• Family Reunion Organizer
• Personal Ancestral File 4.0.4 Released
• Genealogy Systems for Complex Family Relationships
• Ancestry.com Posts Narratives of Former Slaves
• In Search of Your Asian Roots
• IrishAbroad.com
• From the Mailbox
• Home Pages Highlighted

Family Reunion Organizer
FormalSoft, Inc. recently announced a new program, called "Family Reunion Organizer" for Windows. I had a chance to use the program for a bit this week and must say that I fell in love with it.

Family Reunion Organizer is not a genealogy program, although there are many similarities. As its name implies, it is a program to organize and manage family reunions. It works equally well on small reunions of a few people or large national or even international surname societies. It is a program that combines bits and pieces of a genealogy program, an address book, a checkbook program, an expense account manager, a mailing list manager, a badge printing program, a certificate-printing program, a project manager and more. It isn’t a "heavy duty" program at any one of these tasks, yet it combines all of these functions into one nice package.

Installing Family Reunion Organizer was easy, about the same as any other modern Windows program. Once installed, the main screen looks like a sheet of paper containing a checklist. The entries on the checklist include:

Getting Started
Enter basic reunion information
Enter family members into address book
Create a reunion committee

Initial Planning
What type of reunion should we have?
Send a survey to family for opinions and ideas
Select a reunion theme
Select the reunion dates

Select the location for the reunion
Go online for a list of possible reunion sites
Select and reserve the reunion location
Locate lodging for out of town guests

Tell the family about the reunion
Create an invitation
Print mailing labels
Print tri-fold addresses on the backs of mailings
Create a family reunion Web page
Announce reunion at Family-Reunion.com
Send out a reminder

Paying for your reunion
Enter bank account information
Create a budget
Track expenses
Create a shopping list
Plan any fundraising activities

Plan what to do at your reunion
Schedule the meals and activities
Assign duties to family members
Check out ideas for things to do
Visit Family-reunion.com message boards

Final Preparations
Prepare award certificates
Print name tags
Print sign-in sheets

After the reunion
Print evaluation forms
Send thank you notes to the volunteers

The above list shows many of the program’s capabilities. Each activity can be checked off when it is completed, helping the user to keep track of tasks. In addition, clicking on any of the above items opens the menus for the section of the program to accomplish that task. For instance, clicking on "Create an invitation" opens a mini word processor with three boxes of text that you can fill in: Opening text, Closing text and Contact information. Then there are check boxes for such things as:

Include family reunion logo at the top
Include directions to the reunion site
Include lodging information
Include the schedule
Print a registration form on the invitation

There are further option for page layout, text font and title font. The program also features a built-in spell checker.

Once you complete the above, Family Reunion Organizer prints a personalized invitation for each person in the address book. The output can be directed to the printer for immediate printing or to a disk file that you can then edit in any word processor before printing. If desired, you can add more graphics or a map or include other materials using the tools built into your favorite word processor.

The above describes only the features in "Create an invitation," but almost all the other menu choices have equally rich options. You can create an address book. Even better, if your present genealogy program has mailing addresses included, you can export that data in a GEDCOM file and then read that file into Family Reunion Organizer so that you do not have to re-enter all the names and addresses manually. You can also use that same data from the GEDCOM file to print name badges of attendees.

I was particularly impressed with the capability of handling reunion financials. While this program will never compete with Quicken, it does have some nifty features. You can keep track of funds in the checking account, create budgets and track expenses paid against the plans, and more. It even can create shopping lists, telling how many cans of spaghetti sauce or other needed items to buy.

Finally, the list of printed reports available is extensive, including:

Address list of all individuals in the database
Telephone list of all individuals in the database
Mailing labels to be printed on gummed label stock
Tri-fold address that print directly on the backs of brochures to be mailed to invitees
Invitations
Reminders to be mailed just before the reunion
Surveys
Thank-you notes to be mailed after the reunion
Schedule of events
Assignments (who brings what or who is in charge of which items)
Committee members
Budget
Expense log
Shopping list
Sign-in sheets
Nametags for each person (with an option for city and state on each)
Certificates (Longest distance traveled, oldest attendee, winner of the sack race or whatever else you want)

Evaluation form to be returned to the reunion organizers after the reunion Family Reunion Organizer is also tightly integrated with the company’s Web site at http://www.family-reunion.com. Here you will find long lists of suitable locations in which to hold a reunion, many ideas for planning purposes, and even a message board where you can ask questions and exchange ideas with others.

