A Christmas Tree

Last year my Canadian genimate, Lorine, created a Christmas Tree.  At this time of year it's a nifty way of visualising one's ancestors.

I've copied Lorine's idea and made a Christmas tree similar to hers. I don't know how Lorine created her tree but I did mine in an Excel spreadsheet. I was going to be really clever and have each layer of the tree represent one generation but that got too hard in the short time I had so my ancestors' surnames are in no particular order.

As I look at my Christmas tree I think of those who have gone before me.

GeniAus' Ancestors

How about joining me in creating a Christmas Tree?

Ancestors by place of birth

My genimate, J Paul Hawthorne, posted a cool pedigree chart he had done in Excel on Facebook several hours ago and since that time my Facebook stream has been overtaken with genies following Paul's lead.

Here is my five generation pedigree chart by place of birth of my ancestors.

I was wondering how to set this up in Excel when Judy G Russell posted these instructions on Facebook " I just copied the format using Excel. First cell is rows 11-21, then five rows up and down for column 2, 3 rows up and down for column 3 and one up and down each for columns 4 and 5." With Judy's instructions compiling the list was a piece of cake.

Thanks Paul and Judy - it was a fun activity.

Geneabloggers - Who and Where are you?

I love a spreadsheet. I use Excel and Google sheets for all manner of geneatasks. On one of my Google sheets I keep a record of the blogs I have included in my GeniAus' Gems or GAGs posts. I have columns for Date, Blogger Name, Blog Title, Post URL, Country and Blog type.

You wouldn't believe the trouble I sometimes have finding information to record in the name and country fields. I realise that some geneabloggers are shy and concerned about security but you can  afford to give a little information away about yourself.

You don't have to go overboard. On your About Me page or Widget you can simply call yourself Sue from Sydney, Wilma from Wyoming or John from Jersey. This small amount of information will give readers some context when they read your post and should not put you at risk of a major cyber attack. If you are a risk taker you might even add a little more biographical information that does not lead a robber to your door.  Alternatively you can tell a little about yourself in the subtitle of your blog, I describe myself there as "an amateur Australian genealogist who enjoys collaborating via sociall media".

Printed books usually display the author's name and give a bit of biographical information. Let's make sure we do this for our blogs.

Today I looked at the About Me page of a "Professional Genealogist" in which she wrote glowingly of her skills. I had to do some major sleuthing to find out what country she was situated in, from the bias in her blog posts I guess it must be the US. Also amazing was that she did not mention about her areas of expertise. Duh!

Another About Me was from a a genealogy author who is a nameless blogger. Her About Me page had links to her books on Amazon so I had to go there to find her identity. Duh!

This little spreadsheet exercise sent me running back to my blogs to make sure that I was easily identifiable. On this blog I have an About Me widget that directs the reader to my Google+ profile and a Contact page that has my name. Phew!

Have you checked your About Me information recently?

Spreadsheets

In recent weeks there has been a lot of discussion around spreadsheets with DearMyrtle hosting a couple of Hangouts on the subject and other bloggers writing posts.

I am a bit of a spreadsheetaholic and use either Excel or a Google Sheets every day to organise my personal life and for some genealogy applications. I was however surprised when I saw some people using spreadsheets for things that my genealogy program does.

One of the main views on Family Historian, the genealogy software database I use,  looks just like a spreadsheet with data displayed in colums each one of which one can sort. One is able to add or remove columns from this display to suit one's needs, any field in the database can be added as a column.

At present these are the colums I have in my display:
Name, Record ID, Sex, Living, Dates, Birth Place, Death Date, Burial Place, Relationship to Root (me), Updated.

If I want to see who is buried in a particular cemetery prior to a geneajourney I just sort by that column by clicking on the column header. To see those entries I haven't updated for a while I can sort on the Updated column. Sorting by the Relationship to Root Column allows me to cluster all my closest relatives together.

 I often add or delete columns when I am after particular information. If I wanted to find all the School teachers or Plumbers in my list I could add an occupation column and osrt on that, If I wanted to find all the Methodists I could add the Religion column and sort by that.

This display is also very useful for identifying where gaps appear in one's data, white spaces (and I have lots of them) indicate that work needs to be done.

So because of this feature in Family Historian I don't need to use external spreadsheets as much as I would if I was using another software package.

