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Monday, August 3, 2009
Latest additions to Record Search Pilot
The New FamilySearch Record Search Pilot has had more significant additions. Dated 1 August 2009, the collections now include New Hampshire Births from early to 1900. Also the 1920 U.S. Census has been republished and six states added; Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Vermont. In the international collections, the Mexico Census Index of 1930, the 1895 Argentina Census, and the Argentina, Buenos Aires City Census of 1855 have been republished with minor updates.
Ancestral Quest Releases New Ordinance Reservation and Tracking System and Helper Access
In a press release dated 24 July 2009, Incline Software announced as follows: "the release of two major new feature sets in its product, Ancestral Quest (AQ). AQ was the first desktop family tree product to interface with New FamilySearch (NFS), and these new features continue to expand the ways in which Ancestral Quest works with New FamilySearch. The first of these is the Ordinance Reservation and Tracking System (ORTS), which allows a user who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to determine whether the records in his/her personal family tree database have had all the LDS temple work completed, and if not, to reserve those ordinances, create Family Ordinances Requests (FORs), and track the progress of the ordinance work while updating their personal records along the way. The other feature is a Helper Access capability, which allows one person who has access to the New FamilySearch.org website to sign in to help another person, usually someone who does not yet have access."
This addition to Ancestral Quest brings the program up to parity with RootsMagic 4. The newest version is 12.1.18 and has new menu items to support the new features. I had the opportunity, finally, to download an upgrade to my program and go through the new features. Although I did not have any names to process for Temple Ordinances, I found the implementation of the features to be straight forward. I will do a feature comparison between Ancestral Quest 12.1 and RootsMagic 4 as soon as I get an opportunity to do so.
This addition to Ancestral Quest brings the program up to parity with RootsMagic 4. The newest version is 12.1.18 and has new menu items to support the new features. I had the opportunity, finally, to download an upgrade to my program and go through the new features. Although I did not have any names to process for Temple Ordinances, I found the implementation of the features to be straight forward. I will do a feature comparison between Ancestral Quest 12.1 and RootsMagic 4 as soon as I get an opportunity to do so.
A gold mine in county land records for genealogists
Almost every county in the United States has a recorder's office and/or an assessor's office. Here in Maricopa County, Arizona we have both. What is not generally known or mentioned in genealogical circles is that these records are mostly online and may go back years and years. Usually, you can search by property and by owner. I picked one county at random, Grayson County, Texas. The Tax Assessor-Collector for Grayson county lists the owner's name or names, address and the property address. The description also contains the legal description of the property and of course, the tax valuation. In the case of Grayson County, they also show the history of the property, indicating when it was first developed and sold.
Another selection, Berks County, Pennsylvania, has an Interactive GIS Web Maps Parcel Viewer. This online function shows plat maps of the entire county. There is also a Berks County Parcel Search where you can look up the ownership information. The Google search is for the county, by name and the word assessor. Try looking up your own tax information. Perhaps you thought there was some measure of privacy? Not exactly, this is all public information. For Pennsylvania, here is a list of all of the counties and links to the assessor's offices. In fact, here is the link to the national directory.
Now to the Recorder's offices. Some sites require you to register but many, if not most, allow public searches of the records. In Maricopa County, Arizona, the Recorder's Office allows you to print an unofficial copy of deeds. Using these sites, it is possible to reconstruct the ownership of a piece of property as far back as the records are online, sometimes hundreds of years. For example, the Barnstable County, Massachusetts Registry of Deeds goes back to 1704 with online images and indexes. However, in Maricopa County, the records only go back about forty years. You can find these records by doing a Google search on the county name plus the word "recorder."
Try this out and see what you can find.
Another selection, Berks County, Pennsylvania, has an Interactive GIS Web Maps Parcel Viewer. This online function shows plat maps of the entire county. There is also a Berks County Parcel Search where you can look up the ownership information. The Google search is for the county, by name and the word assessor. Try looking up your own tax information. Perhaps you thought there was some measure of privacy? Not exactly, this is all public information. For Pennsylvania, here is a list of all of the counties and links to the assessor's offices. In fact, here is the link to the national directory.
Now to the Recorder's offices. Some sites require you to register but many, if not most, allow public searches of the records. In Maricopa County, Arizona, the Recorder's Office allows you to print an unofficial copy of deeds. Using these sites, it is possible to reconstruct the ownership of a piece of property as far back as the records are online, sometimes hundreds of years. For example, the Barnstable County, Massachusetts Registry of Deeds goes back to 1704 with online images and indexes. However, in Maricopa County, the records only go back about forty years. You can find these records by doing a Google search on the county name plus the word "recorder."
