Sunday, December 28, 2008

Bouse Genies 2009 Meeting Schedule

We will be meeting every Friday during January, February and March 2009 as follows:
  • January 2 - 10 AM to 12 - AniMap Training CD
  • January 9 - 10 AM to 12 - Legacy Training CD #2
  • January 16 - 7 PM to 9 - Census Records
  • January 23 - 10 AM to 12 - Legacy Training CD #3
  • January 30 - 10 AM to 12 - Open Meeting
  • February 6 - 10 AM to 12 - Legacy Training CD #4
  • February 13 - 7 PM to 9 - Military Records
  • February 20 - 10 AM to 12 - Legacy Training CD #5
  • February 27 - 10 AM to 12 - Open Meeting
  • March 6 - 10 AM to 12 - Legacy Training CD #6
  • March 13 - 10 AM to 12 - Open Meeting
  • March 20 - 10 AM to 12 - Legacy Training CD #7
  • March 27 - 10 AM to 12 - Barbara Nuehring speaker

Meetings in the building to the East of the Bouse Public Library (44031 Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ).

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Photographing Oversized Pictures

Occasionally it is impossible or impractical to use your scanner on old photos and documents. A camera & tripod or copy stand is a good alternative.

These two websites may help:
How to build a (Cheap) copy stand.
http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=19857

Getting Started: Copy Stand Shooting (uses a tripod & music stand and also teaches good technique)
http://www.videomaker.com/article/6807/

One problem when using a camera on old photos and documents is you can get a barrel effect & it is hard to get a perfect angle. In GIMP http://gimp.org/ (a free open source program) has a filter called “Lens Distortion” in Filters>Distortion where you can manually correct it (use the “Main” slider bar in the “Lens Distortion”). Then you can take care of any angle problems with the “Perceptive button” or Tools>Transform Tools>Perceptive. I just click & drag the ruler guides from the ruler across the 4 sides, then I use the “Perceptive Tool” to click & drag the corners of the frame or edges of the picture to the corners of the guide.

In Episode 038 of Meet The GIMP http://meetthegimp.org/episode-038-a-phython-in-a-barrel/ Rolf Steinort has written a plugin for GIMP that makes taking care of the Barrel Effect created by your camera easy. Some of my pictures it over corrected but it got me in the ballpark, others it did a wonderful job. I recommend watching his video & downloading the “Python source code” and adding it to your GIMP plugins. For Windows users unzip the file & paste the 3 files into “C drive>Documents and Settings>[[User name]]>.gimp-2.6>plug-ins” it will then appear as “Barrel distortion removal CA65” in “Filters>Distort”.

Rede made a video specifically dealing with the Barrel Effect & Perceptive Tool and how it applies with old photos & documents: http://blip.tv/file/1554370

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Free Online Newspapers

I have talked about ICON in the past "ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers", and "Newspapers On The Library of Congress Website". Rede has been working on some tutorials on how to use free online newspapers. ICON is a great place to start http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm . If anyone has problems using any of links off ICON maybe he can make another tutorial video on it.

Online Newspapers - ICON
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/1499639/
ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers http://icon.crl.edu/ is a wonderful place to get started looking for your family in your genealogy. What I like the most is the free & pay sites are clearly marked. The database for the individual newspapers can be found here http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm

Online Newspapers - Utah Digital Newspapers
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/1508426/
Using online digital newspaper to find gems on your family. In this we are exploring Utah Digital Newspapers http://digitalnewspapers.org/ . Several tips on how to do a successful search.

Online Newspaper - Historic Missouri Newspaper Project
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/1514425/
A demo of online newspapers that use the older ActivePaper by Olive Software. In this video I briefly go over the Historic Missouri Newspaper Project http://newspapers.umsystem.edu/ .

Online Newspapers - Chillicothe Constitution Tribune
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/1518694/
In this I use the Chillicothe Constitution Tribune http://chillicothe.newspaperarchive.com/ a free Missouri newspaper from NewspaperArchive. More & more libraries are offering NewspaperArchive so check out your county & state library system to see if it is available. If not ask for it ;-)

Friday, November 28, 2008

Bouse Genies Meeting Schedule

The Bouse genealogy club is in full swing. We are welcoming back our winter visitors as well as all others that are interested in learning about or continuing in the pursuit of your ancestors. Our meetings are open to all who wish to attend. We have modified our regular meeting schedule to meet the needs of those who work. We meet in the Bouse Community Building which is right next to the Bouse Public Library on Plomosa Road, Bouse, AZ.

