"I just wanted to make a reference book."
KRIS HOLLAND/Yakima Herald-Republic Jean Wade shelves books at the Yakima Valley Genealogical Society library on Friday. via Yakima Herald-Republic
Does anyone have information on Bridget Maloney and Rodger Hayes who were the parents of Thomas Hayes born at Killalee, County Clare in 1819? Thomas Hayes married Margaret Shanessy from Limerick before arriving ... via Cousinconnect.com
A few months ago I heard a wonderful essay on NPR. The author was reminiscing about making a lanyard for his mother at summer camp when he was a kid. The essay was addressed to his mother. He said something like, “You gave me thousands of warm meals, 18 years of free housing and a college education, and I gave you a lanyard.”
I tried to remember the last homemade present I gave to my mom. I think it was a pencil holder I made by wrapping yarn around an orange juice can sometime during the Ford or Carter administration.
If it’s been a few decades since you created a gift for your mom with your own hands, now would be a great time to give it another try—even if you weren’t an artistic prodigy in elementary school. The new Mother’s Day photo book template in AncestryPress makes it super easy to create a personalized gift in a couple of hours. If you have a little more time, you can take it a step further and create a family history book dedicated to your mom.
I’m going to offer a few tips for creating a photo book in AncestryPress, but keep in mind that you can use all of the backgrounds, page layouts and quotes from the Mother’s Day photo book template in a family history book as well. Do whatever works for you.
1. Pick the page layouts you like. When you select “Photo Books” from the “Choose a product” page and then select “Mother’s Day Photo Book,” you’ll automatically get 24 pages with pre-designed layouts. Some of the layouts include image boxes only, while others have a combination of text and image boxes. A few have text boxes only.
If you want to include some narrative text, great. You can ask every member of the family to write down their favorite story about Mom/Grandma. You can interview your mom and write a brief history of her life. Or you can just put some of your own memories down on paper.
Here’s an example of how a page with text might look:
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If you’d rather tell the stories through images, that’s fine too. Life is short, and there’s no reason to spend all day staring at a blank page if writing just isn’t your thing. Delete the text box pages and add some more pages with image box layouts.
To add a page, go to the “Pages” icon at the top of AncestryPress, click “New Page,” select “Photo and Text Layouts” and then click “Next.” You’ll see a menu of more than 25 different layouts. An even quicker way to add a page is to make a copy of an existing page. Just go to the “Pages” icon and click “Copy page.”
The layouts provided are meant to help you get started. If they work for you as they are, terrific. But it’s really easy to resize the image boxes and move them around, so feel free to modify the layouts and create your own page templates. And you can always add a blank page if you want to design a page from scratch.
2. Add photos to your book. To upload photos from your computer to AncestryPress, click the My Photos tab on the left side of AncestryPress and then click the Upload Images button. You can upload multiple images by holding down the Control key. All the photos you’ve uploaded will appear in the My Photos content tray. You can also import photos from Picasa or SmugMug. If you have an online family tree on Ancestry.com, you can access the images attached to your tree by clicking the Ancestry Records tab.
To place a photo on a page, drag it over and drop it into an image box by releasing it when the cursor is over the box. If the image box is empty, the photo will fill up the box.
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When you place a photo in an image box, the size of the photo adjusts automatically. If the photo has the same aspect ratio as the box, the entire photo will fit inside the box. If the aspect ratio is different, part of the photo will get cut off. You don’t need to crop the photo before you place it on the page. Just drag it over, release the cursor, move the photo so that it’s positioned how you want it, and then click somewhere else on the page. The parts of the photo that were hanging over the edge of the box will get cropped off.
If you drag over a new photo and there’s already an image in the box, a blue outline will appear around the box. You’ll see a dialogue box asking whether you want to replace the image highlighted in blue.
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If you click “No,” the new photo will be placed on top of the existing image.
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You can choose whether you want to see this dialogue box every time you replace an existing image. Once you’re comfortable with how this feature works, click the box that says, “Always apply during this session.”
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You won’t see the dialogue box again until the next time you open AncestryPress. Anytime you want to add a photo to a page without replacing an image, just make sure you release it in a spot where the cursor isn’t over an existing image.
3. Add captions and stories. You can add text by either typing it in or pasting it from another document. If the page layout you’re using has a text box, just drop in the text. If there’s no text box, click the “Abc” icon at the top of the page to create one. You can position the text box anywhere you want on the page. If you don’t like the default formatting, you can use the text editing tools to change the font type, size, color and style.
4. Change the backgrounds. Every page layout comes with a default background, but you can easily change the background of any page. To browse the available options, click the Backgrounds tab on the left side of AncestryPress.
