Archive for the ‘Genealogy Software’ Category

Great Software for Transcribing Documents!

Yakking with your Friends on Facebook about how they get stuff done can pay off in lots of new ideas!

Thanks to Carol A Bowen Stevens, author of the Reflections From the Fence blog, I downloaded a very helpful software application, appropriately named “Transcript.”

Transcript allows  you to place an image in the top half of the screen, type the transcription on the lower half, and save it in .rtf format, recognized by most word processing programs, including Microsoft Word.

Here is an example, below:

This is a Screen shot of Transcript showing Revolutionary War era, George Stocking’s tombstone and the transcription.

The software is very easy to use.

Click on the image icon on the middle row above, choose an image to load from your hard drive, and then began typing in the lower part of the screen.

Oh my goodness, be still my heart!  Where has this software been for the several years I’ve been transcribing documents!?

After getting this far, my next question was, can I make it work with the indexing that I’m currently doing for the Sumner County (Kansas) Historical & Genealogical Society’s Pioneer Settler files?

For me, the answer is a resounding “yes!”

It will work, not only for ‘plain’ documents, but it will also work for transcribing ‘stuff’ that I want to drop (copy and paste) into an Excel or Google Docs sheet.

To use it for transcribing stuff to put into a spreadsheet, type what you want into the first cell, then hit tab, then type the next word for the next cell and hit tab.  In other words, type for the first cell, hit tab, type for the second cell, hit tab, and so on.

Then copy and paste into the spreadsheet!

The only thing that would make it really, really awesome, would be if you could type directly into the bottom part that was a spreadsheet!

Now, rather than have TWO different programs open, looking from one to another and moving from one to another, it’s all right there, in one program!

The program is free for personal use, but is inexpensive to register!  Click here to try this awesome program: http://www.jacobboerema.nl/en/RegFeatures.htm

I love this program!

by Sherry Stocking Kline
15 May 2011

Nearly every day, at least one person stumbles across my website looking for software to create their dog a family tree, and so finding this blog post at Legacy Family Tree  gave me a way to share the “how-to” with folks who want to get started using Legacy to track their dog’s Family Tree.

Not only are there links to downloading the great Legacy software, there are tips, and links to more tips on how to fill in the blanks, plus comments from other Puppy Pedigree builders!

My dog is a “Rescue” dog, and her pedigree probably includes a German Shepherd, maybe a coon hound, perhaps a bit of husky, and I think she has a Beagle smiley face and pretty brown eyes!  

 O.K., so that doesn’t sound pretty, but she really is, and she loves to sit on her dog house, and survey the world she guards! 

Related links:

Legacy Family Tree

Roots Magic Genealogy Software – Free downloads

Sherry Stocking Kline
November 16, 2009

Just a few quick notes to help my Twitter Friend, @Bonnie67, have some Genealogy Fun!

Everyone told me three things when I started to do genealogy research.

A.   Start with me and work backwards.

B.   Document and log my searches through census and books, even when I didn’t find anything (so I wouldn’t search the same place two or three times) and document my sources, and

C.   Get an organization system, a filing system, a notebook, etc.

I didn’t follow advice B and C as well as I should have, but I’m working to turn over a new leaf!

Ten Tips to Begin Your Family History Research

1.  The first thing you need to do is start filling out Family Sheets/Family Group Sheets. You can find a blank group sheet here.

If you have a family that has more than six children, click here to download an add-on sheet for the children.

2.  Fill out the first group sheet for your own family. Your spouse, yourself and your children.

3.  Multiple marriages?   Begin with the first spouse, and ‘tie’ children to their biological father.

4.  Fill in with everything you know. The reference(s) line refers to where the information comes from, whether it is your personal knowledge, a relatives, a death certificate, census, etc.

5.  If you have more children than blanks, add on an extra sheet.

6.  Written everything you can?   Then next fill out a family group sheet for your parents and their children (you and your siblings). Continue with your grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., as far back as you can go.

