Bridge To Yesterday

Posted this morning to the Legacy Users Group was the following message from Susan Daily, who just published her first family history book. Although it contains specifics of using the Legacy www.legacyfamilytree.com software, similar results could be achieved with a number of different genealogy software programs. I hope this detailed description of her process will inspire you to put some of YOUR research into an accessible form.  

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I just received from the printer two copies of the paperback version of my first published family history book. I would like to encourage those of you who have been researching forever like me to think about getting it into book format, even if it is for your own enjoyment. (I am an amateur genealogist.)

This is how I did it. I started with a family story that I discovered had a flaw. So that made me want to learn more about where this person came from, and who his people were. I thought that if I traced all of his descendants I might meet someone who had reached further back up the tree than I did. Thus led to two years of fairly intensive research into all the family members that descended from this person’s great grandfather. The result to date is 526 descendants (including adoptees) in eight generations. (And no, I never did meet another genealogist.)

Using Legacy, I entered all the data as I found it, sourcing it as I went along. I attached pictures to people or events at their normal size for the most part (being too lazy to resize, but this worked out in the RTF file).

At some point I had to stop entering data and export into a document to begin my book. This is a hard decision to make, but you will learn that you can do it, and still add information even up to the last minute. I used Descendants Book Report, with these settings: Register format, Main entries for all individuals, no title page, Name Index checking off top four items; I included Child status so that the words

(Twin) or (Adopted) would appear next to the child’s name under their parents, age at death, cause of death, marriage status, all events, all notes for all people, all private notes, printing the brackets so they would stand out.

Under pictures, I made sure to include “Embed the Pictures in the file” and all photos. I included the captions and descriptions, but no extra formatting. I set my fonts to size 12 which is what most books recommend, especially if you will have older readers. I included sources, printing industry standard, and formatted per the master source formatting option. I did not do headers or footers, choosing to do that later in the document.

I then selected Rich Text File and saved it to my desktop. Using Microsoft Word, I opened up the file and immediately saved it as a DOC file. I installed the Macros previously discussed in the Archives -

http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/msg04353.html to format the photograph captions. It worked beautifully. I chose not to run the second macro, to link caption to the picture, because instead I inserted text boxes under the pictures and pasted the captions inside. You do have to make sure you go to (in Word) Edit-Links to make sure the photos are within the document and not linked. You may want to wait until you are ready to upload to do this, to keep your file size small and working efficiently.

Then I did some serious editing. I only used this Legacy output as a starting point. I made it more of a narrative, writing, “John lived in Drumna all of his life, and raised his children there,” instead of the Legacy output, “He resided from 1823 to 1890 in Drumna.” This takes a lot of time, so plan accordingly. You can start formatting your pictures by size, but wait until the very end to worry about their position on a page. Otherwise you will go crazy moving them every time you add something new early on in the book. The industry also recommends that you have a nice spacing between lines, but I had so much text, that I chose to use “Exactly 14pt” for my spacing. This allows the source numbers to show without crowding, and keeps all the lines spaced the same. The downside is your photos will also start appearing as only 14pt high, so you have to either format their line to be single space or change the photo so that it is Layout-Wrapping-Square with text.

If I got new information as I was doing this formatting, I simply added a new line to the source list, and used that number, even if it was out of order. Try to remember to add the information to Legacy at the same time, or to the Legacy to do list.

I also indexed my book completely, using the index facility provided by Word. It worked really well. I kept everything in one index, which was easy and I think looks much better than having more than one index. Indexing took me about a week. It was a good opportunity to proofread once again. Be sure to do a spell check when you are all done.

My book has three parts, four appendixes, source list, index, and three extra blank pages called “Additions and Corrections.” Part I is a narrative discussing the goal of my search, my findings, my conclusions, and other interesting details like common medical ailments and physical resemblances. Part II is a 5-generation chart generated by Legacy using the Descendant Chart report, No birth-death dates, Generation Numbers, Format: Generation Lines, 5 generations. I output this to text file. When I imported it into a new Word document, I did a find and replace using the Box Symbols to replace the ASCII text lines and dashes. They came out smoothly like the PDF generated report. I added some spacing between the family groups to show off the lines more clearly. (Just copy and paste a few extra “| |” in between.) Part III is the descendants book.

So if you have one or two good months, you can do this with your existing research. I uploaded my Word document to Lulu.com, chose two types of books (black and white paperback and color hardcover), set prices, then notified relatives of the private links. I also uploaded a Legacy-generated PDF file of the Descendants Book report for family members to be able to download for free. (No charge at Lulu.) This file is 45MB in size, so it is an easy way to share this file among family members.

I received two of the paperbacks today, and have to wait until mid-December for the hardcover. But holding this book in my hand was so thrilling. I wrote this too-long email just to encourage and hopefully inspire someone else on this list to get their book into print, too. I have two over-80 relatives who are looking forward to this, and I am glad I won’t disappoint them. Sadly, I lost a third over-80 person this year who was a big key in connecting me with a long-lost branch. She was very excited about this book.

