Enjoying the Spirit of Family History During the Holidays

Family history work seems to run in cycles during the year. When the holidays are over and fresh New Years resolutions have begun, family history centers are busy as people feel the need to fulfill their obligation to their ancestors.

Then springtime comes. The snow melts and family history gets placed back a little so that gardens may be planted. This is followed by Summer with its family vacations and kids all around. Fall comes. The garden is harvested, children return to school, and family history centers are open full time as we start to have more time for family history.

With the Holidays starting, we turn our thoughts to family gatherings, gift giving, and the birth of Jesus Christ.

So how can we maintain that spirit of family history while enjoying the holidays and spending more time with our family?

* Give an ancestor a gift by taking their name to the temple.
* If you visit with extended family members, ask them about their families. Record any additions and marriages that may have taken place since you last updated your records on their branch.
* If there are older family members present ask them questions and give them the opportunity to tell you or your children about their life and memories of others that may now be gone. You can record these to refer to later. I learned many things about my father’s childhood when he was talking to my children that I never knew about him before. They asked questions that I had not thought to ask and my father was more than willing to talk to them about his life and family.
* If you travel and are close to areas where there is a heritage for you family. Learn what you can about your heritage. Share this with your children and other family members. Take picture of your family home or areas that you or your ancestors lived and grew up in.
* Create a family heritage gift.
o This could be a book with recipes from the family and ancestors. We did this one year and put family pictures in with the recipes. It was a hit with the children in the family as well as the adults. It sparked interest in great grand parents because of the unique recipes that were part of their heritage.
o A calendar with photos and ancestors birth dates and other events.
o A family history CD to share with family members. You can include photos, stories, a family history database and more. Passage Express and Heritage Collector Suite can help in the creation of these projects.
o Write your personal history or a history of one of your ancestors to share with children and other relatives. Personal Historian has a wonderful set of questions to jar your memory and tools to help you organize and create a history. There are also questions to spark your memory on our FHC page .
* Share your joy of Family History by giving your time to help someone else get started. (a wonderful yet low cost gift idea)

With new FamilySearch becoming available to more areas, FamilySearch Record Search and the new tools that are now available to help. it will be easier to do a bit of family history here and there without taking hours at a time. You can continue the work while enjoying the holidays too.

Whatever you do, please enjoy this time and season as one that truly brings families closer together.

~Paula Vilburn~

New Contest

To celebrate the opening of all areas except Asia to new FamilySearch, Ohana Software is holding a new contest through January 1st 2010. The prize will be 2 tickets to the Family History Expo in Mesa, Arizona that will be held on Jan 22-23, 2010. ( Value $150).

There are several ways that you can enter this contest.

• Submit a success story on using FamilyInsight or Ordinance Tracker to success@ohanasoftware.com.
• If you have a blog, blog about FamilyInsight and Ordinance Tracker and send us a link to your blog so that we can follow you too.  Send the link to support@ohanasoftware.com
• Add a comment to this blog’s contest article  about FamilyInsight or Ordinance Tracker.
• Join FamilyInsight on Facebook and add a comment to the FamilyInsight wall. ( While there see the videos on how to use FamilyInsight.)
• Visit www.ohanasoftware.com and go to the purchase page and choose “Enter to win tickets to Mesa Family History Expo.” Continue as if you were purchasing something so it is attached to your registration in our records. (only one entry per person can be done this way).

We look forward to reading your FamilyInsight  stories and hope to see  you in Mesa.

Ohana Software

Introducing FHCWiki

John Vilburn of Ohana Software has created a new wiki. This is not part of Ohana Software but a place for sharing information. He says that he created it so that he would have a place to easily find the resources he uses in helping consultants in our area without having to do the research every time. Just to make it easier.

If you are a Family History Consultant, work in a Family History Center, teach a Family History class or are involved in helping others with Family History , take time to look and contribute to the new FHCWiki at www.fhcwiki.org.

A wiki is a place to share ideas and collaborate with others to add information. It is a website where anyone can share their ideas and where everyone is the webmaster. Most everyone has heard of Wikipedia the online wiki format encyclopedia. I go there often if I have a question about any number of things including places in my research. I am grateful to those that have added to that site so that I could benefit from their knowledge.

This wiki is just getting started and needs the entries of those of you who have information that can benefit others on their work in Family History Centers or as Consultants or others working to help people share in the joy of Family History.

So far there are links to FHC letters and policies, various presentations including a couple on new FamilySearch., lessons on Family History, leadership guides and more. This is a website for everyday people as well as Techies.

