Tools I am Rediscovering

So there are lots of tools to use for genealogy or anything else. Many require coughing up "only" $10-$50 per item, which is fine for one tool, but starts to amount to real money after a while. Save your money for buying access to the documents you cannot find anywhere but fill in the blank charging website, or taking a trip to a county courthouse.
[Warning: I am not a mac person. I realize that Macs vs PCs can stray into religion, and I am trying to stay away from politics and religion. Be warned that this is a PC post, no mac tools, apologies in advance.]

Collaborating with cousins

You want to snap a bit of a website to send to someone or attach to an event in your genealogy software. Or you want to send the census you just found with a big red box around the relevant family, or their residence, or next door neighbor. Enter the newest version of  the Windows Accessory, Snipping Tool. [Greenshot is also free and very fine. PrintKey covers the basics]

If you haven't used it before, Snipping Tool is a Windows freebie. Press start, type "Snipping Tool." (no quotes) When Windows finds it, right click and pin it to start if it's not there already.  Windows 10 has a new app that launches from the print screen button, but it's not as good, in my opinion. You should really check out the Snipping Tool as it has some new features, including the ability to delay your start of area selection for x seconds, which allows those pesky popups to fade before you clip. [See Delay button in the menu]

Now you snip the area you want. To draw on it, click on the edit with Paint button from inside snipping tool. It's the upside down rainbow colored teardrop on the far right.

If you haven't looked at Paint since Windows 3.1, [guilty!] you owe it a second glance. It used to be clunky, but has grown up. It comes with 2D and 3D shapes, arrows, and lines to mark up pictures of your menu, to show someone how to run the report they want, or to draw that red box around the  relative you (finally) found hiding in the census. Here´s a Barrett, maybe Barnett stuck between all those Wiltse, Willse, Wiltsey, Wills in the Oswego, NY 1840 census. 

"United States Census, 1840," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHYC-2DZ : accessed 9 May 2016), Benjn Wiltsey, Hannibal, Oswego, New York, United States; citing p. 14, NARA microfilm publication M704, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 325; FHL microfilm 17,202.

You can draw free hand using any of the implements that look like things you may remember holding in your hand some decades ago (crayon, fountain pen, pencil...).  The first time I opened a "new project," this morning in Paint it took about 15 seconds on my laptop. I did have four open excel spreadsheets, a 35 tab chrome browser, and an access based database program open. Your mileage may vary, but your wait is unlikely to be longer.

NOTE: 
To save a website for future research reference, or because it has info I want to check out on some relative, I use Evernote as its web clipping tool is the best for that purpose. It will automatically select just an article, or you can clip just part of an article. If I want to embed something in my research, or send a markup to a collaborator, I want a copy on my hard drive.  Evernote comes in both free and paid versions.

Image manipulation, conversion

Irfanview has been my go to tool for images since the 90's. I have it set as the default program to open all images because it opens fast, and I often just want to look at an image. It is not a full service editor but can crop and change from color to black and white, or sharpen an image. The thumbnails database is handy for finding duplicates.

One of my favorite features lately is that Irfanview will convert from and to all the main file types (jpg, tif, pdf, png, you name it.) Why would you want to convert?:

• Genealogy programs like Legacy Family Tree won't show pdf's when they are attached to an event or individual. You have to double click on it. I don´t want to have to click twice.
• Tif's are generally too large and slow genealogy database programs down or use up the capacity of your website. 
• Certain websites won't show wmf or png images. 

In addition to conversions, Irfanview will edit the metadata or ¨data about the picture.¨ You can add tags, put in copyright info, the name of the photographer, or embed a citation, the transcription of the document, or the names of the people in the photo. 

Working with those wide census images

I don't know about you, but I find deciphering which of the tick marks goes to what line of the census difficult. And it gets harder as you move forward in time. The 1790 census is relatively easy, since there aren't many columns, but by 1840 I lose track half way through the men, never mind the women or the second page. Enter screen rulers. They were made for designers to measure sizes on screen for detailed drawings, and hey work as a simple straightedge too, always on top of the screen. You drag it under your guy, say any one of the Wiltse, Willse, Wiltsey on that 1840 Oswego, NY. Hmmm, so Henry Wiltsey really could be my 4g grandfather, born 1794 in Duanesburgh, therefore the one in the 40-49 column, and reported by collaborating distant cousins to have been involved in a property deal in Hannibal Twp as early as 1830.

Hannibal Twp, Oswego County, NY Census 1840.  "United States Census, 1840," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYB3-9TRD?cc=1786457&wc=31SK-1NC%3A1588666984%2C1588669333%2C1588670232 : 24 August 2015), New York > Oswego > Hannibal > image 29 of 34 citing NARA microfilm publication M704, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.)

