Covering: Dulwich, Brixton, Denmark Hill, Herne Hill, Stockwell, Peckham, Nunhead, Camberwell and Lambeth. LSE reference no. BOOTH/E/1/11 Printed Map Descriptive of London Poverty 1898-1899
It is a basic historical fact that place names change over time. There is also a well-known, genealogical rule that we record place names as they were at the time an event occurred in our ancestors' or relatives' lives. There are a number of basic reasons why place names change and the reasons include the following:
Changes in political jurisdictions such as from British Colonial America to the United States of America or changing county boundaries
Changes due to socio-political pressure such as a mountain in Phoenix, Arizona that was renamed Piestewa Peak from its previous name of Squaw Peak
Changes because of bureaucratic rules such as the town named St. Joseph being changed to Joseph City due to "too many places with the same name on the train route"
Changes due to conquest such as the fact that the country of Poland did not exist after it was partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1772, 1773 and 1795
Changes due to traditional, local names being renamed for a famous person such as the Argentine city of La Plata being renamed Ciudad de Eva Peron
Some places have undergone a whole series of changes. Parts of Phoenix, Arizona have gone through several name changes: Swillings Mill became Hellinwg Mill which became Mill City which became East Phoenix and ultimately just Phoenix.
The reason for recording events with the place name that existed at the time is to preserve the history and also to enable historians to find a record originating in the location with the historic name. Genealogically and historically valuable records are created at or near the time an event occurs by someone who had an interest in the event or a duty to record it. The ultimate disposition of the record almost always depends on where and when it was created.
How does this relate to the "Standard Names" in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree program? Standardization in the Family Tree is intended to help clarify the information entered and assist in matching events to existing historical records. For these reasons, FamilySearch as adopted the long-standing genealogical rule that places be recorded as they existed at the time of the event. For example, an event that occurred in Arizona in 1875 should be recorded as follows:
St. Joseph, Apache, Arizona Territory, United States
Instead of the current name as follows:
Joseph City, Navajo, Arizona, United States
To accurately record the place names may require some detailed historical investigation and significant effort, but the results will be increased accuracy and a higher probability that records of the event will be located.
RootsTech 2018 is delighted to announce that Scott Hamilton, American champion figure skater, Olympic gold medalist, motivational speaker, author, philanthropist, cancer survivor, TV broadcaster, and husband and father will be the RootsTech 2018 keynote speaker on Friday, March 2, 2018, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Hamilton is hailed as one of the greatest male figure skaters of all time. He won a gold medal for his stunning performance in the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo. He won four consecutive US figure skating championships and four world championships from 1981 to 1984. In 1990, Hamilton was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame and the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. In all, he has earned more than 70 titles, awards, and honors for figure skating.
For the past 30 years, his broadcast analysis of national and global skating competitions has provided firsthand insights, and his speeches and books are uplifting and motivating. Besides his many accomplishments in the public arena, Hamilton says his family members have always been an integral part of his success and are the most important people in his life. He is excited to share more of his personal and family stories at RootsTech 2018.
Born August 28, 1958, in Toledo, Ohio, Hamilton was adopted when he was six weeks old by Dorothy and Ernest S. Hamilton. He has overcome many obstacles on his path to success including an illness at age two when he stopped growing. Doctors were unable to determine the cause, and over time the condition corrected itself.
His parents supported his figure skating passion from the time he began skating at age 13. “Family in my early years of skating were all in the ice show. I remember taking pictures on our front lawn in April, all in our costumes and ices skates. . . . Once I started skating, everybody was involved. . . . We were all in, 100%. It was our ‘candy,’” he said. His highly publicized battles with cancer that interrupted his skating career have inspired millions. Following his mother’s passing from cancer and his own survival, he established the Scott Hamilton CARES Foundation (Cancer Alliance for Research, Education, and Survivorship) to improve cancer survivorship. In 2014, he founded the Scott Hamilton Skating Academy to rebuild figure skating and offer fresh ways for students to fall in love with skating, as he did as a child.
His wife, Tracie, and four children are now the center of his life. While helping with recovery efforts in Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake, he and Tracie fell in love with two amazing orphans. “Now they are our own children; so now we have four,” said Hamilton. “It’s fun, and it’s crazy, and it’s non-stop, and [we] just keep going, going, going. Life is full. Life is good. And I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities to be a part of this very fun—we put the fun in dysfunctional—family."
