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Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
| IN THIS ISSUE: |
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ACGS Conference |
| September 28, 1998 |
I must say that I had a great time this weekend at the American-Canadian Genealogical Society’s conference in Manchester, New Hampshire. To Al Hamel, Pauline Cusson, Dr. Roger Lawrence and all the others who worked so hard to produce this conference I have one thing to say: Thanks!
- Dictionnaire National des Canadiens Francais CD-ROM Dictionnaire National des Canadiens Francais (1608-1760) (or the National Dictionary of French Canadians 1608-1760) has been a standard reference for French-Canadian genealogy for many years. This 3-volume set of books was produced by the Institut Genalogique Drouin in Montreal in 1965. The first two volumes of this "dictionary" contain a compilation of marriage records (repertoires) of marriages in Quebec province between 1608 and 1760. The third volume contains family histories, maps, lithograph plates, and signatures of famous individuals. These three volumes are often referred to as the Drouin "Red Books" and should not be confused with the larger "Blue Books" series.
The Dictionnaire National des Canadiens Francais is a new release from the American-French Genealogical Society in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The society recently purchased the rights to publish many of the materials previously produced by the Drouin Institute. This CD-ROM is the first electronic release of a Drouin Institute publication. The same society promises that they will produce a number of other CD-ROM disks of French-Canadian genealogy information in the future. Macintosh owners will be especially pleased to note that this CD-ROM works on their systems. All the data on this CD-ROM is stored in Adobe Acrobat format, which is very popular on CD-ROM disks. The Acrobat software allows images to be displayed on the screen and printed to almost any laser of inkjet printer. The CD-ROM includes all the necessary Acrobat software for Macintosh, Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98 and Windows NT. You do not need any other software or any external programs to use this CD-ROM disk; all the necessary software is contained on the CD-ROM itself. Keep in mind that all three volumes of the printed version are written in French. The CD-ROM version contains scanned images of every page from the original volumes, so it, too, is in French. Anyone not familiar with the language can easily learn to read the first two volumes as they contain a long list of names, dates and places. The third volume contains histories and a lot of other textual material; this volume requires some knowledge of the language. The CD-ROM version does include a short introduction in both English and French. It also contains a French-to-English dictionary of occupations found in old French records, useful in translating some of the records found on the disk. I do not have easy access to the original printed volumes right now, but I do not remember any English words in the original books. The Dictionnaire National des Canadiens Francais CD-ROM does not include any user’s manual or printed installation instructions. However, the CD-ROM contains a very brief HOWTO.TXT file that gives just enough information to get started. It tells how to find the necessary version of Adobe Acrobat Reader on the CD-ROM and install it. Then the HOWTO.TXT also gives a few sentences about using Adobe Acrobat Reader once it is installed. Of course, Acrobat Reader also has a very good Help file. Installing the software took about a minute. The lack of a user’s manual did not seem to be much of an impediment as the software is very easy to use. The normal default is to show a small window on the left containing the Table of Contents and then the actual data is displayed in a larger window to the right. (Adobe Acrobat’s terminology is "bookmarks," not Table of Contents. But it certainly looks like a Table of Contents.) You can click on an item in the Table of Contents and, within a second or two, page one of that section is displayed. You can quickly navigate to successive pages by clicking on appropriate icons near the top of the screen. You can change the default to hide the Table of Contents (bookmarks). This is useful when trying to display as much of the data as possible on the screen. This CD-ROM disk contains marriage records. While I do not speak French and do not read it very well either, I was able to understand the records listed with a minimum of effort. A typical entry might say:
