Picture this

For many of the lucky ones,Thanksgiving means a family gathering -- I hope you had a good visit and perhaps gleaned a few nuggets of genealogical information from those aunts and uncles and cousins (and perhaps passed some on to nieces and nephews).

And now it is time to begin thinking about Christmas. Of course some smart people have been planning ahead and are just about ready to mail out their Christmas cards and notes. Let’s not think about those over-achievers right now.

My brother and two of my children have December birthdays as well, so it is a serious gift-giving month for me.

In all the flurry of scanning family photos in the past few months, with an eye to making CDs for safekeeping, it occurred to me that it would be wise to include a chart of some sort, showing the connections among these pictured individuals. Otherwise, a cabinet photo of Lucy and Lillian as children, though quite charming, might not mean much. This thought led to my exploration of the Reunion (Macintosh) program’s chart-making capabilities. (Most genealogical programs today, for Mac or PC, have a similar feature.)

There is no better way to learn than by doing! I decided on a four-generation pedigree chart because that will fit on a single standard sheet of paper in landscape mode. Also, in my family this goes back into the 19th century and I have photos for most of these folks.The possibilities and options are many, but I tried to keep it fairly simple.

For my brother I did a chart showing both our parents and their ancestors, starting with him.For my children I am doing a chart showing their dad’s ancestors, and another one for mine. (Don't tell them.)

This, of course, does not cover all the family photos I have, but a printed copy can accompany the CD, and perhaps more detailed explanations can be included to connect the rest of the group. Or, I can make additional charts showing some individual families and all their children.

Since I was involved in all this in a big way, it seemed logical to do a simple slideshow of pictures for my son’s birthday, beginning with his birth announcement and coming up to the present day, with most of them coming from his childhood. The Mac’s iPhoto feature makes slide show production pretty easy, and there are many ways to fancy it up. The trick is to know when to stop!

So, while I have not been doing much research lately, I am still involved in family history!

[The young lad pictured above is my father, Howard Hamilton Cain, and was taken around 1898)

-

Onward and upward -- maybe

Technological developments in the last decade have been truly overwhelming, don’t you agree? PC or Mac? Windows, Macintosh OS, or Linux? Personal Ancestral File, Family Tree Maker, Reunion or ... With so many options to consider, and choices to make, paralysis sets in.

While selecting the computer and its standard operating system narrows the field, there are still many genealogy programs to choose from, and, once connected to the Internet, we are faced with a whole new set of decisions. Free data or subscription(s)? USGenWeb, the ubiquitous Ancestry.com, or Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness? Not mutually exclusive choices, but still, a lot to choose from.

All this leads to my own recent ventures into Apple land, with the purchase of a MacBook and one of the handful of Mac-available genealogy programs, Reunion. It wasn’t difficult to move my data from Personal Ancestral File on the old PC, though, as I expected, the few photos attached to individual records were left behind.

So, that began a true test of patience and skills. I have hundreds of photos in Google’s free Picasa program -- easy to use and quite adequate for my amateur needs. These include not only pictures from my digital camera, but also many portraits of family members which I had scanned in from time to time.

Picasa is not compatible with the Mac operating system, which comes with its own photo management program, iPhoto. But neither iPhoto nor Reunion has a printed manual. So it was truly trial and error, and finally a purchase of David Pogue’s “Missing Manual” for iPhoto ’08 -- a lifesaver. (I lose patience with most online “help” applications.)

First, I copied the family portraits from the PC’s Picasa program onto a flash drive -- these thumb-size devices that plug into a USB port can hold as much or more data than a CD and work better for my setup. From there it was a simple matter to put the little stick in the laptop’s USB port and move the pictures to the iPhoto “library.” (One of the challenges of moving from PC to Mac programs is the difference in terminology.)

The big learning effort came when I wanted to select a particular portrait to accompany an individual’s record in the Reunion program. Trial and error, trial and error. To me, “multimedia” means movies and music, not still pictures. And “add item” (which I found in a minuscule box at the bottom of the screen in the Multimedia display) doesn’t seem too intuitive. But ... after some fiddling around, trying this and that, I learned how to manage it, not only adding selected pictures, but adjusting their size. Triumph at last.