I have had a copy of the freeware Cool Ruler, pictured above, for years. You can find the latest version of the app at Softpedia.  Be sure to read all the specifications before downloading, as it has not been maintained. There are others if you search for them. Once you have used a ruler, you will wonder how you managed without. It´s also good on more modern census forms - they also have multiple columns stretching out across the page.

Research Logs, Manipulating data, Quick searches within index results.

I could rave on about spreadsheets and their marvelous uses for research, but Thomas MacEntee and others already have. (T MacEntee has several websites; the link is my current favorite). For Excel instruction, see Legacy Family Tree Webinars, YouTube, Facebook groups, or just play with it. Software doesn't break.

My only contribution to the spreadsheet lovefest is to recommend two things:

1. Learn how to "screen scrape" the search results from any online search into an excel spreadsheet to save for further research.
2. Install ASAP utilities for Excel. Even if you only ever use the web cleaning tool, it's worth looking at. If you use it for business, you should pay, but it is free for students and non-profits. 

To screen scrape, use your mouse to double click and select all the search results that you want to save. Then paste in Excel. Then you can sort by any of the columns, date, location, name. I added the year column in the spreadsheet below because Excel doesn't read dates prior to 1900. Open Office apparently does.

Scraped from a search of the named database on Ancestry.com

It's amazing what you find just by sorting by date or location instead of the seemingly random sort provided. If you search across multiple census years, the years are usually clumped together, but sort by location and name and you might have your non-moving relatives right there next to one another. I find scraping works best on ancestry results. The bonus of screen scraping is that you can use it as a research log as the links copy over as well. Here´s a sample. The View Record links work in my Excel, though not in this image. All you have to do to use the results as a research log is to add a column on the right that says ¨findings.¨ If you don´t finish going through all the positive hits in one day, you can go back to it later. Kudos to all the main database sites for making their document links permanent, so that the links no longer die as they used to back in the early days.


What´s your favorite freebie tool?

A Simple and Fact-based Cheat Sheet about the Census and Immigration

There is a debate raging just now whether the 2020 Census enumeration should collect data regarding the citizenship of those who respond. The politics of the debate lie outside the realm of genealogy. As family history researchers, we just want to know. We must know. It keeps us awake at night, not knowing where our GGGGM was born. If it was up to us, every Census would include shoe size and food preferences.
While it is easy to read each Census and see in it responses to the events of the day, the basic reason for the Census is established by the Constitution. Under Article One, Section 2 of the Constitution, the sole and single reason for the Census is to calculate the size of the delegation each State can send to the U.S. House of Representatives. The Constitution directs that the enumeration is to include all persons, "Excepting Indians not taxed." The manner of enumeration was changed by the 14th Amendment in the wake of Emancipation, but it still didn't have anything to do with immigration or citizenship, just the number of people subject to paying taxes. Please feel free to verify this for yourself.
The first Census to pay overt attention to the question of citizenship is the 1820, which aims in general for a surprising level of granularity. This Census has a category for, "Foreigners not Naturalized." This is not a separate category from the various and many age groups, but indicates whether any one of the free persons in the household was foreign born, but not naturalized. Could be anyone among those already categorized in the household. I'm not sure how this was helpful, because it's so very vague.
No Census prior to 1850 asked specifically where anyone was born, and 1850 and 1860 asked only for the place of birth for each enumerated individual. In 1870, the Census asked whether an enumerated individual's parents were foreign born, as a, "Yes/No," question. Beginning in 1880, enumerators asked not only for the place of each enumerated individual's birth, but the specific place of birth for each of their parents.
As you likely know, most of the 1890 Census is lost, so I will move on to 1900, which asked specific and direct questions regarding immigration and naturalization. Not only is each enumerated person asked for their own place of birth and that of their Father and Mother, but those who were foreign born were also asked the year they immigrated, how many years they had been in the US, and whether they were naturalized or retained the legal status of alien, as it was then called.
The next three Censuses asked for similar information, with slight variations. The 1910 Census asks for place of birth, parents' places of birth, and for those foreign born, the year of immigration and whether naturalized. The 1920 Census asks for place of birth for the individual and each parent, and if foreign born, the year of immigration, whether or not naturalized, and if naturalized, what year. In 1930, enumerators asked for places of birth for the enumerated individual and their parents, and if foreign born, the year of immigration, whether naturalized, and whether the individual was able to speak English.
The 1940 Census asked for the place of birth for each enumerated individual, and the citizenship of the foreign born. This Census traded the attention previously paid to immigration for attention paid to work history, for obvious reasons. It is also the only Census to ask for place of residence between it and the previous Census enumeration, also for obvious reasons. If you can't find your folks in a City Directory search during the Depression, the 1940 Census can give you a clue. Only random individuals were asked about the birth place of their parents.
While the full Census data is not available for 1950 Census onward, you can find reports containing aggregate data. Just Google for the year you want and multiple links will be made available to you. The aggregate data will tell you what was asked, but all of this lies outside the realm of genealogy, at least until the 1950 Census is released to the public in 2022.