20% off Family Tree Maker

Get 20% off Family Tree Maker 2012 at Ancestry.com ends in 2 days. It isn't to late to get this discount on the latest, improved software. You can still search for all the wonderful resources through Ancestry.com as before.Features will include


TreeSync — lets you easily synchronize your tree in Family Tree Maker with an online Ancestry.com tree.
Access and update your tree anywhere. Continue your research wherever you are whether it’s through your computer, Ancestry.com, even your iPhone or iPad.

Easily share your tree with your family, and even work on it together. Your family and friends can view the online version of your tree without any software or a subscription. They just login with their name and email and they can always see the latest version of your tree, and can even work on adding to it if you’d like them to.

Collaborate with the largest, most active family history community in the world. You can keep your online tree private or make it public so that others researching your family can always find the latest version of your research. You may connect with others who have insight on your ancestors or even rare photos to share with you. And you may even find relatives you didn’t know you had.


Blended family view — shows combined families, including stepfamilies and adoptees at a glance.


Improved Smart Stories — give you new tools for adding and editing details.


Chart personalization — lets you personalize charts by adding text and displaying generation labels such as parents, grandparents and great–grandparents.


Index of individuals report — lists every individual in your tree, plus their birth, marriage and death dates.


Customized fact sentences — let you change wording and choose what data is included in sentences that Family Tree Maker generates for certain reports and Smart Stories.
Descendent charts between two people — make it easy to choose two individuals in your tree and create a descendant chart that shows their relationship.

Cyndi's List

Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet


I talked about Cyndi's List the other day and how much I enjoy visiting her site. There is so much information on Genealogy on her site. Everything from researching old adoption records to state records. She has it all listed, ready to research or find where to access thse documents.

Family Tree University Kits

Kit of the Month

I have been a student and huge fan of Family Tree University for almost 2 years. This is where I have gotten the 101 Brick Walls, Google For Genealogists, Photo Rescue, and Cemetery research. There are so many kits, Expert Webinars, and books to explore in Family Tree University. I will look there before anywhere else first when I am looking for Genealogy Resources. They still have plenty of the Google for Genealogist packs available.

Researching your Genealogy

There are a few days left with Ancestry.com free weekend. Ancestry.com is a great place and the largest resource for Genealogy. However, there are many different sites to find this information; some may have more information than others. Here is a list of the various links, and their benefits.


Ancestry.com: the largest and oldest site that has forums that allow researchers to share information between each other. Ancestry.com also interfaces with its Genealogy software Family Tree Maker 2011 PLUS Deluxe Family History Toolkit Bundle at Ancestry.com. RootsWeb General Search is also connected to Ancestry.com, and is a free option. The amount of resources you can achieve on Ancestry is limitless. Search Military Records, Historic Newspapers Online, Social Security Death Index, Adjustable Surname Search Link, Search Birth, Marriage and Death Records including Obituary Collection .

WorldVitalRecords.com is another Utah based subscription research site. It offers many of the same benefits as Ancestry.com. It is the host company for Family Link, also known as We're Related on Facebook. The link that us Genealogists use to link up our family on Facebook.

OneGreatFamily, Archives.com, are also paid subscription sites. Not as large or as old as Ancestry.com.

There are some really useful Genealogy sites that are free, FamilySearch.org, RootsWeb General Search.

There are also volunteer organizations where you can seek the help of Genealogists in the local area's that your ancestors lived. RAOGK.com, is a really helpful site, one that I volunteer for. I also follow Cyndi's List, her site is full of useful information and easy to follow.


There are many sites out there to research your Genealogy. Some are paid subscriptions, some are free. I personally am leary of most the free sites that have been popping up. How secure is their information, is that data verified information? RAOGK, Family Search, and Cyndi's list are the ones I trust the most if you are going the Free route. I know that those sites are secure and verified links.

Family Tree Maker 2012

There are many sites out there that meet several different needs for every Genealogist. All of them have added features that include web sharing. A few years back I searched for genealogy software that offered photograph and Web design features. Preserving my families photos is very important to me. There is so much that I had never seen, and wish I knew the stories behind the faces. As a military family we travel around quite a bit, so the web is a useful tool to keep in touch and share data with family. The newest features of the new Family Tree Maker 2012 will make sharing a lot easier for families. These new features are:

      1.       TreeSync- the ability to synchronize your tree between Ancestry.comand Family Tree Maker

2.       Blended Family view- now you can add step children, step relatives easily  

3.       Index of Individuals Report

4.       Chart improvements- show generation labels, add your text anywhere in the chart, and Option to limit descendant chart to the direct lineage between people.

5.       Report improvements- Custom fact sentences, automatic smart story generation, which includes individual, spouse, and children, and the research notes report is changed to “Notes Report” with the options to also include several other types of notes.

 

As with the prior Family Tree Maker Software organizing media files, enhancing your family trees with Charts, photos, audio, video, and much more will still be included. September 2011, Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker is releasing the newest version FTM 2012. I am looking forward to receiving my copy of family tree maker this month and sharing with you all my full review of the software.

