What have we been working on?

We have been doing fun photo charts for Christmas already and I got brave yesterday and asked a few of the customers I've been working with if I could show you some thumbnails. I'm always to shy to ask because I know these are so personal. So if you ever have a chart we've created for you that you are willing to share, let me know. Here are some recent comments we've received.

• You are the master. It looks perfect.
• WOW!! and Fantastic!! Somehow these don’t even seem to express how great this is turning out to be. Your creativity and talent are amazing. (Plus your patience with all of our many additions and changes)
• I think it looks terrific! And the tree in the background sets it off perfectly.

It's so fun to make our customers so happy. And not to brag ;-) but we get comments like this all the time. These charts look great, but when you see them with your own family the response is always fantastic.
Our online preview system is really personalized. Once you submit your chart and tell us what you are envisioning, we will put together the chart for you. Then you'll receive an email with a webpage link to your chart preview. At that point, you can request changes on anything and we will work back and forth with you until it is exactly what you are envisioning. And we can come up with anything you are envisioning too. Remember, the deadline for Christmas orders on our decorative charts is December 5th.

Three Generation Road Trip

We have been swamped lately with Christmas orders already so I have been somewhat quiet. But I wanted to get this blog post up. If you were watching facebook a couple of weeks ago, you know that we went to the Redding California Family History Expo. I took my mother and my daughter with me and we had the best time. I'm usually very protective about talking about my children much, but I just have to tell you about how much fun the three of us had.

In case you missed them, here are the facebook statuses:
Day 2 of roadtrip with Mom and Daughter: Apparently nagging about the speed limit skips a generation in my family. :-)

Day 3 of roadtrip with my Mom and my Daughter. It is so beautiful to see my Mom laugh and watch my daughter soak up her Grandmother's praise. And later, so weird to have them both tune me out with their ipods.

And then the two that I was too busy and never got posted:
Day 4 Mom is better friends with my Family History Buddies than I am now.

Day 5 Who is this woman who has kidnapped my mother and replaced her with this lady who is spoiling my daughter? This is definitely not the mother I grew up with.

I had two Grandmothers who adored me. They made sure I knew I walked on water. My Grandmother Carpenter would parade me around to all her friends, showing them my cute new clothes, or having me play the piano for them. And my Grandmother Dana was the best listener that ever lived. When I was in the room, nothing else was important to her.

It was so wonderful this weekend to watch my daughter get the same treatment. I'm so blessed and thankful to have a wonderful mother and grandmother for my daughter. As a Mom, I'm always correcting, and guiding and pushing them to stretch and achieve more. Sometimes the love doesn't come across like it should. It was so good to listen to my daughter bask in her grandmother's love for her and let her feel that unconditional love that a grandmother has. And so nice to relax and let my mother pass on wisdom that my daughter needed, everything from cute hairstyles, to nutrition, and to what is right and wrong in the world.

Sometimes I think that it is too bad that we don't live longer so that we can know more generations of our family. I would have loved to have known my great great grandmother, or her mother. I think a Great-Great-Grandmother would love you just as much. And I hope I get to be a grandmother someday and get to pass on that unconditional love. Maybe I'll even get to meet some great-grandchildren. And hopefully my efforts in family history will be passed down so that my descendants--maybe even further down--will feel my love for them and know about my mother and my grandmothers and what wonderful women they were.

Broken Branches

Wow.

Lisa Louise Cooke just sent me an anouncement for an amazing interview. It is called Broken Branches in Your Family Tree.

Here is what Lisa said:

As I typed the title for this blog post, I visualized nearly every reader's hand.

I have yet to meet anyone who has not had sad and painful stories surface during their research...relatives who committed crimes, were institutionalized, or ended their own lives.

In the case of one of my listener's, the broken branch was very close to home - her parents. And more specifically the mother who left her and her sister on a street corner one day, never to return.

Listen to episode 44 of Family History: Genealogy Made Easy to hear her incredible story. She shares the pain of her childhood, her search for her mother, and the healing and freedom that can come from exploring your family tree.

I promise you, it's a podcast episode like you've never heard before.

I concur.

