Practical, down-to-earth advice for family historians. Join in the fun conversation and see what genealogical breakthroughs can happen.
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Myrt,
Your (not so) retired friend in genealogy.
Quiet on the set here we go five four 3 two one hello everybody I’m dear Myrtle your friend in genealogy welcome to Mondays with mert where we talk about anything and everything that comes across our desk and has happened in the last well we usually say week but
There’s a few things that have happened in the last two years huh anyway I hope those of you on the YouTube side um will U share the link and encourage people to subscribe this is exactly where you will be able to see Mondays with mt every
Week now when I say week we are working in six week segments then two weeks off then another six weeks and then two weeks off and that’s what we’re doing all right I’ve got a couple of co-hosts here today I’m going to bring uh Hillary up on the
Stage and um have you um join me for a little bit here and also Ed Thompson’s here thank you Ed you too and Daniel will be joining us shortly um and uh they they are keeping me on track back here in streamyard let me talk a little bit about what’s going
On I mentioned streamyard that’s this place where the panelists meet now there are alsoo also panelists who are working the YouTube side because you know it’s all about the conversation wow okay yeah I know that uh I said I was retiring who knew that our dear cousin
Russ would pass away or that Mr Mt would need me he’s better now we’re going to have segments with news you can use we’re going to introduce new series called genealogy pis or private investigators and what I plan to do is after the 90minut Mondays with mer I’m
Going to be uh cutting out individual segments of the show and making them short subject videos same thing on the YouTube channel each week or so we’re going to have a special guest ours will be somebody special that I just met and I’m quite excited to introduce you to um also uh
If you’ve got software questions we had one submitted we will try to answer one or two software questions we don’t know every piece of soft software but we try one of the things to tell you is that including everyone is important to Old mert here now in the past I’ve always
Said we recognize the international decade for people of African descent and that for me is not going to expire in 2022 just because the United Nations is no longer um well of course they’re recognizing it but this has been their their focus for the last 10 years
Everyone is welcome here to talk to discuss what’s going on regardless of uh you know their age um where they’re from Etc I just want to see conversation and I’m seeing all kinds of 51 different comments going on out there uh let’s see what’s happening on the uh YouTube side
With comments I’m going to um pull this up and we’ll pull in a comment or two Louie Kessler’s out there hi Valerie um wow uh June is there I’m um oh she’s reminding you all to put your thumbs up Sue Tolbert is there from Oklahoma there’s one of our panelists
She says it’s kind of chilly in Florida Cynthia is here uh she’s a cousin of mine yeah hi Paul uh you must be back in California I loved hearing about your um Cemetery trips over there in Texas oh wow uh Frank is on the backstage right
Now oh he will uh may be jumping in and joining with us he’s one of my uh returning panelist Sher is a new panelist but you all remember her from some of our U Mini merch especially U what’s going on H oh dear there’s so many things to talk about
As I sent a note out to you this is really cool technology I can pull all your comments in and I can make a comment within streamyard and send it out to you um kind of an intriguing possibility Ed I especially want to thank you for helping people uh with
The fact that when I set this up there was a time um change here in the US um did the Canadian folks let me pull um if you’d pull Steve up and also our Daniel Loftus uh I want to ask Steve up there in Canada maybe Ellen can answer that
Question um does um daylight savings time switch over with yall Canada just as it did with us here in the US I don’t know I do not know all right we’ve got a so let me ask Daniel you made it kiddo yes I did thankfully um well obviously we haven’t
Changed uh times yet so it’s one hour sooner than it would typically be for me at the moment there’s always a bit of an adjustment I wish we didn’t do daylight savings time let me also uh give a hat tip to Hillary our Gall in Wales she
Like Daniel is also returning thank you Hillary for being here yeah like like Daniel I we haven’t changed yet because we’re in both in the same time zone we’re on what you class is UTC or what what was called GMT at one time so you
Got it you’ve got it okay um and then Ed is here now I especially want to talk about who Daniel and Ed have been in for old mer um when the decision was made to take down my blog and my YouTube channel Daniel retrieved and archived all of those
Videos that was not an easy task and all of the blog posts and I’m gradually going to be reinstalling or reupping the study groups and some of our good uh Wacky Wednesday now Ed want to acknowledge him because he taught me more about how to use um uh
WordPress and use it as my website and while we’re speaking about that um let me pull it up I’m going to share my screen and make this full screen and it just takes a minute here to do that entire screen here we go okay this is
The website that um Ed helped me build and just yesterday he added the calendar and it’s not just what all merch’s doing it’s also what our panelists are doing I really like the color scheme matches and I like the popup when you do the rollovers and I’ve scheduled
Everything for Monday’s with mert uh through the end of the year so you know whether or not we are um on or off that particular week um at the homepage I just this is going to be pinned always um how to attend Mondays with mert this is just a little bit of
Housekeeping to keep you um uh aware of what we’re doing I added this because Ursula said what’s going on with the time zone differences well uh the uh time and dat.com is really good because you can put in your time zone and mine which is uh Seattle
Pacific time zone and it’ll tell you uh what time it is especially since we’re going to have a guest in the future from Australia what’s particularly important is that you get the opportunity to meet our new and returning panelist and I’m going to like zoom in a little bit here
If you look at this list of uh panelists and I mean I had to pair down their bios because they’re so talented we’ve got people that speak multiple languages if you have uh norian ancestry of course that we’re going to be uh talking with leave a little bit
Later today um yeah we got you covered U Michelle’s another one that is um able to help with uh Eastern European uh of course we’ve got Pat Kar opinionated I’m just looking over some of these I know Sherry’s out there on the YouTube side um yeah and I especially want to give a
Shout out to True Lewis she and I have been friends for a long time and uh she’s you know her because she has worked with na Smith and uh done a bit of work over there as her co-host and she’s working the YouTube side for us today and training
Some of my hosts about half of them that are available will be on the YouTube side specifically to answer your questions okay is there anything urgent coming up in comments I think we’re doing okay yeah everyone welcoming you back all right that’s wonderful thank you all
Right well let’s get on with the show I’m pulling up Trello which is what we use to keep track of things um we’re giving them this link uh to the uh and I’ll send it out here I can actually do this I can send it out myself well there
Goes the one for Elizabeth shown Mills um but let’s talk about uh root Tech so we’ll pull up Randy uh I want to know how many of you went to rootech I would um Mr mert and I went yeah I go to bring this up uh yeah root Tech is basically the