Our program schedule for December and January is:
  • December 5, 2008 - 10:00 AM to 12:00 noon - Program - a Training CD on "Beginning Legacy Family Tree" software.
  • December 19, 2008 - 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM - Program - "Beginning Genealogy Research" by Carolyn H. Brown
  • January 2, 2009 - 10:00 AM - 12:00 noon - Program - a Training CD on "Using AniMap" software
  • January 16, 2009 - 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM - Program - "Using the Federal Census" by Carolyn H. Brown
  • January 30, 2009 - 10:00 AM - 12:00 noon - Open meeting for discussion

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Palo Verde Valley Genealogy Society December Meeting

December 8th meeting will be a program on "Gifts from Your Genealogy". There will also be a number of books and other items for sale at the meeting. The December meeting will be held at the main PVC campus on the mesa: One College Drive in Blythe. We'll meet in Room CS123 in the John O. Crain Student Services Bldg.

The PVVGS meetings are the second Monday of the month at 7:00 p.m. they finish up about 8:45 (California Time). They usually meet at the Palo Verde College campus located at 145 N. Spring St. in Blythe, but occasionally they have to move to another location.

Homepage:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~capvvgs/Site/index.html

Blog:
http://paloverdevalleytimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=160&SubSectionID=658&l=1

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Death of X-Drive

On Friday, March 30, 2007 “Online Backup” & Storage & Monday, March 12, 2007 “Need Extra Storage Space” I talked about X-Drive, a free online storage service. Well on January 12, 2009, AOL will permanently close the Xdrive Online Storage Service. If you signed up for it and haven’t already done so you can download everything as a ZIP file.

Mozy is still a good backup service with 2 gig free, but I liked X-Drive as a place to access files when I’m away from home. Box.net http://www.box.net is a good storage place but there is only 1 gig free and with some file size & bandwidth limits. Live SkyDrive http://skydrive.live.com is another one I like as much as X-Drive, SkyDrive has 5 gig free & with larger file size limits than box.net (wonderful for sharing files too big to email).

Bouse Genies Nov. 21st Meeting

On November 21st Carol Brown will be talking about DNA at the Bouse Genies Meeting, 10:00 A.M. in the Bouse Community Building (building east of the library), 44031 Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Rede Videos

Rede has now authored over 20 videos on ShowMeDo, so I added the Author Button for an easy access to the site (scroll down below links). Some of the videos that might interest to the genealogist is Reparing Old Photos with GIMP, and editing sound files that you could use with lectures, podcasts or interviews.

Don't forget aboutt his GenealogyScrounge videos on blip.tv and youtube.

Bouse Genies October 24th Meeting

The October 24th meeting for the Bouse Genies will be a Legacy Family Tree video and a pot luck salad lunch. Bring a dish, plate & utensils.

They will be meeting at the Bouse Community Building, which is the old cafeteria, the building to the East of the Bouse Public Library 10:00 AM to Noon (44031 Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ).

Visitors Welcome.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Bouse Genies Will Be Starting Soon

The Bouse Genies, a genealogy interest group from Bouse Arizona will be starting up soon. To date these are just tentative dates but they will be starting soon:
September - 26
October - 10, 24
November - 7, 21
December - 5, 19
January - 2, 16, 30
February - 13, 27
March - 13, 27
April - 10, 24
May - 8, 22

They will be meeting at the Bouse Community Building, which is the old cafeteria, the building to the East of the Bouse Public Library 10:00 AM to Noon (44031 Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ).

Please keep checking here or at http://bousegenies.weebly.com/bouse-genies-meetings.html for any changes.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Giving Back - Genealogy Style



Elyse90505 is going a great job of teaching genealogy, it is simple to understand. In this video she talks about giving back, a way to help others. She mentions UsGenWeb, unclaimed persons on facebook, make you own genealogy website, offer to do lookups for others.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Oral History: Memory Triggers

It can be a bit intimidating when you ask someone if you can talk to them about their memories. Why not just ask them if you can look at some of their old pictures, nic nacs, maybe just ask them to tell you about pictures you have. Even just go over to watch an movie or listen to Old Time Radio. Taking them to a museum is an incredible way to get them talking about their life, you have the drive to & from to talk and the old items they used in their life. Another good way is at family reunions, just sit in the back and listen. Whenever possible ask them who, what, where, when & why.

