September-December 2020 - Volume 45 – Issue 6 - Page 1

Inside this issue:

CGS Meets on Zoom 3

New Members 5

James Jeffrey Tribute 5

CIG 6

Calendar of Events 9

From Your Editor

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer. I’m still stunned we already had our first snow fall. There are certain storms that stick in my memory and everything has a story. When I was in college in Montana we had a snow storm in August. I remember the mess it created with broken branches and such. Of course, there’s the March 2003 storm. That was my first winter back in Denver after living in Phoenix for 6 years. What a shock that was to my system. And then there were the 2006 storms that arrived in two separate parts over the Christmas holidays. According to the Farmer’s Almanac we’re in for a big winter which most likely means lots of new stories.

If you’ve been wanting to write your family stories now is a great time to sign up for WriteNOW. See page 4 for more information.

Please stay safe and healthy everyone. I look forward to seeing everyone’s wonderful faces on Zoom.

If you wish to submit an article to include in the newsletter please send it to cgsnews@cogensoc.us.

Kim Smith

Ready. Set. Research.

 

From the President

Thank you! Thank you for accepting our use of Zoom for our meetings and classes this spring and summer. A special thank you goes to those of you who had never used a video conferencing tool and were willing to give Zoom a try. Thank you to everyone who presented and attended our symposium and workshops. The attendance at our meeting has been impressive and sustained though out the summer. I appreciate the time you have spent with us.

For those of you who have recently joined The Colorado Genealogical Society, welcome! We are grateful for your support and look forward to getting to know you. We hope that you will find the CGS meetings educational, encouraging, and enjoyable. I know that it is harder to meet people in a Zoom setting than when we are all together in one place but hopefully, we will all begin to recognize one another’s names and faces and everyone will feel welcomed.

In the May 2020 newsletter, Kelly stated that we had “decided to conduct all our meetings online using Zoom through the end of August. At that time, we will re-evaluate.” We have decided to continue using Zoom for all our meetings through at least the end of the year. Personally, I feel we will continue with Zoom meetings for at least the first few months of 2021 but that is not an “official” statement. We will keep you informed.

Like so much of life these days, we are taking it one day at a time. Gratefully, we have the technology that allows us to still learn and share with one another. So, until next time, thank you, be safe, keep learning, and good luck with your family history endeavors.

Cina Johnson

President, The Colorado Genealogical Society

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Colorado Genealogist

The current issue is in the members only section of the website. The issue on the website is in color. The physical copy is in the mail and should be arriving in your mailbox soon.

NOTIFY CGS OF CHANGE OF ADDRESS

If your home address or email address changes, please notify Sandy Ronayne at sandyronayne@comcast.net. We want to keep in touch with you!

We’re on the Web!

www.cogensoc.us

Find us on Facebook.

COLORADO GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

NEWSLETTER Kimberly Smith, Editor

© Colorado Genealogical Society, 2020. All rights reserved.

CGS welcomes your input. Address items of interest, news, and tips and tricks for the Colorado genealogy community to the editor at cgsnews@cogensoc.us.

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CGS Meets on Zoom

Register in advance for all meetings, classes, and lunch bunch at https://www.cogensoc.us/index.php.

After you register you will receive a confirmation email containing the Zoom information.

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Program Meetings

Regular monthly meetings of the Colorado Genealogical Society are currently meeting on Zoom. Meetings will be held on the third Saturday of each month except July, August, and December.

19 September 2020

Topic: Writing Up the Family Tree

Speaker: Carol Darrow

“Writing Up the Family Tree” is the sure way to organize your vast collection of family information and preserve that information in a way that is accessible for future generations. What story do you want to tell? Who is your audience? What is your deadline? Once you’ve made those decisions, you are on the way to preserving your family history.

Professional genealogist Carol Cooke Darrow is a lecturer, researcher, and writer. She facilitates a monthly WriteNOW! writing group on ZOOM on the second Sunday of the month, 1:30 -3:30 pm from September thru May. She is a well-known presenter at

genealogical society meetings in Colorado and has recently been published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

17 October 2020

Topic: Separating Men of the Same Name

Speaker: Shannon Green, CG

How can you separate identities of men with the same names? Learn the methodology from certified genealogist Shannon Green. Shannon will walk us walk through a case study using probate records, deeds, census records, newspapers, tax rolls, town records, newspapers, neighborhoods, and handwriting analysis to distinguish same-named men.

Shannon Green, CG, is a genealogy researcher, writer, and educator. She earned the Certified Genealogist credential in 2017. She currently instructs in the Boston University Genealogy Studies Program and mentors a ProGen Study Group. She has published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, the National Genealogical Society Magazine, the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society Record, and regional magazines and

journals. Her present research focus is illuminating the lives of her female ancestors.