The above description still doesn’t cover all the features of Family Reunion Organizer. I was impressed with the program. If you have ever helped organize a family reunion, you will appreciate the many features this software provides. If you are thinking of organizing a reunion in the future, you could save yourself a lot of wasted effort if you obtain this Windows program first. The program also handles multiple reunions, in case you are involved in more than just one.

There are a couple of competitive family reunion programs available for $60 or $70 each. However, Family Reunion Organizer is available for $29.95 (U.S. funds), plus shipping and handling. Best of all, a free version can be downloaded online and taken for a "test drive." You can try the program out for a while to see if you like it before you purchase it. The demo version is limited to 5 families, but the full working version supports unlimited families. The demo also includes a small sample database, so you can try features without having to enter a bunch of information yourself. The following features from the full program are disabled in the demo:

GEDCOM Import into address book
Backup/Restore
Help files
World Wide Website
Word processing (RTF) export
Spell checking

Printouts have a "Family Reunion Organizer Demo Printout" watermark on them The best part is that the data you enter into the demo program is preserved if you later upgrade to the full version. You do not have to re-enter any data.

For more information or to download the demo version of Family Reunion Organizer, go to: http://www.family-reunion.com

Personal Ancestral File 4.0.4 Released
One of the most popular Windows genealogy programs available today is Personal Ancestral File. One reason for its popularity is its price: free. In fact, the program is user-friendly and more powerful than the $10.00 or $20.00 programs seen in many computer stores. Personal Ancestral File is produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as "the Mormons." Now the church has released a slightly updated version.

Version 4.0.4 adds the following:

Portuguese, German, and French (in addition to English and Spanish) can be selected as the language for the program to use.
Browse buttons added to folders in Preferences.
Improved the file check/repair:
In most cases database errors "Source x less (or greater) pointer is not less (or greater)" can be repaired.
Source records with missing titles are checked and repaired.
Event type records with missing fields are reported. These only occur when importing from GEDCOM files created by other genealogy software and must be fixed manually by the user.
Multimedia records are checked
Web pages are created in "My Documents" by default. In Preferences you can choose the location where web pages will be created.
Most of the reports can be printed to a file (in Rich Text Format).
When creating a report to a file, index marks are placed in the document so you can use your word processor to generate a complete index of your document.
The place list includes custom events as well as standard events.
The above lists the more significant changes, but the total list is much longer.
For full information, look at:
http://www.ldscatalog.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=369179
&prmenbr=1402&CGRY_NUM=373032&RowStart=1&LocCode=FH

You can download Personal Ancestral File 4.0.4 Release from:
http://www.ldscatalog.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=369179
&prmenbr=1402&CGRY_NUM=373032&RowStart=1&LocCode=FH

Genealogy Systems for Complex Family Relationships
At the recent GENTECH 2000 conference in San Diego, Gary Hoffman described some new ways of looking at genealogy data. Gary focused on two things. The first was showing complex relationships of adopted children to their adopted families as well as step-parents, godparents, cousins and other family members who influence a child’s development into adulthood. In the past, genealogists focused strictly on bloodlines. In recent years, however, genealogists have realized that there is more to a family than bloodlines. After all, we study "family history," not "bloodline histories."

Next, Gary demonstrated a new way of graphically displaying family relationships on a screen. It’s tough to describe his method; all I can say is that it was interactive and "live." As I navigated around family relationships with the mouse, I had the feeling that I was playing a Nintendo game: we zoomed in and out on families, we "entered" families, and we went to new "perspectives." Gary’s demonstration showed a logical manner of displaying relationships that I had never seen before in any genealogy program.