The more people that get involved the more we can all benefit. I know there are a lot of you that receive this newsletter that have a lot to offer. That is the wonderful thing about Family History work, we can all learn from each other. I personally have gained most of my knowledge of Family History as I worked with others to help them find some piece of information.

If you think that you can’t do this because you have never done a wiki before, or anything like it, there is a link on the main page with instructions on just how to proceed. You never know until you try. You can preview what you want to add before it is actually added so you will know how it will look. I made my first wiki entries this week and it was easy. 10 years ago I would never have thought I could be do this.

Register on the wiki and learn something new as you share your knowledge with others.

Hope to see you at www.fhcwiki.org

Paula

Continued Learning

August and September are over and that means most of the younger generation is back in school. The economic downturn has lead many people in their 30s, 40s and 50s to return to school, too. But what about those of us who are working or who are retired? Do we have to miss out on all the fun? Never!

There are educational opportunities all around us. I’ve been watching NOVA lately and learned about the creation of the world (according to scientists), volcanalogy, the newest research on dinosaurs, our genes and other great topics. I might not be able to pass a biology test but my heart rejoices over the incredible scientific advances. Learning is good for our spirits and our minds.

Ohana Software may not be in the same league as NOVA but we offer FREE training classes. If you go to our website www.ohanasoftware.com, and click on the Community tab, there is a link that says Webinars. This will take you to the page to sign up for Webinars. We have classes on various FamilyInsight topics plus guest speakers who speak on topics that are near and dear to their hearts. Next month we will have Rae Lee Steinacker as our guest speaker. She teaches Intermediate and Advanced Internet Research at the BYU Family History Center. Her topic will be How to Find U.S. Birth, Marriage, and Death Records (& Substitutes) on the Internet.

Last month, Merlin Kitchen, Assistant Director at the Utah South Area Family History Training Center in Orem, Utah presented a class on the FamilySearch Records Search pilot program. As FamilySearch converts films to digital images, and those images are indexed by volunteers, the records become available online for free through FamilySearch. We recorded this and other classes so you can watch them over and over again. You can find this and other archived classes on our Webinar Archive page.

The Family History Library in Salt Lake City offers classes every day. If you ever visit that library, you can attend the classes in person. Happily, many of these training classes and series of classes have been recorded so that you and I can watch them at home. You can find them at www.familysearch.org. Click on the “Library” tab and choose “Education”. On the new page, click “Family History Library Research Series Online”. You can receive training for:

• England Beginning Research (5 classes plus handouts)
• Germany Research New! (2 classes)
• Principios básicos para la investigación genealógica en Hispanoamérica (México) ¡Nuevo! (3 classes)
• Russia Research New! (2 classes)
• U.S. Research New! (4 classes)

So, if you are feeling left out and miss the smell of newly sharpened pencils and an opened box of crayons, do the next best thing and go to school online.

~ Cina Johnson~

Ordinance Tracker Stand Alone Released

Ordinance Tracker was first released as an integrated part of the program FamilyInsight. Because of its success, Ohana Software has now released Ordinance Tracker as a stand alone. The program is new in that it gives LDS genealogists the ability to print and track ordinances in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface. When you bring up your reserved ordinances, it actually looks like a bunch of ordinance cards stacked up by type. Three stacks, pink, blue, and yellow. When asked about this design, John Vilburn said “The simple design is meant to be intuitive. You pick up the ordinance card and put it into the ordinance request preview, then click print. There’s not much to learn.”

The ordinance tracker cards also show you what is going on in much the same way. If an ordinance is complete, you see the date as if it were stamped on there. If a card has been printed it says so. And if it is ready to go, it says “ready”.

Some LDS genealogists have been hesitant to submit family names to the temple because they would prefer to do them themselves and don’t want their ancestors stuck waiting. This is no longer a problem because users can see exactly what is going on with their temple assigned ordinances. If a card has been processed at a temple, the card says so. If not, and a user doesn’t want to wait, they can take it back from the temple list by simply dragging and dropping it back to their personal list.

“One of the factors that contributed to releasing Ordinance Tracker as its own program, was the feedback we receive from family history center directors and consultants saying that it made teaching ordinance management so much simpler for them.” said John. “By releasing it by itself, it makes it available to everyone, no matter what database program they are using” All that is needed to run the program is an active login to the new FamilySearch website. For this reason, Ordinance Tracker can be used with any of the current database programs like Rootsmagic, Ancestral Quest and Legacy. For those who have decided to work directly from FamilySearch, without a desktop database program, the program is a much needed tool to organize their reserved ordinances.

