I’d like to introduce…

Edward George "Ted" Turner

Edward George Turner, known affectionately to his family and friends as Ted, was a kind hearted, gregarious, right jolly English gent, loved by all who knew him. He was born on the 27th of June 1911 at Blake Cottage, Horn Street in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, where his father was employed as head groom to Mr Gosling of Blake House.

And His Lovely Wife…

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Miss Phyllis Mary Collins, daughter of William Collins, publican of the George Inn in Winslow, which is where Ted met her one fateful day in the 1930s

Technology Tuesday: My Favorite Rootsmagic5 Enhancements

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I’ve been using Rootsmagic for a number of years, but just upgraded to the newest version earlier this month. I immediately fell in love with two of the new features.

Research logs are an ongoing battle for me….lately I’ve had great success with OneNote, and for my major, probably-taking-to-me-grave, brickwalls, I’m using Word. But for all the everyday, run of the mill work on whichever ancestor catch’s my fancy when I find myself looking for a change of pace, Rootsmagic’s new Research Log seems to be the ticket.

I did a little work on locating the birth of a potential son of a revolutionary patriot, and recorded the research as I went in the new section of the person’s individual screen. Here’s what it looks like:

Birth of Thomas Hawes Jr For: Thomas HAWES Objective Is Thomas Hawes Jr the son of the patriot Thomas Hawes? Date Goal Source (…more)

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My 2012 Plan for Brick Walls

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Attacking the Brick Walls in my Turner Collins Research

Organizing 30+ years of genealogical research is a daunting task. If I’d known in 1976 what I know now, I’d have done so many things differently. I’ve always used pedigree charts and family group sheets but, in my teen years, my citations, when I made them at all, were minimal at best and most are useless.  Since taking the Boston University course, I’ve been aware of how shabby my early citations were, and I’ve been working [at a snail's pace...] to update them. This process has forced me to revisit a lot of my old work and it’s clear that for a good part of it, whatever thought process I went through, in terms of inference and proof argument, has long been forgotten. Again, if I’d known then….. My plan for 2012 is to tackle one family line a month, organize the brick (…more)

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Tech Tuesday: My Growing Love Affair with OneNote

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I recently began experimenting with Microsoft OneNote and wrote about my first impressions here. Since then, I’ve uploaded some of the templates I’m using for research and they are available here: OneNote Research Templates.

One of my favorite uses for OneNote is laying out a chronology. When faced with a genealogical puzzle, I’ve found the best way for me to see what I know and where the holes are is to organize my facts into a chronological list. Once that’s done, I fill in gaps, connect relevant facts, and chip away until I find a solution, or at least see a path for further research. I’m partial to highlighters in different colors, and my favorite research pen is the kind that has four different colored inks built into it.

Sometimes the problem carries on over months, or even years. When that happens, (…more)

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I'm Giving OneNote a Try

onenote research log

I’m a diehard fan of Evernote, for all aspects of my life, not just genealogy notes, but I’ve been giving OneNote a serious look this week and I think it might be a real help in keeping my research organized.

OneNote is a program in the Microsoft Office family (I’m using 2007). The program allows you to create something akin to tabbed notebooks. Each notebook can have any number of tabs, or sections as they’re called. I decided to create a notebook for each family I’m researching. To keep things simple, and to maintain consistency, I created page templates for the different sections of my notebooks:

Surname tab—Basically an overview of the family name, with general notes as well as a table of contents to get to the sections of the notebook quickly – essentially bookmarks which jump to a specific section, or a certain page (or even a paragraph) within (…more)

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