Manasota PAF News
Jan 2002 -  Volume 8 Issue 4 - A publication of the Manasota PAF User Group, Bradenton, Florida

Part 1 (THIS IS IT!) See also: Part 2  
  • Genealogy Supplies (Charts, forms, preservation)
  • Parish & Vital Records List
  • Upcoming Events

Documentation  - by Pat Richley DearMYRTLE@aol.com 

After last month's meeting, the Pattersons from Sun City asked me about teaching a special class just on source documentation. This topic is always an important one, because a compiled genealogy is only as good as the documents that support the lineage assumptions. At yesterday's Manasota Genealogical Society afternoon workshop, Bill Marsh said that a bibliography (at the end of a chapter or end of the book) just isn't detailed enough.

Whenever I think about documentation, I look to two resources:

 

  1. Document as you go.
  2. Enter sources and notes in a consistent format.
  3. Enter a source description only once.
  4. Use confidential information with discretion and sensitivity.
  5. List all sources found for each event.
  6. Identify and document conflicting or missing information.
  7. Avoid using abbreviations.
  8. Specify additional research where needed.
  9. Strive to obtain primary sources for each event.
  10. Welcome input and constructive review of your documentation.
  11. Identify all researchers by name for all contributions, including your own. Use your own name, not I or me.
  12. Recognize that good documentation requires continuous refinement.
Source Title: Census: California; 1900 US Federal
                            or: 1900 US Federal Census: California
                            or: California: 1900 US Federal Census
Author: US Government
Publication Information: Microfilm
Call Number: T623 Number 81-116
Repository Name: US National Archives & Records Administration, Pacific Region
                Address: 1000 Commodore Drive
                                San Bruno, CA 94066
             Telephone: 1-650-876-9009

This is a sample SOURCE data entry screen from PAF 5.0.

At Saturday's class show additional overheads of citation examples from both of these publications.

What's New at Wholly Genes? - Part III FTSuperToops Searching & Filtering Tools  by Pat Richley DearMYRTLE@aol.com  --  See also: articles titled What's New at Wholly Genes  , Three FTS Screen Shots &  Importing.

How to color code names - (those born in Virginia or died in Tennessee or both). By clicking on FILE, and selecting ACCENT, you are given a screen where you can specify the color accent and the criteria to be met to "earn" the accent. From the Family Tree SuperTools Tour Chapter 2: "Accents can be based on the value of flags (e.g., Sex, Living, etc.), field values (e.g., country of birth, surname, etc.) or on a long list of calculated conditions (e.g., age, # of children, etc.)"  In the sample screen below, I followed steps 1-5, and as soon as I click 6, the program will also highlight those born in Maryland.

1. Specify birth, marriage, death tage, etc by state, country, etc.
2. Specify begins with, contains, does not contain, ends with, is empty, is not empty, Soundex=
3. I typed in MARYLAND
4. Its possible to change the lettering color and background with these two tiny buttons.
5. Click ADD so that MARYLAND will be part of the 3 locality listing of births to focus on (VA, TN, MD)

LOAD - This button takes you to a screen where you may open any of the present accent files, namely:

SAVE AS... allows me to save for future use any color accent criteria I have created.

How to search by Name Variations - AKA, Alias & Nickname - For this, you'll want to activate the PICK LIST, which you do by clicking the small binoculars button on the tool bar. You'll find it is the third button from the left in Version 1.1.  

1. The PICK LIST is sorted by surname by default.
2a. You can search for SURNAME, GIVEN NAME, SURNAME SOUNDEX, GIVEN NAME SOUNDEX, PRIMARY BIRTH DATE, PRIMARY DEATH DATE, ID NUMBER & REFERENCE. When working with names, I recommend the soundex options.

2b. For more options, you can click the FILTER button and specify that SURNAME, SUGGIX, OTHERNAME, etc. begins with, contains, does not contain, ends with, is empty, is not empty, Soundex= whichever character string you specify. 

3. In this case I selected OTHERNAME 

4. = 

5. Betty. However, I had to be sure than I had typed BETTY in the OTHERNAME field in my original database. It would NOT find Betty if it was in the SURNAME field by mistake. By Clicking OK, then OK, the search of the file specified would come up with my results.