When they are looking at old photos it is going to bring back memories that you want to make record of & fill in gaps you may have. I enjoy listening to Old Time Radio when I was driving and it was about 125 miles to take my mother to the doctor. She would tell me about her life while that was playing. I found out how proud grandpa was of his first radio, how they had to take the battery out of the truck to use it, and a simple as a commercial she wondered if that was why her father started drinking postum, just to name a few gems.

You can get digital recorders now that can record hours of content and aren’t very threatening. There are several free programs you can edit these files so you can snip out the information you don’t want or paste different talks together. That way you can either transcribe it or you have a recorded treasure.

I would like to hear what you use as memory trigger, so please leave a comment.

IGI Batch Numbers

I don’t know if I haven’t been paying attention or if this is new to http://www.familysearch.org. Please see this page for the explanations of the batch files http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm .

I went to familysearch and ran some names through it and got several types of results:
  1. Messages: Record submitted after 1991 by a member of the LDS Church.
  2. Messages: Record submitted by a member of the LDS Church.
  3. Messages: Record submitted by a member of the LDS Church. (Has a Batch Number)
  4. Messages: Extracted birth or christening record for locality listed in the record. (Has a Batch Number)
  5. Messages: No source document or additional information exists. LDS Church membership record of a deceased person. (Has a Batch Number)

In my opinion the IGI is still just an index and shouldn't be used as more than just a clue, but only the last 2 came from real records and the others you just can’t verify the accuracy of the information.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

New Video From Rede

Labeling Your Digital Images
http://blip.tv/file/1117029
How to label your digital genealogy images so you & others can easily identify them later. There are plenty of free good programs out there, you will just need one that you can change the canvas size & add text. For this I will use GIMP http://gimp.org/ , a good free program.

Embedding Information In A Digital Photo
http://blip.tv/file/1117482
How to embed text in an image with properties

Pro Photo Tools Part 1
http://blip.tv/file/1119127
Pro Photo Tools http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/ , a free program to embed text into your digital photos. This video will go into location name, GPS coordinates, identify location on a map, view images on a map.

Pro Photo Tools Part 2
http://blip.tv/file/1122813
A brief explanation of other text you can embed in a digital photo and other information you can view with Pro Photo Tools http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/ . This will include description, date time, other, categories, shot, camera, and photographer.

Site Search Genealogy Style
http://blip.tv/file/1123735
Using Google Tool Bar's "Site Search" to help you search a website, or use "site:domain.com" in a search engine to speed up you genealogy searches.

Descendant Book Numbering System
http://blip.tv/file/1148456
The Register System is a very easy way to use a descendant book. I hope this video will help you enter the information into your genealogy.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Beyond The Census: A Family Story

I am far from an expert writer, but I guess this means if I can write a family story anyone can.

First of all you will want to make a timeline of all your facts and sources, I like to use Note Pad because I can transcribe or copy/paste into it easily. Next you will want a word processor, preferably one with a grammar checker, and thesaurus. I also use a free text reader so I can hear how it will sound.

I previously did an article, “What Is In A Census”, now I hope to show you what is possible when you add all you have found. Again I am going to use Thomas Chapman of Rocheport Missouri, built from censuses, newspapers, ship manifest, county histories, cemetery & vital records.

Thomas Chapman was born 9 Jan 1824 in Northallerton, Yorkshire, England and moved to Stockton, England by 1830. He came to Boone County Missouri about 1841, possibly departing Liverpool, England on the ship “Ebro” and arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana on 2 Jan 1840.

My first account of Thomas Chapman in Boone County was on the 1850 census where he lived with Henderson Wheeler, the local blacksmith, where Thomas was working as a wagon maker. Thomas continued working as a wagon maker for most of the rest of his life. In 1860 he had real estate in Rocheport worth $200 and a personal estate of $200, and 1870 his real estate was worth $400 and a personal estate of $300. Not a rich man compared to his neighbors. He did become a respected citizen of Rocheport where he or his son Thomas became the Mayor of this community.

