Genealogy research teams should seriously consider using the collaborative features in Google Docs to share and document their assignments and progress in collaborative research. A research plan using Docs is available to your team members any time and in any place that they have Internet access and no special services are required other than a Google account. There are two collaborative tools you’ll want to use with a research document: Comments and Discussions. A comment has been commonly used by most of us for years when we insert a comment into a shared document. Discussions ...

I followed the earthquake of 22 February 2011 in Christchurch, New Zealand closely because a fairly large contingent of extended cousins live there or nearby. As far as I’ve been able to determine, all survived but many experienced damage to their homes and businesses. One story caught my eye on the evening of the first day, when it mentioned two teenagers who were trying to find their mother, Donna Manning, a producer and presenter for Canterbury TV. She and fifteen of her colleagues along with forty or more foreign students and teachers were in the collapsed CTV building. The ...

The early morning murmurings of birds and insects was interrupted by the 6:00 a.m. blast of a cannon on the road outside my bedroom window. It was Home Town Day! That wasn’t the name of the celebration, but the activities of the day could be transposed on about any small town in America with a comfortable fit. Folks in town didn’t have much money, but they had a lot of spirit and they knew how to use the resources at hand to maximize their innate but usually unseen “fun” content. The old hay wagons were wrapped with crepe paper streamers of red, white and blue. ...

A research plan and related notes are required for any successful genealogical research project. Each of us has a method or methods that we use with some level of success. Some of us use our laptop or smartphones to reference research plan files. Others use paper notes that they carry on research trips. I use the tasks that I’ve created in my Legacy database. That tool has worked well for me over the years and I’ll continue to use it. However …. Recently, I found myself unexpectedly stopping at a library without my laptop, my notes and apparently without a functioning ...

We all have favorite utility programs that we use without even thinking of them. They add a dimension of functionality and time savings that are not only measureable but exciting if we stop to think about them. One of my favorite genealogy utility programs is Transcript that was written by Jacob Boerema. It is free for personal use but any donations would certainly be welcomed by Jacob as he works to extend the functions in the program. I use Transcript constantly. Like Pavlov’s dogs, I’ve self-trained myself that whenever I see an image on the screen that needs to be ...

We all have favorite utility programs that we use without even thinking of them. They add a dimension of functionality and time savings that are not only measureable but exciting if we stop to think about them. One of my favorite genealogy utility programs is Transcript that was written by Jacob Boerema. It is free for personal use but any donations would certainly be welcomed by Jacob as he works to extend the functions in the program. I use Transcript constantly. Like Pavlov’s dogs, I’ve self-trained myself that whenever I see an image on the screen that needs to be ...

Not long ago, I was contacted by a lady that lives in a home that was built on the rear-most part of my ancestors property in New England. She enjoys genealogy but her current quest is the result of a ghost that lives in her home and sometimes says “Hello” to her family in a clear intelligible friendly voice when they are climbing the back stairs. Those occurrences prompted her to start a search of the genealogy of her property through the years. My ancestors owned the land her home sits on for four or five generations of the family and are hence candidates for the possible ...

Experienced genealogists constantly receive requests for help to teach others how to do family history research. Teaching is nothing new to them. We all do it if we can. The time spent helping others is just a way of paying it forward or paying it back. Over the years, my audience has extended to reach around the world. Extended cousins and friends don’t all live within a 50-mile radius of my home. I’ve used a number of different software packages to aid in the teaching process across the distances. Most of them have failed to provide a stable platform or have increased in ...

Every family has fellows who love to tinker with stuff. If there is something in the home that they think they can improve, its sanctity is lost. With tools and pocketknife in hand, the pristine factory casing is cracked and its interior is inspected, scrambled and tweaked. Tim Taylor on Home Improvement has nothing on these guys. Of course, sometimes, we, (yes, I’m one of tinkerer’s too), actually do make a worthwhile improvement. Case in point: My great grandfather, David Lewis Drew , moved to Copperopolis, Calaveras County, California from Plymouth, Massachusetts during ...

The resources available for family history researchers has never been greater with another 30+ million records added to the FamilySearch.org site in the past few months. Volunteer Indexers like you and I are constantly working to add indexed information and images to the FamilySearch site, so as grand as the number of records are now, wait a few months and the number will drastically increase again and again and again. FamilySearch Indexing I hope you are one of the volunteer indexers who are bringing the wealth of the records in the granite vaults to light in the digital world. Check ...

Scanning old photos always brings a cry of despair from my lips. My mother and those before her, had a propensity to write on the face of photos. I’m happy to have the names and places, but oh how I wish they would have written on the back of them in pencil rather than with the acid-rich ink they seemed to all use. The images are permanently defaced. Hours and hours of work with Photoshop helps in some cases, but in most situations, the old grainy small black and white or brown images were too small to allow a decent clean up on a digital copy. I’ve entertained the offers of ...

The past few weeks have marked a dramatic interest surge in the LDS Church’s FamilySearch resources and products. The folks at FamilySearch invited a group of genealogy bloggers to Salt Lake where they were given excellent presentations about the projects that are offered to the public free of charge. While most people had heard of the records Indexing project, few of them were familiar with the user driven and written FamilySearch Wiki that contains literally tens of thousands of excellent articles to help genealogists be successful in their research quests. Even if you have ...

Not everyone is aware that there is a “Premier” membership level on FamilySearch . Users with the Premier level membership can see all of the document images that are available on the site. Those without it, can see many, many images but some are reserved due to licensing and other contractual agreements. Readers of Science Fiction novels will recognize the initials “TANSTAAFL”. They apply to FamilySearch as well. “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” A great deal of money and time is required to acquire, license, digitize and host family ...

Like most folks, I tell others in my circle about “Great Buys”, “Feature Rich”, “High Value” items that I encounter in my daily life. Word of Mouth continues to be the most effective selling tool in the world. We don’t pass our praises out lightly because our reputation and veracity are inextricably entwined with the words and actions that emanate from our being. With that in mind, I highly recommend Shades Of The Departed digital magazine to any and all persons interested in family history and genealogy. I am not involved in the publication ...

I frequently use the Street View in Google Maps to look at the property where my ancestors lived long ago. Sometimes, I’m rewarded with a view of their house that has survived the centuries. Although the buildings and properties have experienced changes in the intervening time in cosmetics, construction and destruction, my digital excursion is worth the time. I’m fairly sure that the home my 2nd great-granduncle, Edwin Vanini Smith died in at 7 Wellington Square in Nottingham, England still stands. At least the building appears to be old enough to have been in existence ...