8MM Film - Cleaning, Lubricating and Watching

8MM Brownie Projector and Film / Carrie Norwood / CC

Over the summer, my blogs tend to get quiet.  Summer is my time for vacations and relaxing and not working on projects.  But, this summer, I was presented with a really kind of neat genealogy related project.  My aunt sent me about 50 rolls of 8MM film that belonged to my uncle.  It's all from the early to mid 50s and chronicles the lives of my mom, her brothers and my grandparents during that time.  Having never met my grandfather, I'm pretty excited about the prospect of seeing him in motion.

At first, I thought this would be easy peasy.  Just snag a projector and watch it, with an ultimate goal of digitizing it.  But the more the process has unfolded, the more it is like a treasure hunt with this end goal of having a good quality representation of this era of life in my family.

8MM film, while all the rage in the 50s and 60s, is not used any more.  It hasn't been used since about then.  So the equipment and supplies are tough to come by and the knowledge of how to use and maintain them properly is sparse.  The particular films I'm working with don't appear to have been kept very well... although, to be fair, it doesn't seem like proper film storage supplies are plentiful and at the time, I doubt anyone thought someone would be struggling to watch them 60 years later.  So the films themselves need some maintenance before they can really be watched - including cleaning, lubricating (who knew film needed lubrication!?) and potentially repair.

Getting your DNA into gedmatch

There are many companies that you can get your DNA processed with for genetic genealogy purposes. The big three are 23andme, ftdna and ancestry.  Once you have your DNA done on one of those sites (or others), you can use the tools on that site to 'match' with other users of that same site.  

However, the potential genealogy discoveries you can make are limited to the tools (and quality) that site offers as well as the people who have chosen to get their DNA processed by that site.  For a fee, FTDNA and ancestry both give you the option to import DNA from other sites, so many people choose to download their DNA data from the original site and import it into other sites.  This gives you a broader toolset to use as well as more potential matches. 

If only there were a site that were free, had a huge toolset and a huge user base!  Enter gedmatch.  Gedmatch does have paid tiers to support the site but there is a whole lot you can do without paying anything, and users from all of the big three, plus other sites have uploaded their DNA there, giving you a much larger and more diverse user base to test against.  

Genealogy, Revelations and Secrets... and ethics

It's true.  I have very little patience for the idea that we shouldn't explore a secret because it makes someone uncomfortable.  Family secrets and the things my family just 'doesn't talk about' have had an impact on me and the choices I make.  I consider all information valuable, even secrets, so I will not shy away from digging into them and documenting the appropriate information.  And also, I do have a high degree of respect for the individuals I research as well as my own family members and ancestors.   So, somewhere, there has to be a middle ground.  I think that middle ground falls under the head of personal ethics of the researchers and writers.

I heard someone say (I cannot for the life of me remember where or who or in what context) that when a person dies, they actually die three times.  Their first death is when their body gives out.  Their second death is when everyone who knew them has died and their third death is the last time their name is uttered.  Somewhere along those lines, my personal belief is what is remembered lives.  I fully intend for my family to be remembered.  For their names to be uttered for generations to come.  This is one of my core reasons for genealogy research.  To do that, I need to write about them and tell people about them.

Personally, I am pretty privacy minded about my own information and I have no interest in exposing details about living individuals at all.  For the immediate family or deceased loved ones of living people, I am also careful about what I express in writing because they are connected to living people. Beyond that, I'm a little more judicious because they are historical figures at that point.

Here is how I personally straddle the line between writer and genealogy researcher and the privacy needs of my family and the people I research :

• I don't publish any information about a living person except their last name and their relationship to people in my tree.  I know a lot of services say they obscure the details of living people but I don't even trust that.  I put the word "Living" in the first name field and their last name in the last name field - and that's it.  The only place their details (birth date etc) exist are in my own personal files.
• I do store stuff online on services that are also used for sharing - like evernote, flickr and youtube.  On all of these services, there are sharing and permission settings that I use in order to show what I want to and not show what I don't want to.  Just because something is stored online doesn't mean everyone on the internet can read/see it.   
• Flickr and youtube both offer the option to make something visible only to people who have a link to it - or to only certain users of their system. 
• I rarely share from Evernote but it's a case of only people who have the link s can see it.  Further, I encrypt Evernote notes that contain personal information about anyone living, including myself.  Although Evernote employees have access to the contents of all of your notes (within certain circumstances like troubleshooting an issue or for machine learning), encrypting the note gives the option of having the contents of that note only available to me and never by anyone else, including Evernote employees, barring breaking the encryption (which is not like hacking a password... infinitely more complicated.  Evernote uses AES with a 128 bit key.).  
• When I choose to write something here or in my public family tree, I exclude details of living family.  I've never encountered a time when I wanted to write specifically about a living person in regards to genealogy.  
• If someone tells me something and says 'please don't publish/write/tell that', barring some negative impact it could have on someone else to NOT tell, I don't.  It exists only in my email or private notes.
• My personal line is that if I wouldn't publish a thing about me, I shouldn't publish it about someone else.  Do unto others, turnabout and whatnot.  

