TUESDAY’S TIP ~ Have you documented everything? Take another look at those closest to you

A screen shot from my Legacy 8 database - I have redacted the month and day of my parent's births just because of identity theft and my Mom's death being fairly recent

It will be one year, next month, since my mother died.  Of course, I think about her all the time.  But, this morning I looked at her entry in my Legacy 8 database and realized it was incomplete.
Not only did I not have her death certificate attached or cited, I didn’t even have it scanned in my digital folders.

Take a look at your own parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins and even spouses. 

• Have you documented them the same way you would a great grandparent or granduncle etc? 
• Have you cited all your sources and attached any images that pertain? 
• Or, did you just enter the information because you knew it?

I believe it takes all of us a while to be able to go to someone close to us and document the cold, hard facts.  At least that was true for me.  I had entered her date & place of death and burial and even the cause of death.  But, not the source citation that is necessary to complete the information.

This morning I completed that task.  My Mom was 91 when she died.  She didn’t have a good quality of life and had many ongoing health issues and daily pain.  She had been in assisted living for the last 4 1/2 years of her life.  We had so many conversations over the years.  I interviewed her about her life. I asked a multitude of questions (she would say too many).  I had her help me identify photos and peoples names.  I shared my research with her, even though sometimes she wasn’t that interested.
 
Funny thing about the genealogy research.  My grandmother, Florence Bowden Milne (my Mom’s mother), was a genealogist for most of her life.  She left me copious quantities of information about our family.  Of course I still have a LOT of unanswered questions.  But, her information gave me a heck of a start.
 
I think the genealogy bug skipped a generation though, because my Mom had absolutely no interest.  Sure, she would listen to me and answer my questions, when she was able to remember, but it wasn’t her favorite thing.  Her statement to me a couple of times was “why in the world do you care about all these dead people?”

Genealogy research is either something you “get” or you don’t “get.”  For those of us who do “get” it, we love finding those stories and chasing down those leads.

I am confident that I have documented and cited all the various entries for my Mom, my Dad, my sisters and my grandparents.  Have you?

Let me know if you’ve discovered the same kind of thing in your tree.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

How To Save A Book from Archive.org to Evernote or Your Computer

A Database or a Website?  What's the Difference?

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2017   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

TUESDAY’S TIP–Using the Master Location List in Legacy 8

I use this feature in Legacy 8 a lot.  Today I was specifically looking for a list of all the people in my database who are buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan.

There are differing viewpoints on how we should list our locations in the database.  I’m not going to talk about those options here today.  I will show you how I do my own locations and what works for me.

When I locate a burial place for an ancestor, I enter the information in that portion of the Individual’s Information screen.  Additionally, I will enter the address of the cemetery, if I have it, in the address field for “burial.”  This field is located when you click on the + sign to the right of the burial field.



I like to see the name of the cemetery in the actual burial field and not have to click on the address to find it, or look in Events, if it’s entered there.  Again, not everyone does it this way, but it works for me.
 
Therefore, when I want to locate everyone who is buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan, this is how I would go about it.

Locate the Master Location list in your Legacy program.  There are a couple of ways to do this. 

• You can go to the “View” tab and use the drop down list under “Master Lists”

• I have the Master Lists saved to My Toolbar, so I always have quick access to it.

Once you’ve opened your list you will be able to search for the location you are trying to find.  In this case I just typed in Elmwood.
 


If you want to see a map, in addition to the list you can select “show map” which is located on the right side of the list of names.  Here is the view with the map.  Note that you have a red balloon at the location and also the longitude and latitude.



Something else to note when you bring up the various lists are your List Options – located under the names and your Options – located on the right hand side of the names.

LIST OPTIONS
 
 OPTIONS


These location lists can be used whether your looking to write a blog post, like I am, or preparing to visit a particular location.  When I traveled back to Detroit I created lists of every person buried in each cemetery in Michigan.  Whether I save those lists digitally or print them out, they are of great value and save you a lot of time and effort in your genealogy trip.

Have you used these lists?

If so, how have they helped you?

To see ALL of my Legacy 8 tips please click on the tab of the same name at the top of my blog or click HERE

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2017   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

IT’S INAUGURATION DAY ~ How many Presidents were in office during my father’s lifetime? Let's use Legacy 8 to find out

It’s an amazing day in history. Every four years our country peacefully transfers power from one person to another (unless a President is chosen for a second term).  This process has been taking place since the election of George Washington, our first President.  It makes me very proud to be an American.