Largest family history um conference in the world I would say the numbers for in person attendees weren’t as high as in the past probably 15 20,000 but at one point they had a million Unique Individuals who were tuning in somebody’s giving me some feedback um we
Might try something there okay good um I want to pull this up and share my screen um Rand you you appeared on screen you were at root te after all and I will share my screen I about flipped when I saw the emulate tube uh uh there we go entire
Screen okay can you pull up my share screen please thank you Hillary should be coming up somebody else is sharing their screen and I would ask that they not okay there we go we’ll get the hang of it guys there we go much better all right
Let me zoom in on this picture you’re going to get a kick out of it here I was tooling around in my little electric wheelchair at root Tech I came across emulate me uh booth in the exhibit hall and who did I see but Randy he was there that is
The do mended evidence that you were at Roots deck Randy my avatar was there yes all right and we’ve got something else of yours to share you’ve done a great thing because people who didn’t attend can benefit if they read your blog post so talk to me about
This well first of all I made a mistake and thought it was 2024 in person cabi that were there it was really 2023 oh okay you know you do things quickly yeah and uh so I just learned today it was 2023 when I went to look at it again So
Eventually they will have so if you go to the rock.org website which there and then click on the root event up at the top and down at the bottom is inperson cabi yep okay if you click that okay uh then it says uh 2023 uh so from
There uh you can then bring up the screen of of a specific syllabus there’s about 160 there I think yes and uh you can bring up the screen and and see the syllabus and you can download it using the the uh icon up at the up at the top
Right there yeah I download that to your computer yep and uh that works really well I downloaded 100 or so I didn’t remember that they were from 2023 I thought were from 2024 so uh reader beware uh I did change the blog post this morning a bit as surpris
Everybody um hopefully the 2024 cabus will be available soon I think so I think that they I mean they had them for each class that um I attended one that didn’t have any syllabus material but um it worked out okay because um the person gave us his website and we
Could look at things on his blog okay we’re getting some feedback somebody um on the panel please mute um yeah um I I know that the folks at roote are still trying to uh relax Doris hasle over there in Wyoming is saying she attended virtually um yes I’m quite sure they
Will get the 2024’s up there thank you for showing us how to do that I do so appreciate that okay all right let’s see what’s next on the docket okay we have um probably want to talk about the sharing of the screen with Robin that will be the next thing while
We’re doing that while she’s getting ready I want to mention that um we’re going to be talking about a couple of interesting things are you ready Robin you sharing your screen okay there she goes all right I’ll make that full screen so we can see it really well because we have some
People watching on a laptop thank you okay and yeah so this is about um the new feature that family search is testing out and it’s still experimental so to see it you have to go to view experiments as I’m showing here and then um you’ll see that it it
Has different uh experiments available um and I’m talking about the full text so it says expand your search with full text and then click on go to experiment now they only have two data sets um available right and um us Landon probate and Mexico notario
Records um they also have a a video on how to improve your search so excellent tell me what you found I want to go I went to us uh land and deeds okay you got a typo there so it may not work oops it’s not a
Ship I hear you I thought it was I hear you you got it babe so you can’t so you can’t just click on the icon below for us land you have to type it in yeah okay got it and so now to actually do the search I want to do the
Search on my ancestor Margaret Carolyn okay and um so you add the plus sign to say I want both Margaret and Carolyn to be in the search okay so I click on search mhm and I get uh 1100 plus records um one of which is from San Mato she wasn’t from
San Mato so I can um click on record place it shows United States apply oh actually I have to click on United States sorry and then you can choose the state and she was from New York State okay and then you can choose the county she was Richmond County so I’ll apply
That and now we only have 53 results that looks good and yes and so here is uh the granter deed index um which is uh part of a lot of New York you’re only going to get the deed index um then this is let me just mention let me just
Mention for people that haven’t seen grantee and grantor deed indexes so the grantor is a seller and the granty is the buyer and that’s one of the ways that courthouses index their files by having huge books that list the name of the grante and the
Gror and it tells you which one of the other big books to pull down to get a document okay and the way that I remember Grant tour being the seller is by donor so when donate something oh you can donate property me anytime especially if it’s
Like like the tropics you know would be nice yes so um um this is uh not what I wanted to show oh okay she has an interesting will I love this segment because you are pulling in exactly the process remembering to put the plus sign in
Front of the first name and the last name and then filtering so you didn’t have to go through all those thousands of entries just the will 19 34 1934 MH so this is my great grandmother and you can see that it shows the transcript over on the right
Hand side here of what it says over here on the left hand side and you can download both the transcript and the picture sorry and so what it’s saying what’s very interesting is my husband Patrick having been well provided for by me during my lifetime and because of the
Trouble and suffering he has caused me I give him the sum of1 doar oh whoa so she wasn’t happy with him I see that well this is down oh just a minute so what we’re looking at folks is AI being used in a good way and in this case it’s interpreting
Typewritten text which is not always that easy to interpret because sometimes you know the old typewriters the letter e would be up a little bit so it might so the transcript might not be perfect but the character recognition of handwriting has come a long way in the
Last two years since last we met on Mundy’s with mer take it back giving you the mic Robin okay so uh to download the full transcript and the pictures so you see record include record images and highlights no highlights don’t include the record image so you could just do
That and you just click on download and it will go to where you specify and I and it comes up with the default file name of transcript and I would change that to transcript of will for Margaret we all have different file naming schemes yeah um and so you’re going to
Want to but at least you’re going to want to give the image and the transcript the same be beginning part of the file name so that they appear together in your folder um right and this download downloads a PDF that includes both the image and the transcript so it’s one file okay
I love it I agree with uh Valerie there she says um it’s great to see the steps to do the full Tech search thank you for doing that yep um go ahead wow so it’s I don’t always like PDFs when I I want to be able to see the
Document when I attach it to somebody in my genealogy program let’s make I’m gonna have to make a sticky note remember how I used to do that guys of what I want to talk about in an upcoming Mondays with mer we were going to talk
About um then PDFs to um a a image file like Ping or um jpeg all right that’s over here on my monitor we’re set okay mic back to you so you can see that um it looks like almost everything here has to do with Margaret T Carolyn who
