Family History

I’m still struggling to learn about how The Master Genealogist (TMG) genealogy research and family history software program works. It’s not for the casual family history researcher. It is for the very serious genealogist, determined to dig into all the details of their family’s history and report on it accurately and comprehensively.

A problem I had at first was connecting a person’s life with the data TMG needed from me. A lifesaver came from Terry’s TMG Tips article, “TMG Basic Concepts – A Metaphor to Help Understand the Basics”.

…I hope to offer some basic concepts to aid users in visualizing how TMG manages their data, so that they can more quickly become comfortable in using the features of the program. This is not intended to be an accurate portrayal of the technical details of the program, but rather is intended to create a mental model to help the user to grasp what he or she needs to do to use the program effectively. In order to do that, I am using a ring binder metaphor to illustrate some of the program’s basic operations.

…In TMG, a person is only an ID number, nothing more (sorry – 1984 has come and gone ). So, using our metaphor, when we add a person, we are taking a blank piece of paper, writing an ID number in the upper left corner, and placing it in the ring binder. That’s all a “person” is in TMG.

…Everything you enter about a person is done by adding Tags. Everything! His or her name, birth and death information, parents, children, everything!

Once I understood that everyone is a number and everything about the person is a tag, it started to make sense. Starting with that information, I could begin to build information about the person’s life by adding “tags” with events and descriptions of their life.

Terry goes on to explain that once you have basic information about the person’s life entered in tags, it’s time to document their relationships. After all, no one is totally alone. Everyone comes with parents, and they come with parents, and you may have a spouse, and might even have children. You may even have brothers and sisters, and even if you don’t, your parents probably did. All of these people are connected, and the way to connect these relationships is through, you guessed it, more tags! Start to see the pattern?

I did. If you are struggling with the basic concepts of how The Master Genealogist program works, take time to study Terry’s TMG Tips for indepth information, tools, and tutorials to help you get started and learn more about how the program works.

Going through my father’s papers, I found many of his resumes, going back decades. The most recent ones written in the past 25 years were resumes I helped him put together. Before that, my mother did them for him. He was rather useless in that area. 😉

At first I stuffed them in a file folder, thinking they were probably worth going through later with the idea that I’d probably throw away the oldest ones. A few weeks later I opened the folder to realize I was holding my father’s professional life and history in my hands.

A resume is a factual representation of a person’s professional life and career. It is also an exaggerated and boastful representation of skills they may, or may not, have had, as well as some fidgeting of dates and titles to make themselves look better than they really were. My father’s resumes are both.

A resume is customizable. My father, for example, worked in the shipyards for many years, but he also worked other odd jobs when the shipyard layoffs hit. He worked in house construction, real estate, and janitorial services. He poked around at a wide variety of things, trying to make ends meet. He had different resumes for the different industries he worked in, so each one was different. He even had a very different resume I helped him put together years ago to convince a local college to accept him into their program, highlighting professional skills he really didn’t have.

A resume tells the story of a person’s working life, but it also helps to define them in other ways. I’m still learning about who my father was, even though I knew him in many ways better than most people. His resumes offer new insights. I just wish I’d found them before he died so I could get my new questions about his life answered.

Look through your family papers to see if you can find any resumes of your family members. If you don’t have one, find one, or if they are living, ask them for copies to add to your files. Someday, these resumes may be treasures, revealing more about an ancestor than just names and dates.

The Genealogy Journey offers “Historic Family Papers and Photos: Store Them Right or Consider Donating Them” offers tips and links to resources and techniques on how to protect, preserve, and donate your family history papers and photographs.

Please! As a family member who has lost so many precious family records, photographs, and heirlooms to fire, neglect, and just ignored, please protect your old papers and photographs in whatever method is best for you and your family. They may not mean anything to you now, but for those of us who are searching for microscopic buried treasures on our family’s past, they are gold and diamonds.

Genealogy Today has an article series on scanning old photographs with part one covering basic scanning information. Part two will be out soon.

Among the basics are two issues that confront most new computer users when it comes to scanning photographs and graphics: size and quality.

When you scan an old photo, you create an image file. The amount of space the file takes up on your hard disk is directly related to both the size and complexity of the photo and the resolution used when you scan it. Resolution is measured in dots per square inch (dpi). For example, doubling both the horizontal and vertical resolution going from 300 by 300 dpi to 600 by 600 dpi quadruples the size of the im age file. A 6″ x 4″ photo print scanned at 600dpi produces a 25 megabyte image! Also, the higher the resolution, the longer it takes to scan the photo. The old saying, “A picture is worth 1,000 words,” is more than true with scanned images.

Scan resolution merely determines image size. When you increase scan resolution, you increase image size. A 6×4-inch photo scanned at 110 dpi fills about half of a 1024×768 monitor screen, the typical resolution of most computer monitors today.

Images in newspapers and magazines are reproduced quite differently from photographic prints. They’re reduced to a series of small dots. When scanning these, you can easily get an interference pattern between the dots on the original and the dots scanned. Some scanners allow you to “descreen” when scanning–blurring the dot pattern so it appears more like a photograph. This process is very effective and is better than trying to overcome the screen or patterning in your photo enhancement software after you scan your image. Scanning at high resolution is another way to eliminate these patterns. To scan old engravings, set your scanner to Line Art at 600 dpi.

This are very good points to consider when scanning.

If you are scanning from old photo albums or newspaper clippings, handle these with cotton gloves to protect the emulsion and fragile quality of the items, and handle them with extreme care.

If you are removing photographs or newspaper clippings from photo albums, get professional advice if they don’t come out easily. The best advice is to scan them in their original form rather than remove them, to ensure their protection.

I’ll be writing more about scanning and using your historical images, letters, and graphics in the next few months.