Tech Tuesday - Snagit

Blogging theme suggested by Geneabloggers

Today I am reviewing Snagit.
I love this program I learned about it at work and it is one of the tools we use to capture screen shots to make professional looking handouts.  I love it so much I purchased it for my own use at home and started using it to make my quilting handouts.  

You might ask how does this help me do genealogy?  It doesn't but what it does do is take screen shots of documents, pictures, anything that is displayed on your computer screen.  After you have captured the screen shot you can highlight, place squares, stamps or other items.  One of the other features I like is that the screen shot is not distorted and it can be re-sized. 

Let me show you a couple of ways I have used it in conjunctions to doing genealogy.


Sent to Ancestry.com asking them to fix an image

Here is a screen shot I took on Ancestry.com, showing them the wrong image.  The name on the bottom is who I was looking for.  The red boxes where added before I save it as a .jpg file.  You can change the color and thickness of the lines.  I also used this image and another one and to sent it in an email to my cousins and friends asking for their help to report the image problems.  Showing them exactly what they needed to do. 

I have used the screen shots in my blog posts, here, here and here.

I have used it in emails to my cousins asking them for more input.  The below screen shot show some of the stamps in the program, check mark, question mark and word ballons.



Showing some of the tools within Snagit

 My cousin who lives in England and who is a lot of fun sent me these pictures the other day.  The picture came as one .tif file.  She told me the information in an email and I added it to a screen shot of the picture file.  I'll send it back to her to make sure I have it correct. 



More Photos of Chaplin's, Tony's Clan.

 It also allows me to save them labeled in my computer files. 

I am sure you will come up with your own ideas on how to use Snagit while working on your genealogy.   They have a 30 day free trial on their website. 

I'm not affiliated with them, I am just a happy customer.

Happy Researching!
 

Sorting Saturday - Notes and Handouts

Blogging theme suggested by Geneabloggers


I am reading Unpuzzling your Past by Emily Anne Croom.  I also have her work book, The Unpuzzling Your Past Workbook, Essential Forms and Letters for Genealogist.   While reading these books she suggested in the Workbook to make an Index of workshop notes and handouts.  Now for the seasoned Genealogist that might be an Herculean task but for a new Genealogist it is a big but doable task. 

I have been going to conferences, genealogy meets and workshop for about a year now, so I am starting to collect quiet a few handouts.  I had many of them in a loose leaf binder with no way of finding the notes again until I had looked through all the notes.  Not a very effective use of time.  I want more time for research, studying or quilting.  So I decided to follow the suggestion of Emily Anne Croom.  I could have used her tear out copy of the index from her workbook but I made an excel spreadsheet and I added a third column. 


Index of Handouts and Notes

 The spreadsheet has four pages with the Topics from A -Z divided four ways.  The Lecturer/Author in the middle column.  I added the third column to let me know if it is on paper or on my computer.  Somethings that I received electronically I might print for easy of reading when not at my desk.  Somethings I do not print but still want to be able to find them.

In my bottom desk drawer I used hanging folders, each folder is named with 3 letters of the alphabet.  I had a limited supply of folders in my house that I wanted to use before buying more.  The handout is them placed in the folder and added to the spreadsheet. 

The advantage to using the spreadsheet over the already created form is I can add new notes alphabetically when I receive them instead of just adding them to the bottom of the page. So if I am looking for an article I can look for it on my index then know exactly which folder to find it in.  

Now I guess I will go file a few more handouts.

Happy Researching!

Memories of an Exploding Pressure Cooker

Today I was cooking pinto beans in my pressure cooker and I had a little too much water in it and it started coming out of the vent tube, and I mean a lot of water, enough to pool on the stove.  So off the stove into the sink with cool water.  It's Arizona folks and we do not have cold water coming out of the tap here in the summer. 

Anyway it reminded of a time my Dad was cooking lentil beans in the pressure cooker.  I was in my early teens. The pressure cooker explored and there were lentil beans all over the kitchen, the ceiling, the walls, floor and the stove.  It was a mess.  I wasn't in the kitchen when it happened but the noise made me run to see what had happened.  This was in our Florida home after we had remodeled the kitchen, dinning room and added the Florida room.

My Dad was the real cook in my house.  Mom cooked OK but not as good as my Dad did.  He was also the shift cook at the firehouse.  I can remember him making fruit cake and soaking it in some kind of liquor, wrapping it and putting it in the front coat closet until Christmas when we lived in New York.  I think he stopped making the fruit cake after we moved to Florida because there wasn't any place cool enough to store it.  He made chicken and dumplings and lots of other good dishes.  He cooked all the Holiday meals.  He made the best oil & vinegar salad dressing which I could ever duplicate.  I asked him for the recipe and he laughed, he didn't really measure.  A sign a true cook. 

I couldn't resist telling this story, and using the memory that came to my mind today.   

My First Obits

Every new Genealogist has a list of time discoveries and on a Wednesday evening in August, I found my first obituaries on my great uncle Herbert.  This is the first one I found in the New York Times.  I noticed the cemetery name and it sounded familiar.  I checked out my grandparents, my grandfather William Chaplin is a brother to Herbert and Bertram.  Both my grandparents are buried in the same cemetery, William and his wife Minnie Elizabeth.   

New York Times 27 Apr 1955

New York Times 28 Apr 1955

Now to find Bertram's Obit or something and to do a cemetery search.  When I shared this with my cousins in England one of them wrote back I'll never think of Canada Dry in the same way. 

Neither will I, maybe I should have one in remembrance of

Great Uncle Herbert.

One small step for me and my ancestors

My Adventures at the Family History Center

I went to the Family History Center today to view a film that was currently in the Mesa Center but had been requested by someone else.  I had looked at the film two weeks ago and hadn't found what I wanted. I had viewed about 450 of the records on that day. The dates weren't in order so I had to view the whole film. 

So today I went back I went to the same machine I had used the last time but I remembered one of the missionaries there told me another machine had better magnification, even though both are marked high magnification.  So I moved to that machine and I could see a lot clearer right off the bat!

So I looked at all the records from 450 to the end 1000.  No Peter Hartmann.  I had an index that told me the record was on this film.  So I had to persist.  Now the interesting thing was and I noticed the same thing the last time I was there viewing this film.  It makes me sick to my stomach.  I tried looking away and then looking back after I cranked.  The head movement made it worse.  I was determined I was going to find the record. 

My nausea was so bad at one point I went to the bathroom and almost throw up.  So back to machine because like I said I was determined.  This time I went back to the 450th record and worked backwards.  Every 20 recorders I would take a break, look away and if needed I got up and walked.  I found my record it was #9.  You got it right at the front of the film and I debated with myself if I should start at the front or where I left off. 

The moral of the story, go to the machine with the good or the right magnification right off the bat.  And if you debate with yourself maybe you should listened to yourself.  Boy do I wish I had, if I had it would have saved me time and a bout of nausea.

Marriage Certificate of Peter & Barbara Hartmann

So since this record caused me so much grieve I am posting it here for your viewing pleasure. 

On small step for me and my ancestors.

Sharing Memories: Time with Grandma

Lorine McGinnis Schulze from Olive Tree Genealogy Blog has this wonderful weekly Sharing Memories blog post.  I'm not sure why I don't catch them every week but you can find all 37 of them on her side bar of her blog.  I'm going to have to review the list and see if there are any more topics I can use. 


Since my blog has multiple purposes of sharing my learning experiences about doing genealogy and sharing the stories of my family so they are not forgotten, this is a perfect topic. 

I remember two trip for sure to my Grandparents home in Nantucket Island.  This were my Mom's (my second mother's) parents.  My Mom did adopt me, when I was 10, so they are my adopted grandparents.  They are the only grandparent I knew, since both the Hartmanns and the Chaplins all died before I was born. 

Nantucket Island October 1949

Here are some pictures from my first trip in October of 1949, my parents had been married about 4 to 5 months.  As you can see I like cats from an early age.  Notice the basket my Mom is holding for the clothespins, is that one of those expensive Nantucket Island Baskets??  Of course I have no recollection of this trip. 

Mary, Donald & George 1956, Nantucket Island

The trip in 1956 I do remember but not all of the details.  We drove from Long Island New York to Cape Cod, Massachusetts and took the ferry to Nantucket Island.  In our new 1956 Chevy. 

Alfred B. Corkish & Mildred E. Swann Corkish 1956

The things I remember about my grandma's house, was we sleep upstairs and there was no bathroom upstairs.  We had to use the chamber pots because kids were not allowed to go downstairs after they had been put to bed.  She had an ice box and the ice man came two times a week with a big block of ice.  I had swordfish cooked for dinner and loved it.  We could have Rice Crispies for breakfast and I don't know why I enjoyed them there so much better than at home but I can remember sitting and listening to the snap, crackle and pop.  Maybe just because it was vacation and we had more time.  I can remember being the only child who was allowed to play the piano because I did not pound it like my brothers.  I remember ship in a bottle on the mantel. 

This is my Nantucket friend Miriam we wrote each other well into high school and maybe even nursing school.  I loved the beach and still do, I'm just too far away from the beach to enjoy it often.  Grandma's house was about a block away from the beach.  We would swing on the swings in Miriam back yard.  We went to pick fresh blueberries and my brother George was bitten by a tick and my Mom had to get it off of him. 

My Nantucket friend Miriam Hull

My parents slept in the front bedroom upstairs which was my mother's bedroom when she was a girl.  The house use to have two families in it one on the second floor and one on the first floor.  I guess eventually my grandparents bought the whole house.  There was one bathroom down stairs.  There was a front parlor where the piano was and the fireplace with the ship in a bottle.  There was a big kitchen and a big dinning room.

Last trip to Nantucket Island August 1958

This picture is from the last visit in 1958, we flew there that year.  This was taken just before we left to fly back to New York.  Noticed how dressed up we were. 

Grandma Corkish was legally blinds and she could just she shadows one of my fondest memories of her are the pictures books she made for us kids.  Oh how I wish I had one of them now.  She took those marble covered composition books and cut pictures out of magazines and pasted them on to the pages of the note books.  Sometimes the pictures would be upside down, but we didn't care.  I would sit for hours looking at each book, I think there were three of them one for each kid. 

My Family in History

Yesterday my cousins in England and I were looking into the immigration of the Chaplin brothers. William Chaplin one of the brothers was my grandfather, Herbert another brother was the grandfather of one of my cousins in England. Cousin Sue, a fourth cousin found a couple of dates. I did some more searching and found the ships they came in on I took screen shots of the ship's passenger list and sent them back to the cousins.  Sue sent back a message about the name of the ship. As I was looking at the passenger list and the name of the ship yesterday, I thought that sounds familiar. Today Sue reminded me why. It was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a Germany U-Boat and was the action that brought the US into WWI.



The Lusitania in NYC Sept. 13, 1907, Maiden Voyage

Yes, my great uncles sailed on the Lusitania, luckily they didn't sail on the last voyage but on the Maiden Voyage into New York City.   You can see their names below, in the red box.  Lines 3 and 4. Herbert & Bertram Chaplin.  If you look to the far right you will see the name of the nearest relative in England.  Walter T. Chaplin who is our Great Grandfather.

Lusitania Passenger List.



Next page of list

I do not know what passenger class they sailed.  Herbert was coming to visit Bertram who already lived in Brooklyn, Kings, New York.  My grand father immigrated in 1906 to live with his brother Bertram.  I haven't found when Bertram first arrived in New York, that will be one of my next searches.  Herbert did go back to England and marriage a gal there, which is how I have a second cousin in England. 

Actually these brothers are four of ten siblings, so I have a lot of  cousins in England.  I just don't know them all yet.

 

Memory Jogger: Lessons and Hobbies

I forgot which blog I found this suggestion, and I started this post back in May and just found it again.  I haven't been doing much on my blogs too busy with work, organizing my Genealogy files, both paper and computer.  What a time consuming activity that is.  So I'm going to finish this now, why waste the potential.

This was a good memory jogger for me, it was about lessons or hobbies we did in our families. I wanted piano lessons as a kid and wasn't able to have them.  My parents didn't have extra money for something they didn't think I would stick to.  When I was in my late 20's I started lessons.  When I told my Dad I was taking lessons he was curious as to why I would do that since I would never be a concert pianist.  Like that is the only reason why someone should learn how to play the piano. The little bit of talent and ability I had came in handy while I was on my mission in Bolivia.  I used my basic piano skills to teach the first book of piano lessons to the kids in my mission and my companions who were more accomplished did the more advance students. It worked very well. I took more lessons when I came home. But when I married a fellow with 3 kids that was the end of my piano time. Some day I would like to pick it up again.

The similar thing happened with sewing I begged my Mom to teach me how to sew but she didn't want to, I really don't remember the reason.  One afternoon Mom and Dad went out and I took a part one of my full skirts and made a pair of culottes out of the skirt.  I cut out the pieces for the culottes by following the pattern and sewed all the seams back up.  I even had the waste band back on.  The only thing it didn't have was the zipper.  My Mom was so surprised she decide I really wanted to sew and she took me to J.C. Penny's for sewing lessons.  I can remember buying fabric on sale for $0.50/yard around 63.  I sewed all my own cloths for many years, I made a lot of my cloths in high school, my formal for the senior prom, all my cloths for my mission and I made cloths into my 30's.  Now I can't stand sewing cloths.  I made some holiday scrub tops about 10 years ago and that was the end of that.  I much rather make quilts. 

Mary 1965 Graduation Day, in a dress I made.

When I made that culottes my Dad said, "Mary must get her sewing talent from her great grandfather."  My great grandfather Joseph Hartmann was a tailor.