GenealogyClassBlog

I received an email from Footnote today with an update on their new situation. Here is the text of the email:

Several weeks ago Footnote.com (as part of iArchives) agreed to be acquired by Ancestry.com and that transaction has officially closed today. As we join forces with Ancestry.com there is a huge opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths and move even faster toward our goals. You may be curious about how this deal effects members of Footnote.com? The plan is to continue to run Footnote.com the way we have always run Footnote.com — continuing to do what we believe is best for our customers, our business and our brand.

Now that the deal is officially closed we are excited to leverage some of Ancestry.com’s resources and expertise to take Footnote.com to the next level. It has been exciting to see Footnote.com grow over the past 4 years. Footnote.com started with only 5 million historical documents and today we have nearly 70 million searchable documents, over 1 million members, nearly 100,000 Footnote Pages, and over half million annotations added. We couldn’t have done it without our members and the great team at Footnote.com and we are excited for Ancestry.com’s support in the next chapter.

I am glad to hear that Footnote.com will stay the same for now and will have the resources of the larger organization to make it even better. We talked about Footnote in class yesterday — and found Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 U.S. Federal Census image. Remember that Footnote.com has some historical documents that are free to view, and that library cardholders at the Tulsa City-County Library have access to Footnote.com at the Genealogy Center. To take a look at Footnote.com, visit www.footnote.com.

Boston Avenue Church

It’s time again for the School of Continuing Education at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church. My five-week genealogy classes will move from their usual Tuesday evenings to Wednesday mornings, from 9:30 to 10:30 and from 10:45 to 11:45. Registration for the school is $12.00, and includes all of the classes you can take for that same price. Other classes are listed in the brochure or in the church newspaper, available at BostonAvenue.org.

Genealogy classes are in two different series — one to learn the basics and the other to pick up particular topics in a lecture format. All five of these are programs that I have presented locally, including two that I presented at the 2009 Federation of Genealogical Societies National Conference. Here are the specific titles:

GENEALOGY:  FAMILY HISTORY BASICS  9:30 – 10:30 am

Oct 6 – Important First Steps
Oct 13 – The Census
Oct 20 – The Family History Library
Oct 27 – Court, Land & Military Records
Nov 3 – Tour of Internet Resources

FIVE GENEALOGY TALKS  10:45 – 11:45 am

Oct 6 – How Do You Know? Understanding Evidence and Citing Your Sources
Oct 13 – How to Be a Power Hitter: Improve Your Online Searching Skills
Oct 20 – What’s New at FamilySearch®?
Oct 27 – Oklahoma Settlement:  Territorial Homestead and Allotment Records
Nov 3 – Deutsche Vorfahren:  German Ancestors

For more information call Boston Avenue at 918-583-5181 or visit the church’s web site at www.bostonavenue.org/newspaper.shtml and download the newspaper from 24 September 2010.

Dick Eastman has come through for those of us with Macs. See his June 21 listing of thirteen genealogy software programs for Macintosh, as well as comments from his readers.

Each of the listings include a brief description, the producer, distinctive features or attributes, the selling price, and the link to the producer’s website, just as he did in his June 17 listing of twelve genealogy software programs for Windows (see my earlier post).

The list of Macintosh programs includes:

• Family Tree Maker Mac 2010
• GEDitCOM II
• GenealogyPro
• GenScribe
• GRAMPS
• Heredis
• iFamily for Leopard
• MacFamilyTree
• MyBlood
• ohmiGene
• Osk
• Personal Ancestry Writer II
• Reunion

Dick also describes how Macintosh owners can install Windows onto their Macs, using Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, or VirtualBox, and run Windows genealogy software programs on Macs, too.

As in his June 17 blog post, each of the listings includes a brief description, the producer, distinctive features or attributes, the selling price, and the link to the producer’s website. Prices range from free to $90, but the price for the not-yet-released Family Tree Maker for Mac is not yet known.

Most of my students know that I don’t use Windows at home. Mine is primarily a Macintosh household. To keep track of various genealogy research, from personal to client work, I use Reunion, which is only available for the Macintosh. I do have a dream to be able to spend hours trying out various genealogy software packages so that I can answer questions and possibly make recommendations about particular genealogy software packages. But, the amount of time spent on each different software program would be considerable and I just do not have that kind of time.

There aren’t too many people that would have that opportunity, or who would bother to take the time, but Richard Eastman does. He keeps his eye out for new developments and reviews new products and upgraded versions in his online newsletter. In his June 17 Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, he provided a list of twelve genealogy software programs for Windows. Each of the listings includes a brief description, the producer, distinctive features or attributes, the selling price, and the link to the producer’s website. To introduce the list, Dick says,

“The following is a list of all the more popular genealogy programs that I know of that are actively being marketed for Windows users in North Americas. In fact, more than one hundred genealogy programs have been offered to Windows users over the years and a handful of them are still available for purchase today. However, not all of them are being actively developed and supported. For this list, I will focus only on the products that are current and still have developers writing updates, bug fixes, and new releases.”

The list includes, in alphabetical order:

Ancestral Quest
Branches
Brothers Keeper
Family Historian
Family Tree Builder
Family Tree Maker
GRAMPS
Legacy Family Tree
The Master Genealogist
My Blood
Osk
Roots Magic and Roots Magic Essentials

Dick also writes,

“The above is NOT a complete list of all Windows genealogy programs. A complete list would fill perhaps 30 or 40 pages! Instead, the above is a list of the more popular Windows genealogy programs sold in North America. Several of them are produced in other countries, however.”

In a few cases, Dick has provided links to interviews with the developers of the programs. A few of the above programs are also available for Macintosh and/or Linux.

Dick is a great source of this kind of information, because he actually buys and tests out genealogy programs on his PCs and on his Macs. Visit, or better yet subscribe to http://blog.eogn.com to receive a daily email newsletter. Read what Dick has to say about genealogy software, websites, events, television shows, or about related equipment (from cameras to the iPad). To find earlier articles, use the search box on his site (search for the word, “Macintosh,” for example), or click one of the category links in the list on the right-hand side of any of his web pages.

I used this post to see whether I would be able to put up a link to a map I had made with Google Maps. The map is one I created a year ago as I was planning my first trip to Europe. I used the markers to keep track of the places as I located them. Berwangen is the small town that I wanted to visit. It was the home of my great-great-grandfather, Johan Georg Mayer before he came to the United States in 1853. He was christened in the church there in 1826.

View Germany in a larger map

After posting, I tried editing my Google Map by adding a red place marker for Ittlingen, which I just last week learned was the home of one of Kathy Huber’s German ancestors. Kathy Huber is the Genealogy Librarian at the Genealogy Center in Tulsa. I still can’t believe how close her little German town was to my little German town.

As for my test — the red place marker now appears on the posted map, so the above link to the “Germany” map will take you to the latest version of the Germany map, even as I make changes to it in the future. Pretty cool.