Family Historian User Group

Jane said in her original post that she was looking for a good research management system. I have been reading several books on managing one's research and wondering why we have so few family tree programs, yet so few research management tools. Today I got an email newsletter from the US magazine Fa...

I am entering data from a WWII Draft Registration card. I have two different microfilm citations for the same draft registration card. How can I record both microfilm roll numbers for the same source? Since the cards were physical objects like a birth certificate, I chose to make each one an individ...

In a previous post, I suggested that Peter do a self-interview, or enlist the aid of someone to act as interviewer and to interview him. Today I found a list of interview questions in the genealogy section of the US website About.com -- the link is here: http://genealogy.about.com/cs/oralhistory/a/i...

I agree with Jane.  

Using Nick Walker's add-on, Gedcom Census, makes it easy to add census events.  And if you happen to miss something, Family Historian's auto-source citation makes it easy to add the other data and link in the source citation.

Jan

Many subscription sites have free newsletters, and I find that it is very useful to subscribe to those. That way you can see what new data is being added to the site and can tell whether the site has information from the areas or families you are working on. To date I have not found much on the site...

Tombaston said: I put a feature on the wish list a long time ago to not display the DATA field (feature 207 - Add Source Entry Date and Text From Source to Right Click Context Menu). As you have left a comment against it Jon, I assume you must be one of the other six people who have voted for it. L...

Nick Walker said: Yes I agree with Irene that the IGI (and Free BMD if just using the index) is a source rather than a repository. Its actually not obvious, to me at least, what the repository is for the IGI as it is available on the web and in libraries, record offices, etc. so I leave that blank....

P.S.  While proofreading my earlier messages, I was reminded that in the USA we say 'check boxes' and check marks, to 'check things off on the list', and so on. I believe the usage in the UK is to say 'tick' and 'tick boxes' for this process. However, to 'tick off' someone in the US is to make them ...

Nick Walker said: To add to Jan's excellent comments regarding sources you may find the Knowlege Base article on Sources useful Regards Nick Thanks, Nick! While I am experienced at handling data, I am still a newbie to genealogy and to Family Historian -- I should be reading the articles in the Kno...

Joyaa Antares said: My file was originally imported over from FTM (Family Tree Maker), so none of the sources came across linked at that time. ... Now I have some 670 individuals (growing of course), a long list of unlinked sources, and some 1400 source citations. I did not have quite the same situ...

Now, about sources. One of the reasons I chose Family Historian over all the other programs I tried (and I tried a lot of them) is that it allows me to work in the method I was trained when I did linguistics. In the field we collected information. Then we took the raw notes and re-transcribed them i...

I have a couple of ideas for you to think about. Of course you must do what works best for you, so weight these ideas against your own working style. My first idea is basically the same as what Jon has just said in the previous message when he talks about a 'mental model' of the program. When learni...

Jane said: I am still looking for a good portable contact management system, a research logging system and a 'magic brickwall remover' although the latter is somewhat unlikely. I have also just found a tiny free GedCom Viewer which will work on a key drive called Simple Family Tree Jane, have you h...

I just got my subscription copy of the magazine Your Family Tree (which in North America seems to be distributed as Your Family History , but it's the same magazine).  Issue 57 (November 2007) has as their cover feature '100 research tips'.   They have articles from seven researchers, who break down...

Oops! I accidentally quoted myself rather than editing the previous message -- and the 'delete' button doesn't seem to be getting rid of this message. Sorry about the clutter.

Joyaa Antares said: a) Chris, on sources: what do you mean by 'ATTACHING that source to the person in question'? I can create a source with that person's name - is that what you mean, or is there a way of directly LINKING a source to a name in the Records window that I haven't found? Let's say I ha...

jmurphy said: I may have read recently that the FFHS is getting out of the business of selling publications, but I don't remember if they are simply selling off their remaining stock or turning it over to someone else to liquidate.   Here's the article I was thinking of -- I saw a notice on Dick Ea...

Nick Walker said: I think coroner's reports would be most likely to be in the County Record Office or at the National Archives although I believe many have been destroyed over the years. There is a book 'Coroners' Records in England and Wales'. I have no idea how useful it would be but it is on Gen...

I've posted about this before in the wish list area, but I am on the lookout for some way to record which addresses are associated with particular source records. I have a wide variety of sources which will give the street address -- ship manifests (the 'person going to visit' and 'closest relative ...

Thanks for posting the note about GenSmarts and their reply. I've had some trouble with it also, so when I see the situation you describe I'll double-check what is going on in my FH file.

Jan

Good point -- I had not considered that. Some of the books I've read for newbie genealogists advise the reader to use events from one's own life as guides to what might happen elsewhere. If future genealogists saw my birth registration date and the date I was confirmed (in my teens), and mistook it ...

An update: While merging a couple of old files, I discovered that I had two men with the same name (father and son) and three marriages, and I had linked one of the spouses to the wrong person. So I decided to take this particular set of data and make a clean file, re-examining my data as I went alo...

Just wanted to mention that I use a Notepad drop-in replacement called Metapad -- it is freeware, available at: http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/ I find it to be more friendly than Notepad, so if editing your GEDCOM in Notepad causes problems, give Metapad a try. Also, I wonder if another GEDCOM u...

alywil said: Hi Everyone, I just wanted to say that Jan's (JMurphy) advice in the 2nd post is as good as it gets. Looking back over my own first year of floundering, then my 2nd year of starting to get the gist, Jan has eloquently and completely presented everything I needed to know and am only jus...

I use the free program IrfanView http://www.irfanview.com/ to work with images. It can re-size images for you if you need. When working with these faint images, sometimes it helps to make them smaller. My husband showed me how to use the photo-manipulation tools. Using the 'negative' function (makes...