors so our marriage, siblings and children weren’t imported. Can’t wait to get in a crowd and try it out!

Blaming DNA

naturenurture I blame my DNA a lot and I know I’m not alone. Did you ever hear an older individual tell you as you were growing up that you were just like one of your relatives? I had a teacher tell me I was like my Uncle George and I was perplexed. How could I be like him? I was a girl and he was an adult. When I told my mom she laughed and replied that I liked to play with words like he did. Uncle George had a nickname for everyone. Barely five feet tall and needing to sit on a phone book to peer over the steering wheel, Uncle George called my grandmother “Cutlass Mary” as she was quite assertive in her driving. She also just happened to drive a Cutlass. Since I loved alliteration, rhyming and play on words I understood what my mom was saying. I think that was the beginning of my blaming DNA for my personality.

As I began to delve into my family’s history I completely identified with relatives who had gotten into some serious trouble for their views. Never one to take the path of least resistance, I have questioned authority for as long as I can remember. In high school, my husband joked that must be my personal motto. When I discovered I wasn’t the only one in my family with that trait, I also attributed it to my DNA.

I’m rethinking, though, the amount of influence my DNA has on me due to two events that happened within an hour of each other. The first occurred while visiting a new dentist. At this initial appointment, the dentist asked me what happened to my front teeth. Although not very noticeable, I have some fracturing on the bottoms and a small indent on one of my top teeth. Regarding my bottom teeth, I told the dentist, I had a playground accident as a child as my permanent teeth were erupting. They just came up that way! I told him we must have a genetic mutation of some type on my maternal line as every female has the same indent in the same place. He laughed and asked if I did arts and crafts, sewing in particular. Well, yes, I had even worked as a subcontractor with a costume design company in my younger years. He asked if I used scissors or teeth to cut thread. My goodness! The realization that every woman in my family used their teeth to cut thread hit and all I could say was, “I’ve got to tell my daughter.” So, the indent wasn’t due to DNA but to passing on a habit. My daughter learned to sew from me as I learned from my mom and she from her mom and who knows how far back. I recall my Great Grandmother had the same chip on the same tooth. Who knew?!

After I left the dentist I stopped by a store as I was having one of my kid’s certificates framed. As the clerk displayed the final product another customer asked me who was the recipient. I told her and she said, “Wow, you must be proud.” I am a proud Momma but I always strive to be a Momma who recognized both of my children’s accomplishments so I added an achievement recently made by the other child. Her response surprised me; she said, “You must have good DNA.”

What does that mean – having “good DNA?” I guess “bad DNA” would be a true mutation that resulted in a life threatening illness. Yet mutations alone aren’t “bad,” such as adaptions to make one resistant to diseases. These thoughts quickly ran through my mind as I paid for the frame.

As I left, I turned to the customer and replied, “Naw, it’s not my DNA or my husband’s. It was hard work, tenacity, and self discipline.”

As we delve into our family’s history, we need to be mindful of both nature and nurture. We can blame or praise our ancestors’ influences on our lives, both genetically and observed, but the choices and decisions we make are our own. Happy Hunting!

Genealogy Gift Ideas

Tis the Season to Merrily Spend! Here’s some things that I requested Santa get me this year:

A Stranger in My Genes by Bill Griffin. I’d like the Kindle edition.
Genetic Genealogy in Practice by Blaine Bettinger. I’d like the paperback edition. Yes, it costs a whole bunch more than the Kindle edition but I want to flag pages. It’s also one of my New Year’s resolutions to learn as much as I can about DNA in 2017.
Red Pens – I still underline relationship info with them.
Renew my memberships to my state and local society – they’re due January 1st!
Register for the National Genealogical Society Conference that will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina May 9-13.
A sterling silver charm shaped like a tree that I saw at a local art’s festival.
A package containing primary source documents for relationship of any of my numerous brick wall ancestors. No preference of person! I’d be thankful for any tidbit placed where I could find it.

If you’re a Santa’s helper and are looking for the perfect gift for the Genea in your life, here’s some ideas:

A scanner. Check out Flippal
A jeweler’s head magnifier to better read those records. They start at $7.85 on Amazon. I have a different model that came with interchangeable lenses that I love.
A genealogy mousepad
A genealogy license plate holder
A genealogy travel mug
A subscription to – Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, Fold3.com, Newspapers.com, LegacyFamilyTree.com, National Genealogical Society, New England Historic Genealogical Society, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, your state or local society. These organizations offer classes/workshops/conferences, journals/newsletters, and a community of like minded helpful individuals for support and ideas.
DNA test kits for the entire family (Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, FamilyTreeDNA.com, 23andme.com) Check the pricing and buy the lowest.
A promise you will not roll your eyes, sigh or look bored when your Genea excitedly begins to tell you about the most recent discovery. That’s the best gift ever and it’s free!