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Special Interest Classes 26 September 2020 – Topic: Understanding and Using Family Tree DNA Speaker: Greg Liverman Stay tuned for more information. ________

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Beginning Classes Instructor: Carol Darrow Now is a great time to start a genealogy journey. There are many online options for researching your families’ history. Ancestry.com is now allowing free access to all of its World Deluxe records with local public library cards. FamilySearch.com offers free searches and the ability to find more information already discovered by others, and even find pictures of your ancestors. FindaGrave.com is always free and will let you find cemetery stones. Join Professional Genealogist Carol Cooke Darrow as she guides you to techniques that allow you to discover your roots. Second Saturday of each month - 10 am - Noon (MDT) This is a course for the beginner. Attendees will be introduced to thinking genealogically through the exploration of the following:

Introduction to the census using Ancestry.com Pedigree Charts and Family Group Sheets Other Major Record Groups

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WriteNow! Facilitator: Carol Darrow

Group is open to all beginners and more experienced writers who want to put their genealogy into a written document.

Assignments for various levels of experience Opportunity to share your writing with the group as you wish. Shape your writing to the goal of the month. Be willing to share your writing and accept editing to create a better project.

Sunday, Sept. 13, 2020 - 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): Set personal goals. Discuss different types of genealogy writing including personal memoir, family newsletters, cookbooks, scrapbooks, collection of vignettes, family histories. Assignment for October: Write a 1-3 page story about a specific family member using a topic sentence to interest the reader, perhaps dealing with a genealogical puzzle. Use the fill-in-the-blank form if you wish. Sunday, Oct. 11, 2020 - 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): Discuss basics of narrative writing and hooks for attracting your audience. Assignment for November: Select a project and create an outline for your project. Sunday, Nov. 8, 2020 - 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): Review outlines for your project. Discuss scope of story, length, gaps in history. Assignment: Start writing on your project. Sunday, Dec. 13, 2020- 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): Discuss various ways, viewpoints for telling your story and controlling length. Sunday, Jan. 10, 2021 - 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): Discuss formatting issues, page numbers, section breaks and book design for your project. Share your first draft and compare to outline. Assignment: Continue writing on your project. Sunday, Feb. 14, 2021 - 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): Discuss photo editing (including converting to grayscale) and copyright issues. Assignment: Continue writing on your project. Sunday, March 14, 2021 - 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): Discuss electronic publishing (e.g. Lulu.com) and the many specific decisions you need to make. Bring your project in progress for editing. Assignment: Continue work on your project. Sunday, April 11, 2021 - 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): Bring your project in progress; do revisions; discuss other aspects of project. Assignment: Complete your project. Sunday, May 16, 2021 - 1:30-3:30 pm (MDT): (3rd Sunday in May) Present your project to the group.

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Memoir of a key aspect or event in your life Collection of individual narratives of your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents Story of significant event(s) in life of your ancestor Three generation study of your family House history or cookbook Story of ancestor at war (Civil War, World War I, World War II)

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Lunch Bunch

Thursday, 24 September 2020 starts at 11:30 am

You are invited to grab your favorite dish and join us for lunch via Zoom.

Discussion: What is the best advice you have been given concerning Family History?

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Welcome New Members

Ilka Boogaard Katie MacPhail Sylvia Brady Marriane Martens

Emily Brangoccio Sandra and Michael McCoy Suzanne Brown Jaymie Middendorf

Gretchen Darlington David Ponikvar Jill Buckingham Donahoo Rudy Ramsey

Judy Donalson Barbara Schmidt Betty Greer Jessica Schookhoff

Petty Harrison Clonnie Strandberg Karen Helm Trina Terrell

Ana Hopperstad Jan Therkildsen Karen Hriso Janet Upton Susan Irvine Helen Vangundren

Lora Knowlton Jeryl Vogetly Mary Jane Kreiman Katherine White

Nancy Lathrop Alyson Wiezorek Doreen Livoti Linda Wyman

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James Jeffrey Tribute If you haven’t heard, James Jeffrey, Genealogy Specialist at the Western History/Genealogical Department of the Denver Public Library retired at the end of August. CGS has put together a tribute page on its website at https://www.cogensoc.us/gallery.php. Photos of James were submitted by members and others and have been posted to the tribute page. If you have any photos you wish to submit please send them to Nancy Ratay at cgsweb@cogensoc.us ________

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Reunion 12 for Mac – Multimedia Sidebar by Nancy L. Ratay I thought it would be appropriate to have an article on Multimedia since that is what I want to cover in the Reunion Zoom meeting which is scheduled for 29 September 6:30-8:00 pm. We will be sending out more information on this workshop later in the month including a link to registering. Watch the web site under CIG for this. The last time I wrote about the Multimedia Sidebar was 3 years ago in version 11. Very little has changed in version 12 from those directions. So much of this will be repeat for those of you who were in CIG. I did write in May 2020 about scanning while at home. Doing some of those things will get your media ready to be used by Reunion. This is important for having the least hassle with linking photos.

