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 The Email address shown on the first page of the website was out-of-date.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

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'

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

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

How I Entered My Data

Here are some comments about how I entered data. I was using Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 2.31 to record my genealogy data.

I did not use the "Co." abbreviation for county name. I wish I had since this can sometimes cause confusion. In later edits I fixed this problem in some of my genealogy files.

When the full name of a person isn't known I often use the word "Unknown" in the field where the missing name belongs. This is especially true in the case where a woman has children out of wedlock. In this situation I always enter the name of the father as "Unknown Unknown."

In the case of surnames such as McCoy I enter the name as "Mc Coy". This was done because programs which automatically capitalize the surname to "MCCOY" make it impossible for the reader to know that the name should only have two captial letters in it.

I entered place names in this order: town/city, county, state. In the case of burial a fourth piece of information, the cemetery name could be entered: town/city, county, state, cemetery name. In PAF only 16 characters are allowed for each of the 4 place name fields, so sometimes the cemetery name is truncated. You can usually find the full name entered in the note. In the notes I used a period (.) in the first position of lines between paragraphs. Why I did this is a long story. It was to keep the paragraphs from closing up on each other when printed by some programs.

When I send a GEDCOM you get everything I know. I don't hold back information. If I know a source citation you will find it in the note. If I think there is a conflict about data that has been recorded I discuss it with a "Problem:" note.

The last line in any good GEDCOM file is the TRLR, trailer line. It has those 4 characters "TRLR" in the line and I always check to see that they are there before I send out the file. I use an "editor" or "word processor" to make this check. If you have a similar program that comes with your version of Windows you should do the same thing once you get the GEDCOM. There is no point loading the file if the "TRLR" line isn't there.

If you incorporate any, or all, of my data into your own genealogy file then you may consider the data to be yours and you may share it in any way you see fit.

Good luck with your genealogy. And, if you have shared your information with me, thank you for sharing.

Dick Henthorn
5403 76th Avenue
Hyattsville, MD 20785-1705
(301) 459-0535
Email: Dick.Henthorn@gmail.com

Tags: PAF, GEDCOM