The young lady pictured above, by the way, is my paternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Howard. The photograph was labelled Lebanon, Ohio, so I believe it was taken around the time she graduated from college there, in 1876.

It's that time of year – so much holiday hustle and bustle – parties, musical events, getting in touch with friends, and -- dare I say it -- shopping. Sort of puts genealogical research on the back burner -- temporarily.

If you are going to be seeing family members, do think ahead of some questions to ask. Not just the obvious ones, but some that will give your family history more depth. These are good conversation-starters, and will often elicit reminiscences about events you had never heard of. For example: What was your school like? Do you remember your first day? Any favorite teachers? Why? Do you know what became of any of your classmates? What did you do for summer vacation? Who was your favorite relative? [You might want to record you own answers to these same questions sometime.]

If there are aunts, uncles or cousins around, ask each one about own his/her own recollections. Often siblings will have quite different views of the same piece of family history. Were there weddings? Who attended, and what were the highlights? Are there skeletons someone may now be willing to bring out into the light? Something that seemed scandalous at the time may turn out to be pretty tame by today's standards, but still plenty interesting.

You will probably find that just one or two queries, showing your genuine interest, will get the ball rolling. Then, LISTEN. How many times have we all expressed our regrets for not having listened to our older kin when we had the chance? This may be your last chance among those still here (and if it's not, you can come back for more). You have the opportunity to glean some nuggets of family lore, and those offering it will have the pleasure of reminiscing for an appreciative audience.

*******

Much time spent on getting used to the new Mac laptop. As I reported earlier, it was a snap to transfer genealogical data from my bare-bones Personal Ancestral File program (PAF) on the PC to Mac's Reunion program on the laptop. Starting with a small file I had set up for so-far-unrelated lines, I followed the recommendation first to save it as a GEDCOM file to my PC's hard drive, then burn that to a compact disc. Moving the CD to the new laptop, I was able to retrieve the data and Reunion knew just how to handle it. I never fail to be amazed (and delighted) when these things actually work!

Next, I decided to use PAF's "Focus" feature to pick out a family line which, though part of my big main file, is really separate from my own ancestry. (My great-grandmother's first husband's quite remarkable family) It, too, succeeded. Oh joy.

The laptop works beautifully at the local library, allowing wireless access to Ancestry.com without time restrictions. [According to the recent Sonoma County Library newsletter, History and Genealogy Librarian Tony Hoskins is available for private tutorials on how to make the best use of Ancestry.com. These are held in Santa Rosa, and may be scheduled by calling 545-0831, ext. 562.]

Enjoy your holidays!

PC to Mac

Wild times on the home front.

I have finally acquired a new Mac laptop and am faced with the need to learn many new procedures. The commands may be intuitive, but it is still a challenge to embed them in the old brain. And there are many tips and tricks which only another Mac user can explain – fortunately I have several family members with Macs who are only too happy to show me the ropes.

I also bought a copy of Reunion 9, the Mac genealogy program, and had no trouble installing it. The next step was to transfer a copy of my Personal Ancestral File data to the Mac via GEDCOM. To do a test run, I chose a small file. It is called CainOther because it consists of family lines which I have not yet been able to connect to mine. There is little documentation (another good reason to keep it separate), and fewer than a hundred individuals, so it was a good choice for attempting this initial transfer. The steps were easy to follow, and I was delighted to see it make the transfer with no apparent glitches. Even the notes, that most important field, came through.

(GEDCOM, as you probably know, is the widely-accepted protocol for transferring genealogical data from one computer program to another. A succinct description can be found in the online Wikipedia. Information in this format can be retrieved from websites or other researchers, and compared with one's own – though I would NEVER NEVER accept the option to simply merge someone else's data with my own. Better to load it into a separate file, and work from there.)

The Reunion displays are quite different from Personal Ancestral File, and it will take a while to find my way around the various screens, but so far I am satisfied with the results.

My PC desktop computer, about 4 years old now, is still useful for most purposes, but I wanted a working laptop for its portability. It's far easier, on the road, to check a surname in a computer than to leaf through binders full of family group sheets! Less bulky, too.

I am planning to attend the Utah Genealogical Association Seminar in Salt Lake City in January, and will certainly put the computer to good use there!