Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Salt Lake Wilford Stake Family History Schedule from July to October 2014

Stake Family History Meetings:

19 July 2014 10:00 A.M. (Saturday) Workshop.  Open to everyone.  The workshop will have family history consultants available to assist you with your problems or questions. You can bring your laptop, or can use those available at the meeting.  

12 August 2014 7:00 PM (Tuesday) Class on Family Search Indexing by Pam McCullough.

Upcoming dates:

September 2014: Class on Preserving and Sharing Photos & Documents

October 2014: Class on the website Find My Past by Julie Du Mond.





Sunday, June 15, 2014

Adding a Person in FamilySearch

Lesson: Workshop on how to add a person in FamilySearch

What beautiful day today. Hope you allergies are doing better than mine. :).

Today Julie taught us how to enter in a person, how to search for resources, how to add resources to the individuals, and how to switch on the watch button.

Adding a Person.
  1. How to add a person in Family Search. You can enter a person from many avenues in Family search. But, for the purpose of the basic adding a person, we shall assume it is a brand new person. First you must log into Family search.
  2. Next go to the person you want Family Tree. In the class example, Julie when to Pharis Aaron Marble, one of our relatives who was already in. She wanted to add some children. She opened the file up and found that Pharis and his wife, Bertha May Starrett had only one child listed. Julie knew that more children.
  3. As you clicked on Pharis Aaron Marble, you see that he has Chester Marble already entered in as a child. Down below the Pharis's name, you see “+Add Child”. Click on “+Add Child”.
  4. Next comes up a page for adding a person, or Finding for a person. (Note at the top is the statement “Go to: Previous Page”. If you need to go back to the family group sheet on the previous page, click on that.) The default tab will always be Finding a Person. Now Enter in the information on the person you want to add under Finding a Person. We will enter in Edmund Pierce Marble born 19 Aug 1897. When we are through, press Find. (Remember, at this stage you will only be searching for a person that is already in Family Tree.) Our results came back that there was no such person.
  5. No you could go back to the previous page, add a child under Pharis at the bottom of the family group sheet. You come back to the original Add or Find a Person, click on Add a Person tab, and input the information. However, the church strongly encourages that you go and find this person on one source, such as a census before the enter him or her into the family. Now we shall proceed to the next section on Searching for a person.

Searching for a Resouces on a Person on Family Search

  1. Continuing on from the above, we couldn't find any Edmund Marble, son of Pharis Aaron Marble and Bertha May Starrett in Family Tree. So now we go out and search for him. First we back to the Family Group page of Pharis Aaron Marble and Bertha May Starrett. Over on the right column toward to the top of the page is a section on Reseach Help. Inside the section you will see a magnifying glass with the words Search Records. Click on the Search Records. In most browsers will start a new tab to show the search results.
  2. At the top of the Search Results you will see two tabs: Records and Collections. Records show you the results of all the records that came up in all of the collections. Collections show you from what collections the records came from: these would include census records, death records, etc. The default screen will be in the Records tab. As you look down the records tabs you find:


From here you see there are many records in which the father has possibly been found. We want to choose Unites States Census 1910, since that his the closest to Edmund's birth date of 1897. Click on Pharis Marble over the 1910 Census. Below is the results of you selection.
Now you are asking yourself, but where is Edmund. Well, you check your records and find that his name is Edmund Pierce Marble. With a little amt of math, you realize that Pierce (Edmund) is in the right age range. (1910 – 12 years = 1898 years) He was born in 1897. When using Census records you have to accept that the age will be about + or – 1 year off sometimes.
Now you have a positive source. Up in the right hand corner where it says Sources: you would normally see “Attach to Family Tree”. (Since this letter was done after the attachment was done, it states to View in Family tree. This means that this resource is already been connected to Pharis Aaron Marble. But the dialogue box with an unattached source looks like the example below.) Once you connect to Attach to Family Tree, then this source is placed in Pharis's family group.

They have a whole new dialogue in the attach program with that will walk you through everyone that is in the file. For example, all of the children listed on the census can have that US Census source attached to their person as a source.
Using the Watch Button.

