Genealogical Gems

Ancestry.com announced yesterday afternoon, through Kendall Hulet's Ancestry.com blog , that the company would no longer sell Family Tree Maker. This decision is effective 31 December 2015. Current customers will continue to support FTM users through 2016. This announcement has caused quite a stir among Ancestry.com subscribers and FTM users. One selling point - used quite recently by Ancestry.com in fact - is the ability to sync trees between the two programs. One user on Twitter has even begun a petition to save FTM. The user - @AncestryClassic - has been tweeting for awhile now about saving the classic look of Ancestry.com. The new petition, that is the one for FTM, can be found at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/520/758/907/save-family-tree-maker/ . It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Your Comments Wanted What program do YOU use? How do you think this decision will affect YOUR research? Leave your comments/opinions here below or Tweet me @Genealogi...

Find A Grave is a great resource. Sometimes, you can find the name, birth date, death date, parents, spouse and children from an entry. Some entries include an obituary. This morning I added a few entries to the Hephzibah Baptist Cemetery. The church/cemetery is located on Strasburg Road in East Fallowfield Township, Chester County. The link here below will allow you to search just that cemetery or - if you click the scroll down arrow - all of the millions of entries in their database. Search for cemetery records in Hephzibah Baptist Church Cemetery, PA at by entering a surname and clicking search: Hephzibah Baptist Church Cemetery, PA (2,375 names) All of Find A Grave (138.9 million names) Restrict search to Surname Now, I do feel obligated to remind readers that Find A Grave is a volunteer contributed database. This means you should use the database as a guide or a secondary source but not "the Gospel truth." Sometimes it is not necessa...

This week’s prompt is reviewing genealogy database software, and digitizing photos and documents. These would seem to be two non related items but they are more closely related than one would expect at first glance.   Genealogy database software I personally use Family Tree Maker. It was my first many moons ago and while no one program is perfect for everyone, this one is pretty good. That said, I am also stubborn and do not take well to change!   FTM 2014 actually lets me sync with Ancestry.com! Love this feature! This feature saves so much time and energy. With FTM, you can easily add photos and other images to specific persons. You can merge any duplicate entries, which unfortunately happens more than any of us want to admit. FTM 2014 allows you to create family stories and simplifies citations. Ancestry.com also now lets you share access to your tree. One genealogist wrote that she had numerous problems loading the software. After reading her post though I fe...

How to Put Census Records in a Family Tree Maker eHow.com I also like to print out the images as well as save them on my hard drive. That way I have back up copies and documentation.