Legacy Genealogy Cruise: Days 1 & 2 (Morning)

Day 1 of our cruise was spent driving to New Jersey, checking in and having a quick safety drill.  We followed this by dinner and an early bed time after a long day.

Day 2 was a full day at sea.  For me, this meant a full day of genealogy classes.  The first class, given by Geoff Rasmussen of Legacy,  was on timelines.  A key item in any genealogists toolbox, timelines give hints of how to further research your ancestor in a way just looking at a family group or pedigree chart cannot.  Looking at a chronology report can show you possible problems, such as if an ancestor had a baby at 11 (unlikely) or which piece of conflicting information looks to fit in better than another.

Looking at this piece of the chronology report for my great-great grandfather, I can see that I am missing the birth place for two of his daughters and one son.  I can assume that they were born in Buffalo looking at when the other events in his life occurred.  This gives me a starting place for research into their birth records.

 

 Timelines can also be interesting when you insert historical data around your ancestors life.  What happened when great-great grandpa was 7?  Using Our Timelines, a site Geoff recommended, I found out that the telephone was invented, the Battle of Little Big Horn was fought and Colorado entered as the 31st state in the Union all during the American Centenial year of 1876, which also happened to be when my great-great grandfather Jacob Gress was 7.

The timelines lecture was followed by one titled "Sources Made Simple, Standard & Powerful", also by Geoff.  He discussed why sourcing is important and how to write a good citation.  The easiest way to create proper citations in Legacy is by using the SourceWriter.  SourceWriter offers templates using Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained.

What most excited me about this class was learning about the source clipboard.  In the past, I have gotten extremely frustrated entering the same detail information for a family of 12 in a census record.  Using the source clipboard, I can enter the information once and then easily apply it to every person in the record.  I am glad I learned about this prior to entering in all of the census records of my father's family, as they all had a lot of children, and this would have been very time consuming!

In the afternoon, we learned about "managing your genealogy data" and "building a research toolbox" with Thomas MacEntee, then had our first formal night.  I will post on these tomorrow!

 

 

Facebook Improving for Genealogists

Picture it: The year is 2031 and your child/grandchild/etc. is visiting Randomtown, USA on a road trip with some friends.  The decided to visit because you had often spoken of how much you liked visiting there back in the day.  Upon checking in to Randomtown on Facebook, they then find your Facebook page and see that 20 years ago you checked in there as well and see who you were there with, comments you left and photos you took.  They then go and take a photo in front of that same building you stood in front of decades earlier.

Facebook is not quite there yet, but on October 4th a major renovation to users profile pages will take us one step closer.  No longer will profiles be just long lists of status updates, comments from friends and random game applications; now they will document a person's life from the big to the minute, complete with linking to others involved and photos, in timeline format.  Basically, it is like a blog, but easier and more likely to be updated.

For genealogists, this will be amazing!  After all, what genealogist doesn't love a timeline?  Imagine being able read about the day to day life of your great-grandmother.  Most of us do not have that ability, as finding diaries from our ancestors is difficult, if not impossible.  I would love to have something like this just for me parents even, to see what they thought, felt and did when they first started dating or when I was born.  It also gives an easy way to see what current generations are doing.  Find out about a new cousin?  You can learn all about their life in an easy-to-view format.

Obviously, there is no guarantee that Facebook, or even the internet, will still be around in 100 years.  But if pieces of it are saved, such as with the Wayback Machine, it will be fantastic for our descendants.

Want more info?  Check out these posts by Katy Widrick and CNN.  Mashable also offers the process to get the Timeline turned on early.  I changed mine and already love it and can't wait to play around with it more today.   What do you think of the changes?