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THIS AND THAT MISCELLANEOUS GENEALOGY TIPS #2


BONDS:
Bonds are a type of "guarantee" that the bondsmen will perform the responsibilities granted them and if they default, the value of the bond will be forfeited. Bondsmen were often family members or close friends.

Marriage bonds insured that the marriage would occur according to agreement and that there was no impediment to the marriage such as an existing marriage.

Executor's bonds insured that the executor of a deceased person's estate would administer the estate according to law.

Bail bonds insured that the accused would appear for trial.

Bastardy bonds might be required of the father of an illegitimate child to insure that he would be responsible for the child's support.

Professional bonds are similar to today's malpractice insurance.

LOST TOWNS IN AMERICA:
If you are looking for "lost towns", try writing to U. S. Board of Geographic Names, 523 National Center, Reston, VA 22092.

HOW TO SAVE A PORTION OF ROOTS:
Highlight the portion of ROOTS you want to print or save using the EDIT feature on the tool bar. To do this, place the mouse cursor at the beginning of the text you wish to save, and hold down the left mouse button as you move the cursor to the end of the text.

Copy the highlighted portion to the clipboard. To do this, press CTRL C, or on the menu bar click on EDIT|COPY. (The clipboard is an unseen portion of memory that stores information to be copied elsewhere.)

Go to MESSAGE or whatever it is called in your mail application. This is where you "reply to" or send an e-mail. In Eudora it's called MESSAGE. Then go to NEW. Don't put any ADDRESS in as you are not going to send this but do put in a SUBJECT. Then drop down to the body of the message and hit PASTE. The portion you want should now be there.

You can either go to FILE and print it out.... or SAVE AS.... (wherever you want) or transfer it to one of your mailboxes. I have a ROOTS mailbox and I save all these little tidbits there.

HOW TO PRINT A PORTION OF A DOCUMENT:
Highlight the lines you want to either save or print by holding down the mouse button and dragging the mouse across the portion you want to print. Once it is highlighted, hit CONTROL and P. The print screen comes up giving three choices as to how many pages or what to print, one of these is "selection". Choose that, and hit "Print". If it is "Save " you want, there is a place for marking "to file", and the "print to file" screen comes up, fill in the pertinent info and hit "OK".

Another way is to drag and hold down your mouse button to highlight the portion of anything you want to print out. Once it is highlighted, hit CONTROL and P and print it out. Or, if you like, paste it into a new message and print it out - then save it with a subject.

USING JUNO - submitted by j-psmith@juno.com:
On Juno to copy & paste - there are two screens. On the left, the Read screen and beside it , to the right is the Write screen. When you have a ROOTS message on the Read screen and see a section you want to save.- Highlight the message by pulling your courser down on the left side of the screen as far as you want to copy. If you raise your courser and lose the highlighting just go back and start over. As you get to the bottom of the page it will automatically scroll up so just keep your finger down on the mouse until the complete message you want, is highlighted. You are on the Read screen. Click on Edit. When the window comes down click on Copy. Go to the Write screen and Click on Edit again. When the window comes down Paste will be highlighted. Click on it. Your copy will appear on the screen and you can print it or put it on a floppy disk. Then go back to the Read screen and read the rest of the ROOTS messages. If the Edit button does not work well use the right mouse button the same as you would the edit.

TO COPY/PASTE FROM PAF:
If you are using Eudora or other mail servers, you must run PAF through Windows. You get your PAF program to Windows the same way you put any program there, from the DOS prompt. If in doubt, just follow the *how-to* information in your Windows book.

1. Open a new message in Eudora; enter addressee, subject, etc.
2. At the point in your message where you want to add data from PAF/FR program, MINIMIZE Eudora.
3. Open PAF/FR and bring-up the Pedigree Search screen; go to the person who's information you want to copy.
4. Press ALT-ENTER, making PAF screen into a window.
5. Click on small box in upper left of window.
6. Click on Edit
7. Click on Mark
8. Press left button of mouse and HOLD it down while moving from the little yellow box and dragging the yellow across the screen to cover every thing you want to copy; release mouse button
9. Press ENTER
10. MINIMIZE PAF/FR
11. Reopen Eudora; place cursor where you want to put the data
12. Click on Edit
13. Click on Paste
14. MINIMIZE Eudora again
15. Reopen PAF/FR
16. Press ENTER
17. If you have further pages to copy, repeat from #5, above, through #16 until you have copied everything to your Eudora message page.
18. To clear PAF/FR, while in PAF, press ALT-ENTER, to return to a regular screen (from the window)
19. Exit PAF your usual way
20. Reopen your message, and finish it your usual way
I have not yet tried this with PAF 3 but I have been told it works the same way.

OR - PRODUCE A TEXT REPORT THIS WAY:
If you need to attach a PAF report to an e-mail message especially for a recipient that does not have genealogy software you should use plain text. This is also true if you do not know what word processing software the recipient has. Plain text can be read by any word processor. To do this you should install a generic printer. This is not actually a printer - but rather a universal way of printing text. The following instructions assume you are using Windows 95 or 98:
1. Click on Printers, under My Computer.
2. Click on Add Printer.
3. Go down the list of Manufacturers and click on Generic.
4. You will need your Windows CD-ROM or diskettes to obtain the necessary printer drivers.
5. The next time you print a text file change the printer Name to Generic Printer and check the Print to file.
6. Indicate the file name you want and where you want the text file saved on you PC.
7. You can right-click on the new file name and Send To your e-mail program as an attachment or you can open the text file, in your word processor, and "Copy & Paste" into your e-mail message.

