Anyone Have Ideas on Trying to Collaborate with Germans?

There are a lot of Germans who do great genealogy and have created masterful works and completed amazing projects, but they don't always like to help you with yours, even if the person you are asking is the resident expert in the area or wrote the local Famlienbuch.  I have even tried to offer them hundreds of dollars in advance and really don't have much luck with them. 

Most recently I have had the author of a book lie to my face saying he didn't write the book.

I hate to believe that they are that much of a pain to work with.... Does anyone have any ideas on how to better approach German people for genealogy help?

Ancesty.com is Discontinuing Family Tree Maker!!

Citing the decline in the desktop software market Ancestry.com is making one of the stupidest decisions I have ever seen.  They are discontinuing their Family Tree Maker.  Sales will end at the end of this year and support will end in 2017. 

Why is this the worst idea I have seen:

1. I don't know a single serious genealogist that doesn't use some sort of desktop software to organize their database.  They use it to:

• Create charts and reports
• Show a view of a tree for relatives and other people
• Detect anomalies in their tree.

2. FTM downloaded all of the images and media that I attached to my tree automatically.  Now I guess I have to go back and download all of my media that I have been storing inside of Family Tree Maker.

3.  It gave us a good way to use Ancestry but still maintain our data separately and a way that we could be independent from Ancestry's service if we wanted to.

I am pretty mad!


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All of Tom Pick's Eiffel Germany Survey in a Single Downloadable Query-able File!!!

I am very pleased to say I am finished compiling all of Tom Pick's Eiffel Germany Birth and Death survey into a single query-able file, and you can download it right here!

I cannot imagine how long it took Tom to originally put together his website and obtain all of those records.  He will be sorely missed and I only wish he had longer on this earth so he could have done more.  He compiled about 550,000 birth records and many thousands of marriage records from over 650 cities in Germany.  They weren't perfect and there are some errors, but it's an amazingly valuable resource.  His original website with the records in separate city files are here.

The fields in the database are the same as Tom used with explanations are:

MO - Month of birth
DA - Day of Birth
YEAR - Year of Birth
FatherLast - Last name of father
FatherFirst - First name of father
MotherLast - Last name of mother
MotherFirst - First name of mother
Marriage - Marriage date of mother and father(only recorded in one record for each family if he                           found it)
ChildName - First and middle name of child born on date in MO, DA, and YEAR fields
SpouseName - Spouse of child in ChildName field if found

You can download the single file in csv, xlsx (Excel format), or in Access 2013 database format BELOW!!, just click on the blue box.



-Jamie

FamilySearch.org Has a New Look and Supports Trees!

Unfortunately, I won't be taking the time to enter in all of my people, so this will be much more useful to me once they allow uploading of GEDCOM files.  I will have to check this out with a small sample of people and let you guys know about my thoughts on the basic features of the tree.

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Ancestry.com's AncestryDNA Tests are Now Available Without Invitation

Ancestry.com has now officially opened the floodgates on their new AncestryDNA autosomal DNA test.  It costs $129 ($139 with tax and shipping), which is more expensive than the $99 dollars they offered it for during their invite only period.

Now, you can also order more than one test, although I could only order one at a time when I tried.  That just meant I had to go in and place four separate orders. :)

- Happy Wednesday!

www.GenealogyPlace.com is a Great Free Resource

I had a conumdrum yesterday trying to substantiate whether or not a Susannah Seymour(b 1738) in my tree was the child of a Daniel Seymour (b. 1698).  Because that would mean that my 10th great grandfather was an earlier governor of one of the 13 colonies in early america named John Webster.   I found several trees in ancestry that supported this but not one source in those trees that actually validated the connection.

I did some extensive Google searching and got a result from  http://www.genealogyplace.com.

I found over 10 references to Daniel Seymour (b. 1698) in Connecticut.  The resource helped me find one book written in the 20th century that validated the claims based on another old resource I couldn't find, it does help in my mind that the person who wrote the book was the main vital records guy for that county in the early 20th century.   I found another  resource that validated the information but I couldn't find the original source volume but I did find other volumes in that series, so it is just a matter of time.  I also found a third resource that at least validated the number of children.   I did find one resource that purported something completely different but based on the other three resources the number of kids weren't right (there were way too many) and neither were any of the kids names. 

As a result I am reasonably certain that Daniel is really Susannah's dad and that my 10th great grandfather is actually John Webster.

You Can Search the Census for Free on Ancestry.com This Weekend

I am a member already, but I thought this was interesting.  They are allowing free census searches (with a free account) through midnight on September 3rd.  Not a bad way to expand your marketing list.

http://www.ancestry.com/census?o_iid=52246&o_lid=52246&o_sch=Web+Property

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Odd Site SortedByName is an Amazing Genealogy Resource

SortedByName.com conglomerates info on people from a number of great Genealogical sources.  It links the original source and the info provided.  The site has people basically listed by name.

Ok, if you go directly to the site SortedByName.com you might be confused as it's hard to figure out it's navigation successfully so I recommend instead starting from Google.  I typed in the site name followed by my last name, followed by the county in Ireland I wanted.  I got several pages that came up all from there.

So my google search was: "sortedbyname miley wicklow"


I then just clicked on any one of them and then did a find on page for "Wicklow".  This lead me to MANY, MANY genealogical sources for Mileys that lived in Wicklow, Ireland.  These included obscure resources like US local municipality websites that had local obituary listings of pioneers that came from Wicklow but also had many mainstream resources like the 1901 and 1911 census from Ireland.

Again, amazing genealogy resource, but the site design needs work.  It's like a harder to navigate craigslist feeling site.  Again, just start from Google.

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Friends Don't Let Friends Scrapbook Family History

So, every once in awhile when I am taking in family history collections and things I am planning to scan it is so annoying to find that it's SCRAPBOOKED!!  Seriously, we are talking about family history that should be preserved forever digitally.

So just remember before you scrapbook the family history that someone someday will just tear it apart anyway to run it through the scanner.

It just had to be said...

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RootsIreland.IE Has a Cool July Promotion

I know I just mentioned this site, but I thought this was pretty cool.

For every credit you buy in July you buy in July you get that many free result page views.  This is a huge help looking for your long lost relatives in Ireland.

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Can't Find Your Old Irish Relatives, Try RootsIreland.ie

I checked out the RootsIreland.ie site the other day and it blew the doors off of the limitations I have had previously in trying to find good information about my ancestors in Ireland.   The family lore was always that we came from Cork, but it seems everything thinks that because it's probably the biggest port and it's where many immigrants left Ireland.

The site is ran by a non-profit organization in Ireland that has been working to compile databases church records from all of the various parish's and counties in Ireland in one place and one contiguous database that is searchable.

From their site:

"This website contains a unique set of Irish family history records including Birth, Death, Marriage and Gravestone records the majority of which are only available online on this website and cannot be found online elsewhere.

This website was created by the Irish Family History Foundation (I.F.H.F.), an all Ireland not-for-profit organization, that is co-ordinating the creation of a database of Irish genealogical sources to assist those who wish to trace their Irish ancestry."

I started searching for my family and would type in the name of the person in baptism records along with the parents names and dates of birth and several times there would be ONE MATCH.  This amazingly happenned for 4 of the 6 children I knew came over in 1853.  I was floored.  So far I have been able to definitively trace my family roots to Blessington Parish in Wicklow county.  This is huge because now I have a jumping off point to continue my research.

There are pro's and con's to this site.  

Pro's:

- Easily searchable, most complete, set of church parish records I have seen to date. 

Con's:

- It's not free.  You get 10 free pages of search results but after that you pay for everything.  It's not terrible but it's pay-per-view.  You will pay 1 credit for additional search pages and 25 credits to view a record's details.  I bought 320 credits for 32 euro's (about $40 bucks USD) and that basically got my 12 document views and 20 pages of search results.

- The records are basically transcriptions, which means you will find errors.  The biggest example was looking at the last name of the mother of the six kids that came over from Ireland.  On three of their baptism records there were three different spellings for her last name (Mahan, Mahon, and Malone).  This could also account for why I couldn't find the other two kids in the family at all.

I hope this helps!

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