Photo : Privacy / Owen Moore / CC 2.0

Digitizing Photos

This week, I started the daunting task of scanning all of my paper photos.  First, before you develop visions of a wonderful consumer-grade product that you just put a stack of photos on and it scans them into individual image files, I am disappointed to inform you that No. Such. Product. Exists.

The consumer-grade multi function printer/scanner/fax machines that have auto document feed (ADF) that we have in our homes do not have even optional feed trays for scanning photos.  Without the correct feed tray, you can't use ADF for photos because there is nothing to guide your photo though so it either jams or scans crookedly (or really weirdly stretched out.  I might have experimented.) .  Flatbed works just fine - it's just tedious with hundreds of photos to position the photo, scan it, pull it out, position the next, etc.

So, my options for photo scanning are:

1. Send them to a service.  Going rate is an average of about .25 per photo.  That gets pricey pretty fast, plus you're sending your family photos outside your home, which has inherent risk.
2. Single page photo scanners like this that you can feed one at a time through
3. flat bed photo scanners (no feed).  
4. and then Epson makes one with an auto feed for about $500, which is the cheapest I could find (average is closer to $900).  At a going average of .25 per photo to get them scanned by a photo scanning service, you'd have to scan over 2,000 photos to make that worth while

For now, I'm using a flatbed scanner.  I might try something like this, which just seems easier to feed stuff into.  I guess it would depend upon the software.  It's a whole can of worms though.  So for now, flatbed.

Lately in Hursey/Hussey/Kelly Genealogy and Photo Preservation

I've had health stuff recently so over the last year, genealogy has fallen down a few slots priority-wise.  There are just only so many spoons to go around.  However, a few months back, I did get a bunch of papers and photos from my grandmother, which I've been itching to go through.  I made a first pass through them just to get them into safer acid free containers a few months ago and then recently, sat down to go through them.  What a treasure.

Yesterday, I sat down and actually got the photos sleeved and preserved (see below for deets).  The oldest photo dates from about 1850 and is most likely my 3rd great grandmother Sarah A Matthews (1827-1903).  I say most likely because the piece of paper that was with the photo and it's accompanying photo said 'Matthews girls, grandmother and mother, first cousin of Sarah Marie Jordan Hursey' - and there isn't any way that any of the "Matthews girls" could be Sarah Marie Jordan's first cousins... but it IS possible for them to be her aunt.  So anyways.  Some sleuthing involved in identifying some of the people and dates, which is fun work.

There were birth, death and marriage certificates, some of which I couldn't get previously, because I am not immediate family and they are less than 50 years old (or whatever the rule is in the respective states they are from), so those are gold.

How to Covert Cassette Tape Interviews to Digital

Remember cassette tapes?  It turns out that people used them for things other than mix tapes.  I got some from my grandmother in her papers and one is a cassette recording of my great grandfather, Benjamin Worth Hursey, and his son, talking about things...  the crops, who they are, the weather.  I've seen him on film, but now I've also heard his voice.  A strong, growling,  resonant voice with a South Carolina lilt and a southern slur to his words.

Getting into digital format is much easier than The Great Film Project of 2015 was.

First, I tried "cassette tape to MP3" conversion kits you can buy on amazon.  I'm not going to link to any of them because they were terrible.  Ultimately, the kits are made to be inexpensive and so the tape players (without fail, if you read the reviews) are crap.  They play at variable speeds, giving the resulting audio a warble.  One I tried even had a steady 'thump thump thump' behind the audio.  if you're working with genealogy stuff, you want a high quality recording.

So, failing an out-of-the-box solution, I pieced together a really cheap (under $40) and easy way to do it myself, which is what I'm giving you here.