Holiday Order Deadlines

To avoid extra rush and shipping charges you might want to stay aware of our drop dead dates this holiday season.

For Decorative charts, any orders need to be placed by December 5th to arrive in time for Christmas.

For Working charts, Canvas Giclees, or Gift Cards, orders will need to be placed by December 15th.

Early Bird Holiday Sale

We have a great offer for you this year to help you get going on holiday gifts and get all organized early so that you can relax and enjoy the season knowing the gifts are taken care of. 20% off any order from October 1st to the 15th. And 10% off any order from October 16th to the 31st. Any rolled or framed pieces are included in the offer. Just use the promotional code below when you check out on the website, or mention it in any e-mails or free consults and the discount will be automatically deducted from your order.

Promotional Code: GM20Percent

Expires October 15th 2009

Promotional Code: GM10Percent
Expires October 31st 2009

New (and new to me) Genealogical Serendipity

From our newsletter:

We've been hearing some wonderful serendipitous stories from many of you lately. We are in a wonderful position in this industry where we get to talk to you after you have done genealogy research and gotten hooked. We count ourselves very lucky to get to work with such wonderful people and love to hear about your research.

If you listened to the podcasts I did lately you'll know serendipity has come up in my interviews quite a bit recently. And apparently the subject has been popping up other places with the people who interviewed me too. Lisa Louise Cooke just posted a new podcast talking about some serendipity stories, and I just happened to stumble across an old (new to me) podcast with George Morgan and Drew Smith that they talked about it too.

Besides the times we have talked about it on this site, snooping around a little more recently I've found a couple of other new to me sites:
Granduncle Mark's Genealogy Parlor
The Serendipity Listing on Cyndi's list
Serendipity on Genealogy Today

We've recently had our users tell us stories about searching records and having have a book open right to the marriage record of someone on different line that they thought was in another state. Or traveling to another country to find records and coming up blank, and then a cousin making a wild suggestion about a local place where the records eventually were found. Or having a business client mention someone they were looking for but hadn't been able to find and having that person turn out to be the business person's neighbor. We have heard many, many such stories this year. Thank you for sharing them with us, and if you'd ever like to share them further, we'd love to have you write an article for the blog.

And I have a great story I just realized I've never talked about here too: A couple of years ago we were displaying some of our charts at a genealogy conference. While we change the information on the living people, many of our display charts are of my own ancestry. As often happens, one lady came up and looked closely at the chart looking for people she was related to and she found Rosina Christina Gregerson, my great grandmother who died in 1934. When she said she had a book about my family and that she would sell me a copy, I was skeptical. But the book she brought in the next day was an incredible record of my family. I was actually in it as a descendant, and it ranged up through this line seven generations. It is an incredible 700 pages of stories and pictures and even included a chapter that my grandmother Hortense had written about her mother that we never knew existed. Needless to say I bought it from her and have treasured it. We often find distant cousins of mine at conferences. So if you ever need some help breaking through a brick wall, you can always let us display your chart at the conferences we go to. :-)

One of the important things to remember about serendipity is that the thing that makes these stories so great is how long the person has been looking for the information that has miraculously appeared. So don't get discouraged if you haven't had some serendipity in your research lately. There may be some right around the corner. Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, in her book In Search Of Our Ancestors, says that if you put 50 genealogists in a room, 45 of them will have had a serendipity experience. So if you haven't had one lately, don't worry. It's coming.

You know I think the word I like the best in genealogy serendipity is "miracles." I think genealogy brings all sorts of miracles into your life. It certainly has brought miracles into my life and it gives me this amazing sense of awe. It's just one of the many things that makes genealogy so exciting and fun.

The most comprehensive guide for LDS people using New FamilySearch

Even though the LDS church is well known for promoting genealogy, and well-respected for it's contributions to the genealogy community, most members of the church don't do genealogy. Estimates range from 1-5% of LDS people are involved in Family History of some kind. Our company clientele confirm that statistic. Even though we are based in Utah, the headquarters of the LDS church, from what we can tell (we don't ask, nor care, of course) approximately 90-95% of our customers are not LDS.