Try this out and see what you can find.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Updated perspective on New FamilySearch
With the imminent introduction of New FamilySearch to the rest of the LDS community in Utah, I believe an update perspective would be valuable. I have now worked with the program since October of 2007, going on two years. I have had many opportunities to teach classes on New FamilySearch and provide many, many hours of one-on-one support. By and large the program functions admirably and is highly useful. The two opposite poles of users, those with no family data in the database and those with thousands of names of ancestors, have a completely different experiences with the program. Those with few, if any, ancestors have a simple and elegant interface that immediately allows them to enter information into the database and accomplishes the goal of the program to simplify preparing names for performing LDS Temple ordinance work. Those with pioneer or legacy families have the exact opposite experience, they are frustrated, angry, upset, or hopelessly discouraged. It is not my purpose to criticize New FamilySearch at all, but all the legacy users have about the same reaction.
The reaction of the legacy users is not a result of anything particular in the program itself, but the confusion caused by having combined multiple databases with contradictory information. The legacy users find that merely combining or separating records does not solve many of the data problems. Those problems most disturbing to legacy users include relatives entered with the wrong gender, non-relatives included in families, having a person shown as their own father or mother or grandfather or grandmother, and no easy or convenient way of making corrections.
There is also a significant number of users of the program who are so unsophisticated about the program and computers in general, that they do not even grasp what they are looking at on the screen and assume they need to add in all their information from scratch.
I am concerned that the negative reaction of legacy users will discourage new users of the program. I am also concerned that much of the work done by my relatives in sorting out the information over the past two years will be lost when the Utah folks get into the program and starting making their own changes before they understand what is going on.
Of course, a lot of this discussion is meaningless to those outside the Church or who do not have access to the program. But it is my experience that many people who do not presently have access to the program have been given access by those already registered. Since New FamilySearch will ultimately become one of the most complete genealogical databases in the world, it should be of interest even to those will not have access to the information until sometime in the future.
There are many online services, including Ancestry.com, that attempt to provide a service for the sharing of family trees. But none of them attempt to combine multiple family trees into one reference database. As far as I know, every other online program allows each user or collaborative users to upload their family history files, but except for New FamilySearch, there is no effort to combine all the files into one huge database. Ancestry.com's Family Tree program comes close to combining information from multiple trees but New FamilySearch does not maintain separate family trees at all. All of the information entered goes into the one huge database.
I agree, in part, with the Ancestry Insider's recent post about the possible directions New FamilySearch could take. The first suggestion for the ideal family tree system was the ability to easily correct information. Because of the restriction in New FamilySearch concerning ownership of the information, there is no easy way to correct any information you have not personally contributed. Although I must state that the FamilySearch support staff are remarkably responsive in making corrections when asked. But making a simple correction is neither easy and in some cases not even possible. I find a great deal of dissatisfaction from people who cannot correct obvious, to them, errors.
One of the original goals of New FamilySearch was to attempt to limit the duplication of LDS Temple ordinances. Although I have heard reports that the number of duplicate ordinances has been decreased, my personal experience is just the opposite. I believe that many people are using the system to duplicate many, many, many more ordinances. In a recent meeting where a large group of people were shown an introduction to New FamilySearch, the entire group was told that when they went onto the program all they had to do was click on the green arrows and take the names to the Temple. In many cases where New FamilySearch shows a green arrow for an existing name, there are uncombined individuals who show that the ordinance work has been done. I see stacks of cards from Family Ordinance Requests that are nothing but duplicates. We speculate about how long it will take to mine out all of the duplicates already in the system and what efforts are going to be made to limit the additional duplicates created by users adding in their own information rather than checking to see if the information is already in the system.
The long introduction process has given us an opportunity to work through many issues with the use of the program and the data. The programmers have been very responsive in overcoming many of the early problems with the program, but have not been so successful in overcoming the problems with the data. As noted by the Ancestry Insider, the system needs to move towards the following goals:
The reaction of the legacy users is not a result of anything particular in the program itself, but the confusion caused by having combined multiple databases with contradictory information. The legacy users find that merely combining or separating records does not solve many of the data problems. Those problems most disturbing to legacy users include relatives entered with the wrong gender, non-relatives included in families, having a person shown as their own father or mother or grandfather or grandmother, and no easy or convenient way of making corrections.
There is also a significant number of users of the program who are so unsophisticated about the program and computers in general, that they do not even grasp what they are looking at on the screen and assume they need to add in all their information from scratch.
I am concerned that the negative reaction of legacy users will discourage new users of the program. I am also concerned that much of the work done by my relatives in sorting out the information over the past two years will be lost when the Utah folks get into the program and starting making their own changes before they understand what is going on.
Of course, a lot of this discussion is meaningless to those outside the Church or who do not have access to the program. But it is my experience that many people who do not presently have access to the program have been given access by those already registered. Since New FamilySearch will ultimately become one of the most complete genealogical databases in the world, it should be of interest even to those will not have access to the information until sometime in the future.
