Data Recovery Project

Data Recovery Project

My next data recovery project will be for the family of William David Henthorn and Susannah Parrott of Vermillion Co., IN. William David Henthorn was the son of James Henthorn II and Elizabeth Unknown.

Currently I do most of my genealogy using a file that I named "pafyoh." This file contains thousands of records. 

My goal is to copy all Henthorn(e) data from an older file "PAFBIG" to the newer "pafyoh" file. As part of this project edits must first be done to the older file records.

Edits such as:

• Correct place names from West Virginia to Virginia, if prior to 1863
• Add each person's name to the top of their Note field
• Add PARENTS: to the Note field of the children, if a child Note field exists
• Enter Find A Grave Memorial numbers, if possible
• Remove periods (.) that were used in the Note fields to leave blank lines been paragraphs when I used the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) for genealogy. [What a mess that made.]

Dick Henthorn

3 July 2020

Importance Of Learning GEDCOM

If you haven't learned how to export and import GEDCOM files with your genealogy program you are missing out on some of the fun.

A GEDCOM file is a "text" file format created by the genealogy programmers and the LDS genealogy staff that allows the various genealogy programs to exchange information. You don't have to know anything about the internal structure of a GEDCOM file to take advantage of its power.  My illustration for this post shows, for those who are curious, the first forty lines of a GEDCOM I created from Personal Ancestral File (PAF 2.31) and loaded into my current genealogy program RootsMagic 6. Notice that it's "text" that you can read, with data tags like "2 DATE" and "2 PLAC" on the left of each line in the file.

A GEDCOM file can be created (exported) and shared by attaching the file to an Email. They can also be staged on the Internet (uploaded) for sharing with others. I've found several on the Internet that were of interest.

If you get lucky enough to find another researcher who is working on the same families that you are you can use GEDCOM to exchange the information each of you have recorded.

When loading a GEDCOM from someone else into your genealogy program always create a "new" file with your genealogy program, with a "new" name before you load (import) the GEDCOM.  That way you can check the quality of the work of the other person.  For example, you can see if you both enter place names in the same way.  And, you can see whether there are duplicates in the file you are receiving.  It's never fun to remove duplicates once they are in your master genealogy file.

To learn more about GEDCOM you can practice creating a GEDCOM (exporting) and then adding it to a "new" file (importing) on your own computer.  Backup you own genealogy file first, just to be on the safe side. Just remember that when you load the GEDCOM into your genealogy program you want to create a "new" file with a "new" name.  You don't want to load your practice file into your main genealogy file.  That would create a mess because every record would be duplicated.

You don't have to include all the records in your file when you create a GEDCOM. You can tell your genealogy program which records to include in the GEDCOM.  For example, you may only want to share a branch of your tree rather than the entire file. Practice this also to see how it works.

Dick Henthorn
19 October 2014

Another Mess

Years ago I divided my own genealogy information into two files, one for my maternal line and one for my paternal line. I can't remember why I did this. I must have thought it was a good idea at the time. Now I think it wasn't such a good idea.  This is my the family of my grandmother, Augusta (Anderson) Carlson.

I have some backups. I'm not certain which backup is the latest version. The data was in Personal Ancestral File (PAF).  On my old computer I don't have a copy of my maternal line available to PAF. As a matter of fact I can't remember how long ago it was when I last looked at this information with PAF.

Yesterday, I found three backup floppies with the latest backup dated, 24 Aug 1998. Using the old computer I created a folder to house the files that make up my maternal line and I loaded the backup file into PAF.  It worked. I recovered a copy of the information that I can access with PAF.

Unfortunately moving the information from PAF to RootsMagic isn't a simple matter.  There are  edits that need to be accomplished to get ready. From past experience, with larger files, I know that this task can take several days, if not weeks.

• I want to add the county abbreviation, "Co.," to county names.  
• I want to expand cemetery names to eliminate truncation. 
• And, most important of all I need to edit the textual information in the Note fields so word wrap will work in RootsMagic.