Don't forget this is the free week on Ancestry.com

Sharing Memories, Solving Mysteries

It's been a few days since I had the chance to post more on Genealogy.  I had the chance to visit my Aunt and Cousins that live in another State. My Aunt has all the photographs, letters, post cards, and documents that Grandma had saved through the years. My Aunt had found report cards from grade school that were Grandma's. They were in wonderful condition, and Great Grandma Ula's signature was still on the back. These were report cards from Grade 3rd to Grade 6th, at St. Mary's School.

There didn't seem to be enough time to go through all the wonderful photographs, read all the letters, and post cards that had been collected through the years. We had found letter from Nancy Ola Akin that she had wrote to my Grandma when she was just starting out as a young mom. I can hardly wait until the scanner is working and we can scan more than I was able to during my visit. They live 10 hours away, so getting there is a challenge at times. Here are a few boxes that we were going through.

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At 1 AM as we were putting everything away I noticed an envelope from Bubbles- Edna. She has worked very hard on the family tree from the Durbin side and has shared with everyone the same information. Or we thought. We opened it and right away there was the Obituary and copies of old photographs of Fredrick Augustus Durbin. My Grandma's Grandfather who passed away when she was a couple months old. I had never seen nor was able to find much about Fredrick Augustus Durbin other than he was a Wire Carrier during the turn of the Century. And here was his obituary, photographs, more than I could have hoped to find. 

 

Fredrick A. Durbin Obituary. I will transcribed and add this later so that everyone can see his story. 

Photo of Fredrick A. Durbin, with Wife  Mae Augustas Williams Durbin, and son Fredrick R. Durbin. Scrapping these are going to be a lot of fun. Don't forget My Memory Digital Scrapbooking Giveaway ends on Saturday. I have been using My Memories this week for quick pages.

 

My Memories Digital Scrapbooking Giveaway!!!!!- Closed

I am SO EXCITED to be hosting a giveaway for

        My Memories Digital Scrapbooking!!!!

I have used My Memories Suite Digital Scrapbooking in the past, long before I got my current laptop. Still use it occasionally on my Dinosaur desk top that runs Windows 2000, yes OLD! Between my desk top, Laptop, external hard drive, I have over 

43, 000 photos and still counting. 

Digital Cameras have added such value to our lives, the instant access to our memories. We can share them everywhere, Facebook, Twitter, Flikr, e-mail instantly with loved ones. Now even our cell phones carry these cute photo moments. What to do with all these photos? They are already in your computer and you don't have to spend hours cutting, cropping, finding the space to store the photos safe.  My Memories Digital Scrapbooking allows convenience, and has many designs to play with.

With My Memories Digital Scrapbooking you can make Invitations, Cards, Scrapbooking Pages, Announcements and SO MUCH more!

My Memories Digital Scrapbooking is giving one of my lucky readers their complete My Memories Digital Scrapbooking Suite for FREE!!!! This software retails for $40! The My Memories Suite Software can use on a PC or Mac. The software has design tools that help you build entire albums effortlessly using one of the many installed templates or designing your own pages from scratch.

Even though only one of you will win the software for free, all of my other wonderful readers will get a $10 Discount on the software using our promo code STMMMS36408. That is a fantastic deal for the My Memories Digital Scrapbooking Suite!

Here's how to Enter


To Enter the Giveaway you MUST follow THIS blog via Google Friend Connect(GFC) on the right. Click the “blue follow” tab on the sidebar. Then share how many family photos you want to preserve. If you’re like me and have a digital camera- there probably are thousands of precious memories. :)


Want Extra Chances to Win?


Extra Entry 1: Visit My Memories then come back and share with me which digital paper pack was your favorite.


Extra Entry 2: Share this post on with your friends on Twitter, or Facebook, or Blog- share link here. (3 possible entries)


Extra Entry 3: Like Dawns Delights on Network Blogs


Extra Entry 4: Follow My Memories on Twitter.


Extra Entry 5: "Like" My Memories on Facebook




It's all in the Details!


~Leave a separate comment for each entry.


~Winner will be drawn August 20, 2011 @ 9:00pm MST

~ Winner will be drawn through Random.org.


~Winner will be announced on August 21, 2011


~If I can't reach you through your GFC email, check back here on Sunday, August 21, 2011. You'll have 72 hours to claim your prize.




My Memories is also offering my readers a $10 Discount on their purchase of My Memories Suite v2 Software! Copy and paste the promo code STMMMS36408 in the promotional code field on the shopping cart page. The software also comes with another $10 coupon for Downloads. That’s $20 in Discounts!!!

Digital Family History Pages

My Grandma left behind many different photographs that she had collected through the years. It has been fun adding new digital enhancements to these memories. I wanted to share a couple that I have added to Daisy Trail scrapbooking. It is a software I use for my current photos, and was curious if older photo's would look just as great. They have so many different formats, so many different designs to work with. I decided on the Swirling Memories Template. Here are the 2 pages I have done and exported to JPG for sharing online. I can change the colors, the font, the layout, everything, and print out later on.

Joy, Ula, and Roy Akin- Children of Gip and Nancy Akin

Coffee Sisters, Nancy Coffee Akin, Mattie Coffee Randell, and Mattie Coffee.... Seeing women in pants, truly women before their time.


