Tuesday, March 31, 2009

DNA Genealogy

There are a lot of genealogy DNA companies that test the various markers. I found a website that lists all the companies and the markers that they test. I don’t know if it is current but it still gives a relatively good comparison. One of my Scogings cousins had the test done over at Family tree DNA. The 67 marker test is on the Scoggins group over on their site. It really helps to join a group where others share the same surname so as to have something to compare with from the start. Out of the 13 people who have submitted tests none of them even come close to matching my Scoggins line. My cousin in England recently had his test done over at ancestry. I find it interesting that out of the 40 or so markers tested between my two cousins that three markers do not match. Both were born in the 1930’s and their common ancestor was three generations removed. The only difference is the maternal line. They have different great grandmothers. My cousin in England had his test done at Oxford many years ago and it tested the DYS 425 marker and it was null. DYS 425 is not a standard marker tested by DNA companies. My U.S. cousin’s marker DYS 425 is Null or zero. Apparently only a small percentage of people have a null reading on this marker. Once you have submitted your DNA over at Famiy Tree DNA you can add tests for groups and individual markers like DYS425 for a small fee.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Sharing gedcoms with sources

I have been over at Eastman's Newsletter reading his article about cloud computing. I am amazed at the comments that have been posted about the unreliable nature of all those gedcoms that are on the internet. There are many sites where the gedcoms are compared with each other and thereby it becomes possible to sort out the differences.
The problem arises when people copy their cousins gedcom and this is done numerous times and people assume that it is correct. They are not actively building there genealogy nor consider putting sources with the facts in there gedcom. Furthermore, they cannot be contacted. Even if they could be contacted they in all likelihood could not fathom what all the fuss is about. A smaller crowd is focused on having a reliable genealogy with source citations. Another crowd are the professionals who want all the T's crossed and the i's doted. Now with some of these sites you can link documents to people and events in your gedcom thereby documenting your research as you go. In the past I could not change someone else's gedcom; now the technology is allowing people with permission to edit a gedcom other than there own. They can add new names or edit existing data. Cloud computing for genealogy is about a collaborative effort to build a family tree using all the internet resources available. I put my gedcom on various websites without any source citation. This appears to be the norm. I think that the commercial websites need to go further to accommodate citing sources and make it less confusing to the average Joe. On my php site where I have more control I have source citations but am not happy with the capability of the php software to handle sources. I would assume that as time passes this capability will improve. The advantages of the php software far outweigh the negatives so I use it. By having my gedcom out in the cloud I can find and be found by relatives 24 hours a day.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Newspaper Research

Small town newspaper hold a treasure trove of information about those in the community. Now with the indexing and digitizing of so many newspapers it is becoming easier and easier to find those hidden treasures. I found the following article in the Utah Digital Newspapers website. It is from the 'Free Lance Newspaper' out of Marysvale, Utah on Nov 20, 1903. His tombstone says he died in 1904.
"Claimed By Death; Wm Scroggings Died Last Monday; After lingering painfully between life and death and after firm hope had been entertained that he was on the high road to recovery, word was recieved Monday that Wm Scroggings a well known and respected citizen of this city had passed away in the hospital in Salt Lake. Mr. Scroggings went to Salt Lake about 3 weeks ago to undergo an operation for cancer of the stomach; the cause of his death. One operation about two weeks ago seemed successful and it was thought the cancer had entirely removed, but later another operation was deemed absolutely necesary, but owing to his weakened condition, the result was fatal and the end came about 1 o'clock Monday morning. Mrs. Scroggings and her brothers, Charles and Ab Peterson being with him in his last moments. The remains were brought to this city Tuesday evening, a large concourse of friends meeting the remains at the depot. The funeral services were held at his late residence onThursday morning at 10:30. Remarks were made by J.F. Gibb and S.L. Page, and music furnished by the choir. The pall bearers were the Messrs Harry Cuff, Harry King, Ed Longley, H Hanan, James Ber?elsen, Da?? Gibbs, Wm E White and Albert Hardy. There was an immense outpouring of freinds to pay their last respects to the late departed. Mr. Scroggings was born Feb 12, 1864 in Rockville, Washington County this state being 39 years old. He was married about 10 years ago in Junction to Miss Sadie Peterson of this city. He leaves a wife and two children to mourn his loss. The remains were interred in the Thompson grave yard being followed to their last resting place by almost the entire community and friends from miles around."