Dick Henthorn
16 October 2014

AKA: or NAME-CONFLICT:

I'm working on a project to extract Nicknames from the Note fields in my Conger genealogy file. The goal is to add the Nicknames to the Nickname field that is defined by RootsMagic.  It's a slow process. When I was using Personal Ancestral File (PAF) I used the "data tag" AKA: in the Note field when I wanted to record a Nickname.  Using the search command of RootsMagic it's easy to find the Notes with the AKA: data tag.

I've discovered that I often used the AKA: data tag for information that was really pointing out a name conflict rather than an "also known as" name.

Much of the information in my Conger file came from the impressive two-volume work of Maxine -(Crowell) Leonard, The Conger Family of America.  I have probably written that, "Mrs. Leonard was consistently inconsistent in how she spelled people's names."  There is no guarantee that a name found in Volume Two is more accurate than the name found in Volume One.  I say this because sometimes she used two different spellings in Volume Two. Other researchers such as, Charles G.B. Conger, recorded spelling different from Mrs. Leonard.

As part of the project to extract the Nicknames I decided I would change the AKA: data tag in the Notes to use two other data tags, in combination, that I used in my PAF file, NAME-CONFLICT: when I'm recording that I noticed a "name" conflict between what various researchers reported, rather than a Nickname.

Dick Henthorn
6 September 2014

Researcher Fact

I added a new Fact, that I created, to the Conger genealogy file.  The name of the fact is Researcher and it is abbreviated in my file as, Reschr.

When my genealogy program was PAF I entered the data tag, RESEARCHER: in the Note of anyone who was either a researcher or had a relationship with someone who was a researcher.

I used the RootsMagic search to find all of the RESEARCHER: tags in the Conger file and added the new Fact to the appropriate records.

Now anytime I am viewing the edit screen for a person with this Fact the abbreviation displays. When I print a descendant report RootsMagic prints out this phrase, which I created, when I added the new Fact.

"The record of John Doe lists genealogy researcher information."

I can also search on this Fact to find all of the researchers or create a Researcher List of all the researchers in the file (The Researcher List for the Conger file is five pages with one person listed per line of the report).

Dick Henthorn

4 September 2014

Genealogy Regrets - I have a few

While working on edits and repairs to my Yoho, Baker, Rine genealogy file I've been reflecting on how I got to this point and what it all means to me.

If my recollection is correct, I started working on genealogy about 1987 when I got a personal computer and installed the LDS program Personal Ancestral File (PAF).  Has it really been twenty-six years?

Staying With Personal Ancestral File Too Long

Now, as I am learning to use RootMagic5 for my genealogy, it's more and more evident that I stuck with version 2.31 of PAF too long.  The PAF program wasn't designed to produce a genealogy.  It was designed to support the LDS goal of gathering ancestral information for church purposes.  There was no provision for producing a Register report for example.  Another short-coming was the fact that, for no apparent reason, it was possible to develop a file condition called "cross linked notes."  In my experience it was never evident when this serious file corruption crept into a file.  LDS provided a standalone program to check file integrity and another to correct the cross linked notes.  My success with correcting this issue has been disappointing.

Failing to Document And Maintain Contacts

Over the years of doing genealogy I made many new friends.  Some graciously exchanged genealogy information with me.  I corresponded via telephone, snail mail and Email.  Without the willingness of others to share it wouldn't have been possible to compile information about thousands of people.  I regret that I haven't done a good job of documenting the contact information that would allow me to stay in touch.  Because I failed to cultivate and maintain the contacts it's difficult, in the Fall of 2013, to contact someone if I have a question or want to share information.

Dick Henthorn
29 September 2013

John Henthorn Family

Today I uploaded the John Henthorn family, using a GEDCOM file, to the RootsMagic5 genealogy program on my laptop computer.  Prior to today this file resided on my desktop computer in a RootsMagic3 file.

Henthorn researchers believe that the first two Henthorns to arrive in the British colonies were brothers, James and John. The John Henthorn family is the smaller of the two.

