Your Genealogy Matters

On Sunday, August 13, 2017, night, Game of Thrones gave us a well hidden lesson about genealogy, and what I call "research blinders".   You are thinking to yourself either "what are genealogy blinders," and either, "so" or "who watches that trash." I'm not going to recap what the series is about - you can find that online if care to - but I do want to point out the lesson given, because unless you are a die hard GOT fan, you missed it.   But there are a couple questions in GOT that do deal with genealogy, and all it involves who has the right to sit in the ultimate seat of power.  First, there are families, who intermarry, or not. There are alligences, or not.  There are those who claim birthright, and there are those who would kill anyone who stands between them and the crown. Got it? In the scene, Sam, the former Night's Watch member and good guy and Gilly, the wilding woman he rescued from her abusive father were togethe

It is summer break for me, so I'll be back on Bastille Day, Friday, July 14!

Let us not panic.  OK? The LDS Church, through it's Family Search web site has announced that its long standing microfilm lending program is coming to an end.  The final ship out date is August 31, 2017. Requests for films and orders received after that date will not be fulfilled. Family Search estimates that the remainder of its rolls that have not been transitioned to electronic images should be complete sometime in 2020. Many genealogical web sites have reprinted the press release, so I am not going to do that here, but the links are at the bottom of this post. What I am going to do is try and explain why I think this is being done now, and why this is for the best. First of all, the most important collections to the great number of people are online, free for you to access right now.   www.familysearch.org is an amazing resource. What hasn't been put online is everything else that have.  Because getting a confident answer from anyone inside the LDS org

Windows is in the process of updating computers to its latest and greatest version, "Windows 10 Creators" (henceforth "Creators") which, of course is loaded with all sorts of stuff that is useful for tablet users, but not so much for desktop users like me. When it comes to browsers, the folks at Windows would everyone to use their newest and latest browser, "Edge", now . Edge works perfectly fine for most people, but as my friend Sara points out "Browser are a lot like underwear - certain ones work better for you than others.  If you feel good in a low rise, then you aren't going to enjoy granny panties.  So you find what works and stick with it." She has a point.  Remember Netscape?  I held on to that until the last possible moment.  Then I got shoved off onto an earlier version Internet Explorer.  I have tried Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox and Chrome.  What I have found is some sites just work better with different browsers. Make no m

Seriously, don't go there. So in the past couple weeks, I wrote about the people who are crabbing about others on Ancestry who do not either make their trees public, or have no trees at all, which I have dubbed Tested With No Tree, or TWNT. Said complainers find it very rude of those TWNT people who are not sharing what they know. How unfair is life that the complainers have shared their trees, but the TWNT people are causing them great consternation. And I pointed out their problem is their own.  Because it is.  They created it.  Now they whine hoping that something will hear them and their needs. As you can tell, I don't have a lot of sympathy of these people.  We ALL would love to have the answers we crave dished up and served to us.  How great would life be, right? There is nothing that says anyone HAS TO upload a tree.  Nothing. Nada. BUT, and this is the bigger consideration - what if the person/people you have been badgering to reveal their trees hav

So, Ancestry has had it's "We're Related" app out for some time, and while it is as reliable as a Magic Eight Ball, sometimes it manages odd outcomes that Ancestry should have thought out better. Ancestry should resolve the issues of what happens when: 1) They use a chart where people who were born over 150 years ago showing up as alive.  This means that the person shows up as "Private". 2) They should also not be taking information from "Private Trees" because, all things being equal, everyone in that private tree shows up as "private" on the app. 3) They really ought to give you a floor to establish what is the oldest date that you would accept a match from.  For example, omit matches on people born before 1500. AND 4) Stop telling me that losers like Rob Ford are 10th cousins.  Seriously, I wouldn't claim that crack smoking walking heart attack as a relative if her were my father.  I'm not even Canadian! But