Transcribers Needed! How You Can Help.

I recently received an email from the National Archives regarding a need for volunteers to help transcribe and tag items in the archives catalog. What an awesome opportunity to help digitize historical records! With the holiday season approaching, this opportunity is a wonderful way to give back to the genealogy community by helping to make available some of the U.S.’ national treasures! Not sure where to start? I say, just follow your heart – check out the Transcription Missions and select whichever area interests you. The directions are simple – just click here and the easy to follow instructions will get you on your way to doing a very good deed.

Test Driving MyHeritage.com and Making an Amazing Find!

I had a free account with MyHeritage but I was never a subscriber until recently when a 50% discount offer was made for members of the National Genealogical Society. I believe the discount is now offered for a limited time to everyone – check it out here. I decided to give it a try and I immediately scaled a brick wall on my Duer line that I’ve recently been researching. Here’s how I did it…

I downloaded my gedcom from Ancestry.com to my home computer and then uploaded to MyHeritage. My tree is large so I received an email from MyHeritage once it had been loaded and was ready to go. The following day I went on the site and it was easy to upload a site photo (I used my Genealogy At Heart logo that I keep jpg’d in Dropbox and my Google+ pic, added a blurb about what my research interests are and what I’m currently investigating. I happened to write that my brick wall was to determine the link between John Duer and his purported son, Thomas. Thomas died in 1829 intestate and John, in 1831, with a will that omitted Thomas, understandably since he was deceased, but did not include any of Thomas’ children. That wouldn’t have been odd, however, John did include a grandson who lived out of the Trumbull County, Ohio area, who was the son of one of John’s deceased daughters. Why include a grandson that lived in another state and not the grandchildren that lived next door? Hmm.

I have researched probate, land and court records, cemetery records, tried to find Bible and church records, obituaries, collateral lines, biographies, area histories, and contacted area genealogical societies and libraries but found nothing. The census and tax lists just aren’t helpful since they do not show relationships that far back.

I put the research aside for a month but it’s been gnawing at me. I originally made the connection of John and Thomas through the work of Edgar Duer Whitley, a gentleman who had found me on the internet 6 years ago from a Rootsweb posting I had made in the early 2000’s. My tree proved lineage to Thomas but I couldn’t go farther back. His tree showed lineage to Thomas’ son John who had a daughter, Maria, that I’m descended from. Edgar emailed me and kindly sent me an electronic copy of all his years of sleuthing. He never had a citation, though, of how Thomas and John were related. Shortly after he emailed me he no longer responded to my emails. He was quite up in age and I figured he was deceased. Thus, I couldn’t know how he knew that Thomas was the son of John.

I would love to tell you that MyHeritage found the answer super quickly but that didn’t happen. I actually didn’t receive any Record or Smart Matches from them. I assume that’s because my uploaded tree is well sourced.

I decided to snoop around their Family Trees located under the Research category. I entered birth and death location and death year info for Thomas Duer. A number of trees popped up with displays similarly to Ancestry.com. I clicked on the first one and didn’t find anything exciting. The citations were all from Ancestry trees. Ugh!

Then things got interesting – I clicked on Thomas’ wife Hannah as the tree owner had her listed as Hannah Preston. I had her listed as Hannah Byrd. When I went to Hannah’s page I discovered that she had remarried to a James Preston in September 1831 in Trumbull County, Ohio. How had I missed that? Interestingly, here’s how the marriage license is written:

“Ohio, County Marriages, 1789-2013,” database with images, Family Search (https://familysearch.org: 21 Nov 2016), Trumbull>Marriage licenses 1828-1839 vol 2>image 55 of 181; county courthouses, Ohio.

Notice the right side records Hannah’s surname as “Dewer” but in the body of the text as “Duer.” The record is indexed by Dewer so I never found it. The tree owner had found it because he was descended from James Preston. Putting in “James Preston” in the FamilySearch.org search form would have brought it up.

How do I know that the Hannah Duer is the wife of Thomas. There was only one other Hannah Duer living in the country in 1831 and she was 10 years old, residing in Pennsylvania. My Hannah and James were both born in New Jersey in 1775. James’ first wife died in 1829 in childbirth with twins shortly after Hannah’s husband, Thomas, died. Both had young children in the home so it makes sense they would have blended their families.

I went back to Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org and Rootsweb’s World Connect Project, to see if other’s had this information. Nope! Only the one tree on MyHeritage. For me, this was definitely worth the price.

It looks like the marriage didn’t last long which could explain why no one else has the information on their trees. By 1840, James was living with the children from his first wife and Hannah was living with one of her children as the tick mark in the age category for a female most likely is for her. That age tick mark is lacking on James’ record. In 1850, the couple remained separated per the census records. Hannah’s tombstone notes her first husband’s name, Duer. James lies next to his first wife. It appears that this was a relationship that both sides wanted to forget. This could also explain why Hannah’s first husband’s purported father, John, omitted her from his will written in 1830. I’m now searching for a divorce record. This story just gets more interesting with every find! I’m very happy to have found this information that quickly with MyHeritage’s site. Once I’m done with my Duer’s I’ll be searching their site for other clues on additional lines. Happy Hunting!