My genealogy files were originally created with the LDS program, Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 2.31, on a computer running the DOS operating system. Getting from that point to today entailed years of work and many computer disasters. It's a relief to once again have the data at my finger tips.

A Descendant report created from this file, with place and every name indices is 508 pages.

Dick Henthorn
17 March 2013

Conger File Conversion

My John Belconger (Conger) file, consisting of 44,780 records and 16,989 families is now loaded to RootsMagic5 on my laptop computer.

Here's a example of the amount of information available, a descendant report, in the PDF format, for Job Conger, son of John Belconger, is 2,279 pages.

I used GBridge to move the Conger GEDCOM file from my desktop computer to my laptop computer.

This is a major achievement in my long-standing battle to convert my genealogy information from Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 2.31 to RootsMagic and move the data to the laptop.

Dick Henthorn
5 August 2013

Transitioning to RootsMagic 5

Some comments about moving my genealogy files from my old desktop computer to my newer laptop computer and from older versions of genealogy programs to my latest genealogy program.

My current genealogy program is RootsMagic 5. The majority of my genealogy files are still on my desktop computer in either PAF 2.31 format or RootsMagic 3. There are many issues with the desktop computer which should encourage me to move on with the transition.

Yesterday I resolved an issue with RootsMagic 5. I didn't have the folder structure set up correctly on my laptop. With Email help from my friend in West Virginia, Vernon Anderson, I was able to understand and fix the problem. RootsMagic 5 suggests the creation of five folders and details how to make them work with Windows 7 and it's Library and Folder design. I created:

• Backup
• Data
• GEDCOM
• Multimedia
• Reports

I created a sixth folder which I named "GEDCOMin." I'll use this folder to stage incoming GEDCOM files that I plan to load into RootsMagic 5. The GEDCOM folder is where RootsMagic 5 writes any GEDCOM files that the program creates.

During some recent testing I discovered that a good way to move a RootsMagic 3 file to the laptop computer for loading into RootsMagic 5 was via GEDCOM. The steps I followed were as follows:

1. Create GEDCOM file from RootsMagic 3 (old computer)
2. Send the GEDCOM file to myself, using Gmail attachment (old computer)
3. Download the Gmail GEDCOM file into my Download folder (new computer)
4. Move the GEDCOM file to my GEDCOMin folder (new computer)
5. Import the GEDCOM file to RootsMagic 5 (new computer)
6. Compare counts for People, Families, Events, etc. (old & new computers)
7. Create a backup GEDCOM with RootsMagic5, in my GEDCOM folder (new computer)
8. Create a backup using RootsMagic 5, in the Backup folder (new computer)

The file I moved today (31 July 2013) was my Henthorn, Carlson, Hagstrom, Marquinez file. This file consists of:

• 5216 people
• 1939 families
• 5602 events
•   838 places

Mr. Dickie

31 July 2013

It's A Mess

It's A Mess

When computers fail, when you use more than one genealogy program, or you change from one genealogy program to another, It's A Mess.  I'm going to write at least two posts of my observations concerning some of the issues and problems I must deal with if I'm going to continue to record new genealogy information and if I want to be able to take advantage of the latest technology for sharing on the Internet.

My Genealogy Programs

I have two working computers, an old desktop with some issues and a relatively new Toshiba laptop. 

On the desktop computer I have three genealogy programs installed: 

1. Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 2.31 a DOS genealogy program which I run in a Window
2. RootsMagic version 3 which I used to convert some of my files to the RootsMagic format and to create some new files
3. Personal Ancestral File (PAF) for Windows (version 5.2 I think) which I used for experimentation.

On the new laptop I have RootsMagic version 5 installed. I'm using this program to learn about the features of this version and to experiment with moving my files from the desktop to the laptop computer. I was never proficient with version 3. I'm aware that I continue to fall further behind and that the latest version of RootsMagic is version 6.

I own a copy of the book Getting The Most Out of RootsMagic version 4 even though I've never owned that version of the program. I've found the book to be quite helpful.

The LDS church has announced that as of July 15, 2013 they will discontinue support and downloads of Personal Ancestral File. Something tells me it might be useful to download and install their program one last time before the program is no longer available.