Be inspired!

Susan Daily

PS: I found the textbook, Professional Genealogy edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills to be very helpful in my final formatting of the book.

Ancestry.com has just uploaded a new database - 1.5 million US passport applications, 1795 to 1925. WOWSERS.

I plugged in my husband’s father’s name - Chester COHEN - and couldn’t believe the rich detail contained in his 1925 application. Of course, the application included details such as age, physical description, current address. Better yet, we got a photo that we had never before seen. And best of all, the application contained details of the immigration of Chester’s father, Moses D. COHEN, including the date, emigration port, and naturalization date and place. 

Next I pulled up a passport application for the same year for Moses COHEN (Chester’s father), who, according to family tradition, accompanied Chester on a trip to Europe in 1925. It listed Moses’ wife and her birth date and birth place, his birth date and birth place (Czestochowa, Poland), and his immigration and naturalization dates. The application also contained a photo of Moses and his wife.

Neat stuff, and clues for LOTS of further research. With only 1.5 million entries, coverage is nowhere near as comprehensive as - say - the census. Nevertheless, when you do find someone, especially someone who applied for a passport after 1900, you will be well rewarded with lots of data on both the passport applicant and on others in his family. 

Cafi in Arroyo Grande

When new acquaintances learn that I am researching my family history, they often ask, “How far back have you gone?”

So, I just checked my personal database to determine the earliest ancestor on my family tree. Turns out he is someone named Christopher REYNOLDS, estimated birth date of 1530, probably born in England. I have no spouse identified for him, but he is linked to his son, George REYNOLDS, born about 1555. George REYNOLDS, in turn, is identified as the father of Robert REYNOLDS, born 1586 in England, died 1659 in Weatherfield, Connecticut, at that time an American colony.

My documentation from myself to Robert REYNOLDS the immigrant is quite good, but my sole source for the data cited above is the Shattuck Database found on one of the World Trees at Ancestry. After careful evaluation of the internal consistency and sources for this online tree, I entered applicable portions into my database - not as gospel truth, but instead as a starting point for my research.

Back to the REYNOLDS family. Say that ALL of my parent-child links are 100% correct. This is unlikely - I read somewhere - because even with excellent documentation there is only a 90% chance that you have identified the correct parents at each generation, due to Non Paternity Events (name changes, adoption, “the milkman did it”) and errors in original records.

Nevertheless, say the parent-child links are correct. If so, Robert REYNOLDS, the immigrant ancestor, is my 10th great-grandfather, and Christopher REYNOLDS my 12th great-grandfather. That is 12 and 14 generations, respectively, removed from myself. Stated another way roughly 1/4096 of my DNA came from Robert REYNOLDS, the immigrant, and a great deal less from Christopher REYNOLDS, the “earliest” person my tree.

So I consider the following: (1) the probability that I am actually Christopher REYNOLDS descendant (small) AND  (2) the fraction of my DNA he contributed if he is my 12th great-grandfather. The fraction works out to 1/16384 (very small). Stated another way, he and 16383 other ancestors were contributors to my DNA - providing I got the math right! From this viewpoint, Christopher REYNOLDS becomes much less interesting to me. And so does the question, “How far back have you gone?” 

Last week I did a presentation called “Family History for All Ages,” to a local homeschooling group. This is NOT the usual audience for genealogy presentations, but I have a homeschooling background, and I wanted to try out a Power Point presentation that I had readied for another event but had been unable to do. Anyway, a few days after the presentation, I received the following email from one of the homeschooling moms. Family History really is for ALL ages.  — Cafi 

My name is ______________, and I’m with ___________ Home Educators.  I attended your presentation on Family History last week.  I’m emailing to say a huge thank you.

I must confess that the topic, at first, didn’t resonate with me. My family doesn’t talk about family . . .  never has. So the thought of trying to coax any information from them would require a lot of hard work, tip-toeing, scheduling and most of all . . . a heart change for me.

Those were my thoughts as I drove home from the meeting that night.

I awoke the next day with a completely different perspective. . . . .  I realized that both sets of my son’s grandparents are alive and I should at least interview them. So we cleared our school schedule this week. We purchased a nice digital recorder with a microphone. We compiled a list of 60 questions (from a number of different websites). And we’ve downloaded a digital recording software so we can made CD’s. 

Not only did everyone agree to participate, but they are excited by it. They are calling other relatives to fill in the blanks. So far we’ve interviewed my son, myself, my mother, and we have appointments to interview everyone else by this Sunday. 

I’m surprised already by what we’ve learned. Next week we are interviewing our neighbor Evelyn who will be 90 this month. Our neighborhood is throwing her a HUGE birthday party. We want to make a history box (or book) for her birthday including copies of the interview (for her kids) with transcriptions and maybe a photo or two.

I’ve been bitten by the bug, so to speak. I don’t know where we’ll go from here, but I think we’re having a fun start.