On Family Search under the Persons View:

So you can monitor if anyone is adding/changing the file you just got through updating/adding, you can click the Watch word. When you do this, the star become filled in, and the word changes to Unwatch. This is now activated, so if anyone does alter this file, you will be sent a email on who had done it. You then can communicate with them of why they did this, and what sources they had to make the change. This is why the Church wants us to document all persons with sources. The one with the sources is the one that the Church will give preference. If there are any problems, please contact your Family History Consultant who can assist you with getting any issues resolved.

To remove the Watch status, just click on the Unwatch, and it stops any notifications.


Tip of the Week:
In my job, I deal a lot with both LDS and non LDS folks. I have found that many people are wanting assistance with family history to preserve their heritage. This a great time to make new friends, and maybe have the opportunity to preach the Gospel. Remember:
D&C 84:76,77
  1. But, verily I say unto all those to whom the Kingdom has been given-from you it must be preached unto them...
  2. And again I say unto you, my friends, for from henceforth I shall call you friends, it is expedient that that I give you this command that ye become even as my friends in days when I was with them, traveling to preach the gospel in my power;

Quote of the day: Those that seek to do the work will find that the work will be led to them.

Next week will be a workshop. Please bring one ancestor's information to put into Family search, if you have one, as well as your laptops.

If you are having any problems, or questions, please call or email us. We are happy to set up a time and place to meet with you in your homes to help you with any problems.

Also, please let me know what you think of the newsletter, and any thing you would like to see added.

Thanks:

Family History Consultants
Joel H. Du Mond III

Gathering and Recording Information

Grandview 1st Ward
Family History Letter

Gathering and Recording Information From Family

First of all I would like to thank Janet Gundry for her wonderful presentation on how to conduct a interview. Some of the high points were:
  1. Recording (both audio and video). Some of these recording may be the last thing you will hear from your relative. It will be very valuable to you as time goes on. Take notes, record their personal stories.
  2. She related stories were she was feeling impressed she needed to go and interview this person. Don't neglect these feelings, because you may find that the opportunity may be gone because that person has passed away. As you prepare to follow this impression, pray for guidance on how you should approach this person or persons.
  3. You may find that as you are impressed to go and research something about, for example your father, you may not find anything you can use, but may find something on the father's brother.
  4. Stories are so valuable. Record the stories for your posterity. Janet gave a great story about Donkey Ball. I presume it is a lot like base ball except when you are able to hit the ball, you then have to go ride the donkey standing on the side of the field around the bases-which is not the easiest thing. The interviewed relative said it was a lot of fun.
  5. Priceless Pictures. Once you can obtain them, copy them and get them bound together with stories. One heart felt story was when her brother was killed at 15 when he was involve in a motorcycle accident, the man that hit him stood by his coffin and was weeping. The older brother told a story of seeing his mother go over to the man, put her arm around his waist, and comforting him, saying that”It was not your fault, it was an accident.” Then Janet stated that she felt that the mother realized just as much as this tragedy would haunt the family for a long time, it would also haunt the man that hit her son. You can use businesses like Mixbook (where you can have multiple people on at the same time working on the book in different locations) to publish you pictures and thoughts. Other companies include Costco, WalMart, and Shutterfly.
  6. Finally, she stated she prepared some questions to go out with, and then let them just talk.

Julie Du Mond presented the lesson via Power Point. Some of the lesson's highlights were:
Interviewing Family Members. Julie showed two great videos about how to interview a family member. Some of us found that we had performed interviews unprepared when going through the interviews. Some helpful guidelines include:
  1. Prayerfully ask for guidance in who and what you should ask the family member about. You can use the sample questions in the back of your book, see Appendix B.
  2. Contact the family member and introduce yourself, explaining that you are related to them and are wondering if you could set up a time to come and speak about your common ancestors.
  3. Prepare for the interview. Write down questions you want to ask. Avoid using yes or no questions. (See Appendix B for some examples.)
  4. As you gather the information, complete the family family group worksheets and pedigree charts. Let them know that you will be happy to share this information with them, having them help you to make sure it is correct.
  5. Come prepared with pencils, papers, questions for the interview, tape recorders, video recorders, cameras and documents you want to review. Julie made a good point to try and place the audio recorder out of sight, or if video recording, place the camera out of sight. Then sit with the family member so you are their focus, not the recorder. Some people are shy about being recorded.
  6. If you are interviewing an oral historian or village elder, learn about the proper ways to work with him or her.
  7. Don't be in a hurry. Give people ample time to respond.
  8. Ask about family records, (such as a family Bible), certificates, or photographs. Ask permission to make copies, Take photographs or video footage of the items if you can.
  9. If the person's closest relative if any of your deceased ancestors who were born in the last 95 years, ask the person's permission for the ancestors to receive temple ordinances
Below are the slide from the presentation:



