Dick Henthorn

27 June 2013

The Amos Tree - Revisited - 2nd Installment

More comments about the document, History and Descendants of Amos and Elizabeth (Sharp) Henthorn - 1816-1959 sometimes called The Amos Tree, by Roy Lee and Norma (Latham) Henthorn.

I think the quality of the 44-page document, The Amos Tree was quite good considering that it was created before the advent of personal computers and genealogy programs. I particularly like the four-page name index and all of the textual information. 

That said, there are some issues with readability. This is because the numbering system used is difficult to follow. Arabic numbers are used to designate more than one generation and the oldest person in a line doesn't have a number. 

For example:

THIS IS THE FIRST MEMBER IN A FAMILY
     1. THIS IS HIS SON (or daughter)
         1. THIS IS HIS GRANDSON  (or grand daughter) (sometimes this level doesn't use a number)
             1. THIS IS HIS GREAT GRANDSON (or daughter) (sometimes this level doesn't use a number)
           
This isn't too hard to follow on a single page but gets quite confusing when the family is large enough to cover several pages.  

Entering the information from an older genealogy report into a computer genealogy program improves clarity of the prior researcher's work and makes it much easier for readers to follow the family structure. The challenge, for the person doing the data entry, is to "get it right."  Success in the task depends on the ability of the person doing the data entry to read and interpret the numbering system used in the source document.

Years ago I entered the information from The Amos Tree into my DOS Personal Ancestral File (PAF version 2.31). In June 2013, as part of a project to learn how to use version 5 of RootsMagic, I keyed the data a second time.  I also extracted additional information from my own file and added it to my new file. 

I produced a 46-page PDF report with RootsMagic version five which is now available from the "Henthorn" page on the HenthornFamily Wiki. This four-generation report is for Robert and Mary (Nicholson) Henthorn, the parents of Amos Henthorn. It includes an every name index and a place name index. The report was limited to four generations. A report including additional generations is available, on request, to researchers who are known to me and who are willing to share their own research information.

Robert and Mary (Nicholson) Henthorn

Dick Henthorn
25 June 2013

The Amos Tree - Revisited - (1st Installment)

The Amos Tree - Revisited - (1st Installment)

In 1959, Roy Lee and Norma (Latham) Henthorn of Bethany, Oklahoma published, - History and Descendants of Amos and Elizabeth (Sharp) Henthorn - 1816-1959 sometimes called The Amos Tree.

In March 2013 Mrs. Lola May (Ivy) Senatro sent me some sheets of genealogy information prepared by her deceased sister, Margaret Grace (Ivy) Barnes.  

I needed a project to help me learn more about using version 5 of RootsMagic which is the genealogy program I have installed on my laptop computer. I decided to create a new file for the information of Mrs. Barnes. As I became familiar with the data shared by the Ivy family I realized that Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Henthorn had shared information. I located my three-ring notebook with a paper copy of The Amos Tree. My review reminded me that although I'd keyed the information from The Amos Tree into a Personal Ancestral File (PAF) years ago I hadn't included all of the textual data. This realization inspired me to enlarge my RootsMagic project to include keying the data from The Amos Tree.

I'm planning to post several messages about my experiences with The Amos Tree project and the project to learn more about how to use RootsMagic version 5.

Dick Henthorn

24 June 2013

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) — FamilySearch.org

The end of downloads and support for Personal Ancestral File (PAF) on 15 Jul 2013 is announced.

What will you do about it?  I'm still trying to convert my PAF 2.31 files (before Windows version) to RootsMagic 3 and RootsMagic 5.  It's a data processing nightmare and I may never finish the projects.

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) — FamilySearch.org:

Here's some help from RootsMagic

'via Blog this'

John Henthorn Website

Goal

Yesterday I achieved a long-standing goal, going back many years. I uploaded, to my FreePages space, a small website that I create in 2006 using  Personal Ancestral File (PAF).  As of February 1st, 2013 this file will be available for viewing for the first time on the Internet.