To find out more about the ordinance tracker program, Visit the Ohana Software website. Ordinance Tracker costs $12.50 and is available for both Mac and Windows computers.

For those that currently use FamilyInsight, Ordinance Tracker will still be included the tools menu for you to use.

For more information on Ordinance Tracker visit: www.ohanasoftware.com

Win 2 Redding Family History Expo Tickets

Ohana Software would like to share the joy of attending the Redding Family History with a fellow Genealogist .  We will be giving away 2 Free tickets to the Expo to a lucky winner this next week.  It is easy to enter and there are several ways to do this.

1.   Visit www.ohanasoftware.com and click on the purchase tab.  But wait you don’t have to purchase.  This is just our Kookie way of having you enter.  There is a zero dollar product called “Enter to win Redding Family History Expo tickets”.   Choose this “product”  and add to your cart. check out and register if you are not already registered on our website.  Confirm the order and that is all you need to do to.  While you are there you may want to check out our new standalone product Ordinance Tracker that works directly with new FamilySearch.

2.  If you want more entries you can enter up to 5 more times by doing the following and commenting on this blog as to what you did. I additional entry for each of the below. Be sure to comment on this blog separately for each entry item you do.

* Subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog.

* Twitter about this Giveaway.

* Spread the word about this giveaway on Facebook

* Comment on this blog about what you like about FamilyInsight or the new Ordinance tracker.

* Become a member of FamilyInsight Users on Facebook.

Contest ends at Midnight Redding time ( Pacific time)  Oct 13th 2009

Hope to see you in Redding.

Aloha,

Paula

Helpful Hints for FamilyInsight

I’ve been following the Utah and Idaho roll out of the FamilySearch family tree with almost as much excitement as those of you who live in those states. It is an amazing website and I hope you will appreciate everything is can do.

With the roll out underway, more and more of you are updating to FamilyInsight each day. Welcome. We hope you will enjoy using FamilyInsight.

To say there is a lot to learn about the new.familysearch.org website is a big understatement. The same goes for FamilyInsight. I hope these hints help you get off to a good start with both our program and the new FamilySearch website.

1. The IGI is no longer being updated. All ordinance information goes into the new.familysearch.org website. FamilyInsight can still search the IGI but you will not see ordinances that have been preformed in temples using the new system or ordinances that have been done anywhere since the end of June. If you have access to the FamilySearch family tree, you should use either the Simple Update or the Full Synchronization mode.

2. The process of searching for your ancestors will go smoother if you will first use the Edit Places mode and make sure that your place names are recognized by FamilySearch. We have a good video training lesson ( http://tinyurl.com/aezfbg ) to help you learn to use this mode to the fullest advantage. You will learn how to clean up your file by using the suggestions from FamilySearch. When appropriate, you can keep your historically correct places and point FamilyInsight to the standardized place so FamilySearch knows where to look for your people. If you take the time up front to used Edit Places, you will save time when you start searching.

3. Watch the video training ( http://tinyurl.com/aezfbg ) to see how the program works. Attend a webinar ( http://www.ohanasoftware.com/?sec=webinars ) for in depth training on synchronizing records or reserving names for ordinance and printing the Family Ordinance Request. If you cannot wait for a webinar, you can watch a recording of a previous webinar by going to http://www.ohanasoftware.com/?sec=webinars&page=WebinarArchive.

4. While watching the training videos or webinars, pay close attention to the process of marking names as Matches and THEN going to the “Ready to Sync” line to select the information you want to update from FamilySearch to your file and from your file to FamilySearch. Make sure you understand how to select the information you want, especially for marriages and parents. This will ensure you don’t add duplicates to your file.

As you become familiar with FamilyInsight, you will come to realize how easy it is to synchronize records and how flexible and powerful it is.

City Directories

Since city directories played such a prominent role in my last post (Leave no Stone Unturned), I thought it might be a good idea to write something about them.

As soon as people started gathering together we needed directions to find each another’s dwellings, be it a cave, hut, farm or apartment building. Today, we use the Internet to find someone’s phone number and address, see a map, and get directions to drive there. You can even pull up a satellite image of the place you are heading to so you recognize it when you arrive. In the BC years (as in before computers) you opened a phone book and found the person’s name, address and phone number. You then flipped to the map section and found where they lived. Their predecessor was the city directory.

By the late 1700’s, major cities began publishing city directories as a means of locating people and places. They generally listed the head of the household and his (or her) address. Directories often contained maps to further facilitate finding friends, family members, and co-workers.

