Leaving the Past to the Future 4: Digital Sources

In previous posts in this series, I have mentioned my personal, digitized family history files, genealogical software programs and my paperless habits.

Sourcing information is, of course, the most important thing we do in building our family trees. In years past many family historians visited local LDS Family History Centers (now called FamilySearch Centers), or the main library in Salt Lake City, where microfilms of old parish registers, for example, could be borrowed to search for information about births, marriages and deaths.

Or people wrote letters to archives, museums and country record offices for any information they might have on local communities or people, as my aunt did in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Or they may have consulted Online Parish Clerks in the UK like me or volunteers providing similar assistance in other parts of the world.

The world has moved on. Now we mostly review data in digital form on major genealogical websites, like Ancestry, FindMyPast The Genealogist, MyHeritage, or ScotlandsPeople, both mainly through subscriptions. If you cannot afford the fees for accessing the commercial databases, you might find them using the computers set up at municipal libraries, the FamilySearch Centers or local family history society offices. Some people wait for those special free days offered by some commercial site providers, for example, around Armistice Day to look at military documents or St. Patrick’s Day for Irish records.

But there is a growing number of other websites where information about ancestors can be freely found in digital format, especially important for those of us with limited shelf space or a disinclination for printed material.

Helen Osborn, an English professional genealogist, wrote an excellent piece for the November 2022 issue of Who Do You Think You Are magazine titled, Build your own Digital Reference Library. In it she documented where to find and how to access family history information books on some of the major and minor websites and reminding us of some sources we may have used in the past but forgotten.

Among those highlighted were libraries where you can acquire or just borrow books: the library at familysearch, Google Books, HathiTrust, and Internet Archive. Helen is based in the UK so many of her sources for documents or transcripts are also there: specialist societies like the Surtees Society, the British Record Society and the Harleian Society; local, civic or country record societies such as the London Record Society, British History Online, Bristol Record Society,  the Huguenot Society, or the Navy Records Society.

In the UK’s The National Archives has dozens of published calendars listing important historical records of use to genealogists. Information provided by similar groups in many other countries can I’m sure be found. In the US, use the services provided by their National Archives.

Digital journals are important sources of material that can help the search for ancestors. JSTOR has an immense library of academic studies that can be read online or accessed through a private subscription or a local library. Universities and professional organizations offer publications of all kinds. You need only search for subjects or localities of interest to come up with relevant groups or articles.

Some other sources I have discovered and used include: the Digital Public Library of America, the British Library, Project Gutenberg and the Smithsonian Libraries. Closer to home is the Library and Archives Canada.

Newspapers are a valuable resource for information about people and events. I frequently use The British Newspaper Archive, Newspapers.com (by Ancestry), Peel’s Prairie Provinces now also part of Internet Archive and Chronicling America at the Library of Congress.

If your interest is in Medieval Genealogy, then try Some Notes on Medieval English Genealogy. If it is in Scotland consult the digital resources of the National Library of Scotland, especially for maps. The Statistical Accounts of Scotland will give you substantial information about the geography, people and economy of the country during the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries.

The National Genealogical Society (US) has a list of Eighteen Important Free Websites for Genealogy Research. FamilySearch, already mentioned for books, has a whole webpage dedicated to Using the internet for family history research. Check it out.

I still recommend contacting local record offices, archives, libraries and family history societies, for material pertinent to your research. If you cannot get to their offices, consider hiring a local consultant to search for and make copies of documents. Consider joining a major genealogical society like the Society for Genealogists to access millions of records online.

We live in a digital world now. There is no going back. But that is a good thing as we can now access millions of books and other published material right from our (or someone else’s) computers.

I have listed just a few digital sources here. I know there are dozens of others.

Whatever your interest is, location you want to know more about, family or person you want information about, first try a Google search. My recent search for “genealogy digital sources” brought up over 53 million hits. Narrowing it down to “free genealogy digital sources” still resulted in over 39 million sites. That’s a pretty big starting point.