Was my um great grandmother but here’s one for Margaret J and you notice that it also highlights Margaret um and these are not all about her some of them are I haven’t examined all of them but um you’ll see that it uh goes during her lot well except for this one
1827 this is not she wasn’t born then so this is definitely not her so you need to pay attention to the time and you can actually change the time up here um record year and fortunate part for me is that it’s both I have her both in 1800 and and and
1900 so it’s difficult for me to specify one or the other but what you can do here is oops sorry in 1800 I don’t want to see the 1820 1880 and so you can filter things out as well as filter things in yes correct okay this is pretty cool um I’m
It is very cool thank you for doing this the actual demo is quite I I love that real time uh demo I’m going to um ask my co-host to bring Randy up um I just shared in the chat um uh Randy’s post there’s several people that have given some pretty good
Stepbystep or definitive comments about how to use this new um full Tex Church okay let’s and let me uh ask you I’m going to ask somebody please would my co-host please turn off the screen share for now or Robin can cancel it okay um Randy what were your did you have any specific
Challenges when you were doing this full Tech search I haven’t done it at all I’ve done quite a bit now and I wrote my post week ago and so I’ve learned a lot more and uh I didn’t do exactly what Robin did I I just put a name in without the
Pluses okay and as far as I can tell the results are about the same so uh do you want me to share my screen I’m pulling yours up theoretically possibly there we go got it okay um okay so I wanted to deal with Cornelius feather and who is my fourth grade
Grandfather and I don’t know his wife’s name I don’t I know his last wife’s name was Mary okay so um so knowing that then I I I just put in Cornelius feather in the beginning and he was in Mercer County Pennsylvania before uh for half his life and he was in Trumble
County for a good portion of his life early life especially and he had a girl Sarah feather in 1804 who was my third grade grandmother okay and so I I I knew from experience over the last 35 years once we had an index set of land records or probate records that we would
All find a lot more information about our ancestors I knew that I’ve expressed that several times on Mondays with MD I think too obviously so so I so you did not use the plus sign in front I didn’t and the results are about the same far as I can tell yeah I
Initially I did what I show there currently brother there Trumbo Ohio because I knew I’d already looked in Mercer Pennsylvania and since then I’ve learned to use the filters that that Robin showed a bit of the uh the record year range the record type the record place
And the record collection uh okay so so when I did that then I searched and uh the search seems to find if you put a name in or if you put any of those terms in the search will if they’re all together in one in
One page the search will put them at the top okay now if you got Cornelius Cornelius Smith and a feather bed later in the page it’ll find that too okay but it seems to put the name if a name’s in proximity the first name and the last name in
Proximity to each other it will put that in um yeah this just making sense to me yeah so it’s that tremble Ohio us deed 1831 was one of the first things I saw and uh that was it was a game it was a gameer and you had never seen this document before
I’ never seen this document I never searched Trumble County before either I could have on microfilm um but these things are hard to find sometimes so um so I clicked on that one and the next slide uh I filtered the results down from you know 3 million to oh my gosh 50
Something U but it but with that of those three million the two Deeds that that mention them are at the top okay that’s and and they’re they’re sequential the 1831 and the 1833 are one right after the other so going to the next screen and so you can see that it
Highlights the words I have uh Cornelius feather especially and there were four pages here uh that had two deeds and uh so I captured the the the four pages and how this fits is Cornelius FEA his last wife was Mary I didn’t know when they married I figured it was
Before 1850 when she appears in the census but I didn’t know how far back that went I thought maybe it went back as far as 1830 this deed is 1831 and so in this deed Cornelius feather and his wife Mary feather are mentioned along with uh six other
Children or children and their wives if they’re male uh children of uh Thomas Patridge and his wife Carolyn Pelton now um so and this a qu they quit claim deeds the two Deeds the first deed six of the kids quit claim to a seventh kid
David the uh 2/3 of the land that was owned by their parents okay in the second deed Katherine the Widow of Thomas Patridge uh Deeds her third her D third to the same child David so this is just amazing yes you’ve got f a whole family unit being described here I I and
I they were all the living people too you know yeah there was no there’s no will no Pro case a state case for P I found yes I’ve looked so this says that Mary at least is a daughter of Thomas and Cath Thomas really Thomas and his first wife Hannah
Wakan so um Randy yeah do you see this replacing indexing it eventually I think so yeah I think so I think so but you have to be careful uh the first page of this four page set says Cornelius feathers okay if I search for Cornelius feathers that comes up that first page
Comes up I only search for Cornelius feather and without the they could abbreviate Cornelius they can misspell feather uh they can misspell Cornelius too it seems to find some of the common alternative spellings of of names and things like that so this was uh revelatory for me I
Would love it and it’s only these I don’t think that all of the probate records available on digital microfil at family search are in this set yet it’s it’s property and wills and not probate and land there are other categories in the filters for uh a number of terms in
In the uh record types here I’ve used legal and that includes court and property and wills so things like intested probate files aren’t here I I don’t believe maybe wrong all right let me bring some comments in from the community for a minute yep um there’s tons of good ones
First of all Doris is thanking you for bringing your attention to all of this and thanks to Robin for the demonstration Frank our panelist who’s in the wings here in the backstage area um says it’s not Geor restricted so he could use this even though he’s over there in
Germany um let’s see what’s next next here um holding a family reunion thank you JY uh and Maran yeah I was very happily surprised by that fact because normally when we see some cool stuff from uh over there in the United States or so um we look over there and then yeah I
Can’t play with it because it’s G restricted or something something or you have to pay much more to use it in Germany than you would have um as a user from the states so see that it is not gear restricted and uh we can use it as well it’s it’s simply
Amazing I I am thrilled to hear this um yeah all right Hillary uh you said over on the YouTube side um you haven’t looked at it for UK records because they’re none available and you you you do UK you live in Wales but most of your
Research is in England is it not yeah I’ve got England and I’ve got have got I’ve got touches onto Wells but not not direct ancestry in Wales but yeah I would I when I saw this on the roots Tech thing I thought yes this will be
Really useful at some point but I knew that it was only U certain us groups that it was on at the moment but I have been doing other things which I um I think I put in the chat as well and so Robin’s example was just type text and
We were pretty happy with the transcript and Randy this is handwriting would you say the typescript on the side on the right side was pretty good yeah I I think that the transcript is is fairly good um I have a lot of other records and and deed records where
The handwriting is terrible uh so I’m not sure I haven’t tried to look for those yet but I probably will just to demonstrate let me point out that if you you you can see it on this screen up at the top right next to the underlined
