DearMYRTLE - 3 Jan 2006 DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour

Providing practical, down-to-earth advice for family historians since 1995, online since 1985.

3 Jan 2006 DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour

DearREADERS,
This is the lineup for today's genealogy podcast, now available for you to listen to 24/7. Please also note the "Links We Mention" and "Listening to the Show" directions below. Myrt's guests include:

Geoff Rasmussen, our friend from LegacyFamilyTree.com and GenealogyDaily.com to discuss his newest project, the AniMap Training Video. Ol' Myrt first mentioned this product by forwarding the press release about the new CD back in early Nov 2005. Now that I've had a chance to work with the training video, I really am jazzed about the prospect of making better use of the AniMap program that I already own. Yes, you really can teach ol' Myrt here new tricks!

AniMap is a software program that has long been recognized as THE collection of historical maps to aid genealogical researchers in the US. From the publisher's website we read "Just about every researcher deals with the problem of finding an old town that has long-since disappeared from the map. Or, you have a known location but it was not in the same county 100 or 200 years ago. AniMap Plus now has solutions to these problems.

This upgraded version 2.5 of our program will display over 2,300 maps to show the changing county boundaries for each of the 48 adjacent United States for every year since colonial times. Includes all years, not just the census years. Maps may be viewed separately, or the program can set them in motion so you can automatically view the boundary changes. Maps of the full U.S. are also included showing all the changes in state and territorial boundaries from 1776 to the present."

You can imagine that with software this extensive, you'll need a little help learning how to use it. You'll recognize from the interview that Geoff is just the person to guide you past the basics into plotting a place on a county map, measuring distances, searching for other localities within a specific (perhaps 7 mile radius), and how to find a cemetery in a state even if you only know the first few letters of its name. Other topics discussed in the Geoff's AniMap Tutorial include boundary changes, migration maps and overlays. System Requirements for the tutorial are speakers, Windows 98 or higher, CD-ROM drive, Adobe Reader (free from adobe.com).

FOrder the AniMap Program from GoldBug's website: http://www.goldbug.com/
FOrder the AniMap Training Video (on CD) from Geoff's website http://www.genealogydaily.com/ or through Legacy Family Tree's website.

In fact, there is a free 3-minute preview of the AniMap Training Video located at: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Videos.asp While you are there, you can catch some free Legacy Family Tree training as well. For more info see: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Store/enter.html?target=../en-us/dept_4.html&mid=Legacy

Elizabeth Powell Crowe, beloved author of GENEALOGY ONLINE. From the Library Journal "The increasing number of online genealogy sites and tools allows today's searchers to seek and locate thousands of pages of data in a way they could not have imagined some 20 years ago. Yet even computer-savvy genealogists may not be fully utilizing the many resources available to them. In the most recent edition of her best-selling guide, Crowe, a former contributing editor to Computer Currents, aims to instruct all levels of researchers on the joys and perils of online genealogy." Myrt's enjoys Libbi's professional approach with a flair for practical, helpful instruction to her readers, and highly recommends this book as "A PERFECT MAP ON THE INFORMATION SUPER HIGHWAY for family historians!"

Step-By-Step Plan for getting your genealogy research done this year!

1. Gather what you already know, Enter this into your genealogy program and notebook.
2. Decide what fact to uncover next.
3. Search the records for the information you seek. (Queries, primary records, published genealogies, etc.)
5. Analyze what you've found by comparing what you already know.

Then start the process over again.

Special mention is made of what to do with "things that fall into your lap" where the documents you unearth discuss individuals whose relationship to your known relatives isn't immediately known.

MIGHTYMOUSE TOUR Our tour this week discusses three points:

1837Online's WWI overseas army deaths database
Missouri Land Patents Database provided by the Secretary of State
Godfrey.org's decision to discontinue HeritageQuestOnline in favor of providing additional genealogical databases. Myrt agrees with Dick Eastman that a majority of researchers will have free access to HQO through state, university and local public libraries.

LINKS WE MENTION

Birth record created for war duty
2006 the Chinese year of the Dog
DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour (new podcast every Tuesday night) http://www.ourmedia.org/mediarss/user/33644
Genealogy Guys Podcast (new podcast every Sunday night) http://www.genealogyguys.com/rss
Nuestros Familia (new podcast periodically) http://nuestrafamiliaunida.com/rss.xml

LISTENING TO THE SHOW

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code: http://www.ourmedia.org/mediarss/user/33644

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Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt :)
DearMYRTLE,
6023 26th Street West PMB 352
Bradenton, FL 34207