Mind the Fuzzy Gray Areas - Drawing Conclusions in Genetic Genealogy

I was inspired by an email from a cousin this morning to ponder the logic of genetic genealogy a bit.  Genetic genealogy is deceptively easy on some sites.  It's packaged and marketed by the big sites as an auto-magical way to find relatives you didn't know you had.  So, my experience is that folks get very excited by having these relatives show up and then make assumptions about their own heritage that I often find to be guesswork, at best.  The thing is, your relation to to a person and the conclusions you can draw from that connection are not nearly as clear cut as it can sometimes look on whatever website you're using.

I should also preface this by saying, that to the average person, I'm probably the most annoying genetic cousin ever.  When a cousin tells me a conclusion they have drawn, I will, without fail, ask them for enough information so that I can re-discover it on my own and very often tell them that it's not a for sure conclusion - or maybe even wrong.  Sorry, not sorry, cousins!  Here's why.

How To Preserve and Store Family Papers

 My grandmother has been researching my mother's side of our family (Kelly, Hussey, Hursey, Ulrich, Turner, Jordan, Anderson, Gee, Heath) since September of 1956 - almost 60 years, give or take.  She kept notes of all of her research in spiral bound notebooks and on notebook paper.  She has folders of copies of book pages and vital documents. In among her own notes and copies, she has original handwritten letters from her parents and my grandfather's parents of their own personal knowledge and other such gems.  It's an incredible collection of family papers.

  She recently moved and I was gifted with two boxes of this research.  It's like a genealogist's dream - and also represents a slight preservation crisis.  Some of the pages were already fading away and disintegrating.   I felt a terror that only a genealogist geek could feel when I unearthed a yellowed page with a family tree that could no longer be clearly read.

This is my first paper preservation project but I do have a bit of experience storing vital docs for longevity so I had a wee bit of knowledge and boned up quickly on what else I needed to have.  Here's the basics.

How to Find the Admixture of Shared DNA Segments

You find a genetic match and you have a family tree ancestor in common.  Hooray!  It's possible the genes you share could be from that ancestor.  Knowing the admixture of the SNPs you have in common could provide more clues.  For instance, if the ancestor in question was African, if the genes you share came from that ancestor, it should show that in the admixture.  

Tools like ancestry.com, ftdna and 23andme will give you an overall admixture (I am 3% Lithuanian, for instance). That overall admixture is impossible to use as a clue in gene to gene comparison of matches.  You could both share African descent, for instance - and it could be from entirely different ancestors.  Lo, the African continent happens to be pretty vast and offers billions of possible ancestors!   To find the admixture that is relevant to a particular match, you have to get more granular - down to the segments within a gene.  Only gedmatch offers the tools to do that at this time.  

These instructions will help you find out if the DNA you and you and your genetic cousin have in common has a particular admixture. It is roughly the process I used to find Millie Turner and Samuel Hussey in my genetic makeup.Although this will not prove a MRCA, it will provide more clues or evidence.  

The following caveats apply : 

• An admixture tool is only as good as it's sample size and population.  For instance, if the sample didn't include any people of African descent, it will not pick up African admixture.  For this reason, different admixture tools interpret genes differently so you might not get a completely straight forward answer.  My experience is that you will find one or two admixture tools that do a better job than others of approximating your admixture - and that will differ from person to person.
• When you look at the admixture of a specific gene, for yourself, for instance, you are seeing what you got from BOTH parents.  To find out which admixture on a particular gene came from which parent, you would run through these instructions first to compare yourself to one parent or the other.  
• Not sharing the admixture of the ethnicity of the ancestor does NOT mean you do not have that ancestor in common.  It could mean that, through recombination, across generations, you just don't have any genes from that ancestor or not enough for it to accurately show up in admixture analysis.  
• If your genetic makeup has the admixture of the ancestor in common that also does NOT mean you are definitely related to that person.  So, if you have African admixture, that does not prove you are related to the African ancestor in question.  You might have other African ancestors that you don't know about yet.  

How to Convert 8MM Films into DVD, Reorder Clips and Create a New Movie

Once upon a time, my aunt sent me 71 rolls of 8mm film from my mother's family from when they were kids.  It was 20 years of family history - what a treasure! Aaaaand... on a completely inaccessible media type.  Doh!

Being the do it yourselfer that I am, I toyed around with learning how to correctly lubricate, clean and record film to a more accessible media type.  I bought an 8mm film projector on craigslist, bought a splicer and all of the stuff I needed... and here's my magic tip for converting 8mm film to digital format : hire a professional.