Leaving the Past to the Future 3: Going Paperless

Like many people, I have gone increasingly paperless in my day-to-day life and in my genealogical studies. When we first moved to a condo several years ago, I no longer had the room for walls of bookcases or filing cabinets. We are now back in a large house, but over the past few years I developed the habit of not keeping a lot of paper files, other than a few I need that contain important personal or financial papers.

And, of course, those special family memorabilia and historical documents that are preserved in binders.

I admit I still have and purchase printed books, mainly because I find them useful in much of my research. It is often handier to be able to, firstly, read and mark up pages with yellow high-lighter or turn down the corners where there is information I will want to find later. My old schoolteachers would roll over in their graves to know I desecrate books that way, but these are mostly used books I acquired on the Internet for little cost and will undoubtedly be thrown away at some point when I am finished with them or finished period.

My current bookshelves do not take up as much space as my photo albums did. These are now consigned to plastic bins in our storage space. I have not got the heart to throw them out yet even though they have all been scanned and put online where family members can pursue the pictures (blog post Digitizing Memories 7 March 2017). One of our children might toss them in the future but that will be their burden.

A future project will be to describe the provenance of all my important keepsakes. Hopefully that will help our family to decide to keep them for posterity and future family historians. I believe it is important to collect items used by family members and to preserve them. But they need to have explanations about who owned them and what significance they might have to our family’s history.

Of great importance in keeping digital files is making sure you don’t inadvertently delete them or lose them in a hard drive crash. I have had that unfortunate experience in the past and it took some effort to reconstruct my genealogy records. Luckily, I had most of my files and folders on a separate storage device and was able to secure a family tree from another relative, although it was a few years out-of-date.

The use of CDs, DVDs, USB memory sticks or another hard drive has been important in preserving data in the past. Having the information on other devices, whether stored in your own home or with a friend or relative, offers protection against fire or other loss. Keeping duplicate files in more than one place, at least one of them outside your home, may be important to insure they are safe and accessible. The older technologies offered easy solutions to preserving the data, but their life span is a problem. Storage devices should be checked regularly, or just routinely replaced.

In my post of 4 March 2024 (Leaving the Past to the Future 1: Organizing Your Information) it should have been obvious that all the files I keep on my computer are digital. But what I did not mention is that I keep a copy of them in the Cloud. 

Since my last computer crash a few years ago, I have kept my files in remote computer data storage. That includes all manner of files from typewritten to scanned documents and audio/visual files. Once there it can be retrieved and shared.

The commercial service program I use (Carbonite) copies files constantly.  As of March 11^th, I have 363,840 files backed up (43,080 new ones just this month). It does cost a bit (Cdn$134 per year) but worth it to insure against losing some valuable information in the future.

I can retrieve parts or all or the library at any time, no matter where I am or what device I am using. Storage is secure, password protected, although I can also invite others to access the data, like my daughter who assists me with my IT activities.

For more about being a paperless genealogist or looking for advice and help on how to do it, just do a Google search for “paperless genealogy” and be amazed at the information you find: blogs, books, presentations, newsletters, magazine articles, technology, etc.

I will talk about paperless research sources and techniques in another post.

Upcoming Presentations

 I am presenting two talks to the Society of Genealogists later this year:

On 11 July 2024 I will talk about Genealogy and the Little Ice Age. See here for more details.

On 8 August 2024 I will present Stormy Weather: events that changed our ancestors' fortunes. See here for more details.

Leaving the Past to the Future 2: Genealogy Software

In my last post I talked about my own family history files and how I organize information.

Part of being organized is having a software program that you can use to assemble your family tree and record at least the basic data about your ancestors. That may entail having the tree on your desktop computer (as mine is), using a laptop (which I only use occasionally, mainly when travelling), or using a handheld electronic device (such as a tablet or smart phone).

I find it difficult to work with small, single screens. Part of it is the price you pay for getting older when your eyesight is not as sharp as it once was. And I always keep more than one screen open on my two monitors, especially when working on family history stuff. Using just one, small window does not work for me as I like to switch back and forth often between open websites.

Many in my family have Apple iPads while my computer and laptop are Windows based. I find it difficult to switch between different operating systems. While I used to use Apple products many years ago, I found that genealogy website and programs were mostly not compatible with Apple systems, so I switched everything over.

