FeedBurner Email Lists Discontinued

 

 

The FeedBurner team is discontinuing their email subscription service by the end of  July 2021. As a result, those of you that subscribed to Kathryn's Quest via email will no longer automatically receive the email notifications for new blog posts.

Since I have a small list of active email subscribers, I will send you an invite to subscribe to the posts via Blogger. The invite will come from "noreply+subscribe@blogger.com", so check your Spam folders if you don't see it over the next couple of days. If you don't wish to subscribe, you can just ignore or decline the request.

 

You also can subscribe to Kathryn's Quest via the Feedly button on the right side of this page. The free version of Feedly allows you to subscribe to up to 100 sources.

Tuesday's Tip - The Ohio History Connection Site

If you have ancestors from Ohio, be sure and check out the the Ohio History Connection. This is the online home of the archives at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio. A few items I've found useful are:

Searchable databases - They have searchable databases online including their online collections catalog, Ohio public records index, Ohio newspaper portal, and all volumes of the Ohio History Journal.

Ohio Public Records Index - Provides an index to Ohio death certificates searchable by name, county, and years. Names are spelled as they were entered into the index, so you may have to try variations. Only certain years are covered as stated on the main index page.

Online Collections Catalog - Searches their newspaper and state archives collections by keyword.

Newspaper index - This index lists their newspaper resources by county or city. Other documents available for the selected area are also provided in the search results.

Research guides - A set of research guides for help on researching specific record types.

Photocopy requests - Instructions on how to request photocopies of records in the archives.

I had great success with the photocopy service. I requested scans of microfilm images for a few issues of the Celina Democrat newspaper and received digital copies of the pages within a couple of days after making payment. Their email response was quick and very helpful and the quality of the scans was excellent. The pages contained an obituary for my 2x great-grandfather Timothy Creeden that I'd been trying to track down for years.

This is just a sampling of what's available on their site. Thanks to the Ohio History Connection for providing such a valuable resource!

Note: "Flag of Ohio" image designed by John Eisenmann, SVG code by SiBr4 -  Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

Follow Friday - Changes to Google Friend Connect

Google announced last month that a Google account must be used to follow blogs hosted by Blogger. Users that signed up with other providers won't be able to sign in and see their reader's list.and bloggers may see a decrease in their number of followers.

Full details were posted by Blogger here: Update to Google Friend Connect.

I know some people don't want to register for a Google account, so I've provided other options on my blog. Beneath my followers list, there is a form to subscribe via any email account. The emails are sent out once a day when there is a new post, but don't contain the formatting and colors present on the blog web page.

I've also provided a button to subscribe via the Feedly reader.

For other bloggers out there, what options are you providing? I don't think this has affected me or my readers that much, but let me know if there are other reader options you'd prefer.

Society Saturday - Ohio History Connection

See newer post with updated links at: Ohio History Connection.

If you have ancestors from Ohio, be sure and check out the the Ohio History Connection. This is the online home of the archives at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio. A few items I've found useful are:

Searchable databases - They have several databases searchable online including their online collections catalog, Ohio public records index, Ohio newspaper portal, and all volumes of the Ohio History Journal.

Ohio Public Records Index - Provides an index to Ohio death certificates and records for Ohio Industrial Schools searchable by name, county, and years. Names are spelled as they were entered into the index, so you may have to try variations. Only certain years are covered as stated on the main index page.

Online Collections Catalog - Searches their newspaper and state archives collections by keyword.

Newspaper index - This index lists their newspaper resources by county or city. Other documents available for the selected area are also provided in the search results.

Research guides - A set of research guides for help on researching specific record types.

Photocopy requests - Instructions on how to request photocopies of records in the archives. I had great success with this! I requested scans of microfilm images for a few issues of the Celina Democrat newspaper and received digital copies of the pages within a couple of days after making payment. Their email response was quick and very helpful and the quality of the scans was excellent.

This is just a sampling of what's available on their site. Thanks to the Ohio History Connection for providing such a valuable resource!

Note: "Flag of Ohio" image designed by John Eisenmann, SVG code by SiBr4 -  Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

Tuesday's Tip - Turning Off the Google+ Auto Enhance Feature

Yesterday, I was trying to add an image to a post and the background color of the image kept changing when it uploaded to Blogger. I was trying to upload this:

But, I kept winding up with this:

What the heck!! I had done this graphic in an Excel spreadsheet, so my first thought was that it was something to do with the background color in there. After several attempts at changing the spreadsheet background color and the graphic background color, I ruled that out as the cause.