Helpful Genealogy Tool

Using some basic investigative techniques, family historians can use city directories to locate family members and the places they lived and worked. You can also find churches, schools, fraternal organizations, fire and police stations, government leaders, and businesses in the area. If your family has any connection with these kinds of institutions, you can narrow down which to search for by comparing their locations with where your ancestor lived.

City directories can also help us solve other problems. Since widows were sometimes listed by their name followed by, “widow of [husband's name]” you may be able to narrow down the time when her husband died. If you cannot find a family in a census record, check the city directory to see if they were still living in that area. City directories are particularly helpful for locating people in the 1890s since the 1890 census in virtually nonexistent.

One important fact to remember is, city directories were compiled about a year before they were published. If your person disappears as of the 1891 directory, they may have actually moved in 1890. If they appear in the 1865 directory, they probably arrived in area in early 1864 or even late 1863, depending upon the publication dates. Allow for compilation and publishing when you are estimating dates of departure or death.

Travel Back in Time

Don’t overlook the advertisements, especially if you love history or want to write a personal history. The adds are fun to read, the illustrations are generally delightful, and they help you envision the environment in which your family lived. If your ancestor owned a business, you may even find a advertisement for his or her business. Even looking at the competition’s advertisements can help you visualize life for your ancestors.

I hope you will avail yourself of the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of your family by looking for them in a city directory. You can look for city directories online or check the Family History Library Catalog. The films or fiche can be rented through your local Family History Center.

Leave No Stone Unturned

I have been actively involved with training family history consultants for the better part of the past 17 years, yet I sometimes need to remind myself to practice what I preach. One of the fundamental steps in research, especially if you have hit a brick wall, is to do a “thorough and exhaustive” search for your person using ALL the record types that are available in ALL the places where they lived. Some places do not have a lot of records in either the Family History Library Catalog or on the Internet. Other places have a vast assortment of records so the scope of this project may differ vastly from person to person and from place to place.

I think most of us content ourselves with finding what what are looking for and moving to the next level of research without exhausting all the possible resources that may contain information about our ancestor. When we move on too quickly, we may miss key pieces of information that would have helped us in our future research. We may also miss some family members and interesting tidbits that fill in someone’s life story.

Examples

My first example happened a few years ago while I was in the Family History Library in Salt Lake. I was looking for probate records for one ancestor and decided that “as long as I’m at it” I would grab a another roll of film that would include the records for my third great grandfather. I hoped to find some “background” information. Instead I found 5 new children (4 girls and a boy) and the husbands of two of these daughters! I quickly looked up these new families on the 1850 census and in short order added seventeen new people to my family, all of whom needed temple work.

Another example happened recently. Since I had extra time at our Family History Center, I decided to looked at the Chicago city directories covering years when my second great grandfather and his family lived there. I found him in three consecutive years of the city directory. Two entries listed his occupation as a laborer and the third one listed him as a mason. I also noted that he moved three times in three years. My findings were not earth shaking but they provided insights into this immigrant family.

My last example happened several years ago and also involved using a city directory. I was trying to pin down when a great uncle moved from Pennsylvania to Kansas. In the process of looking for his records in the Scranton city directory, I  found his father who should have been living on his farm in a different county.  It turns out that between census years he moved to Scranton and back to a farm in the original county. While in Scranton, he worked as a lorry driver for a butcher. The following year, the city directory said his occupation was a butcher for the same company. The third and final year, he was the co-owner of the butcher shop. After that, he was no longer living in the city. This short interlude from farming was a total surprise and a treasure to me.

Lessons Learned

The moral of the story is, even though you have identified your family and think you have the family put together properly, it is good to continue looking for additional records and leave no stone unturned. You may find more children, the married name of a daughter, someone’s occupation, address, etc. Every new fact adds life to the person and the possibility of pushing the family line back or forward another generation. The time involved is often well worth the effort.

Happy Hunting!

Loveland Colorado Family History Expos

Diana and I are in Loveland, Colorado today. The Family History Expos is underway and the enthusiastic group of attendee’s have made their first pass through the vendor hall.

The electricity in the air, generated by teaching, learning, and sharing our experiences in family history, eclipses that which came with the thunderstorms of last night. I love gatherings of people with a common interest. There are no strangers, just good friends that haven’t ever met.

I’ll keep my ear to the ground for late breaking news. My first “scoop” is Heritage Collector Suite released version 5.3 yesterday. It will be on their website next week and on ours sometime thereafter.

Stay tuned.