IT’S BLOGIVERSARY TIME ~ Celebrating 11 years of family finds and story telling

Who knew?  Eleven years!  I certainly never thought I’d still be sharing family stories and research tips for this many years.

It’s been fun and continues to be rewarding.  Many cousin contacts have been made over these years. I hope with many more to come.

WHO IS TO BE CREDITED FOR MY SUCCESS?  YOU!!!!  And, I cannot thank you enough

Let’s take a quick look at some stats from my blog.

HOW MANY POSTS HAVE I WRITTEN & PUBLISHED?

639 – an average of 58 per year

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE MADE COMMENTS ON MY POSTS?

2,130 – and I have responded to each and every one

HOW MANY HITS OR CLICKS ON MY PAGE HAVE THERE BEEN?

805,746 – an approximate average of 200 per day

Realistically knowing that not all of those hits are people coming to read my content.  But, nonetheless a good indicator that I do have readers.

My goal is to write many more stories this year.  Thank you all for your continued support.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2021   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

IT’S BLOGIVERSARY TIME ~ I began this journey 9 years ago

It’s been 9 years now since I began this blogging journey.  WOW!  It’s sure been wonderful.

 

I’m a better genealogist because of my blog.  When you are putting something out there for all to see, you realize it better be correct.  As I write about each ancestor I see where the holes are in my research.  I take the time to go back and find missing sources and that will often lead to more records.

 

I’ve made many wonderful friends along the way.  Bloggers are a generous group and we all enjoy helping one another and welcoming new bloggers to the fold.

Each year I have all my blog posts printed into a book or books.  I use Blog2Print and they make it super easy to do.  My current book is in the printing process right now, so here’s a display of my books so far.

The first 3 years I didn’t write much so that white soft cover book on the left covers 2010, 2011 and 2012.

 

I’ve written 515 posts so far and have had well over 1000 comments left by readers.  Blogger stops counting at 1000.  I have responded to each and every comment.

What does the future hold for my blog?  I hope I continue to write posts that people enjoy reading and that I continue to get feedback and make connections with family.

Here’s to a really productive 2019!

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2019   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

A NEW MILESTONE ON MY BLOG ~ Thank you to everyone who reads my posts!

This is a day I am proud to share with all of you.

 My blog posts hits have reached the 500,000 mark today!

Thank you to every reader.  Thank you to all the other bloggers and readers who have recommended my blog posts to others.

I’m so proud to be a member of the genealogy blogging community.  When I wrote my first blog post in 2010, I wondered who would ever read what I wrote.  I was hit and miss on posting, with only 22 posts in the first 3 years.

In September of 2013 I got serious and realized if I was going to “do this” then I should post regularly and see what happens.  In the 5 years since then, I have written 455 posts.

Along the way I have met and made wonderful friends in the blogging community.  I have been contacted by cousins who have found my blog as they searched for their family.  It’s been a FANTASTIC experience and a wonderful journey.

I don’t plan on stopping any time soon because new discoveries within my family are being made every day.  With all the DNA testing we have even more chance of making connections.

To anyone out there who has considered writing their own blog, I highly recommend it.  It’s a wonderful way to share family stories and also research tips.

 

A BIG shoutout to my fellow bloggers/friends.  Too numerous to mention, you know who you are.

Call me “smiling in Ramona.”

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2018 Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

LEGACY 8–THE SEARCH FUNCTION–WHAT CAN YOU FIND?

Today I thought I would take a look at the different types of occupations in my family tree.  That being said, in order to run a report in Legacy 8 I have to have entered the occupations.  

The place to do that is in the Events/Facts section of the Individual’s Information. 

Here is a sample of how it looks in Legacy:

Click on any image in this post to enlarge it

You can see that Richard Lindsay held several positions. I have highlighted them.  Because he was an elected official for two of the positions he held, I entered them as such.  However, for them to show up in a list I would either have to re-enter them as "occupation" or add "election" as a separate search criteria.  This is an unusual scenario as I cannot think of any other family members for whom "Election" is an event. 

Here are the positions he held:

• Estimator at Large
• City Clerk
• Printer’s Devil
• Printer

I sorted the events by name, rather than by date, so that they would show up the way I wanted them to.  Because I entered two of the events as “elections” rather than “occupations” they won’t show up if I run an ‘Occupation’ search & report on Legacy.  Unless I add another criteria for “election.”  Seeing this makes me think I need to adjust those entries.  That’s the beauty of writing this blog and also of doing reports.  You find things that need to be changed in your database.  

