People missing ..

The spreadsheets we have to keep up to date  or we risk losing track of someone who needs a document.  GenDetective now contains reports that provide an alternative to all of those tracking spreadsheets, without the need to maintain the spreadsheets.

You will find these reports under “Sources” in the Create Reports tab, or in “Where am I missing sources” and under ”What information have I found?, Sources” in the Reports By Task tab.  These new reports, People with this event without ..:

People who have source

• .. this source
• .. this source (details)
• .. this source in state
• .. this source in state (details)
• .. this source in county

and, People with this event referencing ..:

• .. this source
• .. this source in state
• .. this source in county

These new reports usually have a number of options, which allow you to precisely identify the people who should have a reference to a very specific source.

Options

This report, will identify all of the people (in my tree) who died in Montgomery County, Pa between the years of 1893 – 1905 who do not have a county death certificate as a source for their death event.  What  would I do with this report?  Make a trip to the county archives and look for these relatives in the death books, or look up the county records online or in a local library.

What kinds of sources or documents can these reports be used to track?  Any source document available in a:

1. Country
2. State
3. County

That has a year range and is associated with a specific event.  What type of event?  Any kind of event, ranging from:

1. Birth certificates
2. Death certificates
3. Deeds
4. Marriage licenses
5. Military pension
6. Obituary
7. Probate records
8. Or any other source document you use

Good luck in your genealogy research and enjoy using these new GenDetective reports.

GenDetective has a series of reports that are dedicated to immigration based on these standard events:

• Emigration
• Immigration
• Naturalization

Immigration Summary report

These events are used to identify relatives missing pieces of their immigration story.  Paraphrasing my discussion with Russ on arrival versus immigration, Russ concluded “I will just edit and redo all of my arrival events, making them immigration events, and remember to do it any time I use Web Merge for immigration records”.  A very complicated solution, especially since GenDetective will resolve the issue without changing how you work!  Read Russ’s follow-up here on using the GenDetective approach to painlessly resolve the difference.

In GenDetective you use the Analyzer to say: any arrival event is really an immigration event.  Launch the Analyzer and do the following:

Set arrival = immigration!

1. Cancel out of the Wizard.
2. Pick your family tree to load.
3. Select the Event Definitions item (calendar) on the left.
4. Locate the arrival GEDCOM tag.
5. Change the drop down that says Event is unique, to Immigration.
6. Press the Save Changes button.
7. Exit the Analyzer.  Reload and run the Wizard as you normally would.

What else might you use this functionality for?  In the Pennsylvania court dockets I may find one or more of the following death related documents:

• Orphans Court
• Inventory & Appraisement
• Partition
• Executor’s Accounts
• Auditor Accounts
• Transfer Inheritance Taxes

Not everyone creates a will, so the absence of a document titled “Last Will and Testament of Joe” is, in my view, irrelevant.   The existence of any one of these court related death documents is proof of Joe’s death.  I track each of these different court dockets with custom events in my family tree.  By mapping these custom events to the standard will event, GenDetective can easily identify who is missing any legal death document.  Lets be honest, isn’t that what a proven will really is, proof that Joe died.  Minus an explicit will, any of the above documents, settling Joe’s estate, works for me.

Happy researching.

• Identify a step-grandmothers name (first & maiden)
• Discover when she died and where she is buried

Russ demonstrated various techniques for searching different online archives in an attempt to find the desired information.  He was able to successfully identify the name of the step-grandmother (Victoria), but was unable to locate her maiden name or when she died.  Russ presented his findings to Patricia (researcher with this brick wall) at a local society meeting, while (again) demonstrating different internet search techniques.  The local society researchers determined that Patricia should make a trip to Seton Hall University to examine the Catholic church records collection.

Looking at the compiled information presented a challenge in preparing for this research trip.  Most of the information in the family tree does not relate to Victoria, and very little is known about her.  To summarize:

• This was Victoria’s second marriage
• She was from Poland, unknown when she arrived in the US
• A couple of children from her 1st marriage were identified
• Victoria was a devout Catholic
• Only 1 census record has been identified, complicated by immigrant name issues
• Victoria died a few short years after marrying the step-grandfather

List of direct relatives for a person

Many of the GenDetective trip reports that we have discussed is this blog were sparse, or identified a lot information was missing.   Looking at the research goals, along with the proposed research trip, I concluded that sometimes the best report(s) for a research task are the simplest ones.

I selected the following four reports to help Patricia prepare for her one day research trip:

1. Location summary for state .. confirming Victoria’s family lived in the areas covered by the Seton Hall Catholic records collection
2. My relatives are .. providing a list of the known relatives (see sample)
3. Personal timeline .. for Victoria and the step-grandfather
4. Research progress worksheets .. Victoria’s direct relatives

Using these reports, the Patricia is planning a trip to Seton Hall University to spend the day poring through Catholic church records.  She will focus her research on the time period from Victoria’s marriage to the step-grandfather until he is identified as a widower, looking for marriage and death records.  She will also be looking for any mention of the 15 people listed in the My relatives are report, in a marriage, baptism or confirmation record.  Any one of these church records may hold that vital clue and reveal Victoria’s maiden name or when she died.

I wish Patricia a successful research trip and hope to hear she found Victoria.  Thank you Dear Myrtle and your stand-in hosts, Russ Worthington and Marian Pierre-Louis, for the opportunity to demonstrate GenDetective.

