Legacy News

Legacy tip: Which name should I record?

I think I'm about to shake up the family tree....

I located the birth record of my great-great-grandfather. Great! But the name listed in the birth record is not the name he used later in his life.

His name, Lauritz Marinus LARSEN, is printed in all the family books and even hangs on my office wall as part of the large, custom-framed wall chart of my ancestry. His death certificate even identifies him as Lauritz LARSEN.

His real name

I already had his family's genealogical information, but I wanted to verify it by locating the original documents. Legacy Family Tree's Research Guidance tool provided the link to the Denmark State Archives' parish register collection. After a little searching, I located the birth record of Laurits Marinus STEFENSEN, who was born on the same day and in the same place as my Lauritz Marinus LARSEN.

Laurits Marinus STEFENSEN, born 14 Sep 1869 in Elling, Hjørring, Denmark - birth record

Lauritz Marinus LARSEN, born 14 Sep 1869 in Elling, Hjørring, Denmark - family records

  

As Danish researchers well know, patronymic naming was the custom in Denmark where the child's surname was composed of the father's given name followed by the addition of the suffix of -sen (son) or -datter (daughter). Therefore, if patronymics were still used in 1869, we could usually assume that according to his birth record, Laurits' father's name was Stefen.

So where did the LARSEN surname come from? I don't yet have all these answers, but I do know that after the family emigrated to America, they used LARSEN as their surname.

How should this be recorded in Legacy?

I know that Laurits STEFENSEN and Lauritz LARSEN are the same person. But for as long as I have been doing genealogy, his name has been recorded in my family file with the LARSEN surname. Good researchers will record every name variant, nickname, and alias and add its proper documentation. These names can then optionally be printed when creating any lists or reports. Following this advice, we should use Legacy's Alternate Names form to record the newly-found name.

1. In the Individual's Information screen, click on the Alternate Names icon. (It's the first in the row of icons at the top, and just to the right of the surname field.)
2. Click on the Add button and fill in both the given name and surname. Click Save.
3. Finally, click on the newly-entered name to highlight it, and using the Source button, add its documentation.

So which of the two names should be his "primary" name? My rule of thumb is to:

use the name as it was earliest recorded.

So in this case, in the Alternate Names form, I would highlight the Laurits STEFENSEN name and click on the Swap Alternate Name with Main Name button. Doing this simply switches the highlighted alternate name with the name in the Individual's Information screen. Of course, there are always exceptions to this guideline - just use your best judgement.

 

The real problem

Now that I've updated his primary name in my Legacy family file, do I now reprint the family group records, books, and even the large wall chart in my office? Maybe I'll work on documenting the rest of the family first.

When an old man dies a library burns

This old African proverb, "when an old man dies a library burns," resonates with genealogists. If I could have just an hour more with my great-grandmother, I would have so many questions. Is there anyone in your life that you need to talk with before it is too late?

You need to know the best kind of questions to ask. For example, "how was your childhood" might get you the response of "it was okay." Interview done....

If you had the right set of thought-provoking questions you could get more out of the "library." Thanks to the interview experts of FamilyHistoryExpos.com, Legacy Family Tree 7.0's Interview Questions has all of the right questions and more.

In Legacy (Reports > Books/Other tab > Interview Questions) choose the subject of your interview...

• My Memories
• Your Memories
• Father Remembers
• Remembering Father
• Mother Remembers
• Remembering Mother
• Grandpa Remembers
• Remembering Grandpa
• Grandma Remembers
• Remembering Grandma
• Christmas Memories
• Family Folklore
• Life in Your Town

... and select which categories/questions you want to include, and you have everything you need to conduct a perfect interview.

You can even interview someone else about your mother/father/grandparent. For example, if you select the "Remembering Mother" interview, Legacy will give you the right questions to interview someone else about mother. Here are the questions from the "Family Time" category within this interview:

• How would you describe my mother's family life when she was growing up?
• When they worked together, what did they do?
• Tell me about some of their family excursions.
• What is one of your favorite, funny memories about my mother's family?

Notice that the questions are open-ended. You'll never get a Yes or No response to these.

You can select from the default questions, write your own questions, or even create your very own interview.

When you are ready, print the entire interview or save it as a text file, or even a .pdf that you can send in an email.

This "when an old man dies a library burns" quote was a good reminder to me to talk more with my "more experienced" relatives before it is too late. Now where did I put Grandma's telephone number....

Legacy Video Tip: Working with Locations

Question from Legacy user:

"Is there an easy way to create a list of everyone linked to a certain location? I know that in Legacy's Master Location List I can highlight a location and see the list of people. For example, if I click on Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts I get a list of everyone that ever lived there. But I want a list of everyone who ever lived/died/resided in Suffolk County."