Friday, March 27, 2009

digital records

I was at the library today and found some marriage records for some long lost cousins. With a database filled with cousins I don't think I will ever run out of them. I have over 600 different surnames in my TNG database. I made some digital scans of the marriage records. i am in the process of digitizing all my records. There a few digital microfilm scanners at the library. I am surprised that there are not more. It appears that many people are still attached to paper. It is hard to image that I can carry my whole genealogy, documents and all on a small thumb drive. I can easily make multiple copies for safe storage. With hundreds of records spanning a couple hundred years and cousins many generations removed it is a task to find a filing system with folders within folders to distinguish them and link them to my genealogy program. I think I may have found one.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Stanley Jaggi, footnote.com


Sometime ago I had been looking through the records at footnote.com. I typed in Stanley Jaggi, being a rather uncommon name I did not get a lot of results. He was in the pacific during world war II. I was rather surprised to find a transport document with his name on it with a few other men in his unit. It places him in a place at a particular time. I have been hard pressed to find anything like that. I created a personal page for him at footnote. There really are a tremendous amount of records being added at footnote. I believe that larger repositoires have subscriptions to their service.
The picture must have been taken before he went off to war in 1941. He was on a ship headed to Hawaii when Pearl Habor was bombed on December 7, 1941. The Jaggi Stettler genealogy is on a TNG php website. I uploaded my gedcom to it and created a page from a template provided by TNG. Now I have to develope some of the pages on it. Now I am beginning to think that I can create blogs for special pages and link to them. It surely is easy to write and add picutres and links than to create a webpage.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Family History Society's

Last year I joined the Suffolk Family History Society. I have belonged to a variety of society's over the years. I now belong to the Utah Historical Society. I once belonged to the Dumfries and Galloway Family History Society and the Fife Family History Society. I stay with a society for some years then move on. It is a great way to learn more about the area and what publications are of value, also if you share common names with other members. Some of these society's have excellent online websites. Fife family history society has quite a few records on there website. Suffolk family history society has search services for records in the county. I have added to my family from their search service for the time period 1837 to 1900, baptisms. They are adding more parishes to this services. As I am adding 1st to 4th cousins to my tree this is quite helpful.
The newsletters for society's provide a way to read what others are doing and post your own interests and stories. It is also possible to purchase parish registers on microfiche from the Suffolk Record Office.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Oswald

I have been researching this line in Scotland for many years. The trails goes cold in Kirkcaldy, Fifeshire when the parish registers fail to have Robert Oswald recorded in about 1800. Robert married, Isabella Auchterlonie. I have quite a bite on the Auchterlonie line. Robert died in 1838 and Isabella died in 1842 leaving a small family to be raised by others. All of the children ended up in the Liverpool area. My great grandfather, James Oswald had connections to his uncle, John Auchterlonie. I would assume that he may have apprenticed with him as a stone mason. A number of this Auchterlonie family took wifes from Cumberland County as did James Oswald. He married, Ann Ridley, in 1846 at St Peters Church in Liverpool. They had eleven children born between 1847 and 1868. Every so many years they were living in a different place. The first four children were born in the Liverpool area, then two more in Yorkshire, three more in Oxfordshre, and then by 1865 they settled in Dalbeattie, Scotland. By then James was a manager at a granite works. Ann Ridley died in 1879. Soon after James Oswald moved to Cornwall and lived out his life there dieing in 1889. Out of the eleven children only one remained in Dalbeattie. Details of the family can be found on my website. My grandmother, Jane Oswald married, John Mckenzie in Barre, Vermont. They grew up together in Dalbeattie. I have yet to make contact with any descendants of the Oswald family. My grandmother did not talk of her family.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

My first widget

I went over to amazon and signed up to become an affiliate. I created my store title, 'books in my library, software on my computer, technology at my finger tips' I went through my personal library and then added those books to the store. Everything is editable so I looked at, changed it, changed it again. I'll refine it as time goes by. The code necessary for it to show up on my blog was generated for me at the amazon site. I pasted it right into this blog with simplicity. So now it is on right column of this page, titled, 'Favorite Books in my Library'. That is a widget. (In a month or so I may change the title to somthing else like, 'What every Genealogist must have') So now I can go over to Amazon and custom add all those things of interest to a genealogist. Amazon has such a wide variety of items, from books, software, and technology. I also put a widget on my 'Scogings Mckenzie Genealogy' site. That was a little more tricky, but if you look at the source code for the site you will see how simple that was as well. For a genealogist these ads could pay for the costs putting up a site and other expences. Now I think I will look for other sites I can get widgets from and add them. It is all free to do. It don't cost anything. If you click though my widget to buy something I get a small percentage, amazon gets a small percentage, and the seller gets his cut.

Salt Lake City


The construction near the temple in Salt Lake moves on. The genealogy library is a half block from this contruction. The CrossRoads and ZCMI malls are gone. The trax train is one bright spot in all this. It is quite easy to to get out and in of the downtown area on the train.