But what’s the best genealogy software program to use?

Using an online site to keep your tree is an option but you may need a subscription to access this service. If you lose or delete your membership you could lose your tree as well. I’ll talk about online trees in a later post.

What software programs most of us use comes down to what we like and how we work with our data. Often people get started with one program and stay with it because it’s easier than moving everything.

I use Legacy 9.0. I moved to it when I started using a Windows based computer system. Prior to that I had my data on Reunion on my old Macintosh computer which I quite liked. I tried a few others at the time but preferred Legacy as it had the features that fit the way I like to do things.

Most of the most popular programs have a free version of a free trial period. That only goes so far, though, as once you are into using it, you really want some of the advanced features.

If you want to know more about the various options, first read the reviews of people or groups who have tested them. Most will compare in terms of ease of use, best features and cost and show some user reviews.

·         TopTenReviews compares the most popular programs for 2024 here (August 2023). https://www.toptenreviews.com/best-family-tree-maker

·         Some good charts that show the features of 23 programs can be found on Wikimedia here (June 2023). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_genealogy_software

·         Techradar lists their best here (February 2024). https://www.techradar.com/best/genealogy-tools

·         Family Tree Magazine (US) have their top picks for software, along with their assessment of Online Trees, here. https://familytreemagazine.com/resources/software/online-tree-vs-genealogy-software/

·         No1Reviews came up with a top 10 selection here. https://genealogy-software.no1reviews.com/

·         Buyers Guide rate their choices here (March 2024). https://buyersguide.org/genealogy-software-ca/t/best?Country=CA&m=b&d=c&c=677404342479&p=&oid=kwd-10994456&lp=9001605&li=&nw=g&nts=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiArrCvBhCNARIsAOkAGcWHiExVL0KQusOV4DQMhBCqVb-hqqYff_UwG5H_-pHwloDya4FpwtwaAivqEALw_wcB&tdid=12017720&gad_source=1

If you want to know what is available, you can read about dozens of makers of Software &Apps for Genealogy Software Programs on Cyndi’s List. https://www.cyndislist.com/software/genealogy/

If you are looking for your first, or new software, check out the reviews first. Also talk to other genealogists to learn what they use and why.

Beware, though. Learning about all the programs may exhaust you.

Some programs work with both Mac and Windows systems. A few also have a mobile app so you can carry the information with you on your phone. Here is a list of some of the more popular programs as summarized by Family Tree Magazine.

 

Name Mac Windows Mobile App Syncs with Hints from Ancestral Quest 16 ✓ ✓ FamilySearch Family Tree FamilySearch, Findmypast Family Historian 7 ✓ Findmypast, MyHeritage Family Tree Builder   ✓   ✓   MyHeritage for iOS and Android (free)   MyHeritage     FamilySearch, Geni, MyHeritage, WikiTree & others Family Tree Maker 2019   ✓ ✓ Family Tree Maker Connect for iOS and Android (free; no editing capabilities) Ancestry     Ancestry, FamilySearch     Legacy Family Tree 9     ✓     Families for iOS and Android ($14.99)     FamilySearch Family Tree     FamilySearch, Findmypast, GenealogyBank, MyHeritage Reunion 13   ✓   ReunionTouch for iOS ($9.99) RootsMagic 9       ✓       ✓       RootsMagic for iOS and Android (free; no editing capabilities)   Ancestry, FamilySearch Family Tree   Ancestry, FamilySearch, Findmypast, MyHeritage

It’s important to have genealogy software, no matter what device you use:

·         First you need to have a system that allows you to store information about your ancestral families, for your own purposes as you progress with your research but also for sharing with others now and in the future.

·         Second you need to have a copy of your family tree and genealogical information that you control and not subject to the whims or decisions of others, whether they be individuals or companies that offer and store data.

·         Third, you need ready access to your data – anywhere, any time – on your own device(s) that does not rely on an internet connection.

Leaving the Past to the Future 1: Organizing Your Information

I often read blog posts and articles about organizing genealogical information. Much of it is written to help family researchers keep track of their own work on the multiple families and individuals whose history they seek to unravel. It does not take long to find thousands of people for whom simple curiosity ends up with enormous amounts of data and documents.