Answer from Legacy:

This is such a great question and one that ALL researchers come across. We need to know who resided in a certain county, or in a certain state/province. To answer your question, below we've "extracted" a portion of the Mastering Legacy: Names, Dates & Places training video. Click on the Play button to watch. The transcript is also beneath the video if you want to read the instructions.

If you do not see the play button below, either 1) click on the yellow "allow" button in your browser above or 2) make sure you have installed Windows Media Player.

Here's the transcript:

The master location list is a powerful research tool. Quite often, you will want to create a report showing all individuals who lived in a certain locality. Once you’re in the master location list, highlight the desired locality, and on the right is the list of everyone who ever lived there. In this example, 14 individuals were found as having Minneapolis, Minnesota as a locality linked to them. Lorenzo Brown, for example, died and was buried in Minneapolis. This list can then be printed by clicking on the List Options button, and you have a custom report.

Now suppose that you want to create a list of all individuals who had resided in Hennepin County, Minnesota. One way to do this is to manually scroll through the long list of localities and select the ones that have Hennepin as the county. This is not very fast, however. It is better to sort this list in reverse order. To do this, click on the sort button.

Typically, the sorted order is city, county, state, and country. In this situation, move the state to the top, then move the county to position number 2, and move the city to the third position. This can be done by either clicking on the move arrows on the left, or just by dragging and dropping the appropriate fields. Now click on OK.

Now all of the Minnesota localities are sorted together, followed by the county, followed by the city. Now each of the localities in which Hennepin is a part can be selected. Then click on the Options button on the right, click on Show List, and a report of all individuals in Hennepin County will be presented.

Preview Mastering Legacy: Names, Dates & Places

The video above is an excerpt from Mastering Legacy: Names, Dates & Places, the second video in our "Learn Legacy" series. To preview the video, or for more information or to purchase the video, please click here.

Legacy seminar now downloadable for offline viewing

For those of you want to view the Legacy Seminar, but you have a slower Internet connection, you can now download the seminar to your computer for "offline viewing". Here are the instructions:

1. Download seminar.zip here (108 MB, requires Windows Media player). When the File Download screen appears, click on Save to save the .zip file to your computer.
2. After the downloading is complete, click on the Open button to begin the "unzipping".
3. In Windows XP, click on the "Extract all files" link which will launch the Extraction Wizard. Click Next.
4. Using the Browse button, decide where on your hard drive you want to save the seminar files. Click Next. Click Finish at the end.
5. Two folders will appear - overview3 and tips3. In the overview3 folder, double-click on the overview3.html file to watch the overview class. In the tips3 folder, double-click on the tips3.html file to watch the tips class.

Enjoy the seminar!

Legacy Family Tree seminar now online

If you did not make it to Hemet, California three weeks ago for the Hemet-San Jacinto Genealogical Society's "Genealogy Technology with Legacy's Geoff Rasmussen seminar" (that's me!) here's your second chance. We recorded the seminar and have now published the Legacy classes for everyone to view.

In the past, we couldn't make it to every genealogy society around the world that wanted us to demonstrate Legacy. But with technology, we can now bring a seminar to the comforts of your own home. You can even attend this seminar in your pajamas.

Publishing these "live" seminar classes is somewhat of a risk for me, because now the whole world gets to experience my dry humor and sometimes foot-in-the-mouth jokes which don't appear in our Legacy Training Video collection. But since one of my goals is to help others with genealogy and Legacy, I guess it's worth the risk....

The classes

We've published two of the seminar's four classes for you to view.

Legacy Family Tree - an Overview (54 minutes) is intended for those who are new to Legacy but is also a great refresher course for experienced Legacy users. Topics include:

• importing from another genealogy computer program
• setting and understanding relationships
• 1/2 siblings
• setting your direct line
• AKAs
• addresses
• notes
• sources
• pictures
• To Do List
• Research Guidance
• reports

Legacy Family Tree - Tips and Tricks (58 minutes) is intended for those who are experienced Legacy users, but everyone is welcome to view it. Topics include:

• chronologies
• effective use of events/facts
• adding historical events to timelines
• successfully obtaining information from living relatives
• creating books
• using Legacy Charting
• Descendant and Index View tips
• using the split screen feature
• what to do when you have an unproven relative
• how to add unlinked individuals
• news/updates
• family group records

How to Watch

Visit http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/seminars.asp for the links to the videos. Be sure to also print the seminar's handouts.

Legacy and New FamilySearch integration

For many years now, the LDS church has worked on developing a web application for its members (and eventually the public) to be able to interact with a very large, unified database of connected genealogical information. This new system is being released in phases for members of the church first. When the system is “perfected”, it should encourage research collaboration and prevent research duplication.