In the Daily Democrat 16 Dec 1872 it was reported, “he had seen the first and last rrilroad engine--the first in 1830 or 1831, at Stockton, England and the last at the depot at Columbia, that day. Mr. Chapman is a native of Stockton, and when quite a boy saw the first train of carrying coal from the coal pits in Derham county to Stockton on the Tees. The road was first constructed for horse cars; but at the time named a rude steam engine was made and attached to a coal train of 18 or 20 coal wagons, the train traveling at the rate of only about two miles an hour.”

Thomas married Sarah Hulett 22 Feb 1854 in Boone County Missouri. She was born 14 Apr 1838 in Rocheport Missouri, the daughter of Edward Hulett. They had 11 children: Thomas (20 Nov 1854-25 Oct 1935), James Buchanan (15 Nov 1856-24 Nov 1942), George William (9 Jul 1858-20 Sep 1952), Mary S. (6 Jun 1860-23 May 1918), Sarah (31 Aug 1862-25 Jan 1940), Elisa (27 Aug 1864-22 Sep 1875), Emily Hulett (2 Nov 1864-13 Feb 1901), Mildred Victor "Millie" (15 Nov 1868-8 Aug 1938), Guy (23 Jan 1871-29 Mar 1906), Niel (born 18 Jan 1873-), and Annie Wilton (about Jan 1877-29 Mar 1953).

Thomas died 13 Mar 1894 in Rocheport Missouri of pneumonia. He left a wife and nine children. Funeral services were conducted Wednesday morning at 11 o'clock by Rev. J. H. Wood.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

What Is In A Census: A Family Story

Way to many people will look at a census and just see dry facts & don’t look at what all is going on in these documents. Quite often with just a few censuses a nice picture of your family will start appearing.

Here is the story of Thomas Chapman of Rocheport, Missouri that is built from just those dry facts so many people over look.

Thomas Chapman was born about 1824 in Northallerton, England (1). By 1850 he had immigrated to Boone Co. Missouri (2). Here he lived with Henderson Wheeler, the local blacksmith, and worked as a wagon maker (3).

By 1860 he owned his own home (4) in Rocheport (5) and continued working as a wagon maker until after 1880. He married Sarah about 1864 (6), Sarah was born about April of 1837 in Missouri (7). They had 11 children (8): Thomas, James, George, Mary, Sarah, Elisa, Emily H, Millie, Guy, Niel, and Annie W. (9). One of the children died by 1900 and another by 1910 (8).

Thomas Chapman Passed away by 1900 (10). After Thomas’s passing his wife Sarah A. stayed in Rocheport living in their home (11) with her children George, Emma H. and Annie W. and in 1910 only Anna was left in the home. Sarah passed away by 1920 (12).

1. Uncommon but the 1850 & 1860 listed the town he was born.
2. 1850 was the 1st census he appeared on.
3. 1850-1930 shows who is in the house, and their occupation.
4. 1860 & 1870 showed real estate.
5. 1860, 1880, 1900 & 1910 shows town of Rocheport.
6. 1900 gave number of years married even though she was a widow
7. 1860 shows his wife & 1900 gave month and year of birth.
8. 1900 & 1910 shows number of children living & dead.
9. 1860-1910 had the names and ages of the children.
10. 1900 his wife is listed as a widow.
11. 1900-1920 shows living in home or farm, rented or owned, and if it is mortgaged.
12. 1920 Sarah appeared on no more censuses.

Now if this story was built using only censuses, just think what could happen when you find newspapers, county histories, land, cemetery, church & vital records, just to mention a few

Free blank census forums can be downloaded here:
http://www.ancestry.com/charts/census.aspx

Elyse90505 on YouTube is working on a set of census videos that make it very easy to understand what you can find on these censuses. I suggest you check them out http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=Elyse90505&p=r

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Looking For Suggestions

I am looking for suggestions & feedback so here is a way to help me make this blog more interesting. Let me know if you are on dialup which makes the videos hard to watch. Would you like to have the videos embedded in this page or do you prefer links. Let me know what you would like to learn.

Use the Comment part of this message or use the Contact link on the bottom left of this page to send me a private message.