7.  When you have gone as far as you can with what you know, you need to turn to other sources. Family members, such as parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, even your older siblings may remember something that you don’t.

8.  After family, you will need to turn to paper records: wills, death certificates, obituaries, census records, newspapers, and much, much more.

9.   Want a basic free genealogy program to help you save, sort and file your info? You can find a link to download one here: Free Legacy Family Tree Software, http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Index.asp. And another one from Roots Magic here: http://www.rootsmagic.com/Essentials/.

Randy Seaver  has written a Roots Magic Essentials review on his Genea-Musings here.

This will give you a place to begin to store your records. You do NOT  have to have a program to do  genealogy, but it does make it easier to file and manage all the information you may accumulate.

10.  Review your Group Sheets.  Someone told me once that doing genealogy was like working the world’s biggest puzzle.  And that’s what genealogists do as they research, they add one puzzle piece at a time, checking to see where it fits.  So now, you go over your Group sheets, and see what blanks you need to fill in, set your goals for future research, and start filling in the blanks!

Happy Hunting!

Downloads:

1. Family Sheets/Family Group Sheets. You can find a blank group sheet here.

2. More children than blanks in your primary group sheet? Add on an extra sheet: Extra Children Sheet.

by Sherry Stocking Kline written for Wichita Eagle’s Active Life Magazine – December 2008 (and just in case Santa is reading this, I’d still like to have this in my Christmas Stocking!) If you’ve ever been at a cemetery, library, or family gathering and wished you had your whole family tree in your shirt pocket or purse, you may want to ask your favorite Santa to leave the Pocket Genealogist Software in your Christmas stocking this year. Laura Phillips and her husband Kevin are the developers, owners, and tech support people for the Pocket Genealogist, a nifty little software package that will let you carry around up to a quarter million family members (plus photographs) on your PDA or smartphone, support GPS latitudes and longitudes, calculate dates, Soundex, add data, and search for individuals or places.

Carry Your Family Tree with You…

Carry Your Ancestors With You on your Windows PDA or Smartphone.

Phillips said that her husband, Kevin, got frustrated while trying to organize his family tree information to go on an out-of-state trip to visit family. He wanted to carry his whole family tree on his PDA (personal digital assistant) and leave his laptop at home. “He couldn’t find a program that would do what he wanted it to do,” said Laura Phillips, business manager and self-proclaimed “dummy tester” of Northern Hills Software’s Pocket Genealogist, “his standards are pretty high. So he put together a program to do what he wanted it to do.”

Software works on Windows Mobile Smart Phones & PDA’s

According to Phillips and the www.pocketgenealogist.com website, the software will run on any Windows Mobile Software, and depending on your PDA’s memory, the program can hold up to a quarter million individuals, allow you to view photographs, calculate those tricky ‘how-are-we-related anyway’ questions, and enter data for transfer back to your desktop computer. “You won’t get a free cell phone that is capable of running this software,” Phillips said.

Decide What Uses Before You Buy!

So before you buy a phone or PDA, you need to decide how you want to use it and what software you want to run and then purchase the smart phone or PDA that will do what you need it to do. Phillips said the Pocket Genealogist won’t work on IPhones, Blackberry’s or PDA’s that use the Palm Operating System. (Phillips said that the Gedstar Pro software program will work with Palm Operating systems.) Besides English, Pocket Genealogist supports nine languages and will import directly from Legacy Family Tree without conversion to a GEDCOM. Phillips said that it also “works with anything that adheres to the GEDCOM standard, including Family Treemaker, The Master Genealogist, and Roots Magic

.”

Desktop In Your Pocket?

“We try to mirror the experience that you have with your desktop,” Phillips said, and added a reminder to software users to “back up”  their information. “Your system is getting hauled around everywhere,” Phillips said, “so it’s important to back up your PDA’s information, just as you would a desktop computer.” Phillips said that Pocket Genealogist is very easy to navigate and has a very low learning curve, making it easy for new users. “I’m considered the dummy tester,” Phillips said, “if I can read the manual and make it work, we figure anybody can.”