Reunion allows you to add, attach or import multimedia items to a person or family, including images, video, audio, and document files. There is a listing of Multimedia File Formats that can be used in Reunion in the Manual (Help). Search the Manual for Multimedia File Formats. You will then see a listing of the various types of media. Click on the one you are interested in, like images, and you will go to the page listing the types accepted. Basic Information About Multimedia •Reunion does not put your multimedia into your database; it puts a link to its location on your hard drive and makes a thumbnail that goes in your database. Actually attaching or embedding the multimedia to your database would soon make it unwieldy. Thumbnails (made by Reunion) will increase the size of your file, but not by as much. •Reunion will not change or alter your original that it is linked to. Because Gary and I have recommended high resolution scan levels, it may be necessary to downsize the photo you want so-as not to overwhelm the Reunion program. I have linked to photos that are over 30M, but I am a little leery of trying it with some of my particularly large (100M+) files. •Choose and implement an organization strategy for your multimedia. Because Reunion uses a link to the multimedia it is important that you have a good idea how and where you want to store your multimedia on your hard drive (see May article). Reunion would like it all in one folder. I tried that and was not happy with the results. I found I had two sets of multimedia, one stored with families (my preference) and one Reunion folder. The Reunion folder became so disorganized I couldn’t find anything, had to make family folders in there. I have around 530 multimedia files linked. Although the newer system versions (Mojave and Catalina) will remember and reroute when you move something, I have found that occasionally this might cause a problem if you have to relink. When you move an item, Reunion will probably ask to relocate it. •Neither Reunion nor I recommend using Photos, or its predecessor iPhotos, for organizing your genealogical photos. Photos has its own ideas about what you should be doing with your photos that doesn’t fit well at all with genealogy. It also chooses how it organizes those photos and where it stores them and prefers not to let the lowly user know where that is. There are directions for using Photos with Reunion, but there are many things you cannot do when all you are allowed is drag-and-drop from #1 below. Methods There are 3 main methods for adding multimedia to a person or family: 1. Drag and drop from your photo folder in the Finder (or from Photos) to the person bar or marriage bar. 2. Drag and drop from your photo folder in the Finder to the Multimedia Window which you open by clicking on

Multimedia in the Sidebar Menu (left of family). 3. With the Multimedia Window open, click on the + symbol and navigate to the correct folder. This method also

works from the Media Window (below right).

September-December 2020 - Volume 45 – Issue 6 - Page 7 Once you have linked photos to the person, the thumbnail will appear under that person in the Multimedia Window. If you double-click on a photo you will get the Media Window (right). This window gives you all the information about the item you have linked and can be partially edited as follows.

Description: You can edit this field. It begins by using the file name of the photo. You can change it without changing the link. This will become a title or caption for slideshows, reports or web sites, so edit accordingly.

File: You can see the path showing the location of your photo. This one is uneditable. However, it does allow you to click on the path name and it will take you to that photo in the Finder.

Format and Size: This gives you original file type and size.

Options: You can select this as the Preferred photo (the one that will appear on the family view). You can also select Sensitive (if you don’t want it to appear in a report) and Treat as a document if you have selected a pdf, Word, or text file.

Comments: Use the comments section to type in extra information you want to have with the photo, such as place, date and names of all the people in a multi-person photo. These comments will appear with a web-media page and may be selected to accompany the photo in a slideshow.

The bottom of the window (starting with ?) shows you the other options similar to other Reunion windows along with a camera icon that allows you to use either your computer camera or if you’ve opened the Reunion app on your iPad or iPhone, you can take a photo of someone or something with those to add to the file. This bar also allows you to rotate the image or crop it and run a slideshow of all the photos for this person.

The Media Window also shows all the other photos you have attached to this person. By clicking on them you can edit each of them. You can also rearrange the order of the photos by clicking and dragging.

An ALWAYS hint: the ? icon that appears in windows will take you directly to the part of the Manual concerning that window. It is much easier than trying to figure out where to go in the Manual yourself.

This is a fun function of Reunion with lots of side benefits. You should try putting in a few photos for one of your people and see how it works. You can always use that minus button and delete them out again if you don’t like what you did, or feel you need to do some more work editing the photos.

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Zoom Workshop - Reunion for Mac - Adding Multimedia 29 September 2020 - 6:30-8:00 pm This workshop will present information on how to link Multimedia to your Reunion program. Please read this CGS newsletter (Reunion column) for some basic information about the Multimedia Sidebar. We should have time for questions at the end regarding other aspects of Reunion as well. Nancy Ratay has been using Reunion since around 1995. She has been running workshops on the software since the early 2000s. She is the current editor of The Colorado Genealogist and the webmaster for CGS.