5. Add quotes and embellishments. Some of the pages in the Mother’s Day photo book template have quotes from famous authors like Robert Browning and Mark Twain. To see all of the Mother’s Day quotes, click the Other Content tab and then go to the Mother’s Day folder. A quote is just like any other embellishment. You can drag it over and place it anywhere you want.
Here’s an example of what you can do in just a few seconds with a quote and a couple of photos:
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If you like the layout of a particular page but the quote doesn’t quite fit the photos you’ve picked, use a different quote—or don’t use one at all. Again, do whatever works for you. And, as always, let me know what you think!
"Anything that can be done to strengthen families, I like to think of it that way. Getting early involvement in families and build relationships."
Alice Duckett doesn't just sit around in dusty old courthouses doing her genealogy research. via Daily Home
We’ve hit another milestone recently, reaching 500 million names added to the system.
This is remarkable especially considering the relatively short time frame we’ve been at this–about 19 months. During that time, more than 4.5 million people have created a family tree, more than 7 million photos have been uploaded, and more than 1 million family members have been invited to help build the family tree.
70 million historical records have been attached to those 500 million names, with more than half of those the result of an Ancestry Hint.
It is incredibly exciting to watch this unfold as all of us collectively create an amazing linkage of family histories–records, photos, names, dates, places, relationships, all being connected and grouped. While the individual names are priceless to those family members finding them (so is seeing an ancestor’s photo for the first time, as has happened to me!), the millions (and billions) of connection points that are being made is truly remarkable.
Thanks for making it happen.
Have you found a name, record, photo, story, or other information that has been memorable? Leave a comment or send me an email (kfreestone at tgn.com). We’d love to hear your story.
Some comment about data entry flow from our U.I Designer:
Many people like the easy flow of entering and editing information from the Family view of Family Tree Maker 16. As nice as it is, many also complained about having to open the “Edit Individual” dialog multiple times to enter common facts such as AKA, title, christening, baptism, and burial. While some aspects of using the Family view were nice, the requirement to repeatedly go in and out of the “Edit Individual” dialog box for some common facts made for an inefficient process in many cases.
Family Tree Maker 2008 addresses this issue in its Family view by allowing the right-hand edit panel to be customized. For instance, if you frequently enter burial information, you can add “Burial” to the right-panel and then you won’t need to go to another screen to enter that information like you did in Family Tree Maker 16. If you have a lot of Jewish ancestry, you might frequently add Bar Mitsvah and Bat Mitsvah information, so you may want to add those facts to the right-hand panel. You certainly don’t want to add every fact you might ever use to the right-hand panel, but those that you frequently use. This makes it possible to add most of your information from one screen without the need to go to another view or open another dialog box.
But what about flowing through your data entry without using your mouse? Family Tree Maker 2008 has fairly extensive support for keyboard navigation.
From a selected person in the pedigree or family panel, press the Tab key to move your focus to the edit panel on the right. Then tab through the fields and enter information for that person. To add or edit another family member, press Ctrl + Tab to return to the family panel. Ctrl + Tab is a common standard way in Windows to move from panel to panel. Once your focus is back in the family panel, use your arrow keys to move between parents or children where you can add new family members or edit existing ones by pressing the Tab key and repeating the process just described.
This might be something you already use, or maybe something you haven’t tried much yet. In the top right corner of most family tree pages we have a little tool that lets you find or quickly jump to any person in your tree. Today we made some changes to it, and want to get your feedback on the changes–Like it? Hate it? Let me know (kfreestone at tgn.com).
We’ve been doing a fair amount of work lately to make it easier to add information you find in other public family trees into your own. Starting back in December we began including information about other public member trees in the ancestry hints(tm). Before then, the hints only included information from OneWorldTree. We’ve also recently (a few weeks ago) improved our process for merging these hints into your tree, and improved the page that lets you compare the information found on these trees to your own tree. Lastly, today we added a link on all public family trees which will let you save that information into your own family tree. A great aspect of all these new features is the control it offers you over what information enters your tree, along with great tools to see which of the trees you might add to yours have sources, saved records, photos, or other compelling information.
Thanks to all of you who have written, or emailed, or have otherwise given us feedback on these pages. Now that they’re up, please don’t stop! Leave a comment or send me an email (kfreestone at tgn.com) to let us know how these new pages and features are working out for you and your research–we love hearing from you.
The staff of Kewaunee County Historical Society Research Center are inviting people to learn multiple ways of using their own story and photos while finding out about the resources within the county. via Kewaunee County
"His kinships are across the political spectrum"
This could make for one odd family reunion: Barack Obama is a distant cousin of actor Brad Pitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt's girlfriend, Angelina Jolie. via Seattle Post-Intelligencer