The Book of Me - Prompt 6 - Journals and Diaries

This week Julie Goucher of Angler's Rest asked us to respond to the following prompt in The Book of Me, Written by You activity.

The prompt for week 6 is Journals and Diaries

Do you keep a journal or diary?

How far back do they go? What do you record?

Where do you keep them?

Do you always buy the same one or vary them?

Have you inherited any?

Do you intend to pass along your journals or destroy them?

Pictures

Do you have a favourite?

What do you use to write with – biro, pencil, ink or fountain pen?

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This post is relatively easy for me as I blogged on this topic in 2010 in a post titled Recording my life's stories. I am pasting that post below and making additional comments in italics.

Do you keep a diary?

I have a couple of shelves of hard copy diaries in my garage. (now in my study). There are work diaries and personal diaries. I started recording a personal diary around 1980 but missed a couple of years in the eighties.

Around eighteen (21 ) years ago when I first acquired a PDA I decided to move to an online diary as I realised that I could move entries from my PDA into a file on my computer, enhance these with anecdotes and keep them as a diary. In those early days there weren't many pieces of  journalling software around and I don't think blogs were around either. I decided to keep my diary in a simple spreadsheet. Today it is still in that spreadsheet and still using the headings I set up all those years ago

Diary Headings

It's not meant to be pretty just functional.

I started by importing all of my PDA calendar entries into the spreadsheet then I  transcribed all of my diary entries; these triggered memories so I was able to add more detail to the dry dates and facts. Once this was completed I was on a roll. I then added entries for events prior to the days when I kept a diary. I added dates and memories of family events, looked at my dated photographs and recorded the stories these told me. My kids let me look at their old school diaries and calendars; these provided more dates and memory prompts. I have since gone through some (most) of our old credit card bills (and cheque butts) and added details of important purchases.





From time to time family members make a comment about an event in the past and their recollections of it.  I note these on either a scrap of paper or a note in my phone (I mostly use Evernote now) and put them in the diary as time permits recording the source of the comment. I always record my sources, not in a formal academic sense but with labels like Aunt May, 1983 school diary, Letter from Fred to Sue, Current, Photo etc.






When my Dad passed away I discovered where my hoarding genes came from. He had kept every receipt from every purchase he had made. I added these and the memories I have related to these purchases: our first refrigerator, our first radiogram, our first television, holiday dates. One of my dear friends had saved all the postcards I had sent to her, when she knew that her days were numbered she gave these back to me. I have added all of the text to the diary; these entries demonstrate in my words the awe and excitement I had when visiting distant lands. I have since acquired the postcards I have sent to my parents and inlaws and some from other family members, these too have been transcribed.



I cannot remember when all my friends got married or had their 21sts or when their kids were christened but I have vivid memories of some of these events. Whenever I come across someone whose wedding I attended I ask when they got married and add this to the diary. I then record my memories of the event. A friend lent me his collection of newsletters from our Church youth group, I have added details of the outings we had during these years. 





As technology has developed I have added entries from other sources. My daughter's emails from boarding school tell of the fun times she was having. My Facebook wall posts (and tweets) are wonderful sources of my thoughts and activities at a particular point in time. Each month I import my outlook calendar into the diary.

Whenever I travel I record my doings on a spreadsheet on my smartphone as I go and import this into the main document on my return. As I would like to access OurDiary from multiple devices I tried using a Google Drive spreadsheet but it was very sluggish and crashed repeatedly so I am still using Excel. When I plan my travel I start a Google spreadsheet using the same columns as OurDiary, as I travel I add to this and it becomes my travel diary that I can access from multiple devices and offline as well. When I return home I copy the entries into OurDiary.



The diary now sits in a folder called OurDiary (backed up weekly) into which I paste scanned images of tickets, invitations, programs etc. I hyperlink to these from the Excel spreadsheet. I also add hyperlinks to information about people, places and events. I once started to transcribe old letters and didn't get far but now I scan and hyperlink them.



What started out as a simple spreadsheet has now grown into a multimedia resource that spans my lifetime. This diary is much richer than a simple paper based diary as it combines information from a range of sources to give a picture of our family and work life. When I finish digitising my photos I will add selected ones into the folder. Whether it will stay in Excel or migrate to some other product I don't know.




Hopefully some of my descendants will be interested in our family life and gain enjoyment and enlightenment from Our Diary.