Archived webinars of Mondays With Myrt are available by clicking on the link (Mondays With Myrt) and an episode may take a few days to appear.

1. Direct (direct blood relationship)
2. Close (aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and 1st cousins)
3. Intermediate (2nd and 3rd cousins)
4. Distant (4th, 5th, 6th cousins, etc.)
5. All or unrelated

Did you know that you can change these definitions?  Your first question might be, “Why would I want to do that?”  Depending on your research goals, this may be the quickest way to isolate a group of relatives.  Due to a series of illnesses among the older generation, health research has become more than a passing curiosity.  I have begun sending for the death certificates for all the aunts and uncles.  Their health history adds to the overall picture of the illnesses and diseases that run in our family.

As a second example,  I have a few brick walls (who doesn’t) that I am trying to work around, and have begun looking at the pension records of uncles who served in the Civil War.  Digging into a young, unmarried uncle’s pension file, has shed light on a mother’s maiden name as well as a few other interesting tidbits.

How does this tie into changing relationship groupings?

Relationship definitions in GenDetective

To isolate the aunts and uncles, I changed the definition of the close relatives to only include: aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, and lumped the 1st cousins into the intermediate group.

To change the relationship definitions, run the GenDetective Analyzer, and after the Wizard finishes, stay in the Analyzer.  On the left hand side of the Analyzer, locate the “Relationships” entry, and select it.  Next select the 1st cousins, and press the right mouse button, which displays a menu.

1st Cousins are now in the intermediate group.

Select the intermediate group which will change the coloring of the 1st cousins from blue to red, moving them into the intermediate group.

Once I have the run reports, I reverse the steps listed here, returning the 1st cousins to the close group of relationships.  After a reanalysis of my tree and everything returns to “normal”.

Good luck with your family research ..

Why did Microsoft make such a radical change?  Not to alienate the consumer, honest.  I have to believe the radical changes to Windows 8 generated a lot of internal discussion.  In order to stay relevant in today’s world, Microsoft must change.  The choices are simple: change and adapt or go the way of the dinosaur.  Microsoft tries to make switching to Windows 8 as easy as possible, but switching to Windows 8 will require some flexibility on our part.

Windows 8 comes in two versions: Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT.  Be careful when shopping for Windows 8 devices, the two versions  of Windows 8 look the same, but they are not.

Windows 8 is:

• For your traditional desktop and laptop computers
• Great on a touch screen computer or hybrid laptop (more on hybrids later)
• A replacement for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7
• For businesses and home offices, traditional computer usage
• For applications installed from CD-ROM, DVD and downloaded via the internet
• Very compatible with your existing Windows programs (GenDetective and others).

Windows 8 RT is:

• For tablets and cell phones
• To compete against iOS (iPad & iPhone) and Android (phones & tablets)
• For mobile users, replacing the web surfing, email only computers
• Applications are only available for download from the Windows store (think iTunes and Android Market, ie. “apps”)
• Office RT is not the full version of Office.  It looks like “regular Office” but it is not!

The bad news, which I will not dwell on, as these items have been prominently covered by the news, are true:

• The Start button is gone.  However, the tiled view is very “natural” with a touch screen.
• Windows 8 does have an option for the “traditional Windows desktop”
• Favorite Windows options/programs have been hidden or appear to be gone.

Back to the hybrid laptop, which is my term to describe new laptops offering dual functaionlity.  What is a hybrid?  It is a lightweigh notebook combined with a tablet.  I just acquired a Windows 8 laptop with a touch screen that swivels, converting into an oversized (12 inch) tablet.  The hybrid combines the computing power of a traditional laptop with an easy to use touch screen tablet.  These laptops weigh a bit more than a traditional tablet (1 pound vs 3.3 pounds), but 3 pounds only feels heavy when holding the laptop in one hand and my Android tablet in the other.  I could not get a good picture, but you can see one here.

I have written more than I intended, but when buying a Windows 8 machine:

• Know if a laptop is Windows 8 (traditional) or Windows 8 RT (apps only)
• Verify touch screen or not (most laptops are not)
• Many stores are offering free training sessions for Windows 8, take the class.
• Verify your favorite applications will run on Windows 8.  Most will not run on RT!

Good luck and happy computing ..

For reporting, and to facilitate additional research, GenDetective attempts to associate a  specific war with each military service event.  Any service that falls outside of the years associated with a war, is identified as “Regular Military Service”.  This grouping will include any relatives who enlisted and served during peace time, or someone who is “Career Military”.

GenDetective uses a couple of different approaches to match military service to a specific war:

1. Standard military event(s) built into your genealogy software
2. Any custom military events

The majority of genealogists use the standard “Military Service” event defined in your software (RootsMagic, FTM, TMG, Legacy, etc).  A couple of programs take it one step further and have “Military Service Starts” and “Military Service Ends”.   Using the standard military service event, military service for John Smith (an American) might look like:

• 1862-1863, Company I, Pennsylvania Volunteers –> Civil War
• 31 Jan 1942 – 30 Jun 1944, Teac 5 US Army –> World War II
• Sgt First Class, 326 Field Hospital –> Regular Military Service

In the first two examples, GenDetective can identify the specific war service because of the dates or years that are included.  In the third example, without any dates or year(s) for guidance, GenDetective will classify this service as Regular Military Service.  One could say, use the dates for this person’s lifetime.  That could be done, but during this John’s lifetime (1888-1953), several possibilities exist: Spanish-American war, World War I and World War II.  It would be impossible for GenDetective to determine the “correct” answer without a timeframe for reference.