When asked how he feels about keynoting RootsTech 2018, Hamilton says he looks forward to soaking in the RootsTech experience and sharing his story. “We all have a story to tell. All of us. And we all have great lineage and heritage. And we’ve got all of these generations and generations and generations [before us]—nothing started with us.” While at RootsTech, Hamilton says he is excited to meet as many people as he can and hear about how they have found their lineage, ancestors, and their families. “All of us have a legacy to leave for future generations,” he said. “It’s hard to be memorable in this world, but through our children, we have a chance to really make an impact,” he said.
Hamilton feels his legacy is compassion, kindness, and generosity, “If I can raise money for cancer research and be successful in that, if I can be a good father and allow my kids to have everything they need to be successful in their lives and for their children and for their children and their grandchildren, then I think I’ve done my job."
Go to RootsTech 2018, February 28 to March 3, 2018, to learn more about Scott Hamilton’s incredible journey, discover your roots, make family connections, and catch the spirit of belonging to generations of your family.
When I am asked about my genealogical specialty, I generally respond, "I find things." After all, that is the whole idea of doing historical research, i.e. genealogy. The last two days, I spent considerable time simply explaining to people how to find things; mostly their ancestors. One particular benefit of having huge online database programs is their ability to search through the content of those databases. One of the inquiries I received was a question about which websites would be best for doing research in the United States? In response, I tried unsuccessfully to elicit further information about which part of the United States the inquirer was interested in. But ultimately, the answer was the large online database programs.
In thinking about all of the questions I received, I realized that it had been some time since I had reviewed the large database search engines in a blog post. I thought it might be interesting to go through a sample search in each of the four large online programs; FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, and Findmypast.com. As I have done in the past, the idea is to take a somewhat random name from my family tree and compare the results of simple searches between the four programs. To make this fair, I really need to do more than one search with more than one name. So, here we go.
I decided to focus on searches in the United States and England. All four of the large online database programs have substantial records in the United States but because of Findmypast.com, I decided to add in a second search in England. I further decided to choose someone in the mid-1800s that way I could be assured that there were potentially a lot of records available. I also decided to accompany the searches with some of my usual commentary. One factor that made selecting individuals to search was the issue that I have already researched nearly all of my ancestors in that time. I also decided to eliminate anyone who already had dozens of sources attached to their entry in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. I also wanted to choose someone who had relatively complete basic information so the results of the search would not be overly affected by a lack of information. Finding someone with only a name and the date and a vague place takes more than a good search engine.
For my first search, I decided to choose David Sheppard (b. 1802, d. 1877). Here is his detailed summary from the Family Tree. I need to note, that there were no sources attached to this person in the Family Tree.
To be fair, I have to note that this person already had three Research Hints from FamilySearch.org. But the idea here was to see what happened if someone came into the program without any other information and simply did a search. But I do need to include the Record Hints in the number of responses. Using the FamilySearch.org Family Tree makes this rather simple because there are links to the four websites that use the information in the family tree to find additional records. Further, because I happen to have an LDS account with FamilySearch.org, I have access to all four programs.
Once I got started, I decided that I would only consider fairly obvious sources. In other words, I would not comb through pages and pages of results. I also decided that I would not add any additional information for this initial comparison. I would also not change the default settings in any of the search parameters available in each of the programs. Essentially, I wanted this to be as close as possible to the perspective of a search done by a relatively unsophisticated user.
So here are the results:
FamilySearch.org:
394 results with six immediately identifiable sources.
Ancestry.com:
There were only three immediately identifiable sources out of 387,320 results. However, upon clicking on one of the sources, Ancestry.com identified five additional applicable sources.
Findmypast.com:
There were two results in both of these were identifiable sources. As a note, there were both references to US census records.
MyHeritage.com:
There were 5,646,916 results. All of the initial results were from MyHeritage Family Trees. Since the rules of the game here mandated that I do nothing more, at this level, I would have rejected all of the results. However, recognizing the way that the program works, information that would not be readily available to a novice, I filter the information to look for census records and found a record. However, to be completely fair I would have needed to evaluate the information already contained in the large number of user family trees matches that were found.