Full text to the right of that is groups and that is where you would find a source citation okay a family search source citation so you’re going to have to do it from the real screen I can do that if you want okay get ready to share your screen
And they’ll bring it up yeah what are you but while you’re doing that let me bring while you’re getting ready to share your screen wait a minute on that Hillary let me pull in some more comments um Monique said she did the the thing with the quotation marks which
Took it from which took it down to 29 result which sounded good and um just a minute we’re getting there got to get through these comments AI handwriting will um with reading the handwriting will help um yes let’s see gives you the family unit I think everybody’s pretty darn
Excited about this here’s our Louis Kesler also up in Canada you know we got a lot of Canadians and a lot of Mac users that have tuned in yeah full transcript searches are problematic if the name is common somebody’s giving me feedback and I think it’s still Ed Ed would you mute
Yourself we’ll try that and see what’s going on thank you um now it’s gone away so it is you I don’t mean to pick on you hun okay and I think I have one or two more um uh oh actually somebody Betty Lou just tried this and this is helping find the
Boses in California cool uh great start transcriptions do leave a bit to be desired I’m still getting the feedback it could be Me I I I tried showing my screen and uh it’s not showing uh okay well is it because the comment is on the there it is okay good yeah I can yeah she I just asked her not put it up right away so there she is go ahead and put it up okay
So now can I click on things here or do I have to go to my I have to go to my my other screen yes okay but we’re not yeah is that his shared screen Hillary that’s mine okay go for it okay and you can see it right yep okay good we’re all
Learning so here here at the top I I I used uh Robin’s thing of the plus Cornelius plus feather and I’ve looked at legal uh for uh record type and I’ve looked a record place and and yes you know restricted it to filter to Ohio and so when I when I do this
Then uh and that that was the screen that I had before right here is the uh the transcript and up here at the top under group it’s actually a image group data and it gives me information about it where it’s from uh historical record collection or I can use that in the in
The uh in the source and further down here is a citation so it tells me more information about an archival reference number that type of thing uh and I can click on more and then I can uh copy paste yes Bingo we love that bingo so that that’s
The important thing I wanted to show um uh the next slide On from uh before okay the the previous image had all the people and and and what was happening and things like that so um one more thing here and that is that we have to understand that these are records that have been digitized by family search and they don’t have
Everything okay true like I I can’t find Massachusetts Deeds after 1880 or so at least in Worcester County because they don’t have those on the family search images uh so there’s still a lot in cour houses uh some of the wills that are available are there uh and in some
States up to the 1980s I think uh but in many states only up to the 1900 time frame approximately and then perhaps the intested estate papers aren’t included here for some reason because they aren’t Wills um that’s probably another 100 million uh pages okay so we okay let’s switch
Gears um and see what we can accomplish next can I just say one thing um in addition to using the plus you can also use a wild card so for Margaret I Aran search um right okay sounds like a plan all right we managed to do a a a one
Practically 45 minutes on one topic and this is it but but we needed to try it out and to see it live in two demonstrations was pretty darn good thank you okay what I’d like to do next is pull leave up I also want to ask one
Of the panelists to go to our Trello board and share also the post written by Lisa gerell and Kimberly Powell and others that have their take on how to use this new Innovative AI a lot of feedback um yeah all right so we’re just going to have leave let me um pull this
Up and share my screen with you uh okay first of all we have a visit from Delo um and let me get ready to share that and also we’re going to talk about something that happened last summer very excited that I got to be part of all this so I’m going to share
My screen and pull that up uh we had a lot of fun last summer didn’t we leave yeah we had a nice launch party yes we did you are so gracious to to host it for us well I thought I’d never come back I thought I’d retired but well I
Guess I’m not a person on my word nah all right let’s let’s uh move everybody else down except for the co-hosts me and our lead that way we can cycle people from backstage up all right so why am I looking at your blog first talk to me about
This uh in our book I wrote a book about Norwegian genealogy together with Margaret strum and uh two of the main persons they immigrated from Norway one to the United States and the other to New Zealand and uh the one to the United stat is on on this picture and she’s
Here called Anna sunon she married a swed in um in duu and they ran a business together and it was quite successful uh they even could afford to go to Florida every uh winter to to Vacation yeah yeah and um and this person she’s a really remarkable woman
Because uh the odds were against her and her parents for a long time but coming to America she she she went from rags to reach and here if you um U enlarge the picture we can see it more clearly uh I think it’s interesting uh to look at all the
Details um my grandfather is on the on the left uh he’s uh visiting uh his brother and sister who who runs this Farm MH and um uh so the two women uh on the right side is the sisters of my grandfather and the one behind them is another
Brother and the last one is another farmer but you can see that Anna and uh and her her father they’re so perfectly dressed so perhaps she brought a suit for her father uh from the US so that he could uh look very good well that’s pretty cool so that’s these are the two
Here in the suit and the in the dark clothing there yes um the you know what also strikes me I’m always looking at architecture and that that’s a very ornate window yes and and yet the siding of the of the home is Log Cabin um I saw a few of those when we
Came to see you and tour and you took Mr MD on his uh ancestral tour of his former residents who also immigrated e exit immigrate after to remember that that’s my way of remembering it um and uh it’s and these are things that they could like take
Aart and go move to the next Farm if they needed to yes so this uh so the the Timber from this house is originally from 168 1680s something like that wow and and has the the house has been standing somewhere else and then in
1848 it was put up again uh and they had done a a test on it that’s why they can say that the the the timber is that old so they know yeah yeah yeah um wow very cool well thank you so should we show your book should we do that part
Next yes please okay all right I totally love it so um I actually have two copies I bought the one softsided you know the paperback version this is 8 and a half by 11 and then your publisher sent me a hardbound copy which is Leland was very nice to do that
Um let me send the link to everybody so that they know I think maybe I already did let’s see here it is again what I like especially is that um varar I don’t know if I’m pronouncing his name correctly yes yes you are said that that is a pretty essential book
Most comprehensive and relevant book on Norwegian genealogy produced so far if I may say the the picture on the front of the book is called dead listu and it’s on a museum now in and uh the things around the door is quite typical for the area yeah it’s