Today I asked myself – how many Presidents were elected/in office during the lifetime of my parents?  How about my grandparents?  Or me?  I’ll use my Dad as an example.

To find out, I used my Legacy 8 database.

Select the Chronology tab, then click on “Options” in the lower right corner.  You can customize your Chronology in many ways.  I will concentrate on the “Include” tab and choose “Select” under Other Options, as shown here.

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)


Note, that you can even change the color of this display, by clicking on the “color” box above my red arrow.  This determines what color the item will show up as, in your timeline.  You can change all the colors in your timeline.

When you hit the “select” icon another screen comes up.  Note all your options on this screen.



Now let’s click on the “Add a Timeline File.”

There are 51 different historical items for you to choose from on this list.  When you highlight one of them, the description field at the bottom tells you about that event.



Here is a screen shot of my Dad’s timeline without any historical events.

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)


Here is a screen shot of my Dad’s timeline with the historical event “U.S. Presidents” added.  I’ve marked the first 3.



You can see how valuable this display option can be for putting your ancestor in a place and time.  Want to know which wars went on during their lifetime, which amendments to the constitution were passed, which items were invented or any other of the 51 timeline options.

My Dad was born during the Presidency of William Howard Taft, the 27th President.  He died during the term of our 41st President, George H. W. Bush.

Which Presidents were in office during your lifetime or your parents?

Have you ever used the historical timeline in you genealogy software program?  If so, what did you discover?

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2017   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

NEVER MARRIED ~ How many people do I have in my database who never married?

Let’s take a look and see who in our family is listed as never having been married?

The first thing I did was go to the “Search” tab in Legacy and select “Find.”  This allows me to enter the criteria for my search.



This search created a list.  The first time I did it, I had 17 people.  I noticed right away that two of my ancestors, whom I know did not marry, were not on the list.  This means I had not checked the appropriate box in Legacy, to indicate this condition.  I went back into Legacy and checked the box and then created a new list.
 
TIP:  The box that is checked in Legacy to indicate that a person wasn’t married and had no children is located on the Individual’s Information screen.  However, I would like to see the wording changed.  Right now it says “This individual has no relationships and no children.”   It would be nice to have two boxes – one that says “never married” and the other “no children.”  We may not know the name of another party involved with our ancestor and the ancestor may well have had children and not named the other parent.

Please note that there are two boxes to check in the Marriage/Relationship screen – one for “This couple did not marry” and the other “This couple had no children”




Here is the list created by Legacy showing the names of those 19 individuals in my database for whom that box is checked.



There are 5070 people in my Legacy database.  So, this cannot be a complete list of those individuals who never married.
 
We can perhaps, assume anyone who died young (under 15) would never have married.  However, I obviously didn’t check the box for those individuals, or they would be on this list.  Yes, some people may have married prior to that, but that number would be quite small, if any. 

What other type of list can I create that would help me with this statistic?  What I’m trying to find is a search by age.  I am unable to locate this particular criteria in the search conditions listed in Legacy.

Therefore, I am unable to create a list of those who are under 15 and go back and check the “never married” box.
 
Can any of you think of another way to check this statistic?

This little exercise today has made me aware that I need to make sure I mark all appropriate boxes in each person’s information screen.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

HERE IS A LINK TO ALL MY LEGACY TIPS 8 TIPS

Happy hunting,
Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2017   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

TUESDAY’S TIP ~ The Surname Summary Report in Legacy 8–Creating a sortable and searchable file from this report

This is a report I had never used before.  There are a LOT of report options in Legacy 8 and I don’t know if I’ll ever learn them all.
 
I heard about this report in a post on the Legacy User Group on Facebook.  It’s an excellent group where we all help one another and share tips and tricks for using Legacy.  Thanks to Cathy Pinner for reminding us about this feature.

To create this report go to Reports > Other Reports > Surname Summary

You then have several options as seen below:

Screenshot of Options

I always want to see what the report looks like first, so I chose “Preview.”

My report is 20 pages long in PDF format.

Here is what the first page looks like:



These are the things this one page tells me.

• I have 33 individuals that have No Surname
• I have one surname that I apparently put parenthesis around (MEIER).  Why?
• For this first page of the report ARMSTRONG has the most entries – 26
• On entry #36 is just the letter “B”  Again, my question is Why?

I’ll be going through the report one page at a time and finding anything that appears to be something that needs correcting.

How can I make better use of this list?