The results from this are not obvious. All four of these programs are structured to provide automated record hints. But since my idea here was to show what happens if you do not have a family tree in each of the four programs and in addition, do not have advanced search skills.
Now let's see what happens with the person from England. I selected William Parkinson, (b. 1828, d. 1892). Here is a screenshot of his information from the Family Tree.
I would have to note, that the birthday, as recorded, is undoubtedly wrong. It cannot be the same as the christening date. I should also note that there were already seven sources attached to this person on the Family Tree. There is also a little twist here and that this person died in Australia. But, in the interests of proceeding from the vantage point of a complete novice, here's the search.
FamilySearch.org:
On an initial search with 227 results, only one of the seven existing sources was found. As a matter of comment, none of the results included any records from Australia. Because I am familiar with the program, I realized that I could increase the number of accurate responses by adding in information not included in the original search. But to do this, I would have to have considerable experience using the program.
Ancestry.com:
The initial search returned 197,587 results. Two of these were the search subject. However, both of the records were from Australia. In this case, clicking on the results did not produce any additional records.
Findmypast.com:
An initial search only returned two results in either of these were the target person. Again, in all fairness, I already know that I found many additional valuable sources about this family on Findmypast.com.
MyHeritage.com:
Once again, I got a huge number of initial results, 1,148,828, most of which, initially, were MyHeritage family trees. There were two results to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Because there were sources attached to this individual in the Family Tree, these connections would have been useful. Additionally, examining the other family tree connections may have produced more information supported by sources.
In conclusion, it would seem that an absolute novice with some basic information about the person who lived in the mid-1800s would have a very good chance of finding pertinent sources to support existing information and add information. But it became abundantly obvious that real progress could only be made with some understanding of each of the four programs.
It would appear that each of the programs does an adequate job of finding records based on a name, a birth date, and a place but expanding on that information requires some degree of sophistication and using each of the programs. From the results of this test I would conclude that all four of the programs are very useful I would also suggest that having a family tree in each program would measurably increase the utility of each of them.
You may not be familiar with Geneanet.org yet, but you probably will be in the very near future. Here is some background about the website:
Geneanet was launched in 1996 by genealogy enthusiasts to help family history researchers sharing their data and it was an instant success. We wanted our users to pay only if they want and that’s why we created the Premium service. Most of the website pages and features are available for free but you can take advantage of Ad-Free browsing, more effective search engine and access to additionnal records by subscribing to the Premium. Today, Geneanet is the first French genealogy website and the company has 25 employees.
One interesting feature of the website is there extensive partnership with French genealogical societies and with FamilySearch.org. You can search the societies' collections including FamilySearch.org directly from the Geneanet.org website. Here's a screenshot of the list of partner programs.
Geneanet.org also has a companion program, Geneastar.org, that features genealogies of famous people.
Geneanet.org has a third website called Geneweb. This is a free open-source genealogy software program similar to a wiki.
If you have French ancestry there should be one of your most valuable resources. However, the website is growing rapidly and is becoming more internationally oriented.
A bright new Chicago Cemetery Website Chicago cemeteries offer a wealth of history and interesting stories. How about a liquor license issued to a cemetery or an actual elevator?
In a new and exciting website, www.chicagoandcookcountycemeteries.com discover 806 Chicago area graveyards and Native American burial listings, In addition, read about funeral trains, undertakers, funeral customs, monuments, mausoleums and more. Ongoing posts contain interesting facts, oddities, and even a few ghost stories. If you enjoy learning more about Chicago cemeteries, searching for lost relatives, or just are curious about local history and burial customs, this website is a must.
There is a list of 273 cemeteries and almost 300 additional Jewish cemeteries and gates within larger cemeteries. Add in over 250 carefully researched name cross references, more than any other site. The Chicago and Cook County Cemetery Guide, authored by noted cemetery historian Barry A. Fleig, is a result of research spanning many years. The website is online now and new posts are added regularly.
Cemeteries are a reflection of life. They offer us a rich history of our ancestors as well as local history. Celebrate our Chicago cemeteries with this very helpful and free website.