Those family films are gold. They are people and events and lives that are 50 or 60 years past.  Many of the people in them have passed or have long forgotten what's there.  Although here are many accessible techniques online for maintaining film, without having had some practice, it is easy to screw up.   Without experience, you won't necessarily know how to counter what you find when you start rolling a film.  What if it cracks?  And although I am a diy pro and feel pretty confident I could figure it out with enough time, I don't want it to be at the expense of 20 years of family history.

So take the $200 it would take to buy all the stuff and stash it in a high interest savings account to hire someone and move on to picking someone out.  When you're looking for a professional, look for someone who will move it to a master tape and then make a DVD for you.  The tape they put it on can always be used to create more DVDs or copies later.  At least until one day, it's also inaccessible.  But for now, it's easier than 8mm.  Check reviews for the person you select.  Make sure their price includes  repairs or cleaning should the film break down in the process.

It's worth noting here, that film conversion is usually quoted by the foot.  When estimating the number of feet of film you have, on the thicker (wider) 8mm film, although it says 25 feet on the box, it's actually 50 feet of filmed images.  So, when pricing out conversion, make sure to do it with how many feet of images there are, not how many feet of film the box says it has.  That got me.  I was expecting to spend $300 and the bill was $600.

$600 isn't something I have lying around.  So, I created a crowd funding project for my family to pitch in.  Within a few months, we had it funded.

The day came and I went and dropped them off and, a couple of weeks later, they were done.  I immediately sat down to watch them.

Sidebar: I saw my grandfather, who I never met when he was alive.  My grandparents  - I saw them young and bright eyed with their first baby and watched them mature over the course of these films.   I saw both sides of great grandparents, some of whom I've never seen photos of at all.  Aunts and uncles I've never seen.  This film is truly a treasure.  I am so grateful that my grandparents were 'those parents', who filmed everything.   I am so grateful to have had the opportunity, the means and the know how to watch them again and that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will hopefully have these in some form.

The new issue was that although some of the film boxes had been labeled or had a post mark date on them and I could sort of put them in the right order for him, most of them were not.  Without playing them, I had no idea what was on some of them.  So although I labeled them and cataloged them before I dropped them off, when they were put onto tape and then DVD, they, of course, were not in the correct order.

I wanted to present my family with something they could watch from beginning to end or something my grand-kids (in 20 years, son) could watch and understand how it was moving through time. So, the next step was to figure out how to edit the video well enough to chop up the film, put it into the correct order and then re-create the DVDs in the correct order - with some additional menus and bells and whistles so that they were easier to watch.

I made lots of mistakes.  It turns out, there is some skill involved in film making.  Who knew?!   I had to redo it 4 times.  This post is the final solution for getting family films from DVD, cutting them up, re-ordering them and burning them to DVD again - without dropping  ton of cash.  It takes relatively advanced computer skills and I don't think I explain it very completely, in large part because I probably don't entirely understand the whys behind a lot of it.

The Magic of a Horizontal Family Tree

Photo : Horizontal Family Tree / Carrie Norwood

Last week a cousin contacted me.  He'd had his DNA processed at FTDNA and was excited to find that FTDNA says we are fourth cousins.  His father was adopted and he believes us to be related on his father's side.  If I only knew who all my 3rd great grandparents were, we might unlock the mystery of his father's heritage!

Unfortunately, he and I are genetically related on a branch of my family tree that I know very little of.  Or should I say, that while I know we are related on my father's side, he and I are NOT related on the branches of my family tree that I have identified MRCA genetics on or that I know a great deal about through research. So I don't have  fairy tale story of unlocking the family mysteries of my adopted 4th cousin once removed (even were the FTDNA estimate to be accurate, which is another post altogether, I'm sure).  But I do have a fairy tale about how freakin' easy it was to get a list of my 3rd great grandparents.

Genealogy Do-Over - Week Something - Research Checklist

Photo : Checklist / Nemo / Public Domain

Week... something.  It is a week happening during the genealogy Do-Over in which I'm doing Genealogy Do-Over things a bit behind the weekly schedule.  At my own turtle pace.  Not a turtle who has seen food though - just a regular, ambling turtle.

Part of this process for me has been watching stuff that other people post and learning new tricks and techniques.  One such new (to me) technique is the genealogy research checklist.  This helped me solve three problems :

Tracking the Negatives

 I have always kept person-centric notes about the research in which I found something interesting - but I have never tracked what I didn't find.  Or where I searched that I didn't find anything.  While I don't know of any issues that this definitely caused, thinking about it, I can see how likely it was that I was re-searching for evidence that wasn't there.