What about Legacy?

Legacy Family Tree is being developed to interact and optionally synchronize with the FamilySearch Family Tree. Using Legacy, you will be able to take advantage of new collaboration and searching tools, and for members of the LDS church, enhanced tools for ordinance work. For a few years now, we have been developing Legacy’s integration tools, and are closer to having our software officially certified by FamilySearch. We are taking a unique approach to integrating with FamilySearch Family Tree which we believe will make it simple for newbies to get started with their family history, and provide the “power” tools for experienced researchers to benefit from the system. It has been challenging to come up with the right combination of features to make it both simple and powerful, but we know it will be well worth the wait.

When will it be available?
After our integration tools have been certified by FamilySearch (hopefully in the next month or so) and then tested, the new tools will be available in both the Standard Edition (free) and Deluxe Edition of Legacy. Of course we wanted to have it done months ago, but we wanted our implementation to be done the right way. We're aiming for the second half of 2009 for these exciting new tools to be released.

New tips page for beginning-level Legacy users

Are you new to using Legacy Family Tree? We've created a special LegacyNews tips page just for you. We have gone through the 700+ LegacyNews articles and selected the articles that best help new Legacy users get started in the right direction.

The link to the new beginner's page is found at the top of this web page. Click on the link which reads "New to Legacy? Read these first" (it's right under the colorful banner at the top).

Do you have a beginner's question?

Don't be afraid to ask! Send me an email and maybe we can turn your question into a LegacyNews article that other beginners can benefit from too.

Legacy tip: how to combine multiple family files into one

Four days before I was married, I purchased my second genealogy software program - Personal Ancestral File (PAF) 3.0. I paid $30. It was one of the few things I brought into our marriage. I was excited to combine our pedigrees and learn more about my wife's roots. I later found out that I married my 13th cousin. (Legacy's Relationship Calculator told me this.)

Four years earlier when I began computerizing my genealogy, I kept a separate database for each of my eight great-grandparents' lines:

• Rasmussen
• Wilde
• Crane
• Morgan
• Larsen
• Fjeldsted
• Brown
• McCall

So, in my Rasmussen database, I kept track of both Ivan Rasmussen's ancestors AND his descendants. In my Wilde database, I recorded Martha Wilde's ancestors, AND her descendants. And so on....

As you may have experienced too, keeping multiple databases has its pros and cons. You might want to re-read our article entitled Your Legacy Database - Should You Split It? for some of these comparisons.

If you currently have your information spread apart in multiple databases, and you want to combine it back into one master database, follow the instructions below.

First of all, decide which of your multiple databases you want to use as your main database. Open it (File > Open). Then...

1. Go to File > Import From > Legacy file
2. Navigate to and select the other database which you want to import. Click the Open button.
3. On the Import a Legacy File screen, select the second option to Add the Legacy information to the EXISTING Family file and click Proceed.
4. Legacy then asks if you want to make a backup before proceeding. It's always a good idea to do this. If you have not yet made a backup of your main database, click the Cancel button to create your backup (File > Backup), then start over with these steps.
5. Click the Continue with import button.
6. On the Legacy Import screen, look at the options, especially those on the Privacy tab to ensure that you will import everyone that you want to. Then click on the Start the Import button. When the AutoSource Reminder screen appears, just click on Don't Assign a Source.

Now that the "other" database has been imported into your master database, it is very likely that you will have duplicates. For example, you and your spouse's information may have been entered into both databases. In any case, we recommend clicking on the Go To Merge button that is now visible. When the Merge Options screen appears, click on the Continue button and Legacy will present to you, side-by-side, any possible duplicates. Using the Merge buttons at the bottom, compare and merge any possible sets of duplicates. When this process is complete, follow steps 1-6 above for any additional databases that you want to import into your master database.

The end result will be that you have one larger master database that contains everything about everyone you are related to. Now it should be easier to avoid some of the pitfalls of maintaining multiple databases as described here.

Using "negative evidence" to solve a research problem

I didn't find Mary Hague in the census - and now I'm more excited than ever. (That just doesn't sound right though, does it?)

We often get excited when we find our ancestor in the census, or in other records. Often, NOT finding our ancestors can tell us just as much. I had such an experience this morning as I searched for Mary Elizabeth Hague in the now-complete 1911 England census at www.1911census.co.uk. (Just this morning I read the announcement that they've now added the final counties to complete the census.)

I have searched many times for Mary's father, Edwin HAGUE, in the 1911 England census. Until yesterday, I hadn't searched for him as Edwin HAGNE. In the image below, I can easily see how the indexer thought the U in the surname should be a N, but it stumped me for a little while.