I will continue to try and keep this blog educational, report local genealogy happenings and share free resources.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Internet Book Search

Rede has done some videos on Internet book searching worth checking out.

Google Book Search:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/927705/
<http://books.google.com/>

Heritage Quest Book Search:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/934918/
http://www.eogen.com/HeritageQuestOnline for availability>

Internet Archive Books:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/936597/
<http://www.archive.org/>


Getting Books With Interlibrary Loan:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/936622/
<http://www.worldcat.org/>

Should you be on dialup you can download the WMV file which average 1-2 megs a minute or review some of my older write-ups.
Interlibrary Loan:
http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2007/10/interlibrary-loan.html

Google Book Search:
http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2006/11/google-book-search.html

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Relatively Speaking, Radio Talkshow

I was searching for new genealogy podcasts & stumbled on ksl radio in Utah "Relatively Speaking with Jackie McKay & Mary Slawson". You can listen to it live on the internet Sunday afternoon 4-6 mountain standard time, I believe that would be 3-5 AZ time in the summer (http://www.ksl.com/ , click radio & click listen live). It also has a toll free number you can call in on to ask questions.

Looks like they only save the last 3 episodes for downloading. but you can check it out here:
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=640045


I guess I'm a bit behind the times, it has been around a couple of years.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Making An Audio Book From Lectures And Podcasts

With digital recorders & podcasts you can now build a nice collection of informative information, but many times they are rather long to listen to in one sitting. Audiobook Cutter http://audiobookcutter.sourceforge.net/ makes it very easy to chop it up into smaller sections so you can come back to where you left off, and many MP3 players will remember the track you stopped at and continue from there. You can also burn these tracks into audio files that will play in a regular CD player.

Audiobook Cutter also has another advantage, file sizes can be too big for emailing. With this program you can change the length of the track & it will be smaller files so it passes the size limits on attachments.

Rede has done 2 videos on how to edit and convert your sound files into MP3 files with Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ and cut up those files with Audiobook Cutter at ShowMeDo http://showmedo.com/videos/series?name=DRALbzyJZ

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Spam proof your email address

For those of you that have your own websites I found a cool way of making it harder for spammers to get your email address. Carnegie Mellon University is doing a digitization project with Internet Archive http://www.archive.org. They give you a special URL that you can make a hyperlink into your page. Then people that want to contact you have to transcribe 2 words before they will give them the email address.

All you do is register your email address with http://recaptcha.net/ (no you don't even have to sign up, just click email protection). Then add that link they give you into your webpage.

Read more about it here:
http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/May/may24_recaptcha.shtml
http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

I'm not much of a script writer, so the only problem I had was making their webpage open in as a new page. But I now have it running on my blog & google pages.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Bouse Genies Upcoming Speakers

March 14 meeting
Carol Brown & Dennis Chapman will be talking about pay & free features in Legacy Family Tree http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/.

Location:
All meetings will be held in the building beside the Bouse Public Library 10:00 AM to Noon (44031 Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ). More info here http://bousegenies.weebly.com

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Portability Of AniMap

Playing around with AniMap http://www.goldbug.com/AniMap.html I have discovered I can run it off my USB stick. Now I don’t have to be limited to just my computer, I can run it when I’m away from home.

I have not upgraded to their newest version 2.6, I am still running 2.51. But the only thing I have to do is copy the AniMap folder onto the root directory of my USB stick & make sure the assigned drive for the stick is between C-F. I have only had problems on 1 computer, but I’m sure the problem was the hard drive had been partitioned. So between the partitions & 2 CD drives, that put my stick higher than F.

More on AniMap:
http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2006/05/county-boundaries.html

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Bouse Genies Upcoming Speakers

January 18th meeting:
Barbara Nehruing will be here for the January 18th meeting, speaking about "Generalities of reaching in Europe and touch on a few oddities in each of the countries"

She will cover some specific things she has found in each of the European country.

February 15th meeting:
Bonnie McDaniel will be here for the February 15th meeting. She will be talking about how to use land records in genealogy

February 29 meeting:
Dennis Chapman will be talking about fixing damaged pictures using GIMP graphics program http://www.gimp.org/

Location:
All meetings will be held in the building beside the Bouse Public Library 10:00 AM to Noon (44031 Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ). More info here http://bousegenies.weebly.com