The developers of the new FamilySearch Family Tree database are hoping to change that statistic in the members of the church. They are hoping that alot of new people will be trying out genealogy for the first time and that this database will make that easier for them. To help these newcomers to genealogy, the church has recently published a couple of new manuals for using the new database. They can be purchased here, here, and here, or downloaded here and here. They are--as to be expected, and as they should be--very general and mostly spiritual in nature.

(If you are not LDS, access to the new database as discussed earlier will be forthcoming shortly. I know what the projections are but I can't tell you--more of that 'under certified affiliate contract' stuff. It won't be long though.)

But, I have recently learned about another great resource for members of the LDS church who are looking to become involved in genealogy. When George Scott first approached me about reviewing his book I have to say I was skeptical--until I delved into this document. Then I went back and looked at his qualifications and he is probably one of the best people to write the book having extensively been a user of New FamilySearch and writing from that perspective. He has obviously done his research and not only could I not find anything wrong with what he put forward. I even learned a little. He has created the most comprehensive manual for dealing with new FamilySearch that I have seen in print. He didn't hold back--outlining every step for beginners, expressing his opinions (which I mostly agree with), warning of the pitfalls and criticizing where criticism was due. It is well worth a read if you are LDS. And I hope you follow his suggestions with regard to the database.

I have one main concern with the new genealogists that will be approaching this database. I am afraid that beginners will have a hard time distinguishing between real research (libraries, archives, real documents, primary sources) and derivatives/pointers to real research (databases and research of other people, aka NFS). After all, New FamilySearch Family Tree is the ultimate secondary source until the sources and documents are linked in. I am afraid new users will use the database as a sole repository for their research and consider what they find there a reliable source without checking. I think for many coming to this new database, the huge amounts of data will be overwhelming. And I hope they can approach it carefully.

George put it extremely well.
"Generally it is best to stay within the bounds of your own research and allow the researchers who submitted the records for earlier centuries to clean those records" (pg 16)
He further explains:
"You have millions of ancestors. Even if you just go back to the year 1500, you may have 100,000 members of your ancestral families. If you spent night and day for your entire mortal life performing genealogical research, you could never build your entire family tree alone. So define your niche, and let PAF chronicle your niche. [He hadn't gotten to talking about certified affiliates yet]. Then, let New FamilySearch serve as a superstructure over your niche, expanding the family tree beyond the bounds of your personal research" [emphasis mine.]
Well said.

He also called it right on the certified software:
"The third-party software firms advertise that you can combine New FamilySearch records and separate New FamilySearch records using their software. Please do not do so at this time... you generally can not see as much information as you can when you are working directly in New FamilySearch. When you see less information, you make a less-educated decision. (In the future this will likely change, as the third-party vendors continue to expand the features of their programs.)"

He advocates combining records first in New FamilySearch and then syncing the data you have researched using certified software. He convinced me he is right--for the time being. The API that the software is using to talk to the database doesn't allow syncing of sources and only allows 300 characters on the notes (until the first of next year). Most of them have holes in what they show you while you are trying to sync (like the contributors, notes and sources, relationships, details and etc.) While the software is great for keeping track of what is going on in the database with the people you are working on, the developers and the API have more to do before everything is working perfectly. It's coming. It will be better the first of next year. It just isn't there yet.

George gives wonderful suggestions on how to decide whether to combine or dispute information (pg 19 or so). And I really appreciated his plea for civility and using the golden rule in collaborating with other people on the database (pgs 7-8, 39-41). At first I thought his step by step process was a little turned around, but as he walked me through it, I was convinced he had the process right. I wish he had spent a little time talking about the difference in good and bad sources/research and going back to the original source (my clarion call on the subject) but that wasn't really what he was trying to do here. He talks about "your research" and "the database" but doesn't really distinguish what "your research" is. I think a discussion on good research would help. And he had some interesting (albeit kind of sidetracked IMHO) stuff at the beginning about we really are all related to each other and the Most Recent Common Ancestor studies that have been done.