Do you use the Events section in Legacy?  If not, then when you are running reports or looking at a chronology/timeline, you won’t have all the information you need on your ancestor.

Back to occupations.  Now I will run an occupation report in Legacy 8.

To do this you go to the “Search” tab and to “Find.”

Then select your criteria and click on “create list.”



I’ll do a broad search first and see how many people have occupations listed.  This created a list with 123 individuals on it.  These must be the only people in my database for whom I’ve added occupations in the events field.  I don’t think that’s a very good percentage considering I have 4,158 people in my database.  And, 2,229 of them are males.  I can see I have work to do.

Here is a screen shot of the top portion of the list.  I selected my 2nd great grandfather and you can see his Events are highlighted on the right.  I could click on any of the tabs on the right and look at information for Charles Milne.



Now let’s run another search for everyone I might have in my database listed with the occupation having to do with cigars.  I remember running across cigar makers in my research.

This time I changed my search criteria as follows:



This created a list with 3 people on it.
 

CHARLES BROWN - CIGAR MANUFACTURER IN NEW YORK 1875

MONSON THORP, JR. - CIGAR MAKER, NEW YORK 1866

I’ve highlighted two of the three people above. Please notice how many events I have added to these individuals.   
TIP:  The more events you add, the better story you can have of your ancestor's life.

I hope this has given you some new ideas about how to use the “Search” function in Legacy 8. There are so many different kinds of reports we can create. I know I haven’t even scratched the surface. 

But, we have had fun, haven’t we?

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

Legacy Census List – How I will Use It to Search for My Family
Legacy 8 – A Quick Guide to Label & Tab Colors
How to Find Your Family Statistics in Legacy 8

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright © 2014 Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHT RESERVED. NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

MEDICAL TERMS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CAUSE OF DEATH – That’s one of the things I always want to know when I’m researching my ancestors.

WHY?  Because, to me, it’s very interesting to see the different kinds of things that people died from during different times in history.  Also, because it will give you a good idea of what types of diseases or conditions run in your family.   

Where can we go to find the definitions for the various causes of death we see on all the records we locate?

You can always use your favorite search engine, Google or Bing or Yahoo or whatever you prefer.

I used Google and typed in “Medical terms in the nineteenth century.”

Here is just the first few choices that were listed.

Clicking on the very first one brings up an 11 page report listing medical terms from that time period.  That was easy.

Then I got curious and wondered if I could create a list in Legacy, that would show who died of which disease or ailment?

The answer is YES, I can.  Here are some of the results of my search. 
 (Legacy users please go to the bottom of this post to find specific instructions)

For Typhoid Fever (click on any image to enlarge it)



For Dropsy



And for Consumption



Of course there are many more that I could look up. But, you get the idea.  

How many of our ancestors might have lived longer had they been born in modern times? 

How many of us living today would live longer 100 years from now?  The advances in medicine have been astounding during the past 100-150 years.  

In the 19th century the doctors arrived in buggies or on horseback.  Surgical instruments like the ones below might have been used if needed.
 

       

What kind of unusual causes of death have you found in your family?  

Do you look for the definition of a disease or cause, if you don’t know what it is?

NOTE:  If the cause of death is something that isn’t ordinary by today’s terms, I try to enter a definition.  Now that I’ve typed that statement I realize something.  I should be entering a definition for every cause of death, shouldn’t I?  Because in 50 or 100 years will our descendants know what our definitions were?  Sure, they will be able to look them up, but maybe I will save them the trouble.

Legacy Users – here are the steps I took to create the cause of death list. 
I went to the “search” tab at the top of my screen, then clicked on “find.”
Next, click on the “detailed search” tab.  Here is what I chose for each question:
Look for whom?  Individual
Where to look?  Cause of death
How to look?  Contains
What to look for?  I typed in whatever disease or ailment I wanted to search for
Then click on “Create List” at the bottom of the screen.
If you want to create a list with more information, just use the “Or” option under the second and third condition and repeat the above steps, only enter a different cause of death.

That’s all the fun for today.  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2014   Diane Gould Hall