My own Legacy 9.0 Family Tree file currently has over 9,600 individuals in over 2,900 families. The most important ones to me, of course, are those in the direct ancestral lines of me and my wife. And those are, arguably, where I spend most of my time when I am actively looking for more information.

There actually used to be more people in my tree but somewhere along the line, during one of my software updates I think, I lost data that I know that I had added. I still have all the information; it just is not all on the Legacy tree. So, every once in a while, I run across a family that is not up-to-date and have to go into my files and input it again to Legacy.

I am past the point of just adding names to flesh out all the families, although that does still occur as I discover more documents relative to our families’ history. As you progress through the research it does get harder to find additional family members as they can be hidden in obscure records or further back in time which can mean records were not preserved.

Most of what I do now with family research focuses on assembling stories about people and their activities. That also involves learning more about natural events that may have impacted lives and livelihoods, which has certainly been influenced by my professional life as an Earth Scientist.

Many of those blogs and articles about organizing family history files are also about what to do with it when we are gone. But I digress…

I am reasonably well organized.

In the main Genealogy folder on my hard drive (backed up on the cloud, too) I have over 126,000 files in over 6,400 folders. That includes not only the individual family folders but also information about courses, societies, publications, consulting projects, and a myriad of other related subjects. All the files and subfolders used to be in one super-folder but having everything together got cumbersome and hard to deal with.

I reorganized my genealogy-related information a few years ago into specific categories:

·         Family Files – contains all the specific information about my ancestral families, including family trees, plus family photos, and information about DNA, heirlooms and memorabilia (55.5 GB; 39,297 files). Each family line has a folder. Within that main folder are other individual folders for each family.

·         General Information & Sources – has information about courses, consulting projects, maps, record offices, societies and software (61.4 GB; 29,711 files)

·         Presentations & Publications – has information about my blogs, books, presentations and published articles (80.9 GB; 44,766 files)

·         Regions – has information about the various regions in which my ancestral families lived (35.0 GB; 19,410 files) including area descriptions, histories, maps and photos

The most important information, of course, is in the Family Files folder which contains the results of almost all my ancestor research. Also of great value is the folder that contains all my written work and presentation material. This is information I would want to preserve and pass down to my descendants. The other folders have data that would be valuable to anyone who wanted to continue work on our families.

I also maintain binders of printed material that, to me at least, is irreplaceable. This includes photo albums; birth, marriage, and death certificates; important individual and family documents that represent events and achievements, and books and other publications that are about or contain references to family members. The documents are generally compiled and stored by family line.

And I have a collection of physical memorabilia, much of it handed down over several generations: cameras, farm implements, films, photos (obviously), toys, bibles, antiques, business paraphernalia, souvenirs of past vacations, jewelry, etc., etc., etc.

So, what are the best ways to make sure your genealogy is safe, all important family information is preserved and be in a form or format that others, including your descendants, will be interested in taking over – or at least want to keep for future generations to peruse. And that includes both digital and hard copies.

Here are some of the blog posts I have written about various aspects of storing and organizing family information and memorabilia for future reference and access:

·         What will we do with future photos? https://discovergenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/04/what-will-we-do-with-future-photos.html

·         Memorabilia https://discovergenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/05/memorabilia.html

·         Digitizing Memories https://discovergenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/03/digitizing-memories.html

·         You Can’t Keep Everything https://discovergenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/05/you-cant-keep-everything.html

·         Organizing and Storing Your Family History Data – My Thoughts https://discovergenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/09/organizing-and-storing-your-family.html

·         My Amazing Picture-Taking Machines https://discovergenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/10/my-amazing-picture-taking-machines.html

In future blog posts I will update the ideas with information I have found in my more recent work.