How to set other search parameters - The website suggests: Given name=John, Number of sons > 4 and Is a descendant of ID #7. This is a unique way of pulling up an individual, yet it tends to work well with the way our brains tend to remember unusual things about an individual. I might recall that I had entered data on a GIST ancestor who had only three children 2 boys and a girl. To relocate the individual I would need to use the PICK LIST to specify that:
surname = GIST
#Daughters = 1
#Sons = 2

 

My results found only one GIST that had 2 sons and a daughter. Other filters may provide more results in position #1 shown below.  Since you will want to work with this data, you will need to insert a check mark at position #2 to place this individual in the PROJECT EXPLORER mode for further study. Click OK. You will then view that individual, be able to see all the events in his life, his parents, etc.

How to save search or filter results to file for future use. 

Once you've finally got a good filtered list to work through, its entirely possible that it will be useful to return to this subset of your data in the future. For instance, you might not be able to complete your analysis and review of the data in one sitting. The ability to save the search or filer results as a separate file to use in the future will save you from having to restructure your work from the beginning. You can look at the FOCUS GROUP by clicking WINDOW on the menu bar, and selecting that option. In my case, I had one individual on the list - James L. Gist. I decided to click the ANCESTORS button to add them to the focus group. By clicking SAVE AS, I could specify a name for the focus group.

Here are some other options, which we will discuss at upcoming Manasota PAF Users Group meetings:

February 2002: Utilities 

  1. dates: calculator & regnal date converter

  2. relationship calculator 

  3. web searching (including multiple sites, and keyword searching)

  4. data presentation: wall charts, multimedia slideshow

March 2002: Preferences & Timeline

  1. Researcher Info (name, address, e-mail, etc) Item Tips, Slideshow, Lists, Project Explorer, Tag Box, Colors

  2. Advanced: backup file locations, definitions for "circa" and "maximum life span"

  3. Setting an automatic "relation tag" to a specific individual.

  4. Historical Time Lines - view an ancestor's events "in relation to politics, battles, county line changes, and general history."

You may jumpstart your understanding of the Family Tree SuperTools by working through the following tutorial online at: www.whollygenes.com/ftsttour.htm . Gosh, I LOVE it when programmers provide lessons for using the software!

For Further Reading:
Family Tree SuperTools - www.whollygenes.com/supertools.htm#features The publisher states: "Family Tree SuperTools is a true 32-bit application with support for right-click menus, long file names, user-defined screen configurations, and drag-n-drop of slideshow media and chart elements. It requires at least a Pentium 166 with 64 Megs of RAM running Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, or XP. Web searching and chart uploading features require an Internet connection."

Managing Computer Viruses  Part 2- submitted by Pat Richley DearMYRTLE@aol.com .  

I learned a lot by working with a client's computer during the month of December.  First, the laptop did not have a CD drive, so there was no way to install new software for a printer, anti-cirus, etc.. WHY? It was a perfectly good IBM ThinkPad. Welp, the computer had been purchased from a business, which used its network to install software on individual laptops, keeping the cost down. This made a good argument for installing the WEB version of McAfee. www.mcafee.com. However, we ran into a hitch.

Because Windows had a corrupted or missing .dll file, we were not able to install the necessary McAfee files on the laptop's hard disk. Because the laptop had no hard disk, we could not properly reinstall Windows98 to its former glory. So basically, this client needs to:

Bottom line re: McAfee - Even though the online version of McAfee must be connected to the internet to work, a few files must be installed on your hard disk to make the process work.

Windows XP for Audrey K - by Pat Richley DearMYRTLE@aol.com 

From www.microsoft.com I located a report from eTesting Labs, a Ziff Davis Media company formerly known as ZD Labs. After testing Windows XP against earlier versions of Windows, the industry leading laboratory concludes:

Windows XP is clearly superior to earlier versions in all key performance categories. Among the lab’s findings:

If you are new to using Windows XP, you might want to check out the following online support services at www.microsoft.com: