Tag: Tools

Rules of Genealogy

Rules of Genealogy

by Justin Durand

James Tanner often writes about the Rules of Genealogy. These aren’t rules in the sense that you must follow them. They’re common sense parameters for doing genealogy. Natural laws rather than rules of the game, if you will.

  • Rule One: When the baby was born, the mother was there.
  • Rule Two: Absence of an obituary or death record does not mean the person is still alive.
  • Rule Three: Every person who ever lived has a unique birth order and a unique set of biological parents.
  • Rule Four: There are always more records.
  • Rule Five: You cannot get blood out of a turnip. 
  • Rule Six: Records move. 
  • Rule Seven: Water and genealogical information flow downhill
  • Rule Eight: Everything in genealogy is connected (butterfly)
  • Rule Nine: There are patterns everywhere
  • Rule Ten: Read the fine print
  • Rule Eleven: Even a perfect fit can be wrong
  • Rule Twelve: The end is always there

The video version explains each point.

My favorite is the first one: when the baby was born the mother was there. The first time I read that, I got a rush. Such an easy way to phrase something so obvious, yet so widely overlooked by genealogy newbies.

DNAPainter

DNAPainter

by Justin Durand

So. I was using Genome Mate. It was a lot of work for not much result. There was an update. Always more work. I never got around to doing it, and never went back.

So now I’m looking at DNAPainter. Worth taking a shot, or will it just be extra useless work?

Roberta Estes says, “DNAPainter is one of my favorite tools because DNAPainter, just as its name implies, facilitates users painting their matches’ segments on their various chromosomes. It’s genetic art and your ancestors provide the paint!

“People use DNAPainter in different ways for various purposes. I utilize DNAPainter to paint matches with whom I’ve identified a common ancestor and therefore know the historical ‘identity’ of the ancestors who contributed that segment.”

I wonder. Painting is fun, but I’m more just a genealogist. Cousins are fun, but they’re not the entire game. I’m going to always lose interest in any tool that doesn’t help identify new ancestors.

Preserve First, Scan Second

Preserve First, Scan Second

by Justin Durand

This blog post stopped me in my tracks. I’m doing a huge scanning project right now. Drawers and drawers and more drawers of old paper files. All my genealogical correspondence and papers from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. A lifetime of work, and omg I was active. And now I’m helping Mom clean out her storage units (yes, units, plural). She’s giving me boxes of stuff, some of it originals of copies she has given me, some of it copies I’ve given her, and some of it stuff I’ve never seen before.

So, you can imagine I was in no mood to hear someone say I should stop scanning, that I should, apparently, backtrack and start preserving. Might be good advice for someone, but not for me.

Then I took a few days to think. Maybe I’ve being over-reactive. INFJ. You have to know I’d be over-reactive to anything that challenges my organizational process.

On reflection, preservation first makes a lot of sense. You don’t have to fix all the problems, but at least get it organized, do some triage, and get it put in archival boxes. I have mine neatly organized into file folders, staples and paper clips mostly pulled, crumbling papers photocopied. So, I’ve already done most of what Denise recommends as the first step. The way I see it, I’m good to continue with the scanning.

I don’t have it all in archival boxes, and I’m not actually sure I want to do that. I have a bunch of lateral files, and a largish closet we call “the file room”. I use those for the papers. Then I have the photos in bankers boxes. I fret about those boxes. If I died right now, today, the lateral files would stay where they are are for 20 years, but the boxes would go to my sister, who would likely stash them in storage for lack of space.

My sense is that climate control is an important element here, as well as keeping a clear vision about what is practical and what is probable. I could put everything in archival boxes now, but my sense is doing that would increase the risk of eventual destruction.

Today’s thoughts aren’t my last word on the subject. Now that I’ve read about the problem, I’ll be thinking about it every morning when I go into the file room to grab today’s scanning project. And I might eventually change course. Just not today.

Use Your Phone for Negatives

Use Your Phone for Negatives

by Justin Durand

From Janet Maydem at Family History Daily:

Wouldn’t it be nice to see what’s really on all those old family photo negatives or slides you’ve been carefully collecting and storing? If so, you might be ready to try out a negative scanner app (also known as a film scanner app). These free apps are designed to quickly scan old black and white and color film negatives and positive slides and turn them into digital photos.

Read more: You Can Now Use Your Phone to Turn Old Negatives and Slides Into Photos

GEDCOM is not the Answer

GEDCOM is not the Answer

by Justin Durand

James Tanner warns us about using GEDCOM. Info stored in a way that it is only portable by GEDCOM might be lost.

“Even if you were successful in having someone in your family accept the information in GEDCOM format, it is very likely that much of the value of the information would be lost.“

This is exactly what I see. Use GEDCOM if you have to, but you’d be better off getting away from the idea that your info is so special it deserves to be isolated in an inaccessible format. Get your data out of your standalone program and into one of the online programs pronto. You’ll never recover some of it, because you used a bad technology too long.

Update Nov. 5, 2019. Same warning from Dick Eastman, Bob Coret, and Nigel Munro Parker:

Edited to fix broken link.