Searching for the problem led me to some posts about a change in Google+. According to a Google+ Help Page, "When you add new photos, Auto Enhance makes subtle adjustments (like removing red-eye and improving lighting) to help them look great". The page also said that Auto Enhance is on by default.

To turn the feature off, execute the following steps:

1. Go to your Google+ home page.
2. Hover your mouse over the Home menu in the upper left corner.

3. Select the Settings option.

4. Scroll down to the Photos section and set Auto Enhance to Off. I also unchecked Auto Awesome and checked another box in the Photos section to upload my photos at full size.

OK, so here's the really crazy thing. I was not a member of Google+! In order to change these settings and return Blogger image uploading to normal, I had to enable my Google profile for Google+. After doing this, I went back to the Settings menu, selected Profiles and Privacy and locked down everything I could.

There is an option at the very bottom of the Settings page to disable Google+, but I'm not sure what effect that would have on the settings I changed. I decided to leave it for now, but I'm not at all happy with the way Google forced these new settings and services on us. It would be much more user friendly to default new features to "Off" rather than make users spend a lot of time trying to figure out what changed.

Thrifty Thursday - Favorite Blogging Freebies

Here are a few tools I've found handy while blogging. All of them are free with no regisration required!

FastStone Image Viewer - Fantastic free image viewer, converter, and editor. I use this all the time for viewing, cropping and editing photos and converting between formats. There are a lot of nifty tools in here too, including the Image Strip Builder I used to create the strip on the top of my blog.

Online OCR - Converts scanned images of text into a searchable Word, Excel, PDF, text or Html file.

Web2PDF - Converts a web page to a PDF file. This is great for saving something you want to go back and read later. They also offer some services I haven't tried like receiving the PDF file via email and adding a button to allow saving your blog posts to PDF format.

Web Resizer - Quick and easy way to resize photos for your blog. You can do some basic photo editing with it too.

Microsoft Clip Art - All kinds of free clip art, photos, and illustrations, including the one on the top of this post!

What are your favorite freebies?

Tuesday's Tip - Check your Spam Folder!

Have you ever had someone email you about possible family links or one of your blog posts only to never be heard from again? I suspect my responses are winding up in their Spam or Junk folders a lot of the time.

Almost all email tools have a Spam or Junk folder where your email provider attempts to route emails it thinks are spam. The problem is that legitimate emails can get routed here too. I check my Spam folder daily and find at least one or two legitimate emails a week. In the case of my Yahoo email, I can designate the legitimate email as "Not Spam" and it will be moved to my Inbox.

Blog posts can also be routed to a Spam folder. Blogger divides comments into Published, Awaiting Moderation and Spam. It's a good idea to check the Blogger Spam folder once in a while just to make sure you didn't miss a valid comment.

To check for spam comments on your blog, first go to your Design page. For my blog, a Design button is visible on the top right of my blog page, but your location may vary depending on your template. This is the page where you can customize your blog template and settings. Once you're there, select "Comments" from the list in the left-hand column and you should see a list of Published Comments. The left-hand column has selections for Published, Awaiting Moderation, and Spam. Click on Spam and from there you can review any comments in the Spam folder. Since I started moderating my comments, I haven't received any comments in the Spam folder, but I suppose it's still possible.

My most recent contact was someone requesting more information about a Creedon family that was in the Guion Miller rolls. I emailed back to tell him that I would scan the rest of the information and to watch for another email. I didn't hear back which should have been a clue. I went ahead and scanned and sent the information, but didn't hear back again. Did he receive it and not answer? Or did it wind up in his Spam folder? I'll probably never know!

Tuesday's Tip - Commenting on a Blogger Post

I recently received an email from someone that was having trouble commenting on my blog. This was someone who was related to one of my lines, so I'm glad she persisted through the problems and found my email!

As I looked at the steps needed to make a comment, I realized some of these are not obvious, especially for someone that isn't a blogger. The steps below apply to blogs created with Blogger.