I was also, most likely missing vital clues about an individual resulting from the absence of of a record in a particular place.  For instance, this evening, I ran through my checklist and searched each census in which my grandfather would have appeared.  I noticed that while he shows up on the census with his parents when he was 4 years old, and I can find a census for his parents and his younger sibling ten years later - he isn't on it.  This is the first time I've noticed that.  Most likely because I was simply looking for his name and when I couldn't find it on a census, probably put it off for another day, assuming I just needed to look harder or differently.  When I wrote down that I found him on the 1920 census and could not check off the 1930 census, this caused me to look for his parents, which I found - and realized the clue that had been staring me in the face the whole time.

Genealogy Do-Over - Oops I cheated

Photo : Break the Rules / chickspirit / CC 2.0

So, I spent last night cheating on the genealogy do-over.  Like all night, I absolutely shamelessly cheated.  A lot.  We weren't supposed to start researching at all.  Instead, I entered myself and my father and researched his parents and siblings.  At the time, it felt like 90% itch to get moving but in retrospect, in the bright sunshine of a new day, given that I am the victor, I get to write that history any way I want, right?

So, I say it was all in the name of science!  I, in fact, spent my time observing what I was doing and how - and came up with some new insight into doing it right.  I have new golden rules, some new Evernote processes and some new knowledge of Legacy Family Tree.

Genealogy Do-Over

Photo : Nagasaki Bomb / public domain

I've decided  to start from scratch with a genealogy do-over.  Here's why :

1) I started poking at genealogy about fifteen years ago and since then have amassed a hodge podge of records, notes and tree data, some of which originated before I knew that a lot of what one can find online in other trees is hogwash.  I know my knowledge level will continue to evolve, but OHMYGAWSH, my processes could sure use a logical, fresh perspective makeover.  Fifteen years is a lot of change and due to the nature of research documentation, incremental change is not always the way to go.  Thus the hodge podge.
2) These days, I am chasing down so many ancestor stories at once that I get this flood of information that trickles through various stages of research but most often, never makes it to my tree software.
3) Geneaology, for me, has evolved from 'interesting thing I do sometimes' to 'immersive hobby that I am borderline obsessed by'.  Just like a career musician might have the best of the best in instruments, it's time I have the best of the best in well oiled genealogy machines.  I want to re-imagine what I'm doing in a way that keeps up with new technology and takes full advantage of what's available these days.
4) There is no better time than now, while there are so many people doing it!  I'm excited to have the pointers and support from everyone who's doing it along with me.  Really, having the community has made all the difference.

Week one is about laying groundwork for where to put genealogy stuff and how to put it there.  It looks like this :

• Setting Previous Research Aside
• Preparing to Research
• Establishing Base Practices and Guidelines

Using Evernote for Genealogy Research

Could I just say... I pretty much live in genealogy geek paradise.

• I have covered 4,000 years of family history in my research.
• I have squirreled away tens of thousands of pages of genealogy related books, photos research reports, newspaper articles, vital records and pages of notes in 700 documents
• My research includes over 30 years of effort from my grandmother and me

.... and I can find absolutely any of it within seconds.  

I can cross reference the state of Tennessee with the name Yarbrough or find every note, photo or scrap of evidence related to my civil war ancestor, Drew Sinks with a few clicks or by typing a few words.  I can create entire research articles with full citations within hours or days instead of weeks.  I have access to entire digitized books on the history of Kent or North Carolina that mentions my ancestors.

I can do all of that with Evernote.  And it can be done for free!  Evernote is a note taking application that I use to organize pdfs, images, documents and research notes related to almost every aspect of my life - but more specifically, to this blog, my family tree stuff.

Google-Fu for Geneaology

Google-Fu Master / scott_hampson / CC2.0

Google-Fu : (n) The art and science of crafting google searches to give you precisely what you need.  Example : GoogleFu is strong in you.

If your Google-Fu is strong, the sky is the limit for what you can find online.  I have often found amazing resources with a few tweaks to an otherwise useless search.  Free, electronic resources free for the taking - if only you know how to find them.

First up is Google Advanced Search.  If you use this advanced form, you can do all of what I'll show you in this post without having to type special stuff into the search blanks.  The google advanced search form is a really user friendly form that allows you to search just about anything with easy, user friendly explanations off to the right of each blank.  If you like google advanced search, add it to your bookmarks so that you can get there easily.

Although google is capable of doing a ton of things and you can do all of them from the advanced search form, sometimes it's quicker for me to do google-fu in the generic search blank.  Here are a couple search tricks that are at the top of my list for genealogy searches.