This Week's Frugality

 

Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay

Some money-saving suggestions to help you with your family tree:

The Society of Genealogists is offering a free online talk, presented by Else Churchill, on English poll books. 

What are poll books? Find out in an article by Dr James Harris, a Research Associate at Newcastle University. 

Legacy, part of the company MyHeritage, offers a new version of its free family history software to help you organise your tree, store it on your device, and keep it private if you wish. There are a number of other packages available; check out reviews in family tree magazines for up-to-date details about the latest programs.

The National Library of Scotland’s digital “Scotland’s News” Collection consists of 18th, 19th, and early 20th century Scottish publications. Some of the newspapers it contains are the Scots Courant, Caledonian Mercury, Clydebank Leader, and a selection of 1926 titles from around the country.

I’ve recently been in touch with a cousin who has agreed to take a DNA test to find out more about their forebears. It can be helpful if more than one member of an extended family tests – learn more about Connecting with Your Biological Family.

At the moment, you may be able to take advantage of discounted prices on some DNA test kits. The best value as far as I can see are

Ancestry 

and

MyHeritage 

These companies market DNA test kits as Father’s Day gifts. Warning: unexpected parent details may be the result, not necessarily bringing great news to an unsuspecting dad. I think it’s really important to be aware of the potential downsides to these tests’ results. Read about the Pros and Cons of DNA in Genealogy Research. 

Graveyard Research: Planning & Visiting

Glamis Kirkyard

In this post, I want to share some resources to help you plan and carry out research visits to graveyards.

For those working out of doors in Scotland at this time of year, the most important item to pack is

MIDGE REPELLENT

A few years ago, a nurse gave me a tip that has worked for me.  Dilute a small amount of Listerine mouthwash in a spray bottle and apply to exposed skin (yours, not the midges’). Frugal and effective!

Planning

For identifying historic graveyard locations, I recommend the National Library of Scotland’s Maps (their OS collections cover the UK).

The Ordnance Survey (the official UK Government mapping organisation) provide free access to contemporary maps, as well as an app to purchase for your mobile device, with a free 7-day trial.

Current online maps provided by popular search engines like Bing and Google are not always accurate or up to date.  This report about Google Maps' dangerous path up Ben Nevis highlighted the potential hazards of relying on this kind of source. 

GENUKI may give names and/or locations of burial grounds in a parish or county you are researching.  Again, check that the information is current (especially crucial details like opening hours) by contacting the local church, council, or family history society. Their contact details may also be found on GENUKI or, for the latter, through the Family History Federation or the Scottish Association of Family History Societies.

While websites such as BillionGraves or FindAGrave won’t necessarily list your ancestors, they may have an entry for the graveyard(s) you’re interested in, with the all-important location details, including GPS coordinates.

 

Arriving

“Leave nothing but footprints” is a phrase often used to raise awareness of the potential impact we can have on the countryside.  I’d suggest that we adopt a similar approach to visiting cemeteries whether in town or country.  These spaces are often havens for wildlife and need to be treated with care, as well as the respect due to burial grounds in general.

I would advise you to choose footwear appropriate for rough terrain, especially if you aren’t familiar with the cemetery.  Some graveyards may suffer from subsidence and require caution while navigating around.  Many cemeteries are neglected and overgrown, and while I'm not advocating the use of machetes, sensible clothing is definitely advisable!

 

Recording

Decide in advance which method(s) of recording gravestones you’ll use, and bring the appropriate kit.  Hidden Heritage has some great ideas for non-invasive techniques, including a link to free imaging software and how this can help make inscriptions clearer. 

To preserve the fabric of headstones, use contactless methods to take a note of monumental inscriptions.  Pen and paper or photographs may be old-fashioned but they’re reliable and good for the stones.  Digital photography and smartphones have transformed our ability to take multiple images of a gravestone and its surroundings, and to share and store them online.

Historic Environment Scotland has produced a PDF leaflet, Looking After Gravestones, which has some excellent advice about the treatment, care and preservation of cemetery monuments.