If you have ancestors from the Chicago area searching in this website would be very productive. In addition, Barry has made a considerable contribution to genealogy in the Chicago area. Here is a summary of his background.
A resident for over fifty years, Barry A. Fleig is a devoted and a recognized authority on Chicago area burying grounds with an emphasis on vanished cemeteries. He served on the Board of Management for the Chicago Genealogical Society, as their Cemetery Chairman. Mr. Fleig has aided in the identification and preservation of Russell Cemetery near Techny in Northfield Township. His most significant accomplishment was the rediscovery, identification and research of the forgotten Cook County Cemetery, the burial site of over 38,000 bodies on the 320 acre County Farm later known as the Chicago State hospital on Chicago's northwest side. Almost nine acres of cemetery have been preserved under the Human Grave Protection act. As a result of the rediscovery of Cook County Cemetery, Mr. Fleig has received extensive recognition on three major television networks, several radio stations, the Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, a feature article in the Los Angeles Times and a major article in the Chicago Reader entitled "Grave Mistake”. Mr. Fleig has made many presentations before community groups, genealogical and historical societies, schools, and churches
Any of my readers who are participating in either FindAGrave.com or BillionGraves.com can use this information to locate and add the gravesites to these programs.
Times Square in New York City is the epitome of American advertising; loud, in-your-face and totally unfocused. Advertising is as old as commerce. Historically, advertising became a major force with the rise of magazines and newspapers in the 19th Century. Today, advertising is dominated by a handful of online mega-corporations, led by Google and Amazon. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar business, but I am certain that unless you are involved directly in the advertising industry, you could not name even one of the top ten advertising agencies in the world.
What does advertising have to do with genealogy? I can answer that question with another. Have you taken a DNA test in the last year or so? If so, why? Of course, I have taken two tests from two of the major genealogical database/family tree companies. But why? Advertising was probably a major factor in your decision whether you realized it or not.
If you want an example of the power of advertising, you only have to look around you at what you have purchased including your electronics, your food, your clothes, and the car you drive. There are very few aspects of your life that are not touched by advertising.
If you ignored the four or five largest, online genealogy companies, the rest of the genealogical community would probably rank as one of the most unimportant and micro-segments of the advertising world. But nonetheless, advertising does play a part in what we do and how we think as genealogists. By the way, advertising is not "bad" or "good" as such, but of course, there is bad advertising and good advertising. For example, I might strongly feel that genealogy should be a universal pursuit and so I am not annoyed by genealogically oriented advertising. However, there are many other things that do annoy me and I am quick to avoid even the mention of certain types of products and services.
Is there a difference between promotion and advertising? We seem to think promoting a cause or a point of view is acceptable as long as we agree with the basis for the promotion. But advertising has the connotation of commerce and philosophically, it falls into a different category. During the almost forty years that I was an attorney, the law profession moved from an absolute ban on advertising, as such, to a general acceptance. Driving down the freeway today, it would be hard to imagine that large law firms advertising personal injury, domestic relations, and bankruptcy law would have been censored and banned from the practice of law only a few short years ago. We can now see billboards for products that would not even have been mentioned in polite society when I was younger.
Do genealogists benefit from advertising? Yes, in the same way, that we all benefit from the availability of goods and services in the marketplace. If you want an example of the limits of the overall genealogical community, you should look at GenSoftReviews.com. This very useful and almost entirely unique website has been gathering user reviews of genealogy products for years.
Unless you are a dedicated and well-informed online genealogist, you have probably never heard of nearly all the products reviewed. If you have never seen a genealogy software review, you might be very surprised to see some of the "star" rankings of the programs you have seen or use. There are currently 985 programs with 4735 reviews.
Going back to the title of this post; what is real and what is hype? If you really want to know what is real, it will take some work. The reviews on GenSoftReviews.com are a good example of the difference between hype and reality. The part of genealogy that verges on fantasy and unreality is that fact that discontinued software programs such as Personal Ancestral File and The Master Genealogist continue to rank high with their fans despite their abandonment by their own developers. I have mentioned this fact many times over the years and I am still amazed when I see these old programs continue to receive high ratings.
