rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.comRootdig | Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website

Rootdig Michael John Neill’s Genealogy Website Toggle navigation Rootdig Free Updates Michael’s Blogs About Michael Weekly Blog Update Bring Michael To Your Group Michael’s Ancestors Recorded Webinars Lecture Topics Privacy Policy Full-Text Searching At FamilySearch webinar Posted on March 13, 2024 , updated on March 13, 2024 by mjnrootdig We’ve released the recording and handout for my new presentation on the full-text searching of local land deed and probate records at FamilySearch . Details are on our announcement page . Introductory price available–save $7. Presentation can be viewed multiple times. No streaming. Posted in Uncategorized Leave a comment To Scan or Photograph? Posted on March 13, 2024 by mjnrootdig My mother has approximately 12 years of daily calendar entries in various day planners and other similar fill-in notebooks. How to preserve them is a concern. The entries are short and usually revolve around the weather, farming, who called, who visited, and other short snippets of daily life. They are not diaries with long, detailed entries. So how to preserve them? I’ve decided to take pictures of each page instead of scanning them. I realize that scanning can create higher quality images. I also realize that I’m not reproducing photographs here. My goal is to preserve the text and taking photographs will be much faster than scanning. That makes the likelihood that I actually complete the project higher. And to me actually getting it done matters. That time can then be used to create a guide to the entries. This guide is not going to be a complete annotation of every day–at least that’s not my goal at this point. My initial goal with a guide is to reference the individuals she only mentions by a first name and indicate who I think they are. The same can be done with farm properties ( eg . the Coeur place”), local businesses ( eg . Casey’s), and the like. To me, the annotation seems important as well as when I and my brother are gone, much of that knowledge will be gone as well. Posted in Uncategorized Leave a comment FamilySearch Labs-Deed and Court Record Full Text Search Webinar Posted on March 11, 2024 , updated on March 11, 2024 by mjnrootdig On 12 March, we’ll have a webinar on the new full-text search currently being tested at FamilySearch . Additional details are on our announcement page . Posted in Uncategorized Leave a comment FamilySearch Full-Text Search: Is It Exhaustive? Posted on March 11, 2024 , updated on March 11, 2024 by mjnrootdig Genealogists who follow the Genealogy Proof Standard are told to conduct a reasonably exhaustive search. How does the full-text search of some land deeds and probate records at FamilySearch impact that? At this point, using the FamilySearch full-text search of these records simply helps the researcher to find some things–pulling some more low-hanging fruit from the tree. That’s not bad. There’s no doubt that it can help one find things in places one would never have looked or in records that are unindexed. It’s great to be able to find references to a person buried in the list of payments from an estate or in a metes and bounds description to a piece of property. Those references before the full-text search would have been too time consuming to find before. But the old indexes still need to be searched. This search does not eliminate the need for searching land deed indexes that most locations created themselves manually when the records were originally created. Those grantor and grantee indexes still need to be accessed–and most are online at FamilySearch if the deeds themselves are. But do not indicate that you’ve manually searched every page of records from a location when that is not what you have done. Indicate that items have been located using the full-text search of those records at FamilySearch . We do not cite records that we do not use and we should not suggest that we’ve done searches that we have not done.n If I’ve found things using the keyword rampley” and filtered my results to Hancock County, Illinois, (as shown in the illustration), I should track that in my research log. I also think it should be noted in any discussion of items found. One reason for that is that these indexes may not be static. Other considerations: What records are actually indexed in the full-text index. What searches were conducted for variant renderings of names. What search parameters were used other than names (if any). Searching the FamilySearch card catalog can give you an idea of what land or court records could be in the full-text search at this point. Keep in mind that some record holders may not allow you to view their records from home. Posted in Uncategorized Leave a comment FamilySearch Labs Full Text Search Posted on March 1, 2024 , updated on March 31, 2024 by mjnrootdig FamilySearch recently announced the full-text search of various local records–particularly probate court and land records at their FamilySearch Labs site . This site is still in the beta stage, so things may work differently from one visit to another. But this functionality allows researchers to access records that would have required manual, page-by-page searches before. But it is not perfect. Results can be filtered. Filtering can be done by record year, record type, record place, or collection. I’m choosing to filter by location–at least for now. Your approach may be different. No matter how unusual the last name, nationwide searches are not always appropriate. You In my family several Habbens married Fechts–so that was one keyword combination I used. Multiple keywords are helpful Surname only searches will likely result in too many results to practically wade through. Think about what other keywords or terms may appear on the document with your ancestor’s name. Keep in mind that any word may have been interpreted incorrectly by the AI. Some keyword approaches to consider: family surnames that intermarried with your family. last and first name combinations locations where the family lived–other than the location where records are being filtered -this can be helpful in deeds where the new residence of a grantor may be mentioned in the deed ancestral occupation –for those records that do mention that as some deeds in the Eastern US do locations where the family lived –helpful for deeds that may mention townships, towns, or other place names. Remember that in federal land states, townships are not always named in legal descriptions. Wildcards are allowed Wildcards are allowed. Many names are easier to locate using wildcard searches. In the illustration, I wanted to search for Bieger, Berger, Beger, etc. all in one search–hence b*ger as a keyword search term. Quotes for exact searches. Quotes can be used to search for two words as a phrase. Clark Sargent” will only return entries containing that exact phrase. I did note in searching for other names with quotation marks that this search occasionally does give other results. My search for James Rampley” returned that name along with James E. Rampley and James & Rampley. Remember: this search is still in the developmental stage track how you search–you’ll never remember all the keyword combinations you used. We’ll have more in future posts. Our webinar on the full-text search at FamilySearch Labs . Posted in Uncategorized 1 Comment Do I Include the Red Saks 5th Avenue Box in the Citation? Posted on February 22, 2024 , updated on February 22, 2024 by mjnrootdig Note: The 4th edition of Evidence Explained has just been released by Genealogical Publishing Company. We’ll be featuring it in several blog posts over the coming months. The Saks Fifth Avenue Box Documenting items in private collections (often housed in just a spare room of someone’s home) is one of the things covered in Evidence Explained . This example illustrating this post was used in an earlier edition of Evidence Explained . At the time the citation was created, the school register was in my Mother’s...