Your Genealogy Matters

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

Today's picture offers a what looks like a lot less than we have had to work with than in the past when dating the car in an image. The image was copied from pictures owned by Florence Kling Harding, wife of Warren G. Harding, 29th President of United States.  As a matter of fact, according to the Florence Harding collector - one of the best on the country, that is lady herself sitting in the passenger seat. The identity of the young woman on the bumper, taking the photographer's picture while they take hers is unknown. My grandmother used to call these pictures - where pictures of the picture taker were taken "See yourself as others see you" images. So, lets talk cars and what we know about this vehicle.  First off, the car is wearing Ohio Tags from 1915.  How do we know this?  Over the woman's right shoulder, our left when looking at the picture is the upper corner of a 1915 Ohio License Plate.  It has a distinctive design in that "OHIO" ap

When Ancestry rolled out it's latest onslaught - the affordable auotsomal tests - into the genealogy markets, a by-product of the tests became their use by adoptees to learn something about their genetic backgrounds. This is because not only have the big four test providers (Ancestry, My Heritage, 23 and Me and Family Tree DNA) provided users with an idea of their genetic make up - where your ancestors might have come from - but they also provide, in varying degrees matches to people who have DNA tests that matches bits and parts of your DNA. And this is where things are becoming sticky, and people are wondering what do I do? In our house, we used DNA testing on ourselves as something that we thought it would open doors with test.  It was of special interest to my husband, because his mother was adopted out of New York State, where adoption records are locked down tighter than  Hetty Green's  purse.   While we have been able to identify and confirm my mother in laws b

Martha Smith Standish, Matriarch  This entry is being given over to my friend and confidant, Martha Smith Standish. " May you live in interesting times " ~ Chinese proverb As many of you have noticed, unless you have been under a rock, we are living in interesting times. And it being summertime - we are past Memorial Day, after all - its time to go and see your family for reunions, weddings, and the like. Not that any of the readers of this blog would need this advice. But I am going to wag my finger just the same, and offer my best advice for cooler heads as the times and temperatures rise: 1) Remember, its a family gathering, reunion, picnic or party, period .  It is not a time to grind axes.  How do you know this?  Look around.  Do you see a blacksmith?  A grinding wheel?  No?  Leave your problems in the trunk of your car.  Better yet, let go of them before you get there. 2) Put on your best clothes.  It shows that you respect yourself, the other atten