(I had to alter the formatting of each line a bit to fit this newsletter, but the words are exactly the same as listed on the CD-ROM disk.) The above means that Mathurin Chabot, son of Jean Chabot and Jeanne Rode of Saint-Hilaire-de-Riex, diocese of Lucon, Poitou, France married Marie Mesange, daughter of Robert Mesange and Madeleine Le Houx of Vestrouze, Perche, France. The marriage took place on November 17, 1661 in Quebec City. The CD-ROM disk contains many thousands of such listings. As in all major published genealogy works, the Drouin books do contain some errors. Any time you extract thousands of records from old handwritten entries that may have been smudged or have faded, there is always an opportunity for mistakes. The CD-ROM version of the Dictionnaire National des Canadiens Francais contains 54 pages of corrections to the original publication. However, the corrections are contained in a separate section; they are not displayed on the original page(s) that contains the error. Therefore, it is necessary to look up each record twice, once for the original data and then again in the list of corrections to see if there is any updated information. I suspect that many people will not check the corrections and will keep repeating the original errors. I would have preferred to see a hypertext link on every record that has had a later update. When the data is first displayed it is a bit difficult to read. On my 17-inch monitor at home I can read the text with some difficulty. I took this CD-ROM disk to the genealogy conference I mentioned earlier and displayed the same data on a 14-inch monitor that I use when traveling. The data was impossible to read at first on the smaller monitor. However, Adobe Acrobat has am icon that looks like a magnifying glass. You can click on that and then click anywhere on the displayed page. That section is then displayed in a magnified option. You can click on it again and again. Every time you do so the text becomes larger and larger. At maximum magnification three or four words fill the screen. You can zoom in or out easily. The software has a number of other options such as: display actual size, fit page to the screen, fit width, etc. The Table of Contents shows the surnames, you can click on a surname and page one of that section will be displayed. That method of displaying information is simple and intuitive. I was a bit surprised to discover that not every surname is shown in the Table of Contents. Instead, it contains the first surname found on each page. For instance, one entry in the Table of Contents shows the name ALBEUF. The first entry on that page is for Pierre Albeuf. However, reading further down that particular page you also find entries for Albrin, Aldanrath, Aleaume, Alexandre, Alino, Alix, Allegrain, Allemand and so on. Yet the only name from that page listed in the Table of Contents is Albeuf. To find any name you look in the Table of Contents and click on the closest name that alphabetically precedes the one you want. That is a minor impediment if you already know how the information is organized. But without a users manual it took me a while to discover the "missing names." Printing was simple, click on FILE in the pull-down menus, then select PRINT and follow the menus as you would in any other Windows or Macintosh program. The result is an image of the original book printed on your laser or inkjet printer. The text is small and somewhat difficult to read. In other words, it is just like the original books! Actually, the printouts on my laser printer are easier to read than the photocopies I made some years ago from the original books. Since this CD-ROM disk contains scanned images, not text, there is no every-name index. It simply preserves the format of the original books. The entries are sorted alphabetically by the groom’s name. There is no "brides’ index" in the original books nor on the CD-ROM. I also was unable to find any method of copying the data to another program, such as a word processor. Even with scanned images you normally expect to copy the image to the Clipboard, then insert the image into a word processor or other program. However, the cut, copy and paste commands were permanently "greyed out" in the pull-down menus. If there is a method of cutting and pasting data, I didn’t find it. It’s nice to see the proliferation of high-quality reference sources on CD-ROM disk. Only a few years ago we were all dreaming of such resources. Today they are commonplace. The Dictionnaire National des Canadiens Francais CD-ROM is a great resource for anyone researching Quebec province ancestry. I hope to spend many hours using this disk. If you have Quebec province ancestry, I suspect you will want to do the same. The Dictionnaire National des Canadiens Francais CD-ROM costs $150.00 U.S. funds plus $3.00 for shipping to any address in the United States. Shipping charges to Canada are $5.00. Contact the society for shipping prices to other countries. More information about this valuable CD-ROM disk is available at the American-French Genealogical Society home page at: http://www.afgs.org/
- The Master Genealogist version 3.6a Released Wholly Genes Software has released version 3.6a of their very powerful genealogy program. Version 3.6a is a very minor change from 3.6; it has mostly bug fixes. The earlier 3.6 update had a number of major changes, including a change to its GenBridge direct import module that allows the program to read Family Origins version 7.0 files without resorting to GEDCOM. TMG 3.6 also added a number of other enhancements. The entire list is available at: http://www.whollygenes.com/change36.txt. The Master Genealogist update to version 3.6a is free for all registered owners of version 3.5 or 3.6. Complete details are available in the Wholly Genes Software section on the Genealogy Vendors’ Support Forum on CompuServe (GO GENSUP) or at: http://www.whollygenes.com.
