Why I Seek Typed Obituaries

Why I Seek Typed Obituaries

This morning a frequent contributor to the Ice Family page on Facebook asked why I am typing and sharing obituaries.

Here's my reply.

Here's how I do genealogy. I use a genealogy program [RootsMagic] to record the information I obtain about each person. Each person can have a Note field where "text" can be stored. When I obtain an obituary I transcribe the information to "text" and save it in the Note field. This allows me to create narrative ancestor or descendant reports that show everything I know about a particular line. These reports are what I call, genealogy. In my opinion storing digital images in a genealogy database wouldn't work very well when one wants to print out the information.

Collecting "raw" data is an important aspect of the genealogy hobby, but in and of itself will never produce a readable genealogy. The only way this can be accomplished is to process the "raw" data and enter it into your genealogy program of choice.

Dick Henthorn
12 Jan 2018

Exchanging Information On Facebook

There are country groups and family groups for genealogy on Facebook.  Lately, there have been some good exchanges of information on the Greene county, Pennsylvania and Wetzel county, West Virginia groups.  Some of the folks have subscriptions to Ancestry.com. I have never subscribed, so I don't really have an appreciation for what is available.  Today I read some good information about ship arrivals.

From time to time I shared PDF files to the File areas of some of the groups.  I encourage others to share in a similar manner.  That idea hasn't amounted to much, to date.

I also encourage everyone to learn how to use their genealogy programs.  Learn to export and import GEDCOM files.  Learn how to produce files in "text" or PDF format and be willing to reciprocate when someone shares information.

Plan ahead. Give thought to which libraries you might want to donate a copy of your work.

Dick Henthorn
29 January 2015

Rule18 - Clipboard Loader

I use some snippets of text over and over in the Notes of my genealogy files.  I needed a clipboard loader program that would allow me to load archived snippets into the Windows7 clipboard.

I found a free program called, Rule18 which I've been using for months. You can create any number of snippet files with many snippets within each file.  For example, you could have a file with snippets you use when working on your genealogy and another file for snippets you use when working on your organization's newsletter.

I load the program when I start working on genealogy and leave it running in the background. I load the genealogy snippet file at start-up. Then any snippet in that file can be loaded to the Windows clipboard with the assigned hotkeys.  I have an icon for the program in the tool tray at the bottom of the screen.  This allows me to pop the program onto the screen when I can't remember what hotkeys I assigned to a particular snippet.

At first I used CTRL + n  (where "n" is a digit from 1-9) as my hotkeys.  Later, I added CTRL + A (where "A" is one of the letters of the alphabet.  I don't remember why I used capital letters.)  I couldn't make the ALT hotkeys work.

Rule18 is a clipboard assistant focused for presenters but can be used by anyone who needs snippets of text to be copied into the Windows clipboard at the press of a specific hotkey. No more copy/paste from notepad!
It is developed in C# using Visual Studio 2010.

Rule18 homepage

Rule18 documentation

If you have any questions I'll try to help.

Dick Henthorn

26 August 2014