The second method of recording military service uses custom (user defined) military events.  Genealogists whose families have a long history of military service, or genealogists looking to prove DAR/SAR or other military service may define their own events, frequently, one per war: Revolution, War1812, Civil, WW1, WW2, Korean, etc.  Have you ever read an obituary that mentions a relative served with a specific unit in WW2, but does not provide dates of service?  Or, walked through a cemetery and found service information engraved on a headstone?  Custom military events provide a way to identify service in a war without having dates of service.  GenDetective takes advantage of these events, as long as the genealogist identifies them as military service, to associate service with a war, even without service dates!

Regardless of how you record military service for your family, GenDetective will help you sort your relative’s service by war.

What does this have to do with my research and GenDetective in particular?  In the roster was Charlie’s 6th great-grandfather, Johannes Rumbel (John Sr).  Looking at the list made me realize I had confined my military service age ranges to a very narrow age range.  The American Revolution, War of 1812 and Civil War all drew combatants that were outside the “ideal service ages”.  At the time of the Revolution Johannes was in his fifties!

To take a closer look at Revolutionary war service, I configured GenDetective to use a relaxed range of service ages for the American Revolution.  This can be done using the GenDetective Analyzer.

1. Launch the GenDetective Analyzer.  Press the cancel button in the Wizard when it appears and browse to your GEDCOM file.
2. Locate and select the cannonand the words Military Conflicts.
   

   Configuring Military Service in the GenDetective

3. At the top of the panel, where it says Edit:, pick the war to configure. I picked the American Revolutionary War.
4. Change the age range from the default to your desired ages. I used: 16 – 65.
5. Press the Save Changes button.
6. Exit the Analzyer with out saving your file (it will prompt you).
7. Run the GenDetective Analyzer as you normally would.

Your changes will be reflected the next time you run a potential military service report!  Looking at the illustration, you may notice the field My Event is configured to Revolutionary War.  I use custom events to track military service and setting  the My Event field provides a way to associate my custom events with a specific war.  You can do the same; just remember to save your changes.

Using the expanded service ages for the American Revolution has allowed me to identify a couple more grand-uncles who served.  I have not finished going through the list, so who knows whom else I may discover served in the Revolution!

*Full book title is: Two Hundredth Anniversary of Heidelberg Union Church  Reformed and Lutheran. Heidelberg Township, Lehigh Co., Pennsylvania. Sunday,  August 4, 1940 by Raymond Hollenbach.

2012 GRIP German Class

Over the summer I attended my very first genealogy institute.  I took the German Genealogy Research course presented by John Humphrey at GRIP in Pittsburgh.   I learned more than I ever imagined about researching my German ancestors.

During class I was asked a couple of seemingly easy questions: who were your immigrant ancestors?  How “German” are you?  I have to confess, Monday night I went back to my room, and determined the answers.  I am less than 25% German, my husband is closer to 50%.  Not the answers I was expecting.  After all, I was taking a German research course, well, because my husband and I are mostly German.  Right?

I returned home determined to get a better picture of my family.  As I’m sure you know, this is not the easiest of endeavors.  I tried paper and pencil, computer charting tools, and priced custom genealogy charts.  My criteria for my chart and each ancestor:

• Vital statistics
• Military service
• Country of origin
• Space for a picture
• Print for a reasonable price

Family Tree

I have been asking questions of aunts and uncles, as well as raiding their photo collections for years.  If I’m going to print a chart it needs to be something attractive that I can share with those poor people who have tolerated my endless stream of questions.

After discarding several possibilities, a friend and I arrived at a viable solution: Microsoft Visio.

To begin, I created a “standard” block for males and females, with space for vital statistics and a picture.  Each chart is 32×48, oriented vertically (my friend prefers horizontal), and when printed, is a standard size of 16×24.  From my male/female blocks I created a template with 8 generations, and started typing away.

A side benefit to creating my family tree in Visio, was it provided an opportunity to identify gaps and a few inconsistencies in my family tree.  There are two keys on each chart:

• A key to the flags which identify immigration country and military service
• A key to the abbreviations used throughout the chart

Now for the good part, the printing and costs.  Most print shops prefer a PDF file (Save as PDF in Visio).  I printed my chart at Staples, on glossy photo paper, for about $22.50 including state tax.  Many print shops also have a heavier bond paper (stationary weight) which can be used to print a “working” chart which you can write on.

If you would like a copy of my template tree, email techsupp@rumblesoftinc.com and request a version.  I am happy to share.   Now if I could find a way to automate the creation of the diagram ..

But, how do you work with a partially indexed census? Not all of the states have been indexed, so what families do you look for and where should you look for them?  The GenDetective solution is to research by state.  The “Missing this census in this state” report provides a way to target people who may have lived in an indexed state!  This report comes in two versions, and can be found in the GenDetective Reporter by going to:

1. Reports by Task tab
2. What information should I research online?
3. Census Records
4. Select either: For families or For people
5. Missing this census in this state

   

   1940 Census for state

The report will include any family (or person), who is expected to be in the census, and at any time, had an event placing them in the specified state.  Does this mean that you will find a specific family (or person) in the state you specified?  No, not necessarily.  Using the 1940 US Census for Indiana sample report, note the first cousin five times removed family of  Judson David Hayes and Martha A Steger.