Legacy gives several options to you when you are preparing to view the report (see screenshot above)

• You can just view the report by using Preview
• You can create a PDF file (this option is also available to you from the preview screen)
• You can create a CSV file

I like the idea of creating a CSV file, which is a spreadsheet file.  CSV stands for “comma separated values.”
 
WHY WOULD A SPREADSHEET FILE BE VALUABLE?

• You can sort the names in different order
• You can sort the columns in a different order
• You could add more information in other columns
• You can add notes
• You could separate the names by alphabet and put them on a different sheet
• You could color code names or any other item

What other ways can you think of to use a surname spreadsheet?

Have you used this report before?  If so, how?  I’d love to hear about it.

PLEASE SEE THE LEGACY 8 TIPS TAB UNDER THE BLOG HEADER.  YOU WILL FIND 12 DIFFERENT POSTS ABOUT MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR LEGACY DATABASE – FROM CHANGING COLORS TO STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS FOR ADDING A RECORD.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

POTENTIAL PROBLEMS LIST IN LEGACY 8 ~ What problems did I find today?

It’s necessary with any database, to check for problems, errors etc.  Legacy 8 has a built-in feature for doing just that.  It’s called “Potential Problems” and can be found under your Tools tab.

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)

 
Since I run this feature about once a month, my problems list is usually very small.  Of course, that wasn’t true the first time I ran it.  I can’t remember exactly how many I had, but I know it was dozens.  It took me a while to go through the list, but it was a worthwhile endeavor.

Today, I ran the list, and here’s what I got.



LET’S TALK ABOUT WHAT WE CAN DO WITH THIS LIST

• The name that is highlighted is Boggs, Virginia [3934].  I always have the RIN number listed after my individuals as it makes it very easy to find them quickly in the Index or write the numbers down, should I need to come back later.
• At the bottom of the screen, you can see that Legacy tells me exactly what the problem is.  In this case “The birth date for this individual is either after the mother’s death date or more than ten months after the death date of the father.”
• I can do several things directly from this list.

    1.  Print it
    2.  Mark as Not a Problem
    3.  Run the report in different ways
    4.  Report destination can be Screen, Text file or PDF file

I went to the family page for Virginia Boggs.  I can see that her birth date is listed as “Abt 1848.”  I have an 1850 census for her and her family which states that she is two years old.  The next census in 1860 lists her as 11.  So, the birth year of approximately 1848 is probably correct.

Now, let’s look at her father, Hamilton Boggs.  OH OH!  I have his death date as “Abt. 1842.”  Kind of tough for him to have been Virginia’s father if she was born 6 years later.  I don’t have a second marriage for her mother, and Virginia is the last child, of 6, listed for this family.

Hamilton Boggs is my 3rd great granduncle, and I can see that I have done very little thorough research on him.  I have one source listed and it’s an email from another descendant, that I received back in 2005.

My next step, as I sit here this morning, will be to go online and begin trying to piece together Hamilton’s life with more valid sources.  I’m sure there has been a lot of sources made available over the past 11 years.

Then I will move on to the other person listed on my Problems Report.

This report provides an excellent method for us to find the problems we might not have noticed and, in this case, to go back to a fairly close ancestor, and do more research.
 
Have you used the Potential Problems report?  What have you found?

Please visit the tab “Legacy 8 Tips” at the top of my blog for 12 other posts that are specific training tools for using Legacy 8.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

HAVE LIMITED TIME FOR RESEARCH? Here's What I Did Today in Just 60 minutes

As genealogists we all want more time.  Whether we work full time, part time or are retired.  There never seems to be enough time to work on our research or our files.  And, if you have a family with children there are even more distractions.

WHAT CAN WE DO IN A LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME?

HERE ARE SOME THINGS I DID TODAY IN 60 MINUTES

• I went to findagrave.com and searched for memorials for one branch of the family.  I located 3, entered the memorial numbers in the User ID in Legacy.  I downloaded and saved the headstone photos to the digital folder and attached it to the burial photos in my database, for that person. 
• I entered a To-Do task to source the photo.
• From those finds I found out that these family members had died in Cabell County, West Virginia.  I know that the wvculture.org site has loads of vital records. 
• I located all three death certificates and death registers on the wvculture website.  I downloaded and saved them to my computer.
• I entered the information from the death records into my Legacy database for that person and created a To-Do item to source the death certificate.

AND THE LAST THING I DID DURING MY 60 MINUTES

• I went into the digital folder where I had just saved the death records for this family.  This is my Frampton family.
• I noticed that some of the death records (including the three I added today) had not been cropped and straightened, so I took care of that today.