CALCULATE BIRTH DATES:
If you have the date of death and the age at time of death (as sometimes found on a tombstone). This method allows the computation to be done on a calculator and eliminates the laborious and tricky subtraction we used to do on paper.

To start, if the death date was for instance 1889, May 6 - enter 18890506. If the age at death was 71 years, 7 months, 9 days - subtract 710709. You should get a result of 18179797. You must now subtract 8870 to correct the months and days. You now have 18170927 or 1817, Sep 27, the correct birth date.

8870 FORMULA:
The following is quoted in part from p184 of the May-June 1993 GENEALOGICAL HELPER: "Mrs. Boyer wrote to remind us that the "8870" formula does not always give the proper results, and to point out that there are ways to modify it so that it will. Briefly, the formula is:

18890506 = Date of death (6 May 1889)
710709 = Age at death (71 years, 7 months, 9 days)
--------
18179797
8870 = "The Formula"
--------
18170927 = Date of birth (27 Sep 1817)

Another example: The person died on March 10, 1873 and was 52 years, 4 months, and 19 days old. 18730310 (Year of death, month, and day) subtract 520419 (Age at death years, months, and days) total 18209891 subtract 8870 (Formula number) 18201021 (Date of birth). This person was born on October 21, 1820.

However, if the death year is a leap year, you should use 8871, rather than 8870. And if the month previous to the death had 31 days, you should use 8869, rather than 8870."

BIRTHDATE CALCULATOR WEB PAGE calculates BIRTHDATE from death date and age at death: http://enws347.eas.asu.edu:8000/~buckner/bdform.html

DETERMINING AGE:
In determining the age of a person who was born 14 Sep 1752 and who lived after that date, one must take into account of the 11 days that we lost in Sep 1752, otherwise the person will appear to be 11 days older than he actually was at any given time after the calendar change. In order to determine the Old Style (O.S.) birth date when age of death is given for a person who was born before the calendar change and died after 1752, 11 days must be subtracted.

CALCULATING AGE AT DEATH:
Example - Date of death May 6, 1889, age 71 years, 7 months, 9 days.

First - Subtract 1 from the year 1889 which will give you 1888.

Second - Add 12 to the month (fifth month) - which will give you 17 - then subtract 1 giving you the number 16

Third - Add 30 to the day (the 6th of the month) which will give you the number 36.

Therefore your numbers are - 1889 - 16- 36

Fourth - Subtract 71 yrs from 1889 = 1817

Fifth - Subtract 7 months from 16 giving you the 9th month which is September.

Sixth - Subtract 9 days from 36 which gives you the 27th of the month.

Result - A birth date of Sep 27, 1817

Computed dates of birth should be verified by adding the stated age to the answer. The result should be, of course, the date of death.

FOOLPROOF PRE-1850 AGE CALCULATIONS by Jerry Merritt :

Lots of you old-timers are well aware that you can often combine age data from several pre-1850 censuses to narrow the age range for a long-ago ancestor who died before the 1850 census came along and got his actual age. Some new people, however, might not be aware of this technique. But most of us have a bit of a struggle getting all the age brackets straight in our heads so that we make accurate refinements in our ancestor’s age on the first try. With this in mind, I offer a relatively easy and foolproof way to make these age refinements.

The first thing you ought to have is a pre-1850 census age bracket cheat sheet. I use a short document that lists for each pre-1850 census the census day, the age bracket for each column and the range of birth years covered by each column in each census. This does away with simple math errors because it’s pre-calculated. Unfortunately, the cheat sheet would lose its formatting if I tried to include it in the body of this message but if any of you want a copy I will be glad to send you a Rich Text Format copy as an attachment to e-mail. Or you can easily make up your own.

Next you need some way to represent in a clear and simple fashion the possible years of birth for your ancestor from each census. The clearest and easiest way I know of to do this is to graph the years on a sheet of graph paper. The graph isn’t complicated. It’s just a straight horizontal line drawn from the earliest to the latest possible year. I can’t show graph paper in this message so I’ll just show each possible birth year with an X. If your male ancestor was listed in the 5th column in the 1820 census, then, according to the cheat sheet, he was born between 1775-1794. This is a pretty big spread. Graphed, it would be a line covering the 20 years from 1775 to 1794 like this:

1820 census 1775 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 1794

Now suppose you found him again in the 1830 census and his age was listed in the 6th column making him born 1790-1800. It is immediately obvious that he must have been born 1790-1794. This drops the possible age spread from 20 years to 4 years -- a big improvement. If you graphed these two age spreads, it would look like this:

1820 census 1775 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 1794
1830 census ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1790 XXXXXXXXXX 1800

The overlap of the two lines is the new, refined age spread.

This looks almost too simple to