Judson Hayes timeline

This family appears in at three different 1940 Census state reports.  Why? Based on what we know about Judson, he moved his family around quite a bit.  Looking at his personal timeline we see:

• Judson was born in Clark County, Oh.
• He lived in both Campaign and Cook County, Il.
• In the 1930 census he was in Gary, In.
• Judson died in 1941 in Campaign County, Il.

Until I locate this family in the 1940 Census, I will find them listed in reports for:  Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.  As of today, the indexes for both Indiana and Ohio have been released, but the index for Illinois has not.  If I find Judson and Martha in Indiana or Ohio, great!  If not, I will look for them later, when the Illinois index is released.

Using the “Missing this census in this state” report provides a way to research census records for specific states, while we wait (impatiently) for the remainder of the states to be indexed.  Good luck with your research!

PS: for those who want to know, I found Judson and Martha living in Gary, Indiana when the 1940 census was taken.

Location Summary report

Location Summary for Country

The reports in question are two GenDetective statistical reports, “Location Summary” and “Location Summary for Country”, and the question was posed at the NGS Conference in Cincinnati.   My answer was to pull out two pictures, and say, “This is what I do with the information”!  The two reports (above) show:

• The total number of events recorded for each state in each country (Location Summary).
• The total number of events for each county in each state in the desired country (Location Summary for Country).

When looking at these reports, you see numbers, right?   Lots of numbers.  What if you look those numbers in this format?  When I run this report, usually when planning

USA Location Summary

a research trip, I get out my gel pens and transcribe the information from the “Location Summary” report onto a country map, color coding by the number of events. The scale represented by each color is irrelevant, as long as you create a scale. For this map I used:

• Blue: <= 250 events
• Green: 251 – 500 events
• Red: 501 – 1000 events
• Purple: 1001+ events

Across the top of the map I record:

• The Date
• Total number of events for the country
• Number of generic events (USA + United States)

Looking at the map, you can conclude:  my family lived in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio, and to a lesser extent, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri.  When planning a research trip, the states with purple numbers are on my “candidate list”, followed by the secondary states (the ones in red).

I recently attended genealogy conferences in California and Indiana.  I opted to spend 1.5 days researching in Indiana over California-based on the data in these two reports.  Not being very familiar with Indiana, I plotted the events for each county with data from the “Location Summary by Country” report.   It was immediately apparent that I should focus my research efforts in the southwest corner of the state.

Map of Indiana

In this case, a picture is worth a thousand words, and when combined with the information in the GenDetective “Location Summary” and “Location Summary for Country” reports, it can make planning your genealogy research trip a whole lot easier!

Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) versions of the maps shown here: the United States and Indiana, as well as all 50 states, are available from nationalatlas.gov for free.

There are many indexes dedicated to locating the birth date and place of a person.  Birth indexes are not limited to just birth records, but include:  baptism or christening index, a newspaper birth announcement index, hospital birth notices, etc.

National Birth Indexes

Few birth indexes are available on a national basis.  Instead there are state, county and church specific indexes.  The county and church indexes make up the majority of birth indexes available to genealogists.  Many of these indexes are starting the online migration process. The vast majority are only available in book form at the local genealogical society where your ancestors were born, or by ordering a copy from the local society.

State Birth Index

To aid in working with birth indexes, GenDetective includes a series of birth index reports that reflect the geographic basis of most birth indexes, including year ranges.  These reports are:

• Birth index for this country
• Birth index for this state
• Birth index for this county

Since it is very difficult to create a birth index for a specific congregation, instead substitute the “Birth index for this county” report.

Looking at each of these GenDetective reports, you may notice that each report includes the word may in its title:  “People Who May Have Been Born in …”.  GenDetective will

Birth Index Report

include any person whom you know was born in the locale and include any people who lived in the locale, but whose birth location (and possibly date) you do not know!  This provides a comprehensive list to compare to any birth index.

Before planning a research trip to a local genealogical society or national archive, look at their card catalog to identify any birth related indexes in their collection.  Run a report that matches each of the indexes. Yes, you may have several reports, but think about how quickly you will be able to check each index. These will ultimately direct you to the records you really want to examine!

There are a large number of indexes, dedicated to locating the death date of a person.

National Death Index

Death indexes are not just limited to the actual death dates, but can be dedicated to obituaries, cemetery transcriptions or an abstract of wills. Offerings include a wide range of possibilities, usually based upon locale:

1. A national index: “Social Security Death Index”
2. A state index: “Ohio State Death Index”
3. A county index: ”Dust to Dust: Deaths from Indiana County Newspapers 1880-1893“

Many death indexes are not available online and most genealogical or historical societies have offerings that are available by visiting the society or purchasing a book.

County Death Index

These books are invaluable when researching our ancestors, especially when looking for records that are not available online.  These indexes are usually geographic and year specific.  For example, the SSDI primarily covers deaths from 1962 – 2011, with occasional deaths recorded prior to 1962.