Finally, use the information to update your records. Make out transcripts or reports of your interview, being sure to record the date and place of the interview. Ask the person you interviewed to read the report and make corrections. Ask for permission to copy the report and distribute it to the family members. Give a copy to the person you interviewed.

Tip of the Week:
Remember when doing research, keep notes on the research you have done on that person. Professional genealogist state that if you don't, you most certainly will end up doing the same research again and again, wasting you efforts.

Quote of the day: Remember, today is history tomorrow!

Next week will be a workshop, so bring your tablets or laptops if you have them.

If you are having any problems, or questions, please call or email us. We are happy to set up a time and meet with you in your homes to help you with any problems.


Thanks:

Family History Consultants
Joel H. Du Mond III

Understanding Sources

Family History Letter

I want to thank everyone who attended the class.  It was a pleasure to work with all of you again.

OK, in today's class we covered, Understanding Sources.

Following is the presentation that was shown.

___________________________________________________________________

The last question is important to keep in mind when looking at prepared genealogies or family histories.  Remember the story I told you about the Coat oF Arms fad that went through Provo.  Those were come to find out not accurate.
We talked about Primary Documents which can be original documents or will lead us to the original documents.
This is my draft registration...or my grandfather's draft registration.  Note that my grandfather could not sign for him because he was ill, so his father signed for him instead.
Declarations of intensions which were done when a person imigrated to the US. They may have signs a Declaraton of Intention, declaring that they will no longer follow the ruler, king, or president of the country they came from.  During their life times this was good for 7 years, in which time they should become a US Citizen.
Remembrance Cards are commonly given at the furneral of someone, especially in the East.  Some are very beautifully decorated, and some are even guilded.  Below (not shown in the class) are some with art...

Again, these are Primary Sources, as well as Obituaries...
Secondary Records.  Remember that when I started with doing Mr. Libertini's family history, all of his sources were secondary, but they lead us to the Primary Sources.
Remember one of the reason we want to find original sources are so our work counts!

So, are the Dead Sea Scrolls Primary or Secondary Sources............
Secondary-they were written long after the occurance.
Remember that all genealogies and family histories are considered secondary sources which can help lead you back to the original or primary sources.
Remember, we don't worry about the format of how you list a source.  Then primary reason for you listing or citing, or typing, or writing your source is so that you can go back and find the source again if you or others need to.
Here is the example for the class...

See how I started off with the date that I found the source, then stated who I found, then what I found out about this individual, and finally the location of the file in Iowa, but also in FamilySearch .  That way if I need to find the original document, I can find it.


Next we reviewed the forms we were using to work with sources.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

At the end of the class, we took and found sources for 

John Edward Dove from Sister Gundry's line...


In this example we found both of this man's wives, and know from Sister Gundry that he had 11 children and two wives.  What I would like to do is use this example in the class next Sunday to reinforce what we have learned so far... from putting someone with their family in FamilyTree, and starting to look at what merging is.

Shirley Hewitt also brought with her sources that are not in FamilyHistory from Canada, and was curioius how we would put them in.  We will also look at those in the next class period.

Again, please bring the names of the people you are working on so we can help you get them into Family Search.

Thanks again.  May the Lord bless all of you for your efforts and dedication to his work.

Brother Joel H. and Sister Julie S. Du Mond

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Addendum to Understanding Sources, here is the page from FamilySearch that shows how Create a Source using their format.  Each field gives you an example to follow.  Notice there is no strict format.  Just put in the information so you, and anyone who is looking at your research, will be able to locate your sources.

Understanding United States Census Records

Thanks Again to all of those that attended our class today.  We really enjoy having you.

Today's subject was about Vital Records.  We will be spending several class periods going over Vital Records and it's many facets.  Today we are going to talk about Census Records.