Components

The website is made up of approximately twenty HTML files, generated by PAF. This includes two sets of seven files each plus the graphic images for the navigation buttons and the cloud/sky page background.

Problems Encountered

I encountered three problems during the project yesterday. The Email address shown on the first page of the website was out-of-date. There was a one line Introduction at the top of the first page that needed to be brought up-to-date. And, the blue sky and cloud background for each page didn't work, even though the images of all of the buttons appeared. I discovered the name of the background file was listed as Clear Day Bkgrd.jpg in the HTML of each page. The uppercase letters in the file name caused the problem. Fortunately I am able to read some HTML code. After I identified and understood the problems I used the RootsWeb Online Editor, for the first time, to make the necessary modifications to the already uploaded files.

The Family

The website shares information about the family of John Henthorn and Frances Low. We believe that John Henthorn and his brother, James Henthorn, were the original Henthorns in the colonies, first being found in Maryland.

Link To The Website

The link to the website will be located on the Henthorn Family Websites page of the HenthornFamily Wiki. Here's the link in case you'd like to visit from this blog page.

John Henthorn

Next Website Project

Now that I understand the process and steps involved in uploading an entire genealogy website I'm ready for another project. My current genealogy program is RootsMagic. This program also can create a website. I intended to upload a website created by this program and make it available in the same way. It may be of interest to some to compare the styles of the two websites.

Dick Henthorn

1 February 2013

Conger

On the Stories page of HenthornFamily Wiki I posted a 50-page PDF document titled, A Collection of Documents about Members of the Conger Family, compiled by Richard E. Henthorn and Robert Guilinger.

I apologize for the fact that a blank page appears in the document. This was probably caused by the program I was using to generate the PDF.

I'm gathering GIF images that I used years ago on some of my webpages. I renamed some of them to group similar buttons in sets. Some of the images have already been uploaded to my RootsWeb Freepages space and you will see them on pages I have been sharing on the Wiki. (I used one of those images on this page.)

For years I've wanted to upload a set of webpages created by one of my genealogy programs to a website to learn more about the steps in that process. I now have the tools in place to carry out this project. I located a set of PAF pages suitable for the experiment. I'll make this my next combined Freepages and HenthornFamily Wiki project.

31 January 2013

Best Free Genealogy or Family Tree Software

Here's a Gizmo's article about free genealogy programs.

I currently use a version of RootsMagic that a friend purchased for me. I'm planning to install the latest version on my laptop soon.

I have also used Personal Ancestral File (PAF) and still have a version of that program on my oldest computer.

Best Free Genealogy or Family Tree Software

  'via Blog this'

Extracting Notes From Personal Ancestral File (PAF)

Extracting Notes from Personal Ancestral File (PAF)
Written: 2 Mar 1996 (Revised 15 Apr 2010)
by
Richard E. Henthorn

Have you ever wished that you could extract the "notes" you saved in Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 2.31 so you could use them somewhere else?

It is not hard to do. Here are the steps you need to follow to create a text (ASCII) file of extracted notes. The note or notes you extract are selected using the Record Identification Numbers (RIN). You can select one note, a series of contiguous RINs or separated RINs.

Starting From the Pedigree Search menu, enter:

....... W - to sWitch menu
....... P - to Print
....... 1 - to Select Printing Option
....... 2 - to Print to Disk
....... On the "Disk for Print File" line enter the path to the sub-directory where you want to save the extracted notes

....... On the "Name of Print File" line enter the name of the file that will contain the extracted notes, default is, PRINT.DAT. I suggest changing the file extension from .DAT to .TXT.

....... F1 to Continue
....... 3 - Range Print
....... 4 - Notes for Individuals
....... Enter the RINs you want to extract
....... For individuals enter the numbers separated by a blank or comma
....... 1 3 5 7 (or) 1,3,5,7
....... For ranges of individuals enter two numbers separated by a hyphen
....... 1-7
....... F1 to Continue
....... 1 - Print All Notes (or for selective note extraction)
....... 2 - Print Family Group Notes
....... 3 - Print Tagged Notes
....... 0 - Return to Previous Menu
....... 0 - Return to Pedigree Search
....... x - to exit PAF

After the note or notes have been extracted start your word processor or text editor and look at the file you have created. You may want to removed page numbers or do other editing on the file that PAF created.