It’s quite elaborate and this is uh the house that was um used as a model for uh the Merchant House in the film Frozen that’s why we see the small figurine there yeah and and and and the house is very relevant for the main character for this lady who came from the United
States because she lived off a a small uh Cotter Farm uh close to deadle so her Cotter Farm was called deadly running implying that it is it was a cutter Farm not a big farm okay okay uh Jill is saying it’s a great book for new regian
Genealogy she has it one and Jill is one of our panelists she’s working the YouTube side today Diana loves your book and true is saying yay for you you did it you made it it’s pretty awesome oh thank you also true for uh working on the YouTube side I appreciate all that
Well I hope that your book continues to help now we should mention that you live in Norway yes I do and you were born there right yes and your co-author Margaret strand is was born in America was it no Scotland oh Scotland that’s right but I could still understand her
English um but she lives in Norway and helps people at is it a local family search center where did yes and she she helps at the History Center and the another another local uh Association so between the two of you you know how to deal with all of us uh
Throughout the world that don’t live in Norway and uh we don’t know where your records are kept and and this is what comes out in your book but you also help people in Norway the book is in English guys so you can understand it okay anything else before we switch
Topics again it’s pretty good I’m really proud of you I should mention that Diana Smith uh helped you you know look through your book she was more active than I was at the time for your editing because of course I was dealing with Mr Mt and his illness and Haven we’re very
Grateful for the help that Diana gave us we had the uh first we had a first edition and we decided to work on with it so Diana read both of them wow and it was very valuable uh advice that she gave us yeah well that’s pretty darn cool well
I’m proud to have worked with you um on the um launch party and um congratulations I’m proud of you my dad used to say my dad who was always very exacting and would make us pronounce things perfectly would say proudly to you which is not good English but I’m
Saying that leave proudly to you okay thank you well thank you pretty darn cool all right so next we’re going to talk with Pat cun so let’s have um leave go to the um backstage and we’ll pull Pat up Pat you had an interesting happen um we need to I’m going to pull
Up your work here just a moment because we’re going to do some fun things with what you did you did some research so you’re genealogy Pi my um one of my cousins um contacted me uh her and her brother were looking into uh a house fire that had taken uh
Some children oh and uh she her brother thought it was in 1980s sometime but couldn’t remember and so she wondered if I would be able to find something and I first I looked in newspapers.com and um I really I didn’t find anything and then I went over to uh I hadn’t used
It in quite a while was uh um Genie ology Bank mhm and that was that was where I found these two little articles which kind of surprised me because I mean it’s obvious in the it’s took place in Upper door BPA but I could not find a local paper
Either Philadelphia or in Delaware County we have the Daily Times uh I couldn’t find anything in a local paper and really one came from uh Erie Pennsylvania which is the most Northwestern part of the state totally across the state yeah and the other one was in uh Springfield Massachusetts in
Their paper so you just never know what gets picked up through the news well you can see that the one from Eerie times has AP in the parentheses so and then the other one says UPI so it’s these stories are going out to these other areas I mean I’ve seen
That in the past like in an obituary or something it’ll say at the bottom certain area papers please pick this up yes because it’s where the person came from um but um or they have family there but this I just really found it interesting that I could not find it in a local
Paper well you just never know and what you’re doing uh for our listeners and uh those who will watch the recording of This is to remind them not to overly edit when they’re doing a search remember how in our BYU fulltech search they were getting very specific when
They had two million responses but you might need to look at something that’s even in another state I mean Massachusetts takes a little while to get from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania uh yeah through a few States I’ve done it yeah exactly and if the traffic’s bad
All bets are off but I digress yeah but so these were they’re the grandchildren of my mother’s first one of my mother’s first cousins uh that died in this fire um well one of the things I wanted to do um let me pull up my um let me
Hide that pull this up one of the things that I wanted to do with your work today with your contribution is to craft a newspaper citation okay and we’ve all been you know ordering this new evidence explained book and uh there’s a new chapter 3 which which makes it a lot
Easier I mean the whole book I mean I don’t even know how many pages there are yeah I haven’t gotten it yet I’ll have to get it well it’s on sale right now um let me give you guys this link um for evidence explained forth Edition I think
I gave it before we even went live there you go um the in it as we’re accustom Elizabeth Shan Mills the author of evidence explained um has very detailed um sample citations thank you Randy for looking it up 739 Pages wow yeah just only because I think the
Other one was feels like it was bigger but the third chapter it’s new and what it does is take you to coming acoss Cross or summarizing for you these are the elements that we need to include in our citation right okay um and yes there are templates uh
That she has in there for magazine articles and things like that but this is exactly from page let me pull up the right page so I can page already page 101 to build the citation where are the and I’m now looking on page 103 to get these building blocks
These basic things one two 3 four five six seven so who created the article and this is how we’ll go forward and try to figure out a citation okay I’m G to move this off the screen temporarily sideways like that I pulled your two um Clips as I asked you for
These in advance in my snag it it just happens to be the uh the uh photo editing program that I’m using today you could do this in paint or any other um uh program where you can edit a a graphic and what I’m going to do is pull
Down using this little handle here to create space so that I can insert a text box and here’s the text icon up here and I’m going to adjust the color because well we’ll make it red so it stands out and this is where I will add the text here oh
Cool and I want to do this frequently to get this into people’s minds when you’ve got a picture like leave had where it’s got all those individuals and you want to list their names left and right you know you scan the photo and maybe all
That writing’s on the back of the of the photo itself um this is a way that you can add it without destroying or writing on top of the individuals but that’s also where you can put a citation so let’s go craft one this is the one from
The that was shared by UPI fire two brothers um let me minimize this and pull up word again come on Microsoft Word where are you there you are okay so using this concept let’s start crafting a citation okay okay so um what was the newspaper I have mine
Written oh you did it already so printed it out I I write okay tell me what you’ve got and I’ll type it okay I put uh that it from the union the morning Union in Springfield Mass okay um it was in the paper Saturday 3 August 1985 so 3 August 1895
1985 okay you got to help me better um I’m a crazy girl let’s put it that way okay so that these are some of the things the date in the year right the publisher then I put access from genealogy bank for March 2024 okay did you have a column number
