iOS 5

 For anyone who is using iOS 5:

iOS 5 Walkthrough


iOS 5 Hidden Treasures 


iOS 5 Tips & Tricks 

Inside iCloud 

Tips for using Safari in iOS 5

Old Friends, Old Places of the Heart

Girls of Cranston Collage, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Technology affords us a new way to look at old photographs. These are some of my "oldest" friends. Yes, we are all middle-aged ladies now but I am sure that in our minds and hearts this is how we shall remain forever.

I have been on Facebook a long time but I hadn't found too many friends from childhood until several years after I joined.

Most of us are here so that we can see photos of our grandchildren since they don't necessarily live near us.

But, I went looking for these three other girls on purpose. I have been scanning and posting my old photos to write about and to research the area of my childhood.

The four of us pictured here are getting together for lunch and "catch-up". One of us lives in Florida and is coming to visit her mom who still lives in the "plat" of the old neighborhood.

I am the oldest. I just wanted you to know. But, we are only months apart. I am a year ahead in school as I skipped Kindergarten.

I am trying to get some data from city directories to show them. One of us grew up in a different neighborhood so I will have to find her street too.

We hung out together in high school despite our varied interests. We are Protestant, Catholic and Jewish. We went to public and private schools. We are married and widowed. We all have children and grandchildren. We are only children or have siblings.

Different or alike, we have a place in each other lives. Thank you Facebook for reminding us of how important that is....

Running the Mop

Running the Mop, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Running the Mop

I woke up this morning thinking about how my mother cleaned the house. I don't know why. (Well, I know why she cleaned but no why I thought of it!)

My mom was an excellent housekeeper. She was college educated but it turned out that she stayed home to be a housewife and take care of me.

When she married, someone gave her a very large carpet sweeper. It was something like the one shown here but much wider and bigger. I can remember riding on it when I was little. (That couldn't have been for long!)

My parent's house had hard wood floors and they had small rugs like the one shown here. It was a ranch house so it was all on one floor.

Every morning, she would start the day by running the mop. The mop was one of those huge mop heads. The mop itself had to be shaken outside to get rid of the "stuff" it picked up every day.

The mop head had to be washed. She put it in with the weekly wash and sent it with my father to the "plant". My grandparents owned a laundry and dry cleaning business. We didn't have a washer or dryer.

By the time I was in my early teens, mom decided that wall to wall carpeting was needed. My father, a tight Scotsman, agreed because he was always cold.

It is very hot inside a laundry and dry cleaning business so it was hard to transition to home. The car heater was always on full blast.

He always wiped his feet and headed to the coat closet to hang up his outercoat and his hat and looked at the thermostat. He bumped it up a bit each time he went by. My mother wondered how it got so hot in the house. I always turned the heat up in my own house before my parents came to visit.

These are the ordinary day family stories that I enjoy telling.

This is my new carpet sweeper and the "Swiffer" I bought for the new house. I was using the "Swiffer" that had belonged to my mother. She adored it. I left it in our old house when we moved.

They are not "high-tech", are they? The carpet sweeper does a great job on my rugs. It is amazing what dirt I pick up each day.

Mom would be proud.

Our First Computer

Our First Computer, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

The passing of Apple's Steve Jobs has saddened me so I decided to show you my very first computer. Purchased in 1983, it was a big hit with my 2nd grade daughter.

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs. You changed my life.

Direct Line Report Part 3

Step 3

Making the "Direct Descendant" Report:

• Pull down the Reports menu and choose Charts and then choose Box Charts

• Click the Start Person button and from the next screen locate the ancestor that you wish to use as the person you wish to see your lineage chart from.

 

In this example, I chose John Howland, one of my Mayflower passengers

• Uncheck the "Include photos" box.
• Click the "Chart Type" Button and choose Descendants.
• In the "Generations" box, choose at least 13 or 14.
• Click the "Box Style" button, the "Box Style" dialog box overlaps the previous screen as shown here.

 

• In the "Border Type" box, choose None and click OK. This closes this dialog box and returns you to the previous box. (See that screen shot above)
• In the "Format" button, choose Name and events word wrapped as shown above.

Optional: I click the "Index button" to the right of this dialog box to choose "no name index" and "no place" index.

• Click  "Generate Report"
• This report can be printed or saved. I save mine in PDF format.

Direct Line Report Part 2

Bruce Buzzbee, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

These are the directions that Bruce Buzzbee of RootsMagic posted to our discussion on Facebook:

1. Reports > Box charts, then set Chart Type to Descendants
2. Set Box style to None
3. Set Format to Name and events word wrapped
4. Uncheck "Include photos"

Now that will give you close to the format, except it draws the lines instead of putting leader dots. But there is one trick you have to use first to get the direct descendants only (instead of all descendants).

1. Create a new blank database (it will open up side by side with yours)
2. Drag and drop the descendant in question from your file to the blank one.
3. When RM asks who else to copy, select the person and his/her ancestors (just ancestors... not children)
4. Generate the above descendant report above for the desired ancestor from the new temporary database. It will give you just the direct line you want. You can delete that temp database when you are done.

Here's what I wrote so I could remember how to do this:

How to create a direct descendent chart using RootsMagic 4

Step 1

Open your genealogy data in RootsMagic

• Launch RootsMagic to open your regular database.

Step 2

Create a new blank database with the "direct line" ancestors:

• In RootsMagic click on the file menu and choose New and name your database test. This will put your regular database and this text database side-by-side on your screen.

The "test" database you are creating will be made up of your own "direct line" ancestors.

• Drag-and-drop your own name from your regular database to the root person in your new database. RootsMagic will open a dialog box (called Drag and Drop) and ask you who to copy.  Choose that person and the ancestors. Make sure the "generations" box is set to the number of generations (shown here as 13) you have in your database or it won't get all of your ancestors. Click OK when you are done.

 

I suggest you eventually rename this database to Direct Line so you don't have to create it again. (File/Rename)

• Close your regular genealogy database so you can work with only the newly created one on the screen and not get confused!

Part 3 is next....

Direct Line Reports Part 1

Coach Potato Genealogist @ The Beach, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.
This is a three part blog post.

Photo is of Midge in 2009, at Cape Cod, reading the manual for the RootsMagic software. I was freezing on the beach. I froze this year too. But, I digress....

Yesterday, I noticed a lively discussion on Facebook about a kind of genealogy software report that I often need to make. I was surprised to discover, from this discussion that the newer software programs don't support or don't make this common chart.

To join a lineage society, one must create a "direct" line chart to have to start to gather proof for joining. This proof consists of many types of documents but before you can start that process, you should have the people connected correctly and have a way to have the dates and places for birth, marriage, death and burial in one document. It can take many months of work to join one of these organizations.

To prepare this report, I have used Family Tree Maker v. 16, 2006 to prepare a list of persons that are descended directly from an ancestor down to me. It is an easy process. But, now I find out this easy process is no longer part of Family Tree Maker. I already knew that the copy I have was so outdated that it will probably not work on my Windows 7 computer so it stays on my laptop.

I upgraded from Personal Ancestral File (called PAF) to RootsMagic 4  because I no longer need free software to teach people how to do genealogy. Now, I make them join Ancestry.com to get them started and them start teaching them to enter data, be critical of what they find and to use census records for their ancestors. I don't do this very often anymore as I find people who really want to learn more about genealogy are already doing this process.

But, reports are basic to genealogy and this is the tyope of report I wanted to learn how to create, save, print and share. Here's a screen shot of that that type of report. It is just a part of the report I created.

Yes, I made this with RootsMagic. In the next posts, I will show you how it is done.