To aid in working with death indexes GenDetective has a series of death index reports that reflect the geographic basis of most indexes and including a year range.  These reports parallel the locale offerings of death indexes:

• Death index for this country
• Death index for this state
• Death index for this county

Looking at each of these GenDetective reports, you will notice that each report includes the word may in its title:  “People Who May Have Died in …“.  GenDetective will include

State Death Index

any person who you know died in the locale and include any people who lived in the locale, but whose death location (and possibly date) you do not know!  This provides a comprehensive list to use when working with a death index.

Before planning a research trip to a local library, a historical society or a national archive, look at their card catalog to identify any death related indexes.  Run a report that matches each of the indexes.  Yes, you may have a several reports, but think how quickly you will be able to examine each index, which will in turn, direct you to the records you really want to see!

How are we doing?

My Research Progress Summary provides an immediate summary of your research progress for each relative.  Using the foot prints as a visual cue, you can quickly identify the relatives where research opportunities exist! But how, do you know what areas you should focus on, for each relative?

The Research Progress Worksheet is similar to the Personal Research Guide, with a section by section breakdown, of your research

Research progress worksheet

progress in the following areas:

• vital statistics
• death statistics
• religion
• census records
• military service
• occupation
• immigration

Missing information is identified as missing, calling attention to areas where additional research may be possible.  Events that have a generic location (a country or state) or an approximate or missing date are also research opportunities.   If you see an event with an * beside it (*Will), this is an event that you have excluded from your personal research goals.  Areas of research that are not applicable to a person are completely excluded from the worksheet.

Overall Research Progress

There are three additional personal research goal reports that you may want to consider using.  My Overall Research Progress report provides an overall picture of your progress as measured against your personal goals.

Research progress by person

The Research Progress by Person provides a visual breakdown, by research area, of your progress on each relative, providing a way to quickly decide if you want to further investigate someone.

Summary of research progress

The final research progress report, Research Progress by the Numbers, presents a condensed summary of the Research Progress by Person report, with one line per person.  Keep in mind when looking at the by the numbers report, that the numbers represent the number of foot prints that would displayed in any other research progress report.

We believe that personal research goals should be a reflection of your own personal goals.   These goals are unique to each genealogist and GenDetective is designed to provide you feedback and guidance based on your personal research objectives.

• Who needs a 1940 census record?
• What information do I need to find for Grandpa Joe?
• I want to research the relatives who lived in Philadelphia, who are those relatives and what do I need to find for each of them?
• I am researching with the California Death Index from years 1940-1997, who did die, or probably died, in California during those years?

What exactly are Personal Research Goals ?  Personal Research Goals provide a mechanism to share your goals, or the kinds of information you attempt to find, with GenDetective.  These goals are yours and yours alone, and will most likely differ from the goals of other researchers.   The research and documentation required for someone whose goal is to join DAR or the Mayflower Society is different from the researcher who does not have such lofty goals.

What types of goals can I configure in GenDetective?  Most of the personal research goals are composed of a two-part question:  Do I research a particular type of record?  And if so, starting from what year?

• Burial locations; from what year?

  

  Configure research goals

• Cemetery markers/plots; from what year?
• Will and/or probate records; from what year?
• Obituaries; from what year?
• Immigration information?
• Emigration information?
• Naturalization information?
• Occupations for men; from what year?
• Occupations for women;  from what year?
• Census records from which year forward?
• Religious events? And if so, how many events do I try to locate?
• Military service?

Personal research goals also include a few goals that you can not configure.  Since our objective in genealogy is to identify our relatives, there are several demographics that are universal to each person.  They include:

• A first name and last name
• Parents
• Birth date and location
• Death date and location (if applicable)

Using your personal goals, GenDetective can now recomend the relatives that need additional research!  Instead of saying I want to research a specific type of record or person today, the question becomes:  Which of my relatives fall short of my personal research goals?

My Personal Research Progess

To identify your progress toward your goals, GenDetective uses a set of foot prints to represent your progress for each relative.  The report, My Research Progress Summary, uses these foot prints to provide a visual cue as to the relatives who have the greatest research opportunities.  A quick glance at the sample reveals that George Franklin Goodman, Joseph Moorhouse, and Harry Irving Vernier are good candidates for additional research.

Now that you can see the power of the Personal Research Goals, in our next post we will explore the additional reports that you can use to identify your research opportunities.

Marker statistics by country

The Marker Statistics By Country takes a look at the states (regions) in a country, identifying the states where you have located markers, and the states where markers still need to be found.  The Marker Statistics By State helps you identify the counties (localities) in a state where you still need to identify markers.

Missing Markers by Relationship

Instead of a geographic examination of the plots that need to be located, the People Missing Markers report identifies the relatives by relationship.  Use this report to prioritize your cemetery marker research by looking for the people that have the closest relationship to you.  Identify the cemetery that these relatives are buried in, then look to see who else may be buried nearby.

Cemetery Markers Located

Equally useful is the People With Markers report. When planning our research, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information we still want, or need, to find.  Use this report to view the progress that you have made finding the burial sites of the relatives who are the most closely related to you.

Markers Missing in Cemetery

When researching a cemetery online, or walking the cemetery itself, use the Markers Missing in Cemetery report to identify the graves you are looking for.  Anyone who has a grave in this cemetery that you have already found will not be on the list!