For today, here are some helpful websites and articles to peruse:

·         Denis May Levenick https://thefamilycurator.com/four-tried-and-true-systems-for-organizing-genealogy-researc/

·         James Tanner: I have a huge pile of genealogy stuff, what do I do with it? https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/search/label/Organization

·         Lisa S. Gorrell – My Trails into the Past (Organized: How I Hope to Leave My Genealogy to My Heirs): http://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2022/10/organized-how-i-hope-to-leave-my.html

·         FamilySearch: What to do with the genealogy and family history I collected https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/What_to_do_with_the_genealogy_and_family_history_I_collected

·         Legacy News: How will you pass down your memories? https://news.legacyfamilytree.com/legacy_news/2019/07/how-will-you-pass-down-your-memories.html

·         Library of Congress (US): https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2014/01/write-your-family-history-and-send-it-to-the-library-of-congress/

My Writing Activity and Success

In recent years I have found myself more engaged in researching material for new articles rather than in writing new blog posts. When I started Discover Genealogy in 2013, I had lots of material from my experiences as an Online Parish Clerk, in collecting data and answering queries form people who wanted to learn about their ancestors in those areas of Devon, England that I looked after.

More data for family historians has come online since then on sites such as Ancestry, FindMyPast, TheGenealogist, MyHeritage and a host of societies, both local and international. That has reduced the number of people looking for information from Online Parish Clerks and other regional helpers.

Partly from my experience in blog writing, my own activity in writing more lengthy and informative pieces took off. Since 2010 I have had 31 articles published in family history society journals. Beginning in 2017, I had my first article published in a commercial magazine. All my articles are all listed on my blog page, Genealogy Related Publications.

Most of the early articles came from work as an Online Parish Clerk and stories I discovered when helping other family historians. Those in commercial publications have been much more intensive and involved considerable research. I will spend at least six months looking for information for these larger submissions and getting a draft finished. A few that had a great deal of work in them did not even make it past the editors’ first review and have gone back to the drawing board.

I have written two books, Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests (2018) and Genealogy and the Little Ices Age (2023) and co-written another one, The Wreck of the Bay of Panama: 10 March 1891 (2022).

I am currently working on four articles scheduled for publication in Family Tree magazine (UK), three for 2024 issues and one for 2025. Another has been submitted to two international genealogical society journals and I am waiting to hear whether either one is interested. The current and recent pieces involve subjects pertaining to my own ancestors as well as some general topics that have come out of previous research, particularly regarding my interests in Mother Nature and the Little Ice Age as they relate to family history.

On the list for publication in Family Tree magazine (UK) are:

·         Maps and Marriages (tentative title) – In looking for confirmation of who the parents of my 3^rd great-grandparents were, I decided to take a different tack in searching for information about their families. I thought that looking at a variety of documents and, particularly, using maps to reference where events occurred and people lived, might help in narrowing down the searches for my people. In doing this summary I put together a map that showed where certain events took place – such as baptisms, marriages, burials – and what addresses were given for businesses or residences in apprenticeship agreements, directories, and land tax lists.

·         Master Craftsmen (tentative title) – The article will focus on craftsmen and tradesmen of the past, mainly but not restricted to the 19^th century and earlier periods, even extending back into ancient history. It will list sources for information for family historians and methods for searches. It will have examples of buildings (focussed mainly on houses owned by my ancestors) and the ways in which they were constructed. Emphasis will be place on the people who built the structures were viewed by their families and by the community at large. It will have lots of photos and other images showing construction techniques and building styles over time.

·         Witchcraft and the Little Ice Age (tentative title) – This article will examine the history of witchcraft accusations in the context of environmental and climatic conditions. Pertinent references to old publications explaining the facts of witchcraft and to new publications offering commentary on the phenomena of witchcraft trials will be listed. Histories of witch hunts in Europe, the British Isles and North America will be outlined. Examples of specific cases, where documents can be found, will be presented with a few familial connections reviewed. Readers may be stimulated to see if there were any individuals in their family lines who may have been part of the witch hunts.

·         The Plague Years: More to the impacts on people than just disease – While examining occasions when large number of deaths occurred centuries ago, can we confidently conclude they were due to natural causes such as epidemics (of which plague was one), famine, both, or to some other type of event? The plague years, of course, have been recognized as being some of the most devasting for causing the deaths of millions of people. The Black Death alone, introduced to Europe in 1346, is thought to have killed at least a third of the population (25-35 million people). But other natural phenomena were also present that induced or exacerbated the spread and devastation of the disease in Europe.