Ancestor Chart Project

One of the charts in the Ancestor Charts book I'm extracting was shared by genealogy friend, Claude Burton. He is a member of the Yoho family via two branches in his family tree. The chart in the book shows five generations with only names listed for the fifth generation. Because I'd worked on Claude's family in the past I knew I had more than four generations of detailed information in my Yoho file. I decided that rather than typing the chart from the book I'd attempt to extract his family tree from the Yoho family Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 2.31 which I still have on my desktop computer.

I created a GEDCOM file for the ancestors of one of Claude's children. Then I edited the GEDCOM to remove the paragraph place holders between the notes. I also did global edits to improve some of the place names. I added the abbreviation "Co." to the county names and spelled out the word "Cemetery" wherever I noticed that it was truncated. There were 1125 people and 203 marriages in the file I created.

I loaded the GEDCOM file into RootsMagic and used the Place Name list to do further place name edits. Testing after the edits revealed that in some cases an Ahnentafel chart for Claude's descendant included eleven generations. I usually think of a generation as thrity-three years. In this case that's 363 years of family history.

This was the first time I attempted to extract a small set of family information from my old PAF files by creating a GEDCOM for ancestors, rather than descendants. I do have lots of experience working with GEDCOM files. I'm pleased that I now have another way to salvage some of the genealogy I keyed over the years. Of course, once the data was loaded to RootsMagic I could just as easily generate a report on descendants as on ancestors.

Mr. Dickie
17/Jan/2010 9:49

Genealogy Happenings - 2009

Genealogy Happenings
2009

Introduction
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Several times in past years I've written a year-end Genealogy Happenings and sent it to my genealogy correspondents. This year I decided to write one and post it to my genealogy "news" blog.

Thanks to those friends and relatives interested in genealogy who kept in touch during the year.

Here's a report about my genealogy projects in 2009 and a few comments about what I might do in 2010.

Computer Disaster

During the year I had another computer disaster. This time my Dell laptop computer failed. As usual I wasn't prepared. Luckily I did have some of the information I didn't want to lose saved on a thumb drive.

I went back to using my old Gateway desktop computer. I connected to our new Verizon FIOS high speed Internet connection. The Gateway computer allowed me to continue to communicate via Email and to began some genealogy recovery projects.

Currently I don't have a printer connected to the working computer. I'm not certain that the printer will work if I do hook it up. Finding out is on my "to do" list, but not near the top.

RootsMagic

For many years I used the LDS genealogy program Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 2.3.1. I still have a working copy of this program on my desktop computer. When the laptop failed I'd begun the process of converting my genealogy files to RootsMagic. RootsMagic evolved from the program Family Origins that I'd used for several years to load any GEDCOM files shared by other researchers. Since the computer incident I've loaded a copy of RootsMagic on the desktop computer. RootsMagic has the capability to produce very nice PDF files and pages for a website. If you'd like to try out a free version of this program you can download RootsMagic Essentials.

RootsMagic:
http://www.rootsmagic.com/

Personal Ancestral File 5.2

I also have a copy of the free LDS Windows genealogy program, Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 5.2 installed on the desktop computer. I've only used this program enough to get an idea of how it works and what it can do.

Personal Ancestral File:
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/paf/

GEDCOM

In my opinion everyone should make GEDCOM copies of their genealogy files as part of their backup plan. GEDCOMs can be shared between researchers. And, they allow us to easily import our data into other genealogy programs. I have worked with the GEDCOM format long enough to understand it fairly well. Since my latest computer disaster I have been making edits to some of my GEDCOM files in order to improve the quality of data. After the edits are complete I can load the data into my genealogy program or share the GEDCOM with others or use it to produce genealogy reports with the Ancestral Author program.