Our final report may just be the strangest report in GenDetective!  Frequently, I enlist the help of my daughters when walking through a cemetery,

Marker Statistics by County

much to their displeasure.  In order to make the process of walking a cemetery go faster, my oldest daughter requested a list of people.  I, of course, handed her the list of people we were looking for in the cemetery.  She informed me that, as far as she was concerned, the list was useless.  What she wanted was a list of last names, nothing else, just a list of last names.  Her solution is to take a picture of every marker where the last name is on the list.  It is my job to delete the pictures that are not of the relatives or people I am looking for, or share them on FindAGrave.  By combining the list of known surnames for a cemetery, with the list of the people who died in the town/township, she has a list of surnames to look for in any given cemetery.  Much to the bemusement of my children, while this report has speeded the process of walking through a cemetery, it now means we have more time to visit other cemeteries

• Cemetery list for county (County statistics for located and missing)
• Markers missing for county cemeteries (To find in this county)

The Cemetery list for county identifies the number of grave sites located, and missing, at each cemetery in the target county.  In addition, it includes the towns in a county where relatives have died, but the cemetery they were buried has not been identified.  Using this report, you can quickly identify cemeteries to visit.

Sample cemetery statistics for county report

Examining the sample report, you will find the first entries are for the town of Armagh, in Indiana County, Pa:

1. Armagh 0 located & 9 not located
2. Armagh Cemetery 0 & 8

This information suggests that we may want to visit the town of Armagh on our research trip.   We have 8 graves to locate in the Armagh Cemetery, plus there are 9 additional relatives who died in town!

How do you know which relatives to look for in Armagh, or in the Armagh Cemetery?  Run the Markers Missing for County Cemeteries report!  This report identifies those people whose final resting spot has not been located. In the Markers Missing report, each cemetery is listed on its own page, as is each town.

Markers to locate

This sample Markers Missing report identifies the 8 people whose burial plots we need to locate, organized by surname, in the Armagh cemetery.  The second page (overlaid onto the first) shows a partial list of the 9 people who died in the town of Armagh.  If we visit the Armagh cemetery (online or in person), we should search for the people from the first page of the Markers Missing report and for the people listed in page 2 of the Markers Missing report.

By using these two complimentary GenDetective cemetery reports, you can quickly plan your cemetery research.  Whether you visit a cemetery in person, or via the internet, you are well prepared for your burial research.  In our next post we will examine a couple of the lesser known, but equally useful, cemetery reports.

Configure the Research Trip Guide

• Where do I want to go?
• Who do I want to research?
• What information do I need to find for each person?

For some research trips, we go to the area of the country where our relatives lived.  For others, we travel to a library that has materials related to an area where our ancestors lived.   Regardless of where you are traveling, and who you are researching, GenDetective has a series of trip reports that will help you quickly prepare for your trip.

List of relatives that lived in this area

The primary GenDetective research report is the “Research Trip Guide”, which has three main sections.  The first section identifies and prioritizes the list of your relatives that lived or worked in the area you plan to research.

The next section of the “Research Trip Guide” is the most important.  Each person identified will have an individual “Research Guide”, consisting of a condensed summary of  the information known  about this relative.   Each individual “Research Guide” is arranged in sections, with located information in normal print, and missing information in bold italics.  The “Research Guide” is also available as a stand-alone report, where you can create individual guides.  The sections in a “Research Guide” include:

Research Guide for a person

• Vital Statistics: birth, death, burial, will, and obituary
• Marriage: each spouse, marriage license, date and location
• Religion: identified religious affiliations
• Immigration: any emigration, immigration and naturalization information;  not applicable identifies relatives who never immigrated.
• Census Records: each identified and missing census record is listed by abbreviation and year (US 1940 = United States 1940 census)
• Military Service: each conflict for which this person was age eligible, along with identified service
• Occupation
• Parents
• Siblings & spouses: good information to have when looking at land deeds, legal documents, obituaries and cemetery markers
• Marriage(s): each spouse with marriage dates and any children born to each couple
• Locations: a quick reference of event locations
• Document area: Provides space to identify the relevant source documents you have or need to locate.  GenDetective is unable to identify the types of documents that are cited
  

  Document section of a Research Guide

  by a source, such as a birth or death certificate.   This space provides a way to identify the documents you already have, or if left blank, ones you want to locate on your trip.

  

  Pre-Trip Worksheet

The final section of the “Research Trip Guide” contains a pre-trip planning worksheet, where you can record the places you plan to visit, books or microfilm to view and notes of items you want to investigate while on your trip.

This concludes our tour of the “Research Trip Guide”.  In our next blog we will explore the cemetery marker report.

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In the past year Ancestry has made a great deal of exciting updates to their online databases and personal trees that have made my task of cleaning up my tree so much easier.   My favorite has been the “how are we related” tool on the personal pages of each person in my tree.

This morning when I opened my browser I noticed the add for the 2012 Family Tree Maker.  They are offering a new tool for their software that has me VERY excited!  This year they have added a TreeSync feature that enables you to update your tree no matter where you are.  With the press of a button I can now make sure that my desktop files are synced with any changes that might have occurred with my online tree.  It also allows my family to view the latest version of my research without having to check out my online tree.  I wish my sister was still with us, she would have been so excited at this latest development.  She always wanted to have a copy of my latest GEDCOM every time I saw her.

I think I am going to look a little more into this latest version and I might just need to purchase an update to my 2011 software.

