My Forest of Family Trees

 I often suggest to fellow Genies that they have a "Forest of Family Trees." Why stop at one? Each of my trees serves a slightly different purose. 

Last week when I was about to host a Friday Hangout with the SAG I created a graphical representation of my forest of family trees in Excel. It was a pedestrian but useful document. I uploaded the diagram to ChatGPT and asked this of  the wizards there :

"For my hosting of the SAG Hangout "Where's your Tree" tomorrow I am wondering if you can create a landscape postcard image of my "Forest of Family Trees". On the attached rough diagram I have listed the places where my family trees live. Below each of these products I have noted how I use them. Through using these avenues I aim to record, preserve, share and futureproof my family's data so that is available for generations to come. It would be great if the image could reflect the design of the attached that you designed for me yesterday."

In about two minutes I was rewarded with an image that suited my purpose perfectly.

Having the diagram kept me on track as I discussed my forest. I hoped it helped those present to reflect on their trees. 

I had also enlisted ChatGPT's help with a graphic to advertise the event. My purpose being to assist those at the Hangout with ideas for discussing their trees. 

On reviewing the diagram I realised that I neglected books as a way to preserve a family tree. Perhaps that demonstrates my focus on 21st century tools. 

All is not lost. In next week's Friday Hangout  with the SAG my focus in "All things Bookish" is on BOOKS.

Strengthening the Tree

Lately I have moved my focus from attending genealogy events to working on my tree. While I love learning from and connecting with fellow genies I realise that my research has suffered. I want to leave behind a full and well-sourced tree for future generations so I am concentrating on my research.

 
Since the advent of DNA I have recognised the value of building trees that not only go back in time but trees that go sideways and down to current generations. To assist in identifying matches one needs a robust DNA friendly tree. My hope is that I will eventually be able to solve many mysteries from my treeless DNA matches.

While I had a lot of distant cousins in my tree I had little information apart from their names. Recently I've been killing off and burying relatives and concentrating on finding sources for these events. In the past week I have found death and burial details from a range of sources for over 300 relatives. Of course there are some pesky people that just don't want to die. If I can't kill them off I make notes on their profiles indicating where I have searched. 

My main database is housed on an instance of Family Historian software on my laptop. From time to time, but not as often as I should, I export a gedcom to my website that uses TNG software and is hosted by Simply Hosting . I was shocked to find this evening that it is a year since I uploaded an update potentially missing out on being found by distant cousins.

Earlier today I tried to do the update and found that I was unable to log in to my web host. In a very short time Simply Hosting came to my rescue and I now my website is up to date. 

I realise that it needs a design overhaul but, as it is a workhorse not a show pony, I would rather concentrate on content. 

You can visit my website here: https://www.geniaus.net/

Trove Tuesday - Family Trees

 A couple of these snippets would not be deemed politically correct these days!

1942 'FAMILY TREE', Molong Express and Western District Advertiser (NSW : 1887 - 1954), 21 February, p. 16. , viewed 29 Dec 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article140101792

1948 'FAMILY TREE', Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 - 1954), 8 February, p. 17. (Sporting Section), viewed 29 Dec 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article59461279

1953 'FAMILY TREE', The World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), 24 January, p. 29. , viewed 29 Dec 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131642636

1938 'FAMILY TREE', The Maitland Daily Mercury (NSW : 1894 - 1939), 13 June, p. 2. , viewed 29 Dec 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131271493

An Album of Trees

In preCovid days Mr GeniAus and I did quite a bit of globetrotting. I took thousands of photographs that included many images of trees, one species of which I am particularly fond is the family tree.

Following are a few of those snaps.

Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

Brac Castle, Romania

Tauranga, New Zealand

Museum, Helsinki, Finland

Amakhala Lodge, South Africa

Museum, Adelaide, Australia

Chartwell, England

Penang, Malaysia

Trove Tuesday - A New Fad

 Looks like this new fad from 1896 has endured!

1896 'The Family Tree Fad.', The Western Champion and General Advertiser for the Central-Western Districts (Barcaldine, Qld. : 1892 - 1922), 4 February, p. 16. , viewed 29 Dec 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article79763036

Jill's Jigsaw

Mr GeniAus and I are hoarders. Back in 2014 I even started writing about my efforts to offload stuff  in Diary of a decrapifier.