Friday, March 20, 2009

FamilySearch Wiki

The Wiki has been around for some years. I recently started to contribute some of my knowledge and writing skills. There appears to be a lack of contributors. On my user page you can click on the history button and see contributors to the page. Every page has this button. You can see the date I made a change to the page and even see how it has changed over time. It you click on 'contribs' you will get a list of every contribution I have ever made to the wiki; talk about transparency. People get the idea that once it is there that that is the ways it is. Your not suppose to get to attached to what you write since someone may come along and rewrite or change it. In my short time in contributing I do not see this happening. As writing is a developing process you will have to develop your own writings. I remember when I was developing a page for GENUKI, I would write something and then some weeks later I would read it again and then I could see how I could refine it. Look for a topic or place that you can make a contribution to and start writing. If what you want to write about has no topic or place then it is quite easy to add a new page. The whole process is user friendly. If you can create a blog you surely can write in a wiki.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Creating a Web Page

I have over the years created various web pages from scratch. I finally settled on using style sheets. The typical websites have used tables for the most part and many of the browsers only supported tables or did not fully support style sheets. If you went to the page with different browsers and different versions you will get a different look and layout. Code can be put in the pages to accomdate these differences but I don't have the knowledge to add that kind of code. The pages I have created with style sheets is for a parish in Scotland named, Urr. Urr parish page is at this address. The google map on the page took some doing but I got it on there. There is number of pages related to this page that I used style sheets for. For long list of names I used tables which are well suited for name list. The lay out of the pages is using style sheets. This tells you what you can do if you have access to some small list for a community and you would like to share them. you could actually copy my code and add your own text and dialogue. I have some banners on the pages that could have created some income but now there are not active since they created no traffic the service disabled them. I need to replace them with new affiliates. Apparently some of the big companies require a certain amount of traffic or they axe you. There are plenty of affilities to replace them.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Unemployed Genealogist

I would say that no genealogist is unemployed since there is always a stone to be turned over. However in this day when so many are unemployed it does bring to mind the fact that many who are unemployed have a project to work on. There are many skills a researcher acquires in the quest to find one ancestors. The first skills I learned was how to operate a computer. It expanded to writing, source citations, scanning, web pages, etc. Also, how to manage a database and create a reliable genealogy that will stand the test of time. Much of this knowlege comes from attending genelaogy conferences. I do not want to be considered a gatherer of names. I must admit that a gather has a place in the genealogy community but a true researcher is one step a head of a gatherer. A researcher knows why that name is there and where the details of the person were obtained. It may not be on the website but if you were to ask them they would point to a record that help them draw the conclusion. However, a sourceless gedcom is a starting place from which to create a reliable genealogy of a family.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Scogings Mckenzie

Scogings and variants; Scoggins, Scroggins, Scoging, Scoggin: Families originated from Suffolk, England. Few have been traced to the United States and some to Australia. The research is on my website http://donjaggi.net/winnifred/index.php.
Mckenzie: My family lived in Kirkcudbrightshire and you may be surprised that there were not many in the county. No Mckenzie's from this line are a live today. My great grandfather moved to Barre, Vermont in 1890. He worked in the granite sheds as a granite cutter, as he did in Dalbeattie. He started to go by Mackenzie instead of Mckenzie. around 1900.

Monday, March 16, 2009

BYU Computerized Conference

I have just attended the conference at BYU. Last year I could not get in because it was full. this year I had no problem getting into it as I paid at the door. I had no problem getting into any of the classes which is a change from other years. The talk is about New Family Search which is the online genealogy program that is being slowily releaased to members of the LDS Church. Much of utah does not have it yet. Eventually anyone in the world will be able to have an account. I would assume that that is many years off. There are many software programs that are becoming affiliates of New Family Search. If they want to survive I suppose they need to become appart of the effort since the LDS Church commands quite an audience of researchers.
One talk that caught my eye was the 'Voice Rcoginition Software' Apparently this technology has really become user friendly and accurate with faster and faster machines able to process the speech very quickly. I could write this at a fraction of the time using such software. 'Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred 10' appears to be a favorite. I look forward to trying it. The usefulnes of this software comes in handy when one want to share your thoughts as the words flow instead of typing out the words. I was impressed by the talks that talked about networking on various social networks, blogging, and tracking events that pertain to areas of interest using RSS feed. Google has various free features that are quite useful to researching and they are free. The purpose of the conference was to create ideas on how to connect with other people and new technology in order to make the research experience more enjoyable, efficient, and faster. (my opinion)