I have three criticisms though. The biggest one is that he suggests standardizing all the names of places in your file before syncing the data. You will lose some of the fine points (such as farm names and cemeteries) in your geographical data if you do that. That is the perfect example of why you should use certified software and what could be left in your personal files and not synced with the database. Secondly, he calls the pedigree interface on NFS a "fan chart" (pg 13). Only the Chart Chick would argue with that one. This is a fan chart, the NFS interface is a left to right hourglass chart. And third, Generation Maps charts should have been added to chapter 9 "A Perfect, Inexpensive, Christmas Gift." :-)

Whether you are new to genealogy or not, his new Appendix "E" is a must read about how to resolve major problems in New FamilySearch--such as wrong gender, incorrect relationships, loops and quarantines. If you are LDS and looking to try out or teach the New FamilySearch database, this book is well worth a look.

As time goes by

With all the weddings in my family going on this summer, and having spent last weekend at the Davenport, and then digging out the wedding picture for the post on the Davenport, I have to add this picture. I'm sure it means more to me than it will to you--but maybe you'll be somewhat impressed with what hit me--how quickly time has flown. It seems like yesterday, and yet things have changed so quickly. (Ok. I'm beyond sounding like my mother. Now I'm sounding like my grandmother ;-)

Jenn, (furthest left) is my sister who was married two weeks ago. The two little girls on my right are my sisters Amy and Emily. Amy, closest to me in the picture, got married this last spring. The comparison between this family picture and our most recent one is so striking to me. I'm not getting older but everyone else sure is ;-)

Lindsey, Kim's niece on his left, is married and has a child of her own. And on her left is her younger sister Madison who is getting married next week. Craig, Kim's nephew on Madison's left was married last year too.

Unbelievable. This picture is only from 1994. My children are now older than the children in this picture. My family marches on through the years. I don't see it as much as I work on family history several generations back because it seems more distant. This closer family history seems to be rushing by faster, and yet if you were to lay it all out together, I'm sure it is *all* rushing quickly.

I tend to want to capture life and put it in a bottle--it all seems to be moving on so fast. Whatever did they do before cameras? But cameras don't seem to be enough. Does anyone else have this fleeting sense of life? How do you hold on to it all?

No wonder I'm a genealogist.

Digital Heart Links--A new company you should know about

I got to catch up with an old friend at the Family History Expo the other week. Across the way from us was Tara Bowen and her husband Brook.

Tara worked with me at the Markosian Library at SLCC long before either of us were into genealogy. She was a fabulous co-worker with a can-do attitude. I knew that any project I took to Tara would be done right, right away and with a smile. She was great to work with and even though we were good friends I had unfortunately lost touch with her as we had both moved from SLCC.

So imagine my surprise when we went to set up at the expo and Tara showed up to set up her company's booth directly across from me. Tara and Brook had started Digital Heart Links a company that will digitize your photos, home movies, audio tapes, slides, etc, etc and etc.

We've talked on this blog alot about the dangers of making sure digital files survive. Brook and Tara help you out with that using only the highest quality materials. But following the Library of Alexandria rule, once the items are digitized you can share and disburse them, and of course we can help you make extra printed copies--all of which is much easier in digital format.

Now I know how to digitize things...you are going to have a hard time convincing me to pay much for something I can do myself. But guess what? Convince me they did. They have a system set up where they can do it so quickly that it is incredibly inexpensive for the time I would have to invest. And they will do it accurately without messing up the lighting, etc, and etc that would take most people tons of time to perfect. I have three shelves of scrapbooks that I put together on my life and Kim's life and our married life together. I've never gotten around to having them digitized so that I can easily reproduce them for my children, and store copies in another place in case of a fire or something. Now I can--at a price I can afford.

Of course she can describe it better than I can. Tara sent me this about their company:

When you digitally archive your family’s history you preserve it against fading, loss or damage and you make it available to all your family members. A digital format allows every family member access to one collection. It’s as simple as copying a disk! Once digital the images are available to be used again and again in a variety of formats including print, slide show, on-line and genealogical records and keepsakes, just like you would use images from your digital camera. It is the first step to so much fun! See us on the web at www.digitalheartlinks.com or give us a call at 801.706.3253

I know you'll be pleased if you do. And then let us know when you are ready to make one of our fabulous photo charts once all your pictures are digitized.