 

Searching

While some burial grounds may have plans or maps available, either online or in the cemetery itself, it can still be difficult to locate a specific burial site, even if you have a plot number.  Do ask for help if local staff are available.  Those tasked with keeping the grounds in good order will be very familiar with the chronology of the place as well as the location of some of the occupants.

If you have a plot or lair number for the grave you want to see, these are sometimes carved into the side of the headstones in larger cemeteries, and while your family stone may not have one, the surrounding stones might.

Once you have found the grave(s) you’re looking for, check nearby for potentially related memorials.

My perennial graveyard tip: look on the reverse of the headstone (just in case they ran out of room on the front). I found an example of this on a recent churchyard search near Forfar.

Check out another of my posts for more tips on graveyard research.  Happy hunting!

A genealogical toolbox of websites

 

Some online tools to help you as you build your family tree!  And this being the Frugal Family Historian blog, they're all completely free.

British Army Ancestors: a photographic archive  

Search this website for your military relatives using first and last name, name, rank, regiment and service number, or any permutation thereof. The results may include links to other sites such as The National Archives (where downloads are currently still free) or FindMyPast, which requires a subscription.

Weird Old Book Finder

The Book Finder mines Google Books for titles in the public domain so you don’t have to. Use keywords to search using this intriguing tool – it will return one relevant book result at a time. 

Easy Peasy Genealogy Timeline Maker 

Blogger Kenneth R. Marks shares an Open Source method of creating that all-important visualisation for your family history. 

GenScriber

This site provides transcription editing software with a variety of layout options.  The package is available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. 

Cousin Chart  

Download this handy chart and make sense of what it means to have a second cousin twice removed!

Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 10

For the final lesson in this series of mini-classes, I’m sharing some online tools that you may find helpful as you continue with your research, whether that’s just beginning or is a long-term project.  These ideas can build your skills as well as your family tree – and like everything else in this course, they are completely free.

☙  Try a spot of descendant research, using the intriguing Puzzilla app that connects to your FamilySearch Tree.

☙  Have FT Analyzer check out your GEDCOM file for potential lines of research or problems. Family Tree Magazine’s Rachel Bellerby gave it a test drive and you can read her review here.

☙  Mind mapping for genealogy – use this study idea to organise your research, and perhaps download the free software it suggests. 

  

☙  Choose some of these PDF family tree charts to organise and display your genealogy.

☙  And finally, sign up now for virtual family history conference RootsTech Connect – access to all the classes and resources will be absolutely free of charge, but you do need to register to attend. 

Thanks for taking my mini-classes! You can review them any time

here on the Frugal Family History blog, or share them with your genealogy buddies – and come back soon to check out 

what else is new here.

Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 4

In this lesson, I’m looking at organising the information you find about your family.  This could be on a visit to a record office, a graveyard, or in conversation with a relative.  If you want to start with what you have at home, check out my post on shoebox genealogy.  Whichever method you choose, you’ll need something to help you make sense of all the details you’ve recorded in your notes.

To start with, you should decide if you’re going to store your family tree on paper, in electronic format, or perhaps both. 

Paper options

·       ☙  A good hard-backed notebook, with a page for each individual or family. The kind with alphabetical index tabs built in is ideal.

·       ☙  A loose-leaf folder or lever arch file for family sheets, which you can organise by surname or family line. This is a really flexible system - polythene pockets can protect your records and keep related documents together

·       ☙  Index cards, one per person – but beware, this can grow very rapidly and take up quite a bit of space!

·       ☙  Once things really take off, you may want to splash out and get a filing cabinet.  This is a great method for storing copies of documents as well as your family history notes and charts.

Electronic options

·       ☙  If you’re comfortable using database or spreadsheet programs, you might like to consider adapting an existing package like Access, a cloud-based app such as Google Sheets, or a free office suite of programs. 