During our class we talked about:


US census records are easiest for us to use to locate our ancestors that lived in the US.  I would recommend that you start with these to locate your grandparents or great grandparents.  You may be surprised on what you can find!


Remember, in the US starting with 1790 to 1940. you should have some information to look for about every 10 years.


Ancestry is Ancestry.com.  All of you in the class should be getting an email on how to log on for your free subscription to Ancestry.com in the next few weeks.  In the mean time, you are always welcome to call Julie and I and we can assist you with this time period in Ancestry.com.



Remember how I found the immigration date on one family that came from Sicilia, Italy, and was able to locate them on the Immigration records from Ellis Island.


Remember how I was able to find that the daughter of a family had married and had moved right next door to her widowed mother and her to younger brothers.
Note that back in the early part of our country, people had a tendency to stay in one location, die there, and be buried there.  You will find whole family groups living by each other and being buried by each other.


In this picture all of these folks were adopted out.  Only recently did they discover the they had brother and sisters which they were able to locate with the help of the census records.


Remember, some records keepers would only put the first initial of the person's first name.  Try searching with just the initial.  Remember, sometimes more information is not always the best when doing a search.



Remember that in some scripts a G, J, T, S, F can all look the same or very similar.  Try and locate the original document and see if you can find other names of written words that have the same letter you are looking for to see if it was written the same way on that document.


You guessed it, this is a MD's hand written prescription for several medications which include IV med!  Needless to say this was sent back by the pharmacy as unreadable. In this example see how many letters and numbers you can identify.  Now if this was a document with names, etc you were looking for, then on your personal family history document writewhat you can see.  For example on the above document it begins with "Give Azitven".  When you come to the part you can't read then put "?".  So it would be "Give Azitven?n?? ?? mg IV.  Now you know why nurses and pharmacist have headaches!



We don't how this boy died, but what we do know is that a conductor was very fond of this boy, and created a tradition to make an unscheduled stop every Memorial Day to place flowers on the boys grave so that we all will remember him.  This is one of the reasons we do family history-we remember...so we continue the legacy!

___________________________________________________________________________

Now the two examples we look up for the class:

From Brother Baker we got the name of George Hardy who was possible born in England, and lived in Utah.

First we logged in and went to the Search Tab at the top of the page.  We are interested in the Records selection.


Next Click on Records and fill in the spaces with what you know.  (Note that Utah has very good records.)


Go down to the bottom of the screen and press Search.


Your results are.....


See the two tabs at the top of the results, Records shows you all the results in all of the collections, but if you click on the Collections tab, you get....


Lets try the 1880 Census,which is in the date range  we are looking for.  Click on the United States Census, 1880 line.

Your results is:


After perusing the list, Brother Baker stated that he thought it was the George Hardy who resided in Antelope, Millard, Utah.  We click on the third George Hardy in the list and get...

 We scroll down to get the rest of the page and get a wealth of information.



And keep scrolling...


Now from this you find the entire family with their ages.  By subtracting their age from 1880 you can get a birth year of the person within a year.  

Now go back to the top of the page.


See the Copy Print words at the top of the page.  You can copy this information (text only) to your personal family history software, or you can print it out.

Now you see the Sources box below that.  You can attach this source directly to this person if he was already in your pedigree, or you a place this source in My Source Box.  A source box is where you place documents you want to use later.  Since I don't have this person in my pedigree, I am going to place this in My Source Box.  I clicked on Add to My Source Box..  No if I wanted to see what I have in My Source Box, click on Go to My Source Box.  


You see the George Hardy file is second in the list.  To remove the record,  click on to box by the name of the record you want to remove, then go to the top and click on the Move tab.


Click over the Remove from source box.  It will delete the item you checked.

We also took a name from Sister Cory for a Per Bengtsson, who lived in Sweden.  Using the same search procedure we did for George Hardy, we were able to find his results of...


We have found the birth date, 08 Apr 1705, and the town/country he was born in.  We also was able to find the Per's father's name.  Notice that the last name is not carried on, but the son takes the father's first name adds son to the end, and that become the son new last name.

Well, I really enjoyed working with all of you for this lesson.  We are going to continue with vital records for the next few weeks.  Your home work assigment is to bring some of the names you are working on so we can see can use them to find sources in census records, etc.

See you next Sunday.

Joel H. Du Mond III