Join me for Elevenses with Lisa, the online video series where we take a break, visit and learn.
In this episode I share viewers’ family tree display, the latest genealogy news, answer your questions about my genealogy organization method, and show you how I file use Evernote and cloud notetaking in conjunction with my organization system. (This series on genealogy organization began with Elevenses with Lisaepisode 6.) Scroll down for all the show notes for this episode.
Today’s “Teacup”
About a month ago YouTube alerted that our Genealogy Gems channel had qualified to have a merch store. I couldn’t resist the temptation to create a mug of our very own for our time together each week!
Elevenses with Lisa Merch availabe at the Genealogy Gems Store on YouTube
Genealogy News:
Free Access to Military Records and Yearbooks at MyHeritage for a Limited Time
In honor of Memorial Day, MyHeritage is offering free access to all if their military records from May 20–26, 2020. The MyHeritage collection consists of 57 million records and includes draft, enlistment, and service records, pension records, and other military documents from North America and around the world, dating back to the American Revolutionary War in the late 18th century.
Remember, Colorized U.S. Yearbooks are available at MyHeritage for free through May 23, 2020.
Linda wrote in this week and shared her family history display. She said her daughter-in-law started it in 2009 and she took the ball and ran with it, and she even added family photos.
“I am really enjoying your Elevenses videos.”
Linda’s Family Tree Display
Organizing Your Genealogy Files Q&A
From Lynnette:
Q: I have my “working” tree on Family Treemaker 3–a very old version and not supported now. Can I make a GEDCOM from this program to upload into Roots Magic?
A: Yes!
From Barbara:
Q: By “master database” do you mean, e.g., My Heritage or Ancestry?
A: The buck stops with you. Click here to listen to Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode #229 to hear more on the importance of a genealogy master database.
From C Davis:
Q: How will your family know how to use your genealogy database, let alone program name?
A: It’s the same challenge your passwords, bank accounts, etc. The Family Heirloom Tracking Binder offers a solution. Download the template from Elevenses with Lisa Episode 6 Show Notes here.
From Janice
Q: So, if you have recent documentation(not available online) for living people, like birth certificates, do you save those in a binder?
A: You can. I have mine in easy to grab folders with “official documents” in my file cabinet.
From Robin:
Q: Do you download and save the census docs from the main sites like Ancestry and FamilySearch – as those are not most likely going to close and can be retrieved anytime…
A: Absolutely! Click here to read my article “If My Ancestry Subscription Expires, What Happens to My Tree?”
From Linda
Q: What year do you put first? Is it the birth year of the person or the date and place of the photo?
A: The year and location of the photo.
From Robin:
Q: Why do you use underscores in your file names?
A: It’s not necessary. Nice for spacing.
From MargtheCar
Q: Does Evernote work if the URL is behind a paid wall?
A: No. You will be prompted to log in to the website.
From BeeMelo
Q: What kind of scanner do you use?
A: My scanner: The Epson Perfection V550 Photo flatbed scanner. (I LOVE this scanner! It can do the high resolution I need for all my projects. If you decide to buy online, I appreciate it when you use my links because we will be compensated at no additional cost to you. This helps support this free show.)
Organizing Web Information with Evernote
Note-taking software is your active research.
Final archiving of documents: on your hard drive backed up to the cloud.
Select a free note-taking tool such as:
Evernote
OneNote
Benefits:
Web Clipper built in
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Syncing across devices
Note restoration to a new device
Free software, mobile app
Universal use
Get the Evernote Web Clipper from your browser’s app store.
Types of Notes: typed, handwritten, audio, photos, videos, drawings.
Don’t Print, Clip!
Types of Tags I recommend:
Record Type (ex. Census)
Surname (ex. Jones)
Locations (ex. Minnesota)
Action to be taken (ex. Follow Up)
BSO (AKA Bright Shiny Object!)
The options are limitless!
Resources:
25% Genealogy Gems Premium Membership
Terry asked: When do you typically have a sale for your prime membership? So I created a special discount coupon code for you. Now through May 27, 2020 get 25% off with the coupon code ACTION25
Learn much more about strategic web clipping with Evernote in Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast episode #101
Evernote for Genealogists Quick Reference Guide by Lisa Louise Cooke in the Genealogy Gems Store.