DNA Lab Analysis – The Accuracy is Questioned

Recently I attended a workshop by Dick Eastman on Cloud Computing provided by my local genealogy society. Dick spoke briefly, a lunch break was given and then the workshop resumed. Although his information was interesting, it was the side conversations I overheard during lunch that piqued my interest.

I need to offer a disclaimer first – one of my children is employed by a large laboratory in the U.S. and part of the job responsibility is to trouble shoot and then correct problems that individual labs are encountering. The troubleshooting my child does is regarding equipment and not results. To my knowledge, none of that organization’s business is in DNA analysis. Even so, this proud momma often hears from family and friends who got results back that there must have been some mistake – how could whatever level that was being measured be so high, etc. It was with this background that I brought to eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table…

A woman was explaining that she had recently had her DNA results returned and she wasn’t matching with anyone in her family. She is unmarried and has no children so none of them tested. Her parents are deceased and she had no siblings. By matching, she was referring to cousins. A man at the table conjectured the lab had made a mistake and mixed up the samples. Another attendee reported that his results matched with his children, siblings and first cousins but not with relatives from 3 generations back. He, too, originally thought the lab had erred. Then a match occurred with a surname which he was not familiar. He thought he had somehow missed that line in his research so he went back over his records and low and behold, discovered that the matching surname lived in the same boarding house as his 2x’s great grandmother. Hmm. And yes, great grandma was married to who he had assumed was his great grandfather at the time. There went all of his research on that great grandpa’s line!

Could a lab make a mistake? Absolutely! The likelihood, though, is not as great with the processes and procedures that are in place as is the entanglement of human relationships.

The following day I was reading a list serv to which I belong and an individual had posted how she had inadvertently given a female DNA test kit to a male relative. The lab caught it and asked for clarification.

My advice if your returned results give you unexpected findings – get the test redone at another site. Prices are dropping for the holidays so the cost is negligible. There are “rumors” that Ancestry will run a special beginning November 25th for $69.00 to beat the FTDNA price of $79.00. I don’t have that in writing so check around on the 25th to see what happens.

When the test results are returned, if they’re similar, well, you know you need to explore other lines to determine who’s the daddy. If they are not the same, I’d contact the lab and share your findings. You’d probably get your money refunded if the lab made the error and an offer for another test as a thank you for letting them know there is a quality control problem. Personally, I’m betting on the relationships and not the lab as the culprit.

Family Tree Maker’s Fall Newsletter Makes Me Feel Vindicated!

Well, well, I’m feeling pretty righteous! I recently received the Fall Newsletter (which, BTW, is the ONLY newsletter that Family Tree Maker has emailed to me this year so it correctly should be labeled as the “First Fall Newsletter” since Software MacKiev bought the rights for the Microsoft version which is what I formerly used.)

The newsletter was designed to notify the public that they are running behind and don’t have the synch ready as they had earlier stated would occur before the end of 2016. Okay, glitches happen and I am pleased that the organization is taking ownership that they will not be able to meet their self imposed deadline.

IMHO, this is a major step forward. I’ve been blogging for quite a while about my frustration with FTM not syching with my large Ancestry.com tree. Every time I called customer service they would blame Ancestry. I’d call Ancestry and they’d tell me to call FTM. I’d wait a day or two and try again as I was hoping whoever was on duty would have the knowledge to assist me. I posted for help, too but no one seemed to know what the problem was. The only “help” I ever received was twice when I was emailed a useless pdf that supposedly would get the synch back but that never worked, either. The final time I called, the rep tried to tell me I couldn’t follow instructions. So much for service! That was the day I switched to Legacy Family Tree’s standard edition.

But back to the newsletter… I quote, “…So, should you get the latest build right now then? Well, it depends. The improvements are mostly in stability and performance. So if FTM is crashing or has slowed to a crawl with large trees, then have at it. ” Finally, they admit that the product doesn’t work well with large trees! Now it’s official who owned the problem and I don’t blame Ancestry.com one bit for cutting the prior company owners’ off last December. What a nightmare it must have been for Ancestry staff to have to take all those calls from unhappy FTM users! I also give kudos to Ancestry’s staff for handling the calls I made to them in a professional manner.

I tried to link to the newsletter but I don’t see it posted on their website so I’m providing the link to sign up to their Mailing List instead.

I would like to see FTM offer a goodwill gesture by providing the new version for free to anyone with a large tree to make up for the wasted time and lack of support. FTM could determine the size of the tree for the offer. For now, that’s the only way I’d be back.