Or anything like that no okay change the year to 85 you did say 85 yeah 1885 1985 okay got it 19 N okay we’re good okay okay and do you have a web address for where you got this genealogybank.com okay okay so the publisher the uh for so this is a two-
Tiered thing you didn’t actually look at the newspaper iners holding it in your hand so we’re describing this in a two-part type of citation okay we’re going to refine it don’t worry and so we it was published at genealogy bank and that is https colon and you can see where the site
Itation that uh Randy looked at that he could copy and paste from his um uh land record right could be you just copied and pasted in that same text box there in your graphic uh editing program Jenny right uh and then you accessed it when or viewed for March 2024
Okay so now let’s look at this um this is what we have I’m going to pretend that I copied it from the website because that saves a lot of typographical errors that like Miss like old mer here would likely do we’ll go here and I don’t want it to have a
Shadow come on go away shadow okay so I’m going to now paste it oh great just a second Z come on you have to be in the text box M come on okay so that’s better um all I did was expand it apparently we’re not doing
Red all right so we need to um what we need to do is is give it a title fire kills to Brothers yeah and I use the um the uh upper and lower case the way they did in the article itself yeah okay so back here on
Our list we said we needed a title and a description and um I would put um would you I want to hear from people would you put the names of the uh individuals William and Charles what’s their last name kruer uh was published in the morning
Union now when it’s like a chapter or something in a book you can put the quotation marks around it the morning Union can be italicized now I’m not perfect on citations but and we I know we need an end quote um what does that citation look
Like for you we’ve got the the title and a description I think that’s descriptive enough don’t you yeah and then we have oh I don’t have Upper Darby yeah it happened in Upper Darby PA oh okay so um that would be location didn’t I see something on that
List yeah let’s say um about location yeah Upper Darby okay now that’s that’s interesting because this other part otherwise you’d think if you didn’t put that Upper Darby or we could say upper Derby how about that what do you think of doing it that way what about a page
Number Mark say again what about a page number uh yeah we have I don’t have there is no there genealogy bank doesn’t give you that like newspapers.com it’s very page or a column yeah what you have to do if it’s been snipped you’re stuck at least we know the date of
Publication yeah I made sure I got that um it’s not a perfect citation but do you think it’s enough I think see I like to have the page and the column and all that too but like I said it didn’t show up yeah it’s geney trick yeah it can be
Tricky Randy you came on screen for a reason did you want to say something you’ve muted yourself apparently remember when you’re on Backstage you don’t have to mute yourself it mutes automatically okay Canya yeah go ahead he did not want to okay so we can put him back stage again um here’s the
Thing folks to me if we also had the page number or the at at least the page number um then I wouldn’t have to go Page by page but I would easily spot that headline as I scanned the page um at least we know that it was at
P published at genealogy bank and here’s the thing we could be totally nuts about our citations and this is enough to get us there if you were going to uh publish an article then the editor of that particular journal or newsletter might direct because direct the the uh composition or
The layout of your citation but if let’s look at our list we have who created it if there was a by line here um that would need to be part of it we have the date the year the publisher yeah we’ve got that information anybody else want to comment
Let me go look at comments to see what people are saying um oh Paul put in it’s on page two column two well thank you thank you Paul so it’s a different place to look for it uh in on genealogy Bank you know every website has different ways of
Dealing with it so we need to say that um okay morning Union of Springfield Massachusetts um and then it is column two or page page two page two column two okay all right so this La lower part that I’m highlighting in blue right now I hope
You all tell me folks if you can’t see it as well I see it okay um I want to hear from people on the YouTube side too uh thank you naen for coming by um start a couple I’ve start a couple Randy said something about um um putting
Um imaged and page number and then Jill said something as well okay it’s all good okay and thank you uh Dr Shelly uh she can see it just fine okay so the first part would be if we were going to be looking for the that the first part not highlighted is the newspaper
Citation and then the part as as Paul has helped amend boy I love this interaction with the folks on the YouTube side don’t you it takes 42,000 of us to get this citation right it takes a village it takes it certainly does but that part highlighted in blue
Tells where what you actually looked at you weren’t looking at the actual paper you were looking at it online at genealogy bank and that is a a layered citation okay um yeah good that how you do it it’s very sad I can’t imagine um the parents it’s a terrible thing to have
Happened but if we were to save this now this is what you will see and the citation stays with it now I want to mention something technical folks um I’m going to stop my screen sharing it’s I have had people say we need to put this all in metadata which
Is a technical term for going behind the scenes of a of a image to put information the trouble is that sometimes when you upload that image to share it with certain websites including flicker they don’t pull the metadata I want the citation right on the surface of the image not obscuring the item
Itself and I just showed you how to do it and almost every week we’re going to do this because I know that our attendees won’t be here almost every week so we will have that um we’ll have that refresher core yeah um so other people are finding
It in Eerie and it’s a longer one over in the times I think that might be this one this is the yeah this really long one the one in well let me go get my citation here yeah and oh but it’s not exactly the same it gives more information yeah yeah
Mar um a lot of people in the in the comments are being very helpful with well it should be this first and then that or this should be this way or or that way which which is all accurate but isn’t the point of the what you were
Presenting the fact that we don’t want to get caught up in all those details yeah because I have seen people who’ve come to talk to me on Mendy’s with mer where they crafted a citation the way that they felt they had followed um Elizabeth Shan Mills um
And and then they submitted it to one of the scholarly journals like NGS or the hisgen um register and the editor had them do it slightly differently it’s an art not a science so thank you for bringing that up um wow I sure appreciate those 49 likes
That you’ve noticed out there oh gosh I go to click and then somebody else I have to somebody else makes a comment I appreciate that wow Hillary you’re good at this as is uh our true Lewis of going ahead and making a comment back and
Forth and I can pick it up here uh right within streamyard I kind of like this technology okay let’s go see what’s next on oh yes we’ll save our changes okay um what’s next on our docket let me go find out and our time um okay have we let’s talk with Ursula
And then we will talk with Simon all right now Ursula do you want me to share the screen we’ve got to pull her up here we go hi oh you’re already sharing good so I actually saw this post when you made it before you contribut it uh in our
Secret uh Facebook group and thought it was fantastic and a good thing to share uh so tell me uh what’s going on can you zoom in so we can see it better uh yes okay is this better yes now of course we’re looking at German it isn’t like I
