DearREADERS, My good neighbor and friend, Van, just published a marvelous personal history following the death of his darling wife. Chapters include stories and pictures from his childhood, university studies, courtship, marriage, work history, church mission, grandchildren, and family trips. Sprinkled in are “words of wisdom” as June calls such personal insights. This got me to thinking. There’s a big difference between one’s personal history and a compiled genealogy. PERSONAL HISTORY A personal history, like the one my friend just published, focuses on one’s life and immediate fami ..read more

Mondays with Myrtwith CC, 90 minutes, recurring most Mondays until 28 May 2022. Registration link:   https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-XHFjdHrTwGW4aejM7pCww Zoom Webinars provide a confirmation email, and three reminder emails - 1 week, 1 day and 1 hour before the scheduled broadcast. CensusGenie with CC, 60 minutes, various Wednesday evenings at 9pm Eastern, leading up to the opening of the 1950 US federal census records in April 2022. See https://blog.dearmyrtle.com/p/censusgenie.html for compendium of previous meetings and upcoming schedule. Zoom Meeting pro ..read more

DearREADERS, We advertised this WACKY Wednesday by saying we'd "share tricks of the trade." As such we dove quickly into demos and discussions about: what to do if you don't have MS Excel and someone sends you a file to review. general orientation to Google Drive uploading the file to Google Drive copy & paste a citation form to your document using Snagit running all eligible ancestors through one database at a time, so it's the same citation, just change the fill-in-the-blank parts The SCARY part - Myrt wanted to import an entire Google Sheet, not just one tab into an existing Google ..read more

DearREADERS, In which we discuss a  reaction to Ancestry.com's change in TOS, and how after removing one's previously uploaded photos gives you a chance to see who has copied the photo to their trees, because it shows up as a hint. Now let's get communicating with those here-to-fore unknown cousins! Are people becoming more aware of WikiTree? Hilary reports an uptick in membership. Megan Smolenyak's father's WWI map of France, with notations about where he was stationed.  https://www.facebook.com/smolenyak/posts/10221895254104655 Federation of Family History Societies (UK)&nbs ..read more

 Strategies for overcoming challenges posed by Ancestry's August 2021 TOS changes DearREADERS, Regarding Ancestry's new Terms of Service dated 3 Aug 2021, and the overnight "clarification" from Ancestry Corporate, DearMYRTLE and Cousin Russ have devised strategies for the following users. Users of Ancestry Member Trees (AMT) only Users with a desktop genealogy software, that does not sync to AMTs Users of RootsMagic desktop software that can TreeShare to/from AMTs Users of Family Tree Maker 2019 desktop software that can FamilySync to/from AMTs We've been working almost non-stop to c ..read more

DearREADERS, Ol' Myrt here just loves it when a plan comes together! Today's groundbreaking news about the release of GEDCOM 7.0 came within minutes of starting today's webinar, thanks to Tony Proctor, a member of the FamilySearch/GEDCOM development team. SELECTED CHAT 10:02:17 From  Cyndy Bray  to  Everyone: Good morning from Newman California 10:02:28 From  Frank Jatzek  to  Everyone: Linda: 80 for me at the moment 10:02:36 From  Lisa  to  Everyone: Hello from Mansfield, Texas! 10:02:52 From  Judy Sova  to  Everyone ..read more

DearREADERS, WHY search by location?Curious genealogists won't want to wait until the census images are fully indexed to find info about their ancestors. It took us six months to index the 1940, and the census bureau explains the 1950 has about 20 million additional names. YIKES! At this meeting, we learned more about peculiarities of the 1950 census and how the Steve Morse One-Step website can assist us with our locality search. My notes include: "Page 71" is reserved for those missed during the first round of enumerations. Even if an ED (enumeration district) has only 5 pages, "Page ..read more

DearREADERS, Today within minutes of Tony Proctor's arrival to Mondays with Myrt, he received notification that GEDCOM 7.0 has been released. See: https://gedcom.io/ GEDCOM is a generic file format that can be employed to export and import genealogy data between genealogy programs and websites. Louis Kessler and Tony discussed some of the welcome improvements included in this open source software designed to facilitate data communication between various genealogy software programs and websites. A breakthrough in technology for genealogists who wish to share all data, images AND sou ..read more

DearREADERS, We had the distinct privilege of meeting with Fr. Ivan Delic from Belgrade, Serbia in a 3-part series of webinars to discuss Serbian genealogical research. We thank him for sharing his expertise. We also acknowledge Carol Petranak's efforts in this regard. Part 1 Birth Recordshttps://youtu.be/gx10OMsWL-g Part 2 Marriage & Death Traditions and Recordshttps://youtu.be/uUJRJbxinIU Part 3 -Archiveshttps://youtu.be/iQ2GVFiZPrc Handout: https://tinyurl.com/SerbiaGenealogy Serbia Genealogy Research YouTube Playlist located here: https://tinyurl.com/SerbiaGen If you value t ..read more

DearREADERS, Attendees of tonight's WACKY Wednesday observed how their society may archive public recordings of Zoom Webinar and Zoom Meetings using YouTube's free space. While the recording is still being rendered, I do have the link to the checklist we created during the show. You'll find it here: https://tinyurl.com/4rkamsdy YES, I will update this blog post to include the recording as soon as it is rendered by Zoom, and then uploaded to YouTube.   [Video to be added shortly.] If you value the interactive genealogy and journaling education provided in De ..read more