Here’s how they looked prior to being edited.
 


I personally, don’t enter any images into my database without first editing them.  I use the Microsoft Office Picture Manager program to perform these tasks.  It’s easy and quick.

Here’s how they look now.  I began this process at 11:29 and finished at 11:34.  
So it took me only 5 minutes and look at the difference!



Here is a post I wrote about using the Microsoft Office Picture Manager program to edit images. The methods here can be used with most photo editing software.

Easy Document Editing

I hope this post has given you a couple of ideas for making use of those small windows of time we may find for our research.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

Family History Library - After you return home...then what?

Tuesday's Tip - Photo Repair and Restoration

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

MICHIGAN DEATH RECORD IMAGES FOR 1940 NOW ONLINE! Here’s how I found my family’s certificates

The website https://michiganology.org/vital-records/ has many wonderful records & historical information for Michigan researchers. 
Certainly the one I’ve used the most is their death index and images. The images for records from 1897-1920 have been online for a while now.

The images for 1921-1952 are being released as the 75 year restriction rolls around.  As of today, they have uploaded the images up to and including 1940.

So, today, I’m going to use my Legacy search function and see how many, if any, of my ancestors have deaths in Michigan in 1940.

To accomplish this I will go to the “Search” tab and then “Find.”
I want two criteria in my search:

• Place of death = Michigan
• Date of death = 1940

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)
 

And, here is my list



Let’s go over to seekingmichigan.org (UPDATE Oct 2019 - the seekingmichigan website if closed down - the new site is michiganology.org) and see how many of those four certificates I can locate.

NOTE:  As you know, uploading and indexing are not perfect sciences.  So, just because we hear that records are available, doesn’t mean they ALL will be.

How many of these death certificate images did I find?

FOUR OUT OF FOUR!!!

DEATH CERT FOR WILLIAM W. BUSH	DEATH CERT FOR WILLARD B. GOULD
DEATH CERT FOR MINNIE ERB	DEATH CERT FOR KATHERINE MARTZ FORSYTH

Wonderful!  I’ve downloaded each of them, cropped and corrected them and now I can add them to Legacy and source them.  That’s what I call 15 minutes well spent online.

TIP:  I do not like the look of images as they appear in our downloads.  I don’t like the black surrounding them and I don’t like them to be crooked or too grey.  I fix all of this before I ever save the digital image to my computer.  I takes about one minute to perform the task and makes your images look so much better in any report or if you upload them online.  See my “Other Posts” below for a post I wrote about this process.

Time to go work on those records.  Please let me know how many new records you find in this collection.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

MICHIGAN DEATH RECORDS ONLINE - Where can you find them?

Legacy 8 - THE SEARCH FUNCTION - What Can You Find?

EASY DOCUMENT EDITING - How to Straighten & Correct Images

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

TUESDAY'S TIP ~ Legacy 8 ~ How To Determine When You Last Modified a Record

A quick tip for today.

I was researching a particular line of my family, that I’d not looked at in quite a while.  I don’t have any general or research notes on this person, so I wondered when I had last looked at her. 

Here’s how to find out.

From the Family View – click in the very lower right hand corner, in the blank area, next to the M:1.

 (CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)

This is the screen you will see next.

Now I know that I have not looked at this ancestor since I entered her into my database on 1 Aug 2011.

HERE'S ADDITIONAL INFORMATION I RECEIVED AFTER I POSTED THIS - If you are reviewing a person in your database, but you haven't made any changes, if you click "save" it will change the modified date.  If you click "cancel" the modified date will remain the same.  I have a habit of clicking save every time I view anyone's record, but I think I will change that habit after learning this.  Sometimes, I'm just taking a look and I don't want the modified date to indicate changes were made.
 
It’s always kind of surprising when I see how long a time passes until I get back to a particular ancestor.  And, surprisingly, I don’t have a particularly large database, just 4796 people.  And, I research almost daily.

That your tip for today.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

LEGACY 8 - HOW TO CHANGE THE LABELS IN FAMILY VIEW

         

After the announcement by Ancestry, regarding the discontinuance of Family Tree Maker, many people have switched to Legacy. 
I thought I would post about a basic function in Legacy – the ability to customize the labels on your Family View.
 
Here is how my great grandparents, William & Elizabeth Lindsay look right now.  Notice their labels are: Born, Bapt., Died, Buried, DthCau.
                           (CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)

By clicking in the blank area just to the left of those labels you will bring up your customization screen.
You’ll notice those little ….. next to each field name.