I used Serif - Software with Imagination and CraftArtist Platinum Edition - Get the ultimate creativity for all your print projects to create these layouts.

Editing your Photographs.

It is so important to select the right photo editing software program to preserve your most treasured family memories. Rather you are editing photographs, old family videos on those VHS tapes. That are in the back of the closet waiting to be watched, memories of get together, reunions. With Serif you can work with a user friendly software to preserve those precious memories.

This past Christmas I got the Serif PhotoPlus X3, I was a little intimidated at first. I have tons of software programs, and get lost with complicated features.

Here is the first photograph I worked with, it wasn't of family but of a road I travel down. The trees along that road are amazing and there was a deep fog that morning. With the editing I removed the street light and brightened it. There is another not so good fuzzy photo on the same day. Taking photos of fog is a challenging task, so I was happy with the second picture. Especially after I had edited it through Serif.

Serif doesn't limited to photo editing software, but has a variety of software available for every need.

They offer WebPlus-Professional Quality Websites Made Easy, Movie Plus-High Definition Video editing, PagePlus-Professional Desktop Publishing, PhotoPlus-Powerful Digital Photo Editing, DrawPlus-powerful Drawing and Graphics, Webplue Essentials-the fun, fast & easy website builder, and many more to meet your everyday need. You could build a family sharing website, share documents from other family far away. Design those amazing family reunion invitations. The creativity is limitless.

I am sharing the Youtube.com video from Serif, I am really glad that my family thought of this wonderful gift for me last Christmas.

101 Brick Wall Busters Part 2

Grandma Ola, Aunt Lovella, and AJ at Aunt Lovella's home in Corona, NM

This was a common sight when visiting my Aunt Lovella. Many a day we sat around this table sharing photos, stories, documents. I was always amazed by all the documents she had. She had dedicated all her life in being the Family Historian, listening to stories, gathering documents and keeping photographs. 

Nancy Ola and Gip Akin with their two eldest children Joy and Roy Akin

Returning to the Brick Wall Busters, the next three steps will really help you. 

4. Identify your Sources, make a list of sources that you could find the information you need. Not only is family a great source for records, especially if family was born prior to record keeping, but Churches are wonderful places to search. Long before states started collecting data and information, Churches were the record keepers of births and deaths. Local Newspapers, censuses, naturalization papers, are great places to look. The Family History Library Catalog is a wonderful tool.

5. When you cant find the information needed online, and there are lots of records still being digitized. Expand your search, try different spellings of your ancestors names. On one census my Great Grandma was listed as Carla, instead of Ula. The location, parents, siblings all matched except her name. On the same census report her Mom was listed as Old N. Akin instead of Nancy Ola. Names got reversed, comparing with other information on these reports will help confirm the lineage. 

6. Research those who lived and were part of your family. Many multiple families lived together during those times and may have served as witnesses to their lives. Land deeds, tax records, the paper trails in communities can also help verify family members. 

Maggie Coffee Randell sister to Nancy Ola Akin

101 Brick Wall Busters

A few months back I took a wonderful course through Family Tree University, called 101 Brick Wall Busters. It is something that happens when researching our family. Records are lost, destroyed in fires, or never even existed. Record keeping wasn't as wide spread in the early days of our Nation, many areas never kept records until the past century, less in some areas.

In the age of Technology and instant information, it is shocking to many that there isn't a data base somewhere with every article of information on our ancestors. The LDS Church has done a wonderful job of gathering many records, but there are still gaps in the research.

In the course 101 Brick Wall Busters it discusses several ways to find this information or at least find information that can lead you in the right direction.
I will be touching on a few points each post.

1. You have to access the problem, what records do you have, what is it that you are trying to find out. Birthplace? Maybe the Date of Birth was left off or the common brick wall of a mothers lineage. For some reason the woman's line is always incomplete.

Ask family first, see if a relative ended up with a box of photographs, documents, letters between family, or land deeds. Recently while researching the death of my Grandma's little brother, I couldn't find any state records for 1929 of his death. My Great Grandma had given a trunk of paperwork, birth records, love letters between her and Great Grandpa to my Grandma's sister and now her Daughter has all the information. It was a real break through on proving his death and burial area. The photograph we believed was Grandma with her father and brother standing by a grave was not the grave of her brother, but her Grandfather who passed away in 1926.

2. Don't skip any steps, check all records here in the US before venturing overseas. If there are not State or County records, see if the papers of the time have any articles on your ancestors. I recently found a wonderful article written by the Senior Center that my Grandma was active in, honoring her crafts and involvement at the Center. County Fairs, Senior Centers, newspapers are a few places you can look for more information.

3. Create a time line of their life. Do you know when they lived, who else in your family was around during that time. My Aunt Lovella was my Grandma's Mother's youngest sister of seven children. I always referred to her as Aunt, when really she was my Great Great Aunt. Knowing the time line of the family helped when filling out the lineage chart. Other things to know is what sort of things were going on in the world during the time of their life. Was it during War time, there are a lot of War records that can help bridge the gaps.

 Gip and Nancy Akin, with their children.