·       ☙  Install specialised genealogy computer software on your laptop or PC – check out some of the many free packages available to download.  Try some out before deciding on one with the features you want.

·      ☙  Use a genealogy website with online tree hosting facilities – and you don’t need to have a paid subscription with them.  In a previous blog post I compare a few of these companies’ free offerings.  

Next time, I'll look at how to plan and

carry out a cemetery visit in search

of family gravestones.

Free Apps for Family History On The Go!

Who Do You Think You Are? magazine's forum app

There seems to be a mobile app for just about anything these days, including family history.  The ones I’ve listed below are, naturally, all free to download and use, although companies like Ancestry and FindMyPast charge for the full use of their main websites. 

Free apps are, in effect, a method of attracting new customers for the commercial organisations.  They can be extremely useful when you are away from home and don’t have access to your records, especially when the opportunity arises for some unexpected research!

Some apps allow you to organise, access, and investigate your family tree while on the go, in different ways.  Others are specifically aimed at graveyard research, either remotely or on-site.  This blog post is not meant to be a comprehensive listing by any means, and of course there are other apps which you can buy for your phone or tablet.  I've just chosen a few with which I'm familiar.

BillionGraves App

BillionGraves in particular is aimed at encouraging users to photograph cemetery headstones and upload pictures to its website.  It uses GPS technology to help you locate a gravesite when you’re out and about, and to share what you find with other users.

Similarly, FindAGrave has introduced this function with their app, powered by Ancestry, and you can learn how to use it by clicking on the “Tutorials” button on the website.

Most (if not all) of these apps are available for Android and Apple devices.  There is no charge for any of them.  Some of those that enable you to access your online tree are

☙  Ancestry

☙  FamilySearch Family Tree

☙  FindMyPast

☙  Heredis

If you’ve ever tried to photograph a page of a book or document, only to find your picture is unreadable, consider using an app such as CamScanner which acts more like a scanning device than a camera, producing sharper images.  Just make sure you download the free basic account.

Finally, Who Do You Think You Are? magazine has an app to connect you to its user forum, where you can ask and answer genealogy questions - very handy if you're visiting a new ancestral area and the archives are closed for the day!

Frugal Family History Tip  Remember to read an app’s customer reviews as well as all the product information in your online store before deciding to download it.  Frequent updates can mean changes in the way an app functions, and users are normally quick to point out any glitches or faults that may have developed. 

Free Office software - no strings attached

This is the first in an occasional series of posts about computer software which you can download and use at absolutely no cost to yourself.  I’ll kick off with one of my own personal favourites, Apache OpenOffice.

Family historians use office software, such as spreadsheets for organising ancestral information, or creating lists or research logs to work with.  Word processing packages are infinitely useful for any form of written work, ranging from basic letters to full-scale biographies.  And if you are sharing your know-how with your fellow genealogists, a presentation package can help get your message across to a group.  You may be familiar with Microsoft's Office programs like Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

OpenOffice is a suite of programs much like Microsoft Office.  However, unlike its Microsoft counterpart, OpenOffice is an open source product, which means it has been made freely available for anyone to use as they wish.  There will never be any cost involved in downloading or using any element of the package.  It contains word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and drawing software, plus a maths function creator (you probably didn’t know you needed one!).  It also runs on computers using all the main operating systems, including Macs.

I used it for several years before acquiring Microsoft Office 365 as a student, and may yet go back to it again.  The look and function of OpenOffice is quite similar to Microsoft, although there are differences, for example in the way you go about formatting word processing documents.  But it’s pretty straightforward and like any technology you're new to, it takes a little time to adapt to.  There are occasional glitches, which is true of any software package!  

If all this technical stuff is making you switch off, just take it from me: try OpenOffice before you shell out megabucks for a big-brand product that you might only use half of.  You can check out more information about the package here.

Another very similar open source product, which I haven’t used, is LibreOffice.  What’s the difference between this one and OpenOffice?  Read this journalist’s take on it.

Wishing you happy free downloading 😃