Out for review with two groups is another piece:

·         Effects of Strife: How disruptive and historical events are reflected in parish register entries – Significant changes in the numbers of births/baptisms, marriages and deaths/burials (BMDs) from year-to-year, or decade-to-decade, can often be correlated to specific physical, political or social incidents, many of which directly affected lives and livelihoods. The effects of historical episodes such as wars, famines, epidemics, industrial developments, government policies and edicts, and migration are reflected in graphic plots of BMD totals. The data may suggest normal social development or occasions of strife that were imposed on residents.

As an adjunct to writing, I have compiled many of my ideas and information into presentations. Some worked the other way, though, with material from a few talks used for articles. Currently I have over a dozen active presentations in my inventory. Several more are being prepared. In 2024 I have six talks scheduled, a more manageable number from the peak during the COVID Pandemic years of 2021-22 when I gave 20 online presentations.

All these projects, of course, have kept me away from blog posts.

Not my 7th Great-Grandfather

In one of my earliest blog posts, on 3 December 2013 (Who was my 7^th Great-grandfather?), I tentatively concluded that a Nicholas Shepheard, who was born about 1636 and died before 1685, was “rightly or wrongly, and until further information comes along” my 7^th great-grandfather.

That conclusion was based upon analyses of a fraudulent will and a will of my 8^th great-grandfather dated 1657. The interpretation was a bit complex and contained more than a few assumptions. On the face of it, though, it seemed logical.

Well, “further information” has come along. This week I obtained photos of a 1659 lease document for a property called Notts, now Woodburn, in Cornwood Parish, Devon, England. This and other documents are being analyzed to determine when this property came into the possession of members of my family as part of a review of the construction of the main residence.

I am writing an article on Master Craftsmen and the house at Woodburn offers an excellent example of many different building styles in use over the past several hundred years. But I digress.

The first document I have transcribed pertains to a lease for certain lands in Cornwood to two local gentlemen, one of them being the property named Notts. A section of the lease in part describes the “…Messuage and Tenement commonly called or known by the name of Notts Scituate lying and being in the Parish of Cornwood aforesaid formerly in the Tenure or Possession of one Margaret Shepheard and John Shepheard the Grandfather of him the Said Nicholas Shepheard or one of them Afterwards of Nicholas Shepheard Father of the Said Nicholas Shepheard…”

The Nicholas Shepheard named as a party to the agreement was my 4^th great-grandfather. Parish records are clear that he was born in 1716 and died in 1786 and was my direct ancestor. It is equally clear that his father was also Nicholas Shepheard, born around 1675 and died in 1756. His burial record confirms the year of his death. His birth year cannot be entirely defined as the parish records older than 1685 were destroyed in a fire that year. He appears to be the individual named in a 1685 legal case involving a fraudulent will, at which time he was a minor child.

Margaret Shepheard was the widow of my 8^th great-grandfather, another Nicholas Shepheard. They had sons John, Nicholas, Samson, Thomas and William. The lease document just obtained states that it was John who was the direct ancestor.

Serendipity smiled on me again.

Through circumstance and a new look at certain lands in Cornwood parish, I can now be confident that my Shepheard line is better defined.

I would also note that the spelling of our surname has been constant since at least the early 17^th century, notwithstanding that other members of the family have changed their names on occasion over the decades.

The next challenge is to discover who John’s wife was. There are some possibilities as recorded in the parish registers: one being a Cathren Shipperd [sic] buried in 1685. By all accounts John died before the “fire” year of 1685 and was thus certainly married before that time as well. We do have his baptism record as shown on the Bishops Transcripts for Cornwood as being 20 June 1633.

The Notts or Woodburn property stayed in the family until 1806 when it was sold by my 4^th great-grandfather, Nicholas Shepheard (yes, another one!). The documents demonstrate that the lands, along with other properties at Rooke, Cornwood (the “family estate”) were in possession of family members for likely at least 200 years. In the case of Rooke it was over 300 years.

This example does show the importance of land records and wills, especially when BMD data is not available. These types of old documents often have information about lineage, at times when title records were not kept.

It also shows that persistence, patience and luck are important in reconstructing family histories.