- Fifth New England Regional Genealogical Conference The Fifth New England Regional Genealogical Conference, "Connecting to Your Cousins," will run from 23 - 25 October 1998. Pre-conference activities will also take place on October 22, 1998. The site of the conference will be at the Holiday Inn by the Bay, Portland, Maine. The New England Regional Genealogical Conference is a consortium of more than twenty genealogical and historical societies. They assemble to promote a major genealogical conference every eighteen to twenty-four months in a different New England state. The same organization will co-host the Year 2000 National Genealogical Society’s annual conference in Providence, Rhode Island. Highlights of the 1998 conference will include presentations by international, national and local speakers, pre-conference workshops, vendors, computer workshops, banquets, queries and more. The keynote speaker will be Henry Z. ("Hank") Jones, Jr., FASG. He is an expert on the Palatines and noted author of many books including: Psychic Roots: Serendipity and Intuition in Genealogy, and The Palatine Families of New York - 1710. Other featured speakers include Roger Joslyn CG, FASG, Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, CGRS, Stephen White and many others. More information on the Fifth New England Regional Genealogical Conference can be found at: http://users.rootsweb.com/~maplymou/conf/confmain.htm
- Family Tree Maker Wins PC Magazine Award Broderbund’s Family Tree Maker version 5.0 has been named as one of the Top 100 CD-ROMs by PC Magazine. The article says that "Although it's facing some stiff competition, Family Tree Maker remains the top choice for tracking down your far-flung relatives and documenting your family's past." Further information is available at: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/100cds98/home11.html
- Kindred Konnections Research Center Update Kindred Konnections is an online database of genealogy information. Actually, it is a collection of several databases. I haven’t written about Kindred Konnections in some time, but apparently they have been busy adding more data. I thought I would repeat a press release they issued this past week. This particular press release contains language that is a bit "enthusiastic," but I decided to republish it unedited:
This isn’t about genealogy, but I think it is interesting. This newsletter has a lot of subscribers in England, and I bet they will be interested, too: Britain's largest electronics retailer, Dixons Group Plc., launched a free Internet service this week. I cannot check it out from this side of the Atlantic, so I have to rely on Dixons’ announcement. It says that the new service will provide unlimited Internet access with no registration or subscription fees or hourly on-line charges. Customers using the new service, known as Freeserve, will only have to pay the normal charge for a local rate telephone call to get online. The product will be available from all Dixons stores, which include Dixons, Currys, PC World and The Link. The service also has e-mail, Lycos and Scoot search facilities and UK news, sport, weather reports supplied by the Press Association, the UK's domestic news agency. Dixons said it had been looking at the Internet market for the past 18 months and had decided many people would be put off using it by access fees, which cost around 12 pounds a month. The retailer said, although UK sales of consumer products over the Internet were currently very small, it expected them to grow, particularly if free access increased the number of on-line households. Energis, one of the UK's largest national telecommunications companies, and its Planet Online subsidiary, will supply the network and connections. The news release did not mention advertising, but I have to believe that Dixons will be supporting the "free" service by such ads. There has to be something of value for Dixons. I am hoping that one of the U.K. readers of this newsletter will try this new service and let the rest of us know how it works.
Naomi Kakuvi Muamba may be the world’s oldest person. Reports from Kenya claim that the resident of Wote, located over 200 kilometers east of Nairobi, was born in 1873 which means that she is now 125 years old. Naomi now lives in a large brick house that has electricity, much different from the childhood she remembers, when she and her brothers trod for miles to get soda ash, which they used to make mbaki. They would then trade this for food or beer. She recalls the raids by the neighboring Maasai people, in whose hands her two brothers, Nthiw'a and Kitila, met their deaths. Naomi also remembers her childhood in Mbooni, before her parents moved to Matetani in Kangundo, where she spent her youth. By the time she was ready for marriage both of her parents were dead. Her elder brother decided that she would marry Muamba, a wealthy herdsman who took her as his third wife. Naomi had no choice in the selection of a husband. The marriage took place in 1892. Her first child, Munyw'ovii, died in 1993 at the age of 99. Her second child, Mutisya, is still living today at the age of 101. Her other living children include Kithembe, 92, Ndulu, 87, and Lois, 81 and also the son that she lives with: Mutiso, a retired army officer now aged 73. All in all, she had 8 children with the last born in 1930. There is no documentation to prove Naomi’s birth in 1873, so Guinness, the keeper of such records, does not recognize the claim. However, the date seems probable as the birth of her children and many of the other facts are easily verified. Her nine children gave her 48 grandchildren, who in turn gave birth to 179 great grandchildren. There are a further 48 great grandchildren, and that number is likely to increase as more grandchildren come of age. Naomi Kakuvi Muamba is reported to be in good health, considering her age. She still walks around the house and grounds. Her memory and mind occasionally leave her, but at other times she is perfectly lucid and able recall the events of more than 100 years ago.
The following is a list of some of the genealogy-related World Wide Web home pages that have been listed recently on http://www.rootscomputing.com. Some of these sites may charge a fee for their services:
To submit your new genealogy-related home page to this newsletter, enter the necessary information at: http://www.rootscomputing.com/register.htm. Due to the volume of new Web pages submitted, I am not able to list all of them in the newsletter.
If you would like to submit news, information or press releases for possible inclusion in future newsletters, send them to roots@compuserve.com. The author does reserve the right to accept or reject any articles submitted.
DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is being written and sent via e-mail at no charge. I expect to write one new issue on a more or less weekly basis. However, life sometimes interferes, and the need to earn a living may create an occasional delay.
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I have used the printed version of the Dictionnaire National des Canadiens Francais many times when researching my own French-Canadian genealogy. This week I had a chance to try a brand-new release of a CD-ROM disk that provides exactly the same information. It contains images of every page in the original books. Since hundreds of my own ancestors are listed in this CD-ROM, you can expect that I really enjoyed using this particular disk!