The first thing that can be confusing is finding the link that allows you to make a comment. If the Post a Comment dialog is not visible, look for the comments link that appears immediately following each post. The comments link text shows the number of comments or "0 comments" if nobody has commented on the post.

 Clicking on the comments link opens up the Post a Comment dialog.

If you are not signed in with one of the accounts allowed by Blogger, you'll see "Select profile" next to the "Comment as" text. Clicking on the "Select profile" menu brings up a list of account types and two non-account options: Name/URL and Anonymous. Note that while I have my blog set to allow the non-account options, some bloggers may require an account to comment. If you have one of the account types listed, you can sign in and post through the account. The steps below show how to comment if you don't want to use one of those account types.

Clicking on Name/URL brings up the Edit profile dialog.

Type the name you want to appear on the comment in the Name field. The URL field is optional and may be left blank. If you have a website, you may enter the address in the URL field.

The second non-account option is to select Anonymous from the profile list. This does not require any other information to be entered. Once you've selected a profile, you can enter your comment text in the box above the profile selection and select Publish when you're done.

A drawback to using the Name/URL or Anonymous options, is that the blogger will have no way to get back in touch with you other than replying to your comment. Please remember to check back and see if there is a reply to your comment!

Another drawback is that spammers love the Anonymous option. I have moderation turned on for comments so that the spam comments don't reach my blog. The comment won't be posted on my blog until I've had a chance to review and approve it. You'll see this message after commenting on one of my posts:

If you are trying to establish contact with the blogger, you may want to look for an email address instead of posting to the blog. I've added my email address to the Contact Me page at the top of my blog. Remember to check your Spam folder in case my response gets lost there!

I also have a Contact Me form located under the Followers list down on the right side of my blog. You can type your message directly into the form and click "Send". Your email address will not be published anywhere.

This all seems a bit cumbersome. How do you make it easier for non bloggers to comment on your blog?

Ohio Probate Records on Family Search - Tuesday's Tip

If you have Ohio ancestors, be sure and check out the Ohio probate records available on the FamilySearch site. The information is arranged by county and is in the form of images of the actual probate book pages. There are wills, estate settlements, guardian's bonds, naturalization records and other types of court records. The images are not searchable, so here are a few tips for browsing them.

• Many of the volumes have a separate index book that lists names alphabetically. If you find an ancestor in the index, the entry will point you to the volume and page number for the actual record. 
• If there is no index volume, each book usually has its own alphabetical index in the front.
• Some of the collections have multiple volumes in one set of images. If this is the case, the page numbers start over for each volume and there is a separate index in the front of each volume.
• If you are certain of a date and don't find an entry in the index, try browsing the volume for that date anyway. I found one estate settlement that did not have an index entry.
• Each image is usually a photo of two pages in the ledger, so be sure and pan around to see everything.
• The image numbers do not match the page numbers, so it takes some trial and error to find a specific page.
• The pages on the website listing the volumes for a county have a scroll bar on the right-hand side. I missed this the first time I was looking and didn't realize there were quite a few more books available.
• For estate settlements, there may be entries in different years for partial and final settlements.

Genealogy Apps - 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy - Week 26

Week 26: Genealogy Apps: Which genealogy app has made your family history experience easier? Who makes the app and what does it do?  Share with others the details so they can learn about the app, too.

When I first got my Kindle Fire, I looked for genealogy apps and didn't find any. Soon after, Ancestry.com came out with their free Ancestry app. The app displays family trees that you've entered on the Ancestry.com site and does a good job of maximizing the space on the Kindle Fire. It allows updates to your tree, searching on Ancestry, and has a relationship calculator from a selected ancestor to yourself.

Sample tree for Ancestry app

To me, the most useful feature is that it downloads your trees to the Kindle Fire. The information can be displayed whether or not you are online, so this makes an easy and portable way to take your trees with you and use as a reference or share them with family.

I searched Amazon today for more genealogy apps compatible with the Kindle Fire and I see that a couple more have been added. They are for sites or family tree programs that I don't use, so the selection is still pretty limited. Hopefully, more apps will become available as the Fire matures.




52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.

Tuesday's Tip - My Source Box from FamilySearch

I just recently noticed the new My Source Box feature at https://www.familysearch.org/ and spent a few moments trying it out. This feature gives you a way to save the source info for records of interest and return back to them. You have to be signed in to use the feature, but registration is free.