The technology that Gary used was based upon the so-called ProjectX that came from Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group in 1995. ProjectX was considered useful for indexing hard drives and even Internet content. Gary employed a derivative of this technology, a plug-in for Web browsers called HotSauce. With the resulting demonstration, Gary represent his ancestors as three-dimensional objects, which he can "fly through" using a mouse to steer the course.

A lot more information about Gary Hoffman’s interesting project may be found at a page he wrote for genealogy.com. You can read this at: http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/61_gary.html

Ancestry.com Posts Narratives of Former Slaves
Last week I wrote about Ancestry.com’s new online African-American Heritage Collection. This week the company released more details in the following press release:

Ancestry.com Posts Narratives of Former Slaves

Online Resource of Tremendous Genealogical and Historical Value Launches to Celebrate Black History Month

OREM, Utah -- MyFamily.com, Inc. today announced that to celebrate February as Black History Month, the company has added the Works Progress Administration Ex-Slave Narratives to the ever-increasing number of family history records available on its Internet site, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com). The largest collection of its kind ever posted on the Internet, the narratives consist of thousands of biographical sketches recorded as workers in the 1930s interviewed former slaves. The individuals interviewed shared information about their families and gave extensive accounts of what life was like as a slave in America.

"The WPA Slave Narratives collection is a must-have source for slave genealogy," said Tony Burroughs, president, Black Roots, and former president, Afro-American Genealogical and Historical Society of Chicago. "It contains thousands of interviews that mention tens of thousands of people. An essential source of history, culture, and folklore, many of the narratives are also very rich in family history data, often identifying ages, places of residence and birth, and names of spouses, children, siblings, and parents."

From the narratives: "My pappy name Ned; my mammy name Jane. My brudders and sisters was Tom, Lizzie, Mary, and Gill. Us live in a log house wid a plank floor and a wooden chimney, dat was always ketchin' afire and de wind comin' through and fillin' de room wid smoke and cinders. It was just one of many others, just lak it, dat made up de quarters. Us had peg beds for de old folks and just pallets on de floor for de chillun. Matresses was made of wheat straw but de pillows on de bed was cotton. I does 'member dat mammy had a chicken feather pillow she made from de feathers she saved at de kitchen..." Peter Clifton, ex-slave, April 29, 1937, South Carolina.

"Many of the narratives identify the name of former slave owners, otherwise difficult to find, and essential for researching slave genealogy," said Burroughs. "Putting these narratives online is a very important step, making the narratives more accessible than ever before."

The interviews were conducted as workers under the Works Progress Administration asked former slaves to share their memories about childhood, southern plantations and the Civil War. In addition, the people interviewed shared their opinions about politicians, voting, youth of the day and many other topics of interest at the time of the interview.

"This data has tremendous genealogical significance for a large number of Americans and immense historical value for all Americans," said Loretto Szucs, vice president of Ancestry.com Publishing. "Ancestry.com is dedicated to continually providing the most diverse and comprehensive collection of databases online and we are excited to offer this information free to everyone because of the tremendous value of the life histories contained in the collection."

Along with the life story and details of familial relationships of the individuals interviewed, the series contains interesting insights into slave folklore, poetry, songs, recipes and even ghost stories. People interviewed share a wide variety of details about everything from oral traditions to unique medicinal procedures used by slaves. The interviews are between two and ten pages long and give accounts from former slaves who resided in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and other states.

The narratives will be accessible free of charge through the end of February and can be accessed directly by going to http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/biohist/slavnarr/promo.htm. The data is also available on CD ROM and can be purchased through Ancestry.com's online store.

In Search of Your Asian Roots
I normally only write book reviews about high-tech genealogy books. That is, if the book is about searching the Web for genealogy data or how to use a genealogy program effectively or some other application of high-tech genealogy research, I’ll write a review. I normally do not review "traditional" genealogy books, such as "How to find German immigrant records" or "The descendants of John Smith" or other such non-technology topics. Knowing that there are others who are far more qualified than I am to write such reviews, I prefer to focus on the technology side of things.