New GenDetective Unindexed Census Report

Why create this new report?  When the 1940 Census is released on April 2nd it will be unindexed. This means that all of the tools that we genealogists depend on to get a “name hit” for a census will not be available.  Instead, we will have to examine each page in an Enumeration District (ED) to see if our family is listed on the page.  But how do we know in which ED we should look for our family?  An ED can be anywhere from a few pages to a few hundred pages long.  A free tool has been developed to help with this task, providing a way to translate a 1930 ED to the 1940 ED, or map a street address to its 1940 ED.  These free tools can be found at http://www.stevemorse.org/census/unified.html.

The new GenDetective Unindexed Census report is designed to extract the information you recorded about a family or person so that it can be used with these mapping tools.  The information included in the report is all events 20 years before AND after the census year.  For each event you will see:

1. The event itself
2. Any notes attached to the event
3. Your source citation for the event
4. Any address recorded for the event (This not supported by all genealogy software.)

You will find this report listed in the two different areas of the GenDetective Reporter.  In the Create Reports tab, under the Census Records category of reports.  You can also find this report in the Reports By Task tab, organized under these tasked based options:

• How can I organize my research trip?
• Microfilm research
• Census records

Using all of the information extracted for each person, or family, you can quickly identify what subset of pages you need to examine in the 1940 Census, or any other microfilmed or unindexed census to find your family!

Note: RumbleSoft is not affiliated with the website or the tools found at www.stevemorse.org.

Reports By Task View (click to enlarge)

1. How can I organize my research trip?
2. What information should I research online?
3. Which reports help with my research efforts?
4. Where am I missing sources?
5. How can I get more from my existing research?
6. What does my family look like?
7. How close am I to meeting my research goals?

Several of these tasks have additional questions.  For example, ”How can I organize my research trip?” has the following questions:

1. My trip
2. Microfilm research ( followed by Census records, Obituaries, newspapers and books)
3.  Cemetery markers

This view, Reports By Task is featured in the new GenDetective Video Series video, “Using the GenDetective Reporter”, available from our website at: http://www.rumblesoftinc.com/gen_detective_videos.cfm

This new interface should make it easier and quicker to identify reports to use for any research task.  Let us know what you think of this new GenDetective™ feature.

GenDetective Report Categories

By viewing reports in a specific category, you can target the reports to the type of research you wish to perform.  The list of report categories is found at the top of the GenDetective Reporter, just below the toolbar.

The report categories include:

• Trip Reports: These reports help you plan your research trips.  They focus on information that is missing, and very frequently can be found, when taking a genealogy research trip.  Types of data include: wills, birth, death and marriage certificates, obituaries, deeds, military service, cemetery markers and other local sources of information.
• Census Record: Reports for families and individuals related to missing or located census records
• People: The people reports provide ways to find additional research opportunities.  Common examples include: a complete timeline for a person, a research worksheet identifying the facts that need to be located for a person, people without a death date, people without a marriage, people who are older than born afterand who lived in (identifying people born after 1860, who are 60 years or older and lived in California, enabling quick use the California Death Index to locate death dates).
• Family: The family reports provide information on each family, summarizing places the family lived, families that are missing events, such as marriage date, and provide detailed information on the family, generally aiding your research.
• Event: These reports identify people in your family tree, where you have not located a specific event, such as occupation, a will, or religion, or conversely, identify the people, where you have located an event.  Some reports provide a way to “pull out” or extract information that has been recorded.  A common example of this type of report is to examine at the cause of death or illnesses that run in a certain family line.
• Military Service: The military service reports provide a way to identify people who were age eligible to have served in a war (or register in a mandatory draft), and identify people who served in a specific war.
• My Reports: My Reports is new in version 1.3 and provide a way for you to identify, and quickly locate, your favorite reports.  Highlight a report, right-click, and select add to add a report to this list.  When you select this category of reports, it will include your favorite reports, making them easier to return to!
• Marker and Obituary: The cemetery marker and obituary reports detail for whom cemetery markers or obituaries have, or have not, been located.
• Location: These reports help with standardizing your place names, detail the events that happened at locations, identify the most common locations in your family tree (helpful when planning research trips), and identify events without locations.
• Media: The media (multimedia) reports identify events with, or without, supporting media files, files unreferenced on disk, as well as files that are referenced by your tree but are missing from disk.
• Source:  Reports that help identify people, families and events that are missing a source, identify references to sources of dubious value, as well as compile complete references to each source.
• Statistical: The statistical reports take a slightly different look at your family tree with reports that measure the demographics of your family, as well as progress towards locating data.
• Located Data: These reports help you identify data you have already found.
• Missing Data: These reports identify data that is missing from your family tree.
• All Reports: An alphabetical listing of all of the GenDetective reports.
• Configuration: Reports that provide a definition of census, military conflicts and countries.  These reports are of interest if you are adding census or census substitutes, military conflicts or changing country definitions and abbreviations.

Over the next several blog entries we will highlight the most popular reports in each category, enabling you to make the most of GenDetective in your research.

Why are these generic locations a research opportunity?  While it is good to know that someone was born in Germany and died in the United States, those locations are vague.  Planning a research trip to Germany to find someone’s birthplace when Germany is all you have to work with, is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

What can you do?  GenDetective™ provides the “Events recorded at a generic location” report which identifies events, by person, that have a generic location.  Examine these events to determine if you can narrow the event location further.