One issue that bears discussion, perhaps in a different context, is the contrast between online websites or programs and those that are standalone and based on your computer. For example, the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is not considered a "program" in competition with the long list of desktop programs available. But, in fact, many people today choose to keep all of their genealogical data in an online program. If you want to see one chart comparing the popularity of online genealogy sites, you can see one on Geni.com, "Comparison of Internet Genealogy Sites." However, it is interesting that the list omits the huge websites FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com, and Geneanet.org and includes both LinkedIn.com and Facebook.com as genealogy websites. Could this illustrate bias and prejudice in advertising?
Note: This old website from Geni.com was apparently put up back in 2010. I apparently missed that. But it is still interesting to note the omissions.
Smartphones are ubiquitous. It is estimated that over 2 billion people now own and use smartphones around the world and that another one and a half billion will be sold in 2017. Everyone of these devices as a camera. Since genealogists are people, they are included in this estimate. It may seem simplistic, but these smartphone cameras are useful for doing genealogical research and replacing the laborious process of copying books and photographs. Instead of sitting in a library and writing pages of notes, it is faster and easier just to pull out your smartphone and take a photo of every page you are interested in preserving. This also works for what is left of the world of microfilm.
Lately, there have been a lot of news articles online about smartphones ultimately replacing DSLR cameras (Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras) used by professional photographers. One issue is still the resolution of the smartphone cameras when compared to a "real" DSLR camera. I have written about comparing the two devices in the past. But this week, I received my upgraded smartphone, an Apple iPhone 8 plus, and decided to go the rounds again with a comparison.
The photo above was taken with my new iPhone 8 plus. Here is the same view taken a few minutes later with my Sony DSC HX400V 20.4 MP camera. The iPhone 8 plus has a 12 MP camera. I must also note that the Sony costs less than half the prices of the iPhone.
Sony DSC HX400V image
Both shots come right out of the cameras and have not been altered except the iPhone image is stored as an .HEIC image and had to be converted to a .jpg to work in this blog post. I could have the iPhone store all the images as .jpg images, but the .HEIC is the newer format and saves storage. There are some obvious differences in the quality of the color of the two images, but what about the detail?
A 12MP image will never have as much detail as a 20.4 MP image. That is the reality. But the main question for genealogists is whether the 12 MP image is "good enough?" Here is a comparison by using Adobe Photoshop to zoom in on both images at 400%.
First the iPhone:
iPhone 8 Plus
Now, the Sony:
Sony DSC HX400V
Now, here is the difference. The Mega-pixel measurement is misleading. Zooming in with Photoshop does not produce a valid comparison of the detail of the images at any given size. The real comparison is much more complex. To show the same view, the Sony photo only needs to be zoomed in at 200%. So here is approximately the same visual area of the mountain from the Sony photo.
Sony DSC HX400V
If you can't see any significant difference it is because at the size that you would normally view either image, you are actually seeing a screen projection of the digital file. So making any comparisons is really almost impossible. There is more information (detail) in the Sony image, but looking at them in this type of comparison is somewhat misleading. What it turns out is that for most users, the smartphone images are perfectly adequate, especially if they are going to be viewed on a computer screen. You would only begin to see an appreciable difference if you printed both photos at poster size or about 24 x 36 inches.
What does this mean for genealogists who are not professional photographers? It means that you can now use your 12 MP smartphone for practically all your image needs. The reality is that it is true; smartphone cameras are killing off both low cost point-and-shoot cameras and the sales of high end DSLR cameras. Here is an appropriate quote from a Petapixel.com article entitled, "This Latest Camera Sales Chart Shows the Compact Camera Near Death."
“In a nutshell, photography is more popular than it has ever been – take a look at the rise of Instagram or Snapchat, for example,” Skafisk tells PetaPixel. “But literally 98.4% of the consumer cameras sold in 2016 were built into smartphones – only 0.8% were compacts, 0.5% DSLRs, and 0.2% mirrorless.”
“Where will we go from here? An easy prediction is that smartphones will continue to get better, and compact camera sales will go to near-zero,” he continues. “There will always be people interested in larger, more ‘serious’ cameras, and the camera companies that listen to these people and meet their needs will be fine.”
For genealogists, learn to use your smartphone camera. If you are considering spending a few bucks on a separate compact camera, you might rather consider upgrading your smartphone to one with a newer camera instead. So the answer to the question in the title of this post is a definite yes.
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