Please see the web site for the link for registration. Registration is required to get the link to Zoom. ________

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FamilySearch Spotlight By: Cina Johnson

In the February 2020, FamilySearch added a new feature to its mobile app called “My Contributions”. https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/family-tree-my-contributions/ This new feature is now available on their website and can be accessed from the “Family Tree” dropdown menu. Seeing the “Stats” pertaining to your work on FamilySearch is fun, and “My Changes” is useful, but my favorite feature is “Private People”. This is a list of the people I have added to FamilySearch who are listed as living and therefore I am the ONLY person who can see the record. Even though everyone on the list should be living, I have found that many of them are actually deceased.

FamilySearch considers a person to be living if they were born less than 110 years ago and there is no death or burial information. It also considers a person to be living if there

is no birth/christening or death/burial date for an individual. FamilySearch makes no assumptions about a person’s living or death status based on their immediate family member’s information. Therefore, I have been going through each name on the list and checking to see if I can find birth and/or death information.

Sometimes, the “living” person is a parent of a child who was christened far more than 110 years ago. When I am unable to find birth or death information for the parents, I mark their record as deceased and give the child’s name and birth date as part of my reason statement for marking the parents as deceased. Other times, I have been able to find additional information about the person and can provide the required dates so they can be marked as deceased.

I like the feeling that I have done something to improve my part of the FamilySearch Family Tree. I also like having a project that I can work on when I do not have a lot of time for a long-term project. These “one and done” projects are ideal when time is limited.

I hope that you will look at “My Contributions” on FamilySearch to see what you have accomplished in the past few years and perhaps fix some of your “Private People”, too.

You can email Cina at familysearch@cogensoc.us if you have questions on using FamilySearch.org and the FamilySearch family tree searching, archiving photos, stories and memories. There is also a link in the research tab of the website. Remember that FamilySearch.org is the most trusted and significant organization to keep or materials for future generations to view.

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CGS Programs and Classes – Free unless otherwise noted

CGS Regular meetings are every third Saturday of each month except July, August and December.

Occasionally dates change: Check the website, Facebook, or your email for updates.

Saturday, September 12, 2020 – CGS Beginning Genealogy Class, 10:00-noon. Zoom. Instructor: Carol Darrow, CG.

Sunday, September 13, 2020 – WriteNow! 1:30-3:30 pm. Zoom. Facilitator: Carol Darrow, CG. Monday, September 14, 2020 – CGS Board Meeting, 5:00-7:00 pm. Zoom. All CGS members welcome. Saturday, September 19, 2020 – CGS Program Meeting, 9:30-noon. Zoom. Speaker: Carol Darrow.

Topic: Writing Up the Family Tree. Saturday, September 26, 2020 – Special Interest Class. Zoom. Speaker: Greg Liverman. Topic:

Understanding and Using Family Tree DNA. Tuesday, September 29, 2020 – CIG Meeting, 6:30-8:00. Zoom. Speaker: Nancy Ratay. Topic: Reunion

for Mac – Adding Multimedia. Saturday, October 10, 2020 – CGS Beginning Genealogy Class, 10:00-noon. Zoom. Instructor: Carol

Darrow, CG Sunday, October 11, 2020 – WriteNow! 1:30-3:30 pm. Zoom. Facilitator: Carol Darrow, CG Monday, October 12, 2020 – CGS Board Meeting, 5:00-7:00 pm. Zoom. All CGS members welcome. Saturday, October 17, 2020 – CGS Program Meeting, 9:30-noon. Zoom. Speaker: Shannon Green, CG.

Topic: Separating Men of the Same Name. Saturday, October 24, 2020 – Special Interest Class. Zoom. Speaker: TBA. Topic: TBA. Sunday, November 8, 2020 – WriteNow! 1:30-3:30 pm. Zoom. Facilitator: Carol Darrow, CG. Monday, November 9, 2020 – CGS Board Meeting, 5:00-7:00 pm. Zoom. All CGS members welcome. Saturday, November 14, 2020 – CGS Beginning Genealogy Class, 10:00-noon. Zoom. Instructor: Carol

Darrow, CG. Saturday, November 21, 2020 – CGS Program Meeting, 9:30-noon. Zoom. Speaker: TBA. Topic: TBA. Saturday, November 28, 2020 – Special Interest Class. Zoom. Speaker: TBA. Topic: TBA. Saturday, December 12, 2020 – CGS Beginning Genealogy Class, 10:00-noon. Zoom - Instructor: Carol

Darrow, CG. Sunday, December 13, 2020 – WriteNow! 1:30-3:30 pm. Zoom. Facilitator: Carol Darrow, CG. Monday, December 14, 2020 – CGS Board Meeting, 5:00-7:00 pm. Zoom. All CGS members welcome.

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