 

Using various searching techniques, I finally located the family. In previous census years, Edwin and Annie's children were living with them. Their youngest daughter, Mary, was with them in 1901. She was 18 years old. In this 1911 census, Mary was no longer listed with her parents.

What happened? 1) She could have died. 2) She could have left home to live on her own. 3) She could have married.

According to the "Total Children Born Alive" and "Children Still Living" columns, the parents had 4 children, and all were still living. So theory #1 is not true. Performing searches of a Mary Elizabeth Hague, born 1883 in the area was negative, so theory #2 might not be true. What most likely happened, is she married sometime between 1901 (when she was living with her parents) and 1911 (when she was not living at home).

In her book, Evidence Explained, Elizabeth Shown Mills explains that negative evidence is an "inference we can draw from the absence of information that should exist under particular circumstances." In this situation, the negative evidence is the absence of Mary in the household of her parents, and we can now come up with new research possibilities.

I have now narrowed the time frame of Mary's possible marriage to between 1901 and 1911. Using Legacy Family Tree's built-in Research Guidance (shown below), I clicked on the Goal: Marriage tab. One of the suggested sources is to search the England/Wales Civil Registration Indexes. Clicking on its Online button, Legacy provided six different Internet links to these databases, including a link to a free database.

    

I performed various searches and found a terrific possibility of a marriage to Edmund Hoyland in 1901. Legacy's Research Guidance also gave me a direct link to order the marriage certificate, so this morning, that's just what I did. Legacy explains that the fathers' names and occupations should be listed on the certificate, so I am hoping that when the certificate arrives in my mailbox, it will list Edwin HAGUE as Mary's father. If so, I've then solved a research problem from the clues I learned from a record that did not even include Mary.

I know...I get excited about the littlest things....

Do you have an experience of using negative evidence to solve a research question? Let us know by using the comments form below.

Sharing Your Legacy Electronically

Gone are the days of waiting impatiently by the mailbox for the package from the court house, or the letter from your long-lost cousin. Now we wait, even more impatiently, with our email’s inbox open.

Legacy Family Tree can create electronic versions of reports that can be attached to emails, making it easier and faster to communicate with your friends and family.

On the right side of each report are the report’s output options:

Screen / Printer  Sends the report to either the Print Preview window or directly to your printer depending on whether you click the Preview or Print button.

Rich Text File  Sends the report to a disk file containing all the formatting options such as bolding, indents, fonts and font sizes.  It also contains all the index and table of contents marks.  This file can then be loaded into your favorite word processor for further editing and formatting.

Text File  Sends the report to a text file on either your hard drive or other device.  You will be prompted for a drive and path.  (Note: The Index, Table of Contents, and Title Page options are not available when using the Text File output format.)

HTML File  Sends the report to a HTML file that can be used on a web site or sent as an email message. You will be prompted for a drive and path.  (Note: The Index, Table of Contents, and Title Page options are not available when using the HTML File output format.)

PDF File  Generates the report, displays it in the Print Preview window and then creates an Adobe PDF (Portable Document File) file.  This file can be viewed with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader and easily sent to other people by e mail.  (This feature is part of the Deluxe Edition only.)

How to Send Files via Email

In Legacy, click on Help > Show Help Index > type Attachments to e-mail > and double-click on this subject. This article provides information on sending attachments using several different email programs.

Report Settings – Save/Load
In the lower right-corner of the report’s options page are two buttons that few Legacy users utilize. You’ll find the Load and Save buttons for every report, and also in other areas in Legacy. The Save button is often misunderstood. It does not save the report to a file. Rather, it saves all of the report settings to a special file. This means that you can have different sets of report settings saved for different purposes. For example, let’s pretend that we do most of our genealogy correspondence with two other researchers – John and Mary. When you correspond with John, you like to include different aspects in your reports than you would share with Mary.

Click on the Report Options button. When you correspond with John, on the Include tab, you like to include Notes, Events, and RINs. And you like to share pictures with him, so on the pictures tab, turn on those options. Every time you share a report with John – these are the options you want to have turned on. Close these options, now click on the Save button. Now, give the settings a file name – John, and click save.

Now create a set of report settings for your correspondence with Mary. Click on the Report Options button. Mary doesn’t like pictures, so turn off those options. And she doesn’t need information from the notes, events, or even the RIN numbers. So turn those options off.

Now close the report options, and save this set of report settings. Now you’re set. Any time you want to create a report for John, just load his settings by clicking on the Load button. Select his name and click on Open. To be sure, click on the Report Options button, and notice on the include tab how the RINs, events, and notes are selected. If we loaded Mary’s settings, these would not be selected.

So the Load and Save buttons are very handy tools to save different sets of report options for various purposes.