GEDCOM Explained by Dick Eastman:
http://globalgenealogy.com/globalgazette/gazrr/gazrr82a.htm

Ancestral Author

I owned a copy of the Ancestral Author program and lost it when the laptop stopped working. I was able to download another copy of the program and install it on the desktop computer. This program reads GEDCOM files to produce genealogy reports in the PDF format which is perfect for sharing with others. In the last couple of months I learned more about how to use the program. In 2010 I plan to share these documents with some of the folks I know who are doing genealogy.

Ancestral Author:
http://www.ancestralauthor.com

GenViewer Lite

I have a copy of the GenViewer Lite program installed on my computer. This is a free version of a program that can also read GEDCOM files. The program is very handy when you want to review the contents of a GEDCOM file without loading the data into your genealogy program. I'm thinking about buying the program because some of the capabilities are turned off in the free version.

GenViewer Lite:
http://www.mudcreeksoftware.com/

Google Blogs

I have two genealogy blogs on Google. One is for "News" and other information. The other is for "Obituaries." I post to them whenever I have something ready. There are sidebar links from these two blogs to other things I post on the Internet.

Henthorn Genealogy News:
http://henthorn-website-news.blogspot.com

Henthorn Genealogy Obits:
http://henthorn-website-obits.blogspot.com

Google Group

I maintain a "private" Google genealogy group. You must register with Google and then request that I grant access. There hasn't been much interest in the "group" so my posting there has been infrequent.

Henthorn Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/henthornwebsite

Google Site

In early December I announced the creation of a Google genealogy "site." This is also a "private" area. You must register with Google and then request that I grant access. There has been almost no interest shown in this so far. There are about fifty genealogy reports in PDF format available to anyone who gains access. In December I had a PDF Week on my "news" blog where I posted information about the available files. If I know you, and your area of genealogy interest, it's possible to request a particular file directly if you don't want to gain access to the "site." I can attach the file you want to an Email message.

Henthorn Google Site:
http://sites.google.com/site/henthorngenealogy/

Delicious

I have posted the URLs to many of my favorite websites on the social bookmarking website, Delicious. People interested in genealogy or visiting Washington, DC might find visiting this area useful.

Delicious:
http://delicious.com/mrdickie

Society Membership

I continue to maintain a membership in the Monroe County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society; P.O. Box 641,Woodsfield, OH. 43793. I enjoy reading their very nice newsletter, The Navigator.

Their website URL is: http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohmccogs/

Plans for 2010

Currently I am no longer actively seeking to add information to my genealogy files. My interest for some time has been in sharing and publishing what I have collected and keyed over the years.

In 2010, as interest and health permit, I hope to share more of my genealogy information on the Internet and via Email attachments.

I'm going to investigate whether I can send PDF files to FedEx (Kinko's) for printing. This might be a good way to make paper copies for donation to some of the genealogy libraries.

I'll continue to share new information on my genealogy areas on the Internet. Little by little I have returned some of the information that used to be available on my AOL website to the Internet. I hope to continue this project.

Being able to produce and share genealogy reports in the PDF format is something genealogists have needed for years. In the new year I plan to make use of this capability to create and share more of the information that I gathered and keyed into my genealogy program over the years when I was working on genealogy. If we have been out of touch for a while I hope you will "touch base" so you can benefit in the sharing if I produce a report for a family in which you are interested.

Email Addresses

I now have two Email addresses. You can still reach me on AOL, but I prefer that you use my new Gmail address. I look at Gmail every day and skip signing on to AOL sometimes.

Preferred Gmail Address: dick.henthorn@gmail.com

Richard E. (Edson) "Dick" Henthorn

Phone: (301) 459-0535

Personal Ancestral File - Future

Genealogy's Star: Personal Ancestral File -- only mostly dead:

"So where are we going with PAF? In a fairly recent article in Mormon Times, David E. Rencher, FamilySearch's Chief Genealogical Officer is quoted as saying as follows:"

This is a very interesting blog posting, by James Tanner, about what the future may hold in store for the very popular (free) genealogy program Personal Ancestral File (PAF). I recommend taking the time to read this blog posting.

Mr. Dickie