Stay Smart, Stay Brave
I always think very carefully about what I want to say to you each and every week, and particularly how I close each episode and the thoughts that I leave you with. Lately, it seems like everyone says “stay safe” particularly as they say goodbye or end an email. I’d just like to share a few thoughts with you about this phrase. “Be safe” implies fear, and when fear kicks in, it replaces reason. “Be safe” also implies that it’s attainable in this life, and it’s not really possible to be completely safe.
I like more empowering salutations like “be smart”, “think, and make good decisions for yourself”, and “be brave”.
At the end of episode 6 I told you that I believe that not knowing your family history is like arriving 60 minutes into a movie and expecting to understand the story.
Family History is Knowing the Full Story – Lisa Louise Cooke
And of course if we know this story then we can also help our kids and our grand kids know theirs. And that’s so important for children to hear about the adversity the family has faced and how it overcame it. This helps them be resilient. This current adversity we face, like all adversity, is temporary in nature, and will evolve. We have the opportunity to help the kids in our lives understand that and gain a longer range perspective. (Click here to watch my conversation with New York Times best-selling author and television personality Bruce Feiler on How Family History Creates Happy Families.)
This is SO on my mind because my family is my number one priority. So, I’ve been looking carefully again at my family history these last few weeks, and I noticed something very interesting about my ancestors. None of them appeared to be preoccupied with staying safe.
In fact, there were an overwhelming number of brave and hard-working people in my family. So this week, consider taking an inventory of your family, and cultivate the simple stories of bravery and persistence that exist there in your family tree.
With Memorial Day approaching this weekend here in America, it’s a timely reminder that we are a country with a rich history of risk-taking and bravery, particularly in the name of freedom. So I’d like to end this episode with a short video I produced a few years ago that pays tribute to the very brave men and women who have served their country, featuring an historical author who happens to be from the other side of the ocean.
Stay wise, stay brave, and thanks so much for watching friends.
Note: Author Chris Cleave was my guest in Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast episode 139. Premium Members can click here to listen now. Click here or the image below to get your copy of this wonderful book:
From New York Times bestselling author and Genealogy Gems Podcast guest Chris Cleave.
I’d Like to Hear from You
In this episode I encouraged you to leave your comments in the Comments section below the video on YouTube. Silly me, I didn’t realize that the Comments section doesn’t appear under the Live video because there is a live chat in progress. It only becomes available after the show has ended and the video replay is posted. However, I thank all of you who left comments in the Live Chat about what you would like to talk about in future episodes of Elevenses with Lisa. Two topics I suggested were How to Save Your Research from Destruction and Using Google Photos for Genealogy. Please leave a comment below to let me know what you would like to hear about and learn about in upcoming episodes. And of course I welcome your questions. Thanks for watching!
The Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 195 with Lisa Louise Cooke
In this episode, I’m celebrating the 100th episode of another podcast I host: the Family Tree Magazine podcast. So I’ll flashback to one of my favorite interviews from that show, an inspiring get-in-shape conversation for your research skills: how you can strengthen your research muscles and tone those technology skills to find and share your family history.
Listen now – click the player below
More episode highlights:
News on Chronicling America and Scotland’s People;
Comments from guest expert Lisa Alzo on millions of Czech records that have recently come online;
A YouTube-for-genealogy success story from a woman I met at a conference;
An excerpt from the Genealogy Gems Book Club interview with Chris Cleave, author of Everyone Brave is Forgiven;
Diahan Southard shares a DNA gem: the free website GEDmatch, which you might be ready for if you’ve done some DNA testing.
Though not fully indexed, the new Czech browse-only records number over 4 million. Click here learn how to use browse-only collections on FamilySearch.org.
“These records are a real boon for Czech researchers because at one time the only to get records such as these was to write to an archive and taking a chance on getting a response or spending a lot of money to hire someone to find the records or to travel there yourself to do research in the archives.
The church records contain Images and some indexes of baptisms/births, marriages, and deaths that occurred in the Roman Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and Reformed Church parishes, as well as entries in those registers for Jews.
Land transactions containing significant genealogical detail for a time period that predates parish registers. The collection includes records from regional archives in Opava and Tebo and from the district archive in Trutnov.
School registers contain the full name for a child, birth date, place of birth, country, religion and father’s full name, and place of residence.