When we moved house two years ago we thought that we had tossed out a lot of stuff prior to the big move but we didn't! Two years down the track we still have a garage that is full of cartons and  odd bits of furniture. Over the past few days we have stepped up our efforts to claim the garage for our cars.

As well as attending to the big stuff I have been looking at my tech gear. We took a hammer to our museum of laptops' harddrives earlier in the year. Gone tonight are a few old thumb drives of 128 and 256 megabytes together with old cables, adaptors and chargers. I am now looking at old external hard drives (and taking a trip down memory lane) and copying files I want to keep (nearly everything) onto my 8TB external Hard Drive. This has taken me ages as I look at the websites I built in the late nineties and early this century.

One gem I found was Jill's Jigsaw, my first family history related site that I built around 2000 using Adobe Dreamweaver. I had a narrative page each for some of my earliest ancestors and spreadsheets that listed all ancestors and their families. I kept this up until I created the GeniAus family site using TNG in 2009. It is so much easier to look after my current site than Jill's Jigsaw.

It was gratifying to find that all of the links on the site still worked when I fired it up in Chrome.

Do you still have a copy of your first attempt at an online tree?

What is Twiggli?

I'm a bit ho, hum about printed out family trees stuck on walls. I think most of them are dull and boring! I guess I'm more of a digital girl.

After visiting Twiggli's stand at THE Genealogy Show in Birmingham recently I changed my mind. I loved the family tree posters they had on display at THE Show and thought that they may even appeal to my grandchildren.

The Twiggli stand at THE Genealogy Show 2019

All you need to produce a Twiggli tree is a gedcom file which you can upload to their website to produce a poster. You can see what the poster looks like for no cost (it will be watermarked so won't be good for printing),  and edit away until you have something that appeals. For just 10GBP you can buy and download a non-watermarked file that you can take to your favourite printer (like Officeworks in Australia) for printing.

I was so pleased to see a product that would be accessible to my Australian genimates at a Genealogy event in England

Any questions? Go to the FAQ page on the Twiggli site.

A Kiwi Tree

On a recent visit to The Elms Mission House in Tauranga, New Zealand I came across this family tree.

There were also some family portraits on display at the property.

Should you find yourself near Tauranga I can recommend a visit to this well-maintained property that offers interesting guided tours.

Your Tree Needs Nurturing

Just as the plants in our garden need TLC so do our online family trees.

A benefit of online family trees is that they are not static documents like printed genealogies that cannot easily be edited. Online trees are dynamic documents that can be easily added to, corrected and maintained. As I come across Australian family trees on the web I add them to my list of FamilySites on my Delicious account.

How disappointing it is to find trees that were last updated a number of years ago, This morning I found a distant cousin mentioned in an online tree that was last updated in 2005!  Some of the trees I have bookmarked have not been updated for nearly ten years.

I find it hard to believe that once researchers publish their tree on the web they consider it a completed task. Families trees keep growing. As new resources are discovered, records digitised, children born, ancestors pass away and cousins appear from nowhere we are presented with new information to add to our trees. We should nurture our trees.

I try to update my online tree Geniaus Family Tree every fortnight or whenever someone shares a good chunk of information with me, I feel I owe it to those who share with me to publish their offerings promptly. I am not suggesting that everyone should update as often as I do but a couple of times per year or whenever a number of significant changes are made would be reasonable.

By adding corrections and additions to our trees we raise our chances of making new connections with other interested parties.

Trees that are nurtured will bear fruit.

8000 leaves on the tree

I just can't help growing my family tree! Nice people like Andrew R and Fairlie O who contacted me this week have shared more information with me that I just have to add. The snippets that these people give me provide clues to find other descendants who share my ancestors and so it goes on growing.....

My recent trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City found me a whole new line of Kealy cousins from Ireland and details of a few younguns in the Pusell line here in Australia. Sadly I discovered that the Gowans line that had moved to New York around 1860 had died out, I had been hoping to find living members of the Gowans family there.

My usual practice is to upload additions and amendments to my family site every couple of weeks but due to my overseas trip followed by forgetting the admin password for my website means that I had not done this task since January.

Last night I updated my site with details of new people, additional info on quite a few and some additional sources for others.  If you happen to be one of my distant cousins you may wish to visit and see what I have found.