Once you've located a record of interest, a menu appears in the upper right for My Source Box. Clicking "Add to My Source Box" saves the source info and a link to the record. Also on the menu is "Go to My Source Box". Clicking on this takes you to a screen where you can view and manage the info you have saved.

Folders can be created to organize your data and sources can be moved into the folders. One thing I didn't see is a way to save a source directly into one of my folders, so it looks like you have to save a source and then move it. There is also an option to create your own source that allows you to save web links or whatever information you want.

Clicking on an individual source expands the info for that source and allows you to View, Copy, or Remove the source or return to the record. Clicking on View takes you to a screen for the source where you can add and save your own notes to the source record.

I appreciate any tools that help keep me better organized, so My Search Box looks like a nice addition to FamilySearch.

Tuesday's Tip - Newspaper Annuals

The N. W. Ayer & Son's American Newspaper Annuals are a good resource for finding out what newspapers were published in the US and Canada for a given area and time. The annuals from the 1880's through the early 1900's are digitized and available for online searching at the University of North Texas Digital Library. The entries contain some information on each newspaper including the publisher and date the newspaper was established and some general census information for the area. The example for Celina, OH in 1915 shown below lists my great-grandfather George Pulskamp as the publisher of a German newspaper called the Mercer County Bote.

N.W. Ayer & Son's American Newspaper Annual entry for Celina, OH in 1915

Follow Friday - Make an Ancestry Pie Chart

Family Tree Magazine's Genealogy Insider Blog by Diane Haddad had a fun exercise this week on making a pie chart to show the ethnic heritages that make up an individual's ancestry. She used a simple online pie chart generator at Kid's Zone to create the chart.

Here's the chart I came up with for my ancestry:

My lines aren't too complicated, so it was fairly easy to halve each of my parents lines to get the numbers. They both have some British ancestry, so I added the percentage from each of them. Of course, this is just an estimate and subject to change when I find out more on my ancestry, but it's a quick and easy way to take a look!

Tuesday's Tip - Removal of Personal Data from Ancestry.com

Some time ago, I had shared my family tree files with a distant cousin researching the same lines. I made a rookie mistake and shared my entire tree with her with the request that she not publish it. The tree contained my notes, speculations, and information on living members of my family, including myself.

I was quite surprised when I did a search on Ancestry.com's trees and my own data came up! Not only was my personal information online, but somehow the data included two of my email addresses. I contacted my cousin and she said she had answered "yes" when her family tree software asked her if she wanted to publish the tree. She said she made an attempt to remove the data, but was unsuccessful.

I sent Ancestry.com an email about removing the data and received this response:

All requests to have information or data removed from our website are handled by our Executive Office department. These requests should be sent to by email to customersolutions@ancestry.com requesting that the information be removed.

Note: Please include in the following information so we can better serve your request.

Your email address
The URL address to the page in which the information appears
Specify which portion of the page you would like to have removed

I provided my information as requested and then received a response that I needed to provide a scanned copy of my driver's license:

In order to complete the verification process for record removal, we ask that you provide the following information:

 

·         A copy of your driver’s license, passport, or another government issued document.  (Note: you may cross out your Driver’s License number or Social Security number. We will shred the provided identification after the verification process has been completed.)

The information on my driver's license (name, address, birth date) was already online in the family tree, so I went ahead and provided a copy of my driver's license with the number blacked out. I received a quick response that said my information had been removed. I searched Ancestry's trees to be sure and the information was gone.

I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly Ancestry.com responded to my request. This won't prevent me from sharing family tree data with others in the future, but I will certainly be more cautious with personal data!

Tech Tuesday - Resizing Photos With WebResizer

I like to share photos in some of my blog posts, but don't always want to put the full size photos on the web. Most photo editing software has the ability to resize photos, but I found I was doing a lot of trial and error to get the size I wanted. It was also inconvenient to bring up a photo editing tool just to resize a couple of photos.

I gave Web Resizer a try and was pleased with the results. There is no software to download, no registration required and no advertising. You simply upload your original photo via their web interface and download the resized photo. Most of the time I don't have to make any adjustments to the modified photo. If you want to fine tune the results, they offer options to control the size, sharpness, and image quality. They also provide some basic photo editing options.

The tool is available at: http://www.webresizer.com/resizer/