While researchers should keep in mind that not everything is yet online, and FamilySearch will likely add to its collection, having these records from FS is an amazing resource for anyone whose ancestors may have come from these areas. And hopefully, there are more records to come!”
Genealogy Gems app users: For those of you who listen to this show through the Genealogy Gems app, your bonus handout is a PDF document with step-by-step instructions and helpful screenshots for Google image search on mobile devices. The Genealogy Gems app is FREE in Google Play and is only $2.99 for Windows, iPhone and iPad users
Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. In the works: RootsMagic will be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.
Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at http://www.backblaze.com/Lisa.
Review your search results especially those that pop up in the Images category.
Sunny Morton has get-in-shape advice for us from strengthening research skills to toning tech muscles–from the article “Shaping Up” featured in the March 2010 issue of Family Tree Magazine.
GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB:Everyone Brave is Forgiven, the best-selling novel by British author Chris Cleave. A love story set in World War II London and Malta. This story is intense, eye-opening and full of insights into the human experience of living and loving in a war zone?and afterward. Everyone Brave is Forgiven is inspired by love letters exchanged between the author’s grandparents during World War II.
The genetic genealogy community has a crush. A big one. Everyone is talking about it. “It has such great features.” says one. “It has a chromosome browser!” exclaims another. “It’s FREE!” they all shout. What are they talking about? GEDmatch. GEDmatch is a mostly free online tool where anyone with autosomal DNA test results from 23andMe, FTDNA, and AncestryDNA can meet and share information. All you need to do is download your data from your testing company and upload it into your newly created GEDmatch account.GEDmatch is set up just like your testing company in that it provides two kinds of reports: ethnicity results, and a match list. Remember that ethnicity results, meaning those pie charts that report you are 15% Italian and 32% Irish, are based on two factors: a reference population and fancy math. GEDmatch has gathered data from multiple academic sources to provide you with several different iterations of ethnicity reports. This is like getting a second (and third and fourth, etc) opinion on a science that is still emerging. It is a fun exercise, but will likely not impact your genealogy research very much. The more important match list does allow you to see genetic cousins who have tested at other companies. Of course, only those who have downloaded their results and entered them into GEDmatch will show up on your list. This means GEDmatch has the potential to expand your pool of genetic cousins, increasing your chances of finding someone to help you track down that missing ancestor. Many also flock to GEDmatch because they were tested at AncestryDNA and thus do not have access to a chromosome browser. A chromosome browser allows you to visualize the physical locations that you share with someone else. Some find this to be a helpful tool when analyzing their DNA matches (though in my opinion, it is not essential).GEDmatch also has some great genealogy features that let you analyze your pedigree against someone else’s, as well as the ability to search all the pedigree charts in their system so you can look specifically for a descendant of a particular relative.However, even with all of these great features, GEDmatch is still yet another website you have to navigate, and with that will be a learning curve, and certainly some frustration. So, is it worth it? If you are fairly comfortable with the website where you were tested, and you are feeling both curious and patient, I say go for it.It’s too much to try to tell you right this minute how to download your data from your testing site and upload it to GEDmatch. BUT you’re in luck, I’ve put step-by-step instructions for getting started in a FREE tutorial on my website at www.yourDNAguide.com/transferring.
By the way, have you tried GEDmatch? I would love to hear about your experiences. You can email me at guide@yourDNAguide.com.
A Guide to the Family Finder Test at Family Tree DNA
and Advanced Tools
Breaking Down Brick Walls with DNA
Organizing Your DNA Matches
DNA Third Party Tools
Genealogy Gems Podcast turns 200: Tell me what you think? As we count down to the 200th episode of the free Genealogy Gems Podcast, what have been YOUR favorite things about the podcast? Any particular topics, interviews or segments of the show? What keeps you coming back? What would you like to hear more of? Email me at genealogygemspodcast@gmail.com, or leave a voicemail at (925) 272-4021, or send mail to: P.O. Box 531, Rhome, TX 76078.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
The Genealogy Gems Podcast
YouTube video with Robyn’s father: 
MyHeritage.com
The genetic genealogy community has a crush. A big one. Everyone is talking about it. “It has such great features.” says one. “It has a chromosome browser!” exclaims another. “It’s FREE!” they all shout. What are they talking about? 