Could it’s German marriage record obviously it’s from 186 2 and it’s from Brandenburg Prussia northern part of Brandenburg very close to the border of mecklinburg and um we have a very interesting column here and the column says if so it’s marriage record um so if the bride was already married and if how
The marriage ended and um there are three or four ways but on this page there are three ways it’s one is the yunga and that means Maiden but it might even mean virgin here he probably means means Maiden the second part is what we see here in the third uh line um Def
Florata and the deata means she’s not a virgin anymore and he probably knows that because they’re pregnant so it not only are they pregnant you can see that they’re pregnant it’s obvious yeah it’s very obvious um and I found this page because my uh my great great grand grandfather’s second first cousin is
Listed there as a Def florata and she gives birth three weeks after the marriage so she was pregnant right and then we have uh the the the other listing in that already has children and is marrying the father of her children so has two this an actual printed form in
1862 and the priest is very concerned about legitimacy exactly exactly and this is uncommon it’s not that I’ve I haven’t seen it before it does happen every once in a while but I I I looked at the neighboring parishes and I hadn’t f seen that so he’s very picky so to
Say um and what it means for us genealogists is that we really have to look for every single entry when when we have these kind of um uh this kind of information um because it means if we see a def florata it always means there will be
Childbirth in a certain amount of time so it’s probably yeah in the next to in the to look for a christening and do we call them christenings uh baptisms baptism or christening yes yeah yeah so we we should always look before when we look for children and we
Should also look right after from the day of marriage we should also start looking at the baptism even if we don’t find these kind of remarks but I’ve had this several times but this obviously makes it easier because you know something’s going on and and you you
Should check yes but I had I had um my great great great grandparents who married very close by um and she already had an illegitimate son by him and he was four or five at the moment and the marriage record does not say um so I never knew I knew there were
Seven children and I only found six and I and I simply didn’t realize that there might might have been a child born before the marriage and it was also not born in Brandenburg but even in mecklinburg and the child died um so that’s and and the the the
Death entry said where it was born and the age and it also said that it was born illegitimate but acknowledged so but it shows that we really have to when we’re working with with uh Church records that we really have to look into to every single column and even if it’s hard to
Read uh it’s really really necessary to look at every single tiny bit piece of information that we find here because it might lead to other findings yeah you can draw inferences that that lead you to other uh documents exactly um you know this discussion reminds me of a of Warren
Bitner Warren Bitner has a presentation that he does called Bitner Bastards of Bavaria and he had a couple uh in his direct ancestry um who had met I don’t know how many children I can’t recall that part but because of finances they weren’t able to um get the
Get them mentioned in the church records until much later yeah exact yeah we find that we don’t really find that on the countryside it’s not that common it does happen but it’s it’s rather uncommon but we find it in the cities especially in the worker districts of Berlin that’s
Very common they some sometimes four or five children baptized on one day yeah exactly I think there issue was they never got married because of the money and I have a oh my my gosh all right we’re going to go over today guys that’s
All there is to it I have an alarm that lets me know I have five more minutes to go and we haven’t talked to Simon yet um I want to compliment you though on your citation um and this website AR how do we say this Arion
Aron um the German word for archive is arive so that’s why they’re called Aron okay and so this is of and Aran is gathering digital images of in this case Church Rec isn’t it principally Church records it’s only church records it uh it belongs to the church to the Lutheran
Church of uh of Germany okay and again this isn’t all the churches in Germany this is a great collection for the um evangelisation Church EXA I didn’t say that correctly but you know I I love I love working with it it’s my favorite even if if if they are on other
Databases I always work with this one they’re not indexed though but uh if you do research the German Way you you’re very focused on the on the country on on the place so in that case working with Aron is much easier better I think I totally totally get it I’m very excited
I mean the things that have come forth each year to make our research easier is just incredible but we need experts like you and others who are most familiar with the records and what seems normal versus uh unusual and um and quirky handwriting no less the old high German script is
Different Etc yeah exactly and I have a little YouTube channel where I do small tips is all two to three minute videos where share that link yes you please share that link in the chat here and then um they’ll be able to get it on the other side it goes over there directly
Thank you Ursula now I’m pulling up my guest for today Simon and let me go to your website first of all Simon thank you for join joining us we have a joint friend tell tell who introduced us and what’s well I’m just so excited about the
Program I can’t even tell you let’s say that talking about the wonderful Jen Jen our friend in our friend in Minneapolis yes uh okay I’m sharing my screen I’ve got to be able to have you turn that on there we go okay so Jen has has introduced us and
She knows that I love talking to uh people that I haven’t met before this is your website we are and doxyz not.com and I’m going to show you a video and then I’m going to talk with Simon um about social family history websites that I’m going to create one
For my family this is what old M has been looking for uh I hope I told it let me let me check my screen share I’m going to do it again because you have to click a certain thing to tell it that you want the sound to come through uh
Okay okay it’s got it I did it correctly and just didn’t trust myself guys I’m learning this is the one that I want to show you I think here’s how it works Here can you all hear that sound dang can you hear on the outside let me know because I did click the Switch all right I’m going to show it anyway because it’s amazing what you’ve got for for wow I totally agree with Dr Shelly who
Says oh I love this okay I thought I would cry at a different part but Simon you’re making me cry you’ve got a super cool website called we are and this isn’t just a website where it’s about um pedigree charts and family group sheets is it talk to me sure well
Thank you for that sorry to make you cry it’s a good cry well when we finish the video we look back and we said this is good but we said there there’s no happy moments in it which was yes there should be really um yeah so what this is I suppose in its
Essence it’s it’s an online web platform that allows us genealogists to basically create a family archive on behalf of our family and that’s that’s different from making a family website so I’m a keen genealogist I’ve reached a point where I wanted to share my family and I started
Making a a website and I found myself wanting to do all sorts of things like have you know sub trees separate trees of different families trees for different stories document editors transcribers all sorts of things and it was all just too hard um and even if you
Make a website and I did make a quite nice static website the thing that struck me was that it’s very it’s just me Centric right it’s my statement about my family history to impart to my family who will take notice for a while whereas what I’m
