Shannon M. Thomas | Mostly Genealogy

For most of 2017, I spent my genealogy time cleaning up my database in Legacy Family Tree.  I'm still working on cleaning up messes from when I first started my family tree.  For 2018, I plan to continue cleaning up my database.  I would also like to finish adding all Find A Grave information to my database as well.   Find A Grave is a great place to find leads to research.  Legacy makes it very easy to find everyone in your database who do not have Find A Grave memorials.   Click the drop-down arrow on the Find A Grave icon and it gives you the following options: I selected create a list of people without a Find A Grave Memorial and I got a nice LONG list of people.  From this list, I have been able to find more ancestors to research and add to my database. My other goal for 2018 is to find the people in my database who do not have a source {yes, I said without a source.  Gasp!} Leg...

I have been stuck on Reverend  A lvah Russel Rutan for quite some time.  He is my husband's 3rd great grandfather.  He born in New Jersey 7 Mar 1821 and he died 12 Mar 1877.  I loose him and his family in the 1870 census, then I have an 1876 map that shows where his farm is, and then a will dated 10 March 1877 (the will brings up many questions for another post).  I have no idea who his parents are. Alvah is most notably known for his involvement in the Fishing Creek Confederacy he was  a rrested at least twice in 1864 before being sent to trial for draft resistance. The image above is  A lvah's Individual Information screen and you can see in his Events/Facts the two times he was arrested, his trial, when he was sent to prison, and when he was released from prison(where the green arrows are).  You can also see that I have an Event/Fact called note; I use the note Event/Fact to keep all of my information together where I can ea...

Using social media to start a conversation. HTML cheat sheet Using Evernote as a Genealogical Research Log An informal research log in Evernote 8 YouTube channels to improve your genealogy More tips for using Evernote with your genealogy Have you found anything interesting around the web??

Today while I was at work I received a notice on my phone that I had an Evernote reminder for today.  I was excited because I knew when I got a chance to do some genealogy today that I would be following up on this reminder instead of sitting at my computer trying to figure out what I needed to work on. First I created a Pennsylvania death certificate search list from my Legacy database and saved it as a pdf.  When I have some time I go through my list and look for the death certs on ancestry.com  When I find the death certificate I save it to my computer and then process it. I saved Christianna Daum's death certificate as 6769 -- Christianna Elizabeth Cadwallader Daum in my Cadwallader surname file on my computer.  [Christianna is my 4th great grandmother].  I then pulled [drag and drop] the death certificate into Evernote in a new note and add the appropriate tags [#1] and title [#3].  I also add the url of where I got the death certificate from [...

I found a new cheat sheet today for Evernote.  It has been added to my Evernote Genealogy notebook.  Below is a screen shot of the cheat sheet. The cheat sheet was found at Cheatography .  The cheat sheets are free; you can also create your own. This particular sheet was created by ferdipeeters on 22 April 2017.  The cheat sheets are licensed under a creative commons license.  You can view it here . Also, you can find the pdf in my shared genealogy notebook or by going to this link to download the pdf. I am in no way affiliated with  cheatography.com  I just really enjoy the simplicity and ease of use of their cheat sheets.

Do you wish you could see your Evernote Reminders in your Google Calendar??  You can and I will show you how! 1.  Go to Cronofy  -- Cronofy syncs with Evernote and Google Calendar with 2 way syncing.  You can change the title in your calendar and it will also change it in Evernote.   This is what you will see when you get to Cronofy. 2.  Select your calendar service. ( I set mine up so they show up in a separate calendar in Google Calendar called TO DO.  If you want to set up a separate calendar do it before connecting your Google Calendar.  If you do not know how follow these instructions ). Supported calendar services. 3.  Connect with your Evernote account.   4.  Select your settings.   5.  Connection complete! The screen you get when your connections are made. It may take a few minutes to see your reminders in your calendar. Google Calendar with my Evernote Reminders. If you w...

I was catching up on some blog reading and saw that Randy Seaver recently posted  Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- How Many Trees in Your Database? I thought I would check my Legacy Family Tree Database. To do this go to View and then select Trees.  This will bring up the Tree Finder window.  {The image below shows the Tree Finder window.} A few surprises here.  First, I have 52 total trees.  The largest has 3,191 people and the smallest have 1 person and there are 42 of them.  What!?  {The trees with only one person may have come from a GEDCOM import I did a long time ago.} I see some pruning of some bushes in my future.  Second, there are five trees with the Rutan surname.  I believe these are trees that I started when I was researching a brick wall and trying to see if there were any connections. {I will keep these...you never know when these will come in handy.} There are a few things you can do in this window to make clean up e...