However, this week I will make an exception. I read a "how to" book that fascinated me. This is despite the fact that it doesn’t help me one bit in my own research. Maybe I was fascinated because I lived in Communist China for a while. Then again, perhaps it’s because I’ve seen few books on this topic, even though the Chinese have been tracking their genealogy probably longer than any Western nations; historical works refer to genealogies compiled back in the Shang Period (1700-1122 B.C). In any case, this book can help many people research their ancestry in a part of the world where English-language genealogy books are rare.

"In Search of Your Asian Roots" is subtitled "Genealogical Research on Chinese Surnames." Author Sheau-yueh J. Chao lists hundreds of Chinese surnames and then tells the origin of each. Sheau-yueh J. Chao is a librarian on the staff of the Newman Library of Baruch College. The information included with the book says that the preparation of Genealogical Resources on Chinese Surnames was a long and serious academic effort. Among other things, the author translated and analyzed nearly 200 books in ancient Chinese literature housed at Columbia University's East Asian Library, the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University, and the Library of Congress.

The book isn’t so much a genealogy book as it is a "Dictionary of Surnames," showing the origins of more than 600 Chinese surnames. It doesn’t give detailed information on individuals. However, it can be useful to show likely places of origins of a Chinese surname. For instance, for the name Chai, the author wrote:

Yuan ho hsing tsuan describes the origin of the name Chai as follows: The surname Chai derived from the name of a feudal territory, the State of Chai (Chai kuo), in the Spring and Autumn (Ch’un ch’iu) Period. It was adopted as a common surname by its citizens. After the State of Chai was defeated by the State of Chin (Chin kuo), the family relocated in Shan-his province and subsequently prospered in Chiang-su and Che-chiang provinces.

The author also includes a Chronology of Chinese History and a Pinying to Wade-Giles Conversion Table. For anyone not familiar with those terms, Wade and Giles were two Englishmen in the nineteenth century who formulated a method of spelling Chinese words using the European alphabet. It worked well but was not terribly accurate. In the twentieth century, Chinese scholars invented a new system, which seems to be better.

For instance, the Chinese capital city is spelled "Peking" in the Wade-Giles system but is spelled as "Beijing" in the Pinying system. Anyone who speaks English as their native language will find that Beijing is closer to the actual Chinese pronunciation than that used by Wade-Giles. (No, the Chinese never changed the names of their cities. The pronunciations in Chinese have been the same for centuries. Only the European alphabet spellings changed.)

Author Chao includes a 40-page bibliography of surnames and genealogy publications written in Chinese plus a 13-page bibliography of English language publications that are applicable to Chinese surnames and genealogy. She also gives a Stroke Index.

I am not going to describe a Stroke Index in detail, simply because I am no expert. But I always thought of it as a sort of alphabetized list. In Chinese, there are no letters, only Chinese characters. Therefore, Chinese cannot be indexed in quite the same manner as Western languages. Instead, Chinese books count the number of pen strokes required to write a character and then create an index based upon the number of strokes. The resultant Stroke Index can be used as easily as an English-language telephone book, assuming the reader is fluent in Chinese.

One criticism that I can give is the title: I would have preferred a title of "In Search of Your Chinese Roots" instead of the words "Asian Roots." There seems to be little or no information about Japanese, Korean, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Thai or other non-Chinese names.

"In Search of Your Asian Roots" can be a big help for anyone with Chinese ancestry who doesn’t know where to begin genealogy research. The book by itself will point to likely provinces of origin, and its bibliographies will point to more specialized publications.

"In Search of Your Asian Roots" is published by Clearfield Company, Inc. Almost any book store can order it for you if you specify ISBN number 0-8063-4946-8. You can also order it directly from the publisher for $29.95 (U.S. funds) plus shipping. For more information, look at: http://www.genealogybookshop.com/genealogybookshop/
files/General,Surnames_and_Personal_Names/9355.html

IrishAbroad.com
Have Irish ancestry? Does your Irish heritage include twentieth century immigrants? Do you have an interest in the Irish in North America as well as in Ireland? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you might want to look at IrishAbroad.com. This Web site is not really a genealogy site. It is more of a heritage site. It also serves the interests of Irish citizens living in other countries.

