My Genealogy File

Yesterday I did some work on my own genealogy file. I posted the obituaries of two of my Henthorn relatives. They both died at the end of 2006. That gives you an idea of how much interest I've had in working on genealogy in the last couple of years.

If you are interested in those obituaries I posted a pointer to the one for my cousin, Wrex Henthorn, Jr. on my obituaries blog. The other obituary, for Jack Charles Henthorn, was featured in the same blog some time ago.

BTW, a register report for my Henthorn family is now a 311 page document. If you are a member of my family and if you have an interest in such a document feel free to contact me. To read the report you need a copy of the free Adobe Reader (PDF) installed on your computer.

Mr. Dickie's Virtual Website

Ever since AOL dropped website support in October 2008 I have been giving thought to how to go about maintaining an Internet presence.

The idea of paying for webspace to recreate my genealogy website didn't appeal to me. In the past I found maintaining skill in the use of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets was a lot of work.

I decided to see what I could accomplish using free space and capabilities offered by Google and others.

I created four Google blogs:
1. Mr. Dickie's Blog - where I post quotations that I like and things that are on my mind. I usually post to this blog daily. It also feeds to my "Notes" on Facebook.

2. Arrow Prayers - where I post short prayers. I usually post to this blog once a day too.

3. Henthorn Website News - I use this blog to post genealogy news and other information about the families I'm interested in: Henthorn(e), Hinthorn(e), Conger and Yoho. I post to this one as the mood strikes me and as time permits.

4. Henthorn Website Obits - this blog is the place where I share obituaries as I extract them from my files or as they become available on the Internet. I post to this one when something becomes available.

I also created a Google group.
5. Henthorn Website - A group is a place where people with a common interest can become members and share information. Response to this idea has, so far, been underwhelming. There is a Discussion Board where members can post messages to various topics. There is an area where "files" can be shared and a place where "pages" can be shared. I have successfully posted the following file types to the group: JPEGs, HTML, TXT, and PDFs.

I joined a social bookmarking site.
6. Del.icio.us - My AOL website had a Links page I used to share URLs to other websites I felt might be of interest to others working on the same surnames. Recently I found a better way to accomplish this task, and more, which is very user friendly. I'm posting my links to the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us. If you haven't taken a look at this site I recommend doing so. You don't have to join to use it. To post your own links you must register.

I'm writing today to announce that all six components are now linked together from the four Google blogs. There is a "link" box in the right-hand sidebar of each blog with the names of the various pieces of what I call "my virtual website." From the "link" box you can go to any of the other components. To return to the Google blogs from either the "group" or "Del.icio.us use your browser "back" key.

I'm interested in feedback.

Mr. Dickie

Delicious Genealogy

I was able to add bookmarks to pages on my Google genealogy group to Delicious. That's nice because the bookmarks allow me to write a description of the file I am referencing.

Tags make it possible to focus on a topic within my bookmarks. For example, If someone wants to see all of my bookmarks that have a tag for the "Yoho" family entering this URL is all it takes.

http://del.icio.us/MrDickie/Yoho

You can also search for more than one tag by entering a plus sign (+) between tags. For example: to find all of my bookmarks pointing to the articles about "PDF" written by Dick Eastman use this URL.

http://del.icio.us/MrDickie/Eastman+PDF

After trying this URL enter the following line without the word "Eastman" to see the difference. This one finds all of the pages about "PDF."

http://del.icio.us/MrDickie/PDF

This ability to gather all of the links together in one set is very powerful. You could think of the bookmarks of "MrDickie" as a website with pointers to all of the webpages he's either found or posted himself. This website doesn't have a structure, like a tree or organizational chart. Rather the website is dynamic or virtual. The visitor searches for the topic of interest using a tag or tags and Delicious presents a display, similar to a Google search, which gathers all of the pages about the topic of interest together.

There's more to it than I'm writing about here. Once you are at Delicious you will see lists of tags, a place to key in tags, counts of the number of times the tags were used and much more.

If you take a look at what I have done so far I'd appreciate hearing your opinion. Did you find it useful? Was it easy to learn and use?

Mr. Dickie

Genealogy Publishing with PDF

I've started a project to post bookmarks to websites of interest on the social bookmarking website: Delicious.

This link presents a series of websites that would be useful if you are interested in using PDF to publish genealogy or anything else. A number of articles written by Dick Eastman are very useful. There are three sites for affordable PDF publishing programs. One of them, Ancestral Author, uses a GEDCOM file to publish a hyper-linked genealogy report.

To display PDF website links from Mr. Dickie's bookmarks on Delicious click the link below.

http://del.icio.us/MrDickie/pdf

Who Reads This Blog?

I wonder if there is a way to install a visitor counter on Google blogs? That could be very handy. Without a counter or some feedback there is no way to tell if anyone is reading what's posted on a blog.

If you visited, feel free to add a comment to let me know whether you found anything of interest. I'd appreciate the feedback.

I'm trying to encourage myself to get busy posting to the two Google genealogy blogs I created and the Google genealogy group I created.

Dick Henthorn

Allen County Public Library - Fort Wayne, IN

It's been months since I posted anything to this blog. I think I am ready to post something from time to time. At the present time I am not actively working on genealogy. I do, however, have many documents and other information that I can share. Let's see where this takes me.

If you are interested in Henthorn genealogy and are fortunate to be able to visit the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN you can review five documents with information about the Henthorn family.

"Henthorn family: James Henthorn II, of Monroe County, Ohio" by Richard E. Henthorn and Mary Josephine (Henthorn) Bolerjack.

"Joseph Fox, his descendants and related families: including: Ammons, Barr, Berdine, Crane, Dulaney, Haines, Henderson, Hennen, Henthorn, Lemley, Michael, Myers, Nuzum, Phillips, Smith, Stephens/Stevens, Tennant & etc." by Charles Scott Fox.

"Five Methodist families of western Pennsylvania, 1785: Henthorn, Jones, Lackey, Murphy, Pumphrey" by Raymond Martin Bell.

"The Henthorn family, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia: with notes on Cresap and Quinn families" by Norma L. Henthorn.

"Descendants of Hugh and Mary Jackson, Sr. and related families: Craft, Dunaway, Fuller, Henthorn and McCleary" by Albert G. Macdonald.

AOL Did It

The End of My AOL Website and Journals

I checked at 6:00 p.m. to see if AOL removed my website and my journals from the Internet. They did! Thus ends a season in my life.

Mr. Dickie