There are many online services, including Ancestry.com, that attempt to provide a service for the sharing of family trees. But none of them attempt to combine multiple family trees into one reference database. As far as I know, every other online program allows each user or collaborative users to upload their family history files, but except for New FamilySearch, there is no effort to combine all the files into one huge database. Ancestry.com's Family Tree program comes close to combining information from multiple trees but New FamilySearch does not maintain separate family trees at all. All of the information entered goes into the one huge database.
I agree, in part, with the Ancestry Insider's recent post about the possible directions New FamilySearch could take. The first suggestion for the ideal family tree system was the ability to easily correct information. Because of the restriction in New FamilySearch concerning ownership of the information, there is no easy way to correct any information you have not personally contributed. Although I must state that the FamilySearch support staff are remarkably responsive in making corrections when asked. But making a simple correction is neither easy and in some cases not even possible. I find a great deal of dissatisfaction from people who cannot correct obvious, to them, errors.
One of the original goals of New FamilySearch was to attempt to limit the duplication of LDS Temple ordinances. Although I have heard reports that the number of duplicate ordinances has been decreased, my personal experience is just the opposite. I believe that many people are using the system to duplicate many, many, many more ordinances. In a recent meeting where a large group of people were shown an introduction to New FamilySearch, the entire group was told that when they went onto the program all they had to do was click on the green arrows and take the names to the Temple. In many cases where New FamilySearch shows a green arrow for an existing name, there are uncombined individuals who show that the ordinance work has been done. I see stacks of cards from Family Ordinance Requests that are nothing but duplicates. We speculate about how long it will take to mine out all of the duplicates already in the system and what efforts are going to be made to limit the additional duplicates created by users adding in their own information rather than checking to see if the information is already in the system.
The long introduction process has given us an opportunity to work through many issues with the use of the program and the data. The programmers have been very responsive in overcoming many of the early problems with the program, but have not been so successful in overcoming the problems with the data. As noted by the Ancestry Insider, the system needs to move towards the following goals:
- sources are used as evidence,
- they can see who changed the data and why they changed it,
- they are able to contact those making changes,
- they can optionally be notified when changes occur,
- they can hook reliable and verified sources to their data, and
- sources are protected and can be modified only by the contributor.
FamilySearch Help Center more than New FamilySearch
Users of the New FamilySearch program are hopefully familiar with the program's Help Center. But it is important to realize that the Help Center is more than just assistance to New FamilySearch. The Help Center includes information on all of the family history products products from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Here is a list of the programs supported:
Ancestral File
Census
FH Library Catalog
FamilySearch 2.27
FamilySearch Internet
Family Tree
Freedman's Bank Records
HelpCenter
IGI
inContact
Indexing
Mormon Immigration Index
New FamilySearch
PAF (Personal Ancestral File)
PAF Companion
Pedigree Resource File
Record Search
Resource File Viewer
SourceGuide
Temple
TempleReady
UDE
Vital Records
Web conferencing tools
Some of the programs require purchase or download of the program, such as Personal Ancestral File and some have been discontinued, such as TempleReady. Other of the programs requires registration, like New FamilySearch and are available only to church members. However, presently if you have no access to the New FamilySearch program, you cannot get to the Help Center.
Ancestral File
Census
FH Library Catalog
FamilySearch 2.27
FamilySearch Internet
Family Tree
Freedman's Bank Records
HelpCenter
IGI
inContact
Indexing
Mormon Immigration Index
New FamilySearch
PAF (Personal Ancestral File)
PAF Companion
Pedigree Resource File
Record Search
Resource File Viewer
SourceGuide
Temple
TempleReady
UDE
Vital Records
Web conferencing tools
Some of the programs require purchase or download of the program, such as Personal Ancestral File and some have been discontinued, such as TempleReady. Other of the programs requires registration, like New FamilySearch and are available only to church members. However, presently if you have no access to the New FamilySearch program, you cannot get to the Help Center.
Two new Temple Districts for New FamilySearch
A news update on 2 August 2009 from the official Website for New FamilySearch confirms the news from the Ancestry Insider from 30 July 2009. The FamilySearch announcement does not yet contain any dates for the release. With the Boise Temple District, the Website listed the participating Stakes without a release date for some considerable time before the exact dates were announced. I would assume that the exact dates may take some time yet.
The St. George Temple District stretches from Beaver, Escalante and Panguitch, Utah to Ely, Nevada and includes the Page, Arizona Stake also. This is a huge geographic area, but mostly sparsely populated. The Idaho Falls Temple District also covers a huge geographic area, most of eastern Idaho including Afton, Wyoming.