Based in San Francisco, IrishAbroad.com was founded as a site to provide advice to the Irish community living in San Francisco. IrishAbroad.com has since grown into one of the leading Irish-centric communities on the Internet, providing invaluable services and resources to the Irish abroad, Irish at home, and all those with an interest in Ireland.

IrishAbroad.com offers a free suite of communication tools for all members -- free ISP, free Email, free Photo-sharing, discussion boards and chat rooms. IrishAbroad.com has also partnered with The Examiner, Ireland Today, IAIS, and Hot Press to provide Irish news and commentary, and much more.

The site also provides advice on immigration and naturalization issues, along with a genealogy section, an employment section, and listings of Irish pubs and events.

You don’t even need Irish ancestry to enjoy that list of pubs!

To look at all the information available, go to: http://www.IrishAbroad.com

From the Mailbox
A number of people wrote about my review last week of the AGBI, the American Genealogical-Biographical Index. I made a huge mistake in that article; I substituted the word "biological" in place of biographical. Since I am a lousy typist, I set up a keyboard macro so that I didn’t have to re-type the long name time and time again. Every time I wanted to write the name I simply pressed Alt-F12 to insert the long name into my text. Unfortunately, I stored an incorrect name. Every time I pressed Alt-F12 I repeated the error. The result was that I kept making the same error over and over, thanks to the macro. Even worse, I didn’t notice the problem when I went back and re-read it. To set the record straight, the correct title of this CD-ROM is the "American Genealogical-Biographical Index."

Speaking of the American Genealogical-Biographical Index (see? I did use the proper name that time), Nancy Doane at the Godfrey Libray sent a nice note reminding me that the library is willing to look up the citations that are listed on the CD-ROM. Nancy wrote:

Dick,

What a wonderful article about the AGBI in this week's newsletter. I just wanted to let you know that the Godfrey Libray has 710 of the 833 books that are indexed in the AGBI. Anyone can get a copy of an entry (for a small charge, or course) by contacting the Godfrey Library at referenceinfo@godfrey.org or by going onto our web site and downloading a copy of the order form and instructions. There is usually a 10-14 day turnaround time to fill an order. Thanks again!

Sincerely,

Nancy Doane
Director
Godfrey Memorial Library
134 Newfield Street
Middletown, CT 06457
860-346-4375
http://www.godfrey.org

The order form for AGBI references is available at:
http://www.godfrey.org/AGBI_Order.htm

Home Pages Highlighted
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:

Downloadable PDF file of draft book on "Some Descendants of Rev. Leonard Metcalf of Tatterford, Norfolk, England," mostly descendants of Michael Metcalf, immigrant to Dedham, MA, in 1637. Eight generations. Also, viewable HTML from the author's book, "Die Familie Oberwinder," the family connections of Richard Oberwinder, mostly his ancestors in Weilburg, Hesse, Germany, and in Vinkovci, Slavonia, Croatia:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Tinseltown

News and information for descendants of John Tefft of Rhode Island (c. 1630s), which includes all Tefft surnames plus variant spellings such as Tift and Tifft, is available through the Tefft Family Association (TFA):
http://www.geocities.com/tefft_family

The town of Wedmore, Somerset's parish records for marriages and baptisms from 1561 to the 1800's. This site also contains the Tutton family tree:
http://members.tripod.com/gloomchasers/

To submit your 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.

COPYRIGHTS: The contents of this newsletter are copyright by Richard W. Eastman. You are hereby granted rights, unless otherwise specified, to re-distribute articles from this newsletter to other parties provided you do so strictly for non-commercial purposes. Please limit your re-distribution to one or two articles per newsletter; do not re-distribute the newsletter in its entirety. Also, please include the following words with any articles you re-distribute:

The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 1999 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.

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