Events recorded at generic location Pennsylvania

For example, instead of someone dying in the United States, identifying the state, such as Colorado, provides you a much smaller region to research.  Narrowing it even further, to say Pitkin county, increases your odds of finding a local record, or obituary, that identifies where your relative died and might be buried.

Where should you begin?  Examine the events that you have located for the person, go back and pull up each record, source or documentation and see if there are any potential clues.   Does any event provide a clue that might point you in a new direction?  What about the person’s spouse?  Do any of their events (or articles, notes, letters, will, etc) point you in a specific direction?  Look for any missing events; finding additional events may provide you with additional clues.

GenDetective™ enables you to identify new research opportunities in your existing data by identifying events that occurred at generic locations, providing you with additional avenues to research.

Unknown states/regions imported from my GEDCOM file!

Unknown states imported from GEDCOM identifies each of the states, regions or territories that did not have a match in a country.  For example, when recording a location in West Virginia, I occassionally mistype the state abbreviation as “WVa” instead of “WV”.  If I have the location:  Hometown, Some county, WVa, USA, I will find the unknown region WVa in the country listing for the United States.   However, if I type the location as: Hometown, Some county, WVa, I will find the unknown region WVa in the country, Unknown!

Locations missing GPS coordinates

Locations missing longitude or latitude identifies each location that does not have GPS coordinates assocatied with it.  Some of the newer genealogy programs provide you with a way to record the actual GPS coordinates of a town or cemetery.  Having recorded the coordinates in a single location ensures that you can always return to a location, especially some of the overgrown or hard to find cemeteries.  Providing coordinates for the places in your genealogy data (some programs can automatically do this for you), enables you to quickly identify places that have non-standard names, or no longer exist.  They are the locations without GPS coordinates!

Locations

Locations is an alphabetical listing of each location in your family tree with the number of events that occurred there.  This report puts, in a single place, every location in your data, so that you can eyeball it for compliance.

Events occurring at locations in state

Events at each location in a state provides a breakdown of each location, in a state, by county.  The report provides a way to see locations arranged side by side.  Looking at the sample (click to see it larger), you will notice that one location is Elderton, and it is also recorded as Elderton, Plumcreek Twp with two (2) events.  The location Elderton, Plumcreek Twp, should be combined with the town of Elderton, to make a single location for a total of 433 events.

Location summary for state

Location summary for state is similar to the Events at each location in a state, except that it stops the breakdown of events at a town/township level, instead of displaying the names at the most granular level as Events at each location.

Using several of the location reports in GenDetective™, you can quickly identify the locations in your data that are in a non-standardized format.

Standardized place names, generally start, from the most detailed location to the most generic, and follow the format: City/Town/Township, County, State/Province, Country. A couple of examples may make things clearer:

Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States
Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, USA
Oakland Memorial Cemetery, White, Indiana, Pennsylvania, United States

Sometimes genealogists include the word County or Township to clarify place names, especially when there may be confusion, such as Indiana, Indiana County, Pennsylvania. What is most important, especially when using GenDetective™, is that you be consistent.

Take the following 4 places:
Doylestown, Bucks, Pa
Doylestown, Bucks Co, Pa
Doylestown, Bucks Co., Pa
Doylestown, Bucks County, Pa

All four of these locations will be treated by GenDetective™ as different locations because their names are different! Did you notice that the country was left out of the place names? GenDetective™ knows that Pa is the standard abbreviation for Pennsylvania, and that Pennsylvania is in the United States. GenDetective™ will treat the following three places as the same location:

Allentown, Lehigh, Pa
Allentown, Lehigh, Pennsylvania
Allentown, Lehigh, Pennsylvania, United States

How do you go about standardizing your place names? Many genealogy programs like RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, Legacy, TMG, etc., offer the functionality to manage your place names, usually under Places, or Manage Places, or List of Places. See the documentation for your genealogy program for additional information.

By successfully using consistent place names you can take full advantage of the analytical power of GenDetective™.

1. How GenDetective™ works
2. How to map your custom events
3. Discuss the trip reports and how they can help you plan your research trips
4. Look at reports targeting online research or finding questionable data
5. How to extend GenDetective’s functionality

There are many ways to conduct genealogy research, and as such, there is no single right or wrong way.  Our goal is to encourage discussions of concepts and ways to use GenDetective™ to aid in your personal genealogy research goals.  Any discussion will naturally include the pros and cons of the product or a report.  Constructive criticism is welcomed as part of the dialog, but criticism of individuals or their research methods negatively impacts an open discussion.  If a report we discuss doesn’t work with the way you research, tell us how you research and source so that we can improve the product to fit a wider range of research methods.

We plan to start slow with approximately two articles a month depending on the topic and its complexity.

Topics we plan to cover (in no particular order)

1. Standardizing place names
2. Mapping custom census events
3. Mapping custom military events
4. How to add your own military conflict
5. How to add a census substitute
6. What are generic locations?
7. What are those numbers beside my people’s dates?
8. The value of family lines
9. What is the number of children event?
10. Are you ready for the 1940 US Census release?
11. State censuses
12. Grave sites and grave markers
13. How often do should I run the Analyzer?
14. How do I configure relationships (close, intermediate & distant)?

What topics would you like us to cover?  Respond to this post and suggest other topics you would like to hear about!

This is a monitored blog and comes with the usual disclaimers and policies.