The list of remaining Temple Districts is now down to those on the Wasatch Front; Mount Timpanogos, Bountiful, Salt Lake, Ogden, Draper, Jordan River and Provo. The new Oquirre Mountain Temple is not yet included in the list.
The high concentration of pioneer family members in the Wasatch Front area is likely the reason for the delay. There have been no new announcements from New FamilySearch concerning changes in the program for some time now.
The St. George Temple District stretches from Beaver, Escalante and Panguitch, Utah to Ely, Nevada and includes the Page, Arizona Stake also. This is a huge geographic area, but mostly sparsely populated. The Idaho Falls Temple District also covers a huge geographic area, most of eastern Idaho including Afton, Wyoming.
The list of remaining Temple Districts is now down to those on the Wasatch Front; Mount Timpanogos, Bountiful, Salt Lake, Ogden, Draper, Jordan River and Provo. The new Oquirre Mountain Temple is not yet included in the list.
The high concentration of pioneer family members in the Wasatch Front area is likely the reason for the delay. There have been no new announcements from New FamilySearch concerning changes in the program for some time now.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Metes and Bounds and Measurement
Understanding land measurements and methods and terms is necessary skill for all genealogists. However, I should note, that it is a lot easier to understand the technical aspects of real estate legal descriptions than it is to read the handwriting in old deed books. For an example, you might try the early books of deeds available on The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Southern Essex District, Registry of Deeds Website which has deeds dating back to October 20, 1641. Before the introduction of the Public Survey system, all deeds used some form of the metes and bounds type of legal description of the property. Generally, the description began at some know location and proceeded to describe the boundary of the property either by compass directions from the point or by natural landmarks. The metes portion of the description is in the most current unit of measure of the time.
The units of measure in old deeds are not really confusing if you convert them into current terms. For example, a chain is the length of a cricket pitch. The original measurement was called Gunter's chain or a surveyor's chain and is 22 yards or 66 feet. The whole of the United States was measured and mapped using the Gunters Chain and his chain still applies to all title plans in use today. For this reason all city blocks, roads and avenues are multiples of the chain. Towns were laid out at 6 miles square or 36 sq miles. Early farms were sold to would-be farmers as lots of 640 acres or 1 sq mile. Imperial Measures of Length. A chain was made up of 100 links, each 7.92 inches in length. These measurements were standardized in 1607 by Edmund Gunter in England.
A chain was also equal to 4 poles. Each pole was equal to 5.5 yards. One rod was the same as a pole (and also the same as a perch). Therefore a rod is 16.5 feet.
There was another type of chain, called the Ramsden chain or engineer's chain, which was equal to 100 feet. There are a number of Websites that will automatically convert any unit of measure to another. See Unitconversion.org for example.
The Manual of Instructions for the Survey of the Public Lands of the United States; 1973
Prepared by the Bureau of Land Management, Technical Bulletin 6; pub. U.S. Dept of Interior states as follows:
The units of measure in old deeds are not really confusing if you convert them into current terms. For example, a chain is the length of a cricket pitch. The original measurement was called Gunter's chain or a surveyor's chain and is 22 yards or 66 feet. The whole of the United States was measured and mapped using the Gunters Chain and his chain still applies to all title plans in use today. For this reason all city blocks, roads and avenues are multiples of the chain. Towns were laid out at 6 miles square or 36 sq miles. Early farms were sold to would-be farmers as lots of 640 acres or 1 sq mile. Imperial Measures of Length. A chain was made up of 100 links, each 7.92 inches in length. These measurements were standardized in 1607 by Edmund Gunter in England.
A chain was also equal to 4 poles. Each pole was equal to 5.5 yards. One rod was the same as a pole (and also the same as a perch). Therefore a rod is 16.5 feet.
There was another type of chain, called the Ramsden chain or engineer's chain, which was equal to 100 feet. There are a number of Websites that will automatically convert any unit of measure to another. See Unitconversion.org for example.
The Manual of Instructions for the Survey of the Public Lands of the United States; 1973
Prepared by the Bureau of Land Management, Technical Bulletin 6; pub. U.S. Dept of Interior states as follows:
- 1 yard = 3 ft = 0.9144 meter
- 1 rod, perch, or pole = 25 links = 16.5 ft
- 4 rods = 1 chain
- 1 chain = 4 rods = 66 ft = 100 links
- 10 chains = 1 furlong
- 1 link = 1/100 of surveyor's chain = 7.92 inches
- 25 links = 1 rod = 16.5 ft
- 100 links = 1 chain = 66 ft
- 1 furlong = 10 chains = 1/8 mile = 220 yards = 660 ft = 201.168 meters
- 8 furlongs = 1 mile
- 1 mile = 80 chains = 320 rods = 1,760 yards = 5,280 ft = 1,609.344 meters
- league = 3 statute miles = 4,828.032 meters
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