Really trying to do is share my family history and give everyone a share in it so the the the platform here is is different from a website you can if you’re in the family you can log into the family’s archive and when you get in there you’ll find this rather annoying
Person called Simon who happens to be very busy in it but you can get busy in it too if you want um uh and crucially everything that my cousin my brother or my you my um second cousin Etc experience is when they enter their family’s archive It
Centers on them all the trees all the content um in fact we’re just finishing off a filter that filters out any all the sort of f you don’t have to see all the stuff that’s you’re not directly descended from and let’s say you’re cousin’s wife starts taking an interest
And putting in loads of her stuff that can be filter that so it’s really important that it gives a a personal Centric view of one’s family history but the apart from sharing our work and what we’ve done the real objective here has been to crack the time old problem of how to actually
Reliably hand on your family history and have it passed down the generations and to do that set against the fact that you cannot guarantee that your living family today is necessarily that interested you know we all experience a complete range of interest in our work and some of us find it very
Perplexing fact I I find it very perplexing for example my brother has no interest whatsoever on breaks my heart really actually to be honest but it’s a truism you see a lot like some people really don’t care at all so how are you going to make it survive anyway and what
We’ve designed the platform to do is to say well look the family historians put in your family history the Beyond living memory and bring it up to you know um your grandparents Etc and what it does is it inspires nostalgia in your family so they go in and start thinking well
What about my childhood what about raising my kids and they start what about the wedding last weekend what about the ski trip that they took but I didn’t go on if they upload from their camera and talk about it then I can then it’s not lost in our iPhone cell
Phone that’s it exactly so you’ve got three sort of stages one is beyond living memory which the genealogist puts in there yeah then everyone starts get nostalgic and puts within living memory and the final part which you’re talking about M which is really the most most exciting part yes is living history like
Putting yourself now I’ve just been on vacation I’ve just been to root St I’ve probably write it up and put a footnote that it gave me covid which is I’m just getting over thank you very much root root and and um like the Fantastic vacation camper van holiday I Haden with
My son you two years ago and all all this sort of stuff my nephew’s wedding and if those come together then you’ve given your family a functional useful environment and so you’ve really maximized the probability that all our work to do with our family history gets passed down to the generations you know
We can never we never be certain right you know you you we need to apply ourselves to everything you know back up physical copies download to different storage devices put a copy with family search Etc but with this we’re trying to make one Central place where everyone
Feels at home putting in themselves and their past and although it’s a bit I apologize it’s a bit of a marketing sort of statement but you know like try and make it a part of the family if the if the family knows it has an archive at
Its Center it doesn’t have to use it it just knows it’s there and of course the database which is the family tree and all that information knows who’s alive and it knows when next Generations are coming along and it Taps people on on the shoulder and says I think your
Child’s of email age now perhaps you ought to get them into the family archive okay and it makes sense to keep them involved in this platform in this space that we create online by having them get excited about sharing you know they I can see saying tell me about the ski trip upload
Them to this site you have remember you have membership and then they are subliminally taught oh yeah there’s your whole family tree over here if you want um it’s the combination of the of it’s sort of to use old parland it’s sort of like your family tree plus message boards but
They’re very Dynamic and interrelated and you can tag things and the reason I wanted to have Simon come talk to you now and for me to have shared that video which I agree those were good tiar um was that I’m going to start building my own family archive and
I think the word here is living it isn’t all about the dead it’s it’s a this is like an amoeba that’s going to grow and expand this way and that way and whatever a nice amoeba we only have nice amibas right um and make this work for my family to think of you
Know I only have what at 7 I don’t know how old I’m approaching my 75th year so you know I’ve got X number of years left I need to share in a way that’s Dynamic and exciting and interactive and that all my family my daughters not just Carrie who’s going to
Inherit some of these Hollinger boxes of archive special documents but my entire family can contribute here and this is the gift of we are and this is what Simon brought to me and thanks to Jen for letting me know about it oh golly art I said we were going to
Go over a little bit and I am so sorry that we had to go over thank you so much for um being here and visiting with me today Simon what I’m going to do is um create you know create these mini merts and on an ad hoc basis like I can
Guarantee I’m not doing one this afternoon I’m gonna be pretty pretty exhausted after all the excitement of Mondays with merch and I will post in my dear Myrtle Facebook group um that it’s going live live and those of you who are now subscribed and this I would like you
To subscribe definitely you will receive a notice when I go live and do this so hit that subscribe button and um that way you’ll know when I’m doing something else and so for the next little while I’ll do a mini mert of exactly what it was
Uh when I first logged in uh when I first logged in and I didn’t go any farther there was an orientation and I want to Simon has given me permission folks to uh to use the videos in my mini merchs um so that I can help show you
What I’m learning and we’ll pause and go try that a as we as I learn it and I’m sure from time to time he may May kind of hang in with us occasionally I don’t know all righty thank you Simon all right Hillary can you set me up we’ll um
Have Simon go to the backstage and I want to just mention a couple of little things to everybody okay I’m getting comments from the YouTube side from my panelists and everyone who are trying to share a a web address now a safety feature that’s built into YouTube is that unless I have
Added you as a member which is different than a subscriber and doesn’t cost you any money um you cannot share a a web address you’d have to uh send it to us some other way you can see we could you know be inundated by folks who aren’t
Playing the game too nicely we don’t want that to happen um okay let’s see what we can do so we’ve so what I’m going to do you’ll notice that true Lewis could send things that’s because she’s a moderator over there I could send things that included
A URL so all of my panelists will be given that status um because they’re actively engaged in in uh sharing what we’ve planned to talk about with you each day gosh we got through uh less than half of the things that we planned today but that’s a okay because it’s all about the
Conversation and what comes up all right um and thanks for helping me uh today Ed and Hillary and true and all of my panelists each one of you you become so precious to me I I just can’t tell you and so there’s nothing left to say but happy family tree climbing everybody
That’s a wrap
4 Comments
It was such fun to participate as a panelist. Congrats on show #1
So glad to see you all again!
Welcome back, Myrtle! We missed you!
Welcome back!! Really missed you bunches.