Click on any of those boxes containing the dots and you will bring up a new screen.

Scroll through the selections until you find the one you want.  There are many choices.  Click on the “select” icon.  You will see that your new selection is in the “Field Name” now instead of whatever was there before.
 
You can either click on “Close” and go back to your Family View or you can use the “SAVE” icon in the lower right corner.  Should you decide to “Save” you will see this screen.

PLEASE NOTE:  I already have saved views in my screen.  The first time you see this screen all the numbers will be blank.  Simply enter what ever name you want to give the particular view (in the box below) and click on the “save” icon in the upper right corner.

You can save up to 10 different views.  Change every label or just one or two.  It’s up to you.  Then save it for when you need it again.



















TO CHOOSE A SAVED LABEL view, simply click in that blank area to the left of the labels on the Family View.  You will see up to 5 of your saved views displayed, or you can click on “customize” to change selections and save again or to “Load” an already saved view.

These flexible options come in very handy depending on what you are working on with your family.  Maybe you want to see display everyone’s age at death, or their primary spouse or their User ID field. 

I, personally start all my work from the Family View.  From there I might go to the Index or Chronology view, but only temporarily.

The Legacy Users Group on Facebook has been swamped with questions over the past several days.  If you are a testing Legacy or have decided to switch over, you will find many answers in that group.

I hope this post has been helpful.  If so, or if you have a question, please leave me a comment.  Please add me to your circles or follow my blog as I will have other posts about Legacy 8 and many other research items.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

LEGACY 8 - Census List - How Will I Use It To Search For My Family?

WORKDAY WEDNESDAY - Using Legacy 8 to Determine What My Ancestors Did for A Living

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2015   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

TUESDAY’S TIP–How to Determine Which War Your Ancestor May Have Participated In

Military records can be one of the best resources we find for our ancestors.  Whether it’s a draft registration, a pension file or a service record, they can tell us a lot about that ancestor.

Here are some of the things you may find in a military record:

• Date of birth
• Names of parents
• Date of marriage, name of spouse & marital status
• Names and ages and/or date of births of children
• Places of residence
• Occupation
• Physical characteristics
• Names of other relations or acquaintances may be found in pension files
• Date & place of death
• Place of burial

That is only a partial list.  But, you can certainly see how important these records can be.

SO HOW CAN WE FIND OUT WHICH OF OUR ANCESTORS MIGHT HAVE PARTICIPATED IN WHICH WAR?

I use Legacy 8 as my software database and this is the method I used.  I’m sure other software programs have similar finding aids.

The first thing I referred to was a list that I located on Ancestry.com last year.  Here is a link to the post: http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2014/04/23/what-war-did-my-ancestor-serve-in/

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)

My next step was to use the “Search” capabilities of Legacy 8 by beginning here: 



For a detailed, step by step lesson on how to create your search criteria, please see my post here - Legacy 8 - The Search Function - What Can You Find?

In this case I used the following criteria for possible World War I veterans:



NOTE: Of course there were women who served during the wars.  Especially the later wars.  However, for now I wanted to concentrate on the primary possibilities, which are the men.

Now I actually have a list I can use for each of the wars.  I can check the list one by one and look for military records.  Rather than my usual method of remembering to do that as I’m researching a particular person.
 
I can indicate in my To-Do list in Legacy that I have completed this task.  Or, I could make a notation in the ancestor’s “research notes.”  Or you could keep track some other way.  Because some of the lists are multiple pages, I would not personally print them out.  You might choose to.  I did create a PDF version of each list, which you can do directly from the “Print” option at the bottom of the page of names.

Here is a sample of the first page of a list I converted to PDF format:



Here is a compilation of how many names appear on each list that I created.

REVOLUTIONARY WAR = 90
CIVIL WAR = 411
SPANISH AMERICAN WAR = 573
WAR OF 1812 = 118
WORLD WAR I = 421
WORLD WAR II = 554
KOREAN WAR = 243
VIETNAM WAR = 160

That’s a grand total of 2570 men who could possibly have military records.  I will be able to quickly eliminate from each list, those who died at birth, died as infants or before they were military age.  There could be several who overlap and could have served in more than one war.  My database contains 4719 individuals.

Now to determine where to start and how to proceed.  Do you think this is a valuable list?  Is it something you could use?  Please share your results with me if you choose to create such lists.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

Legacy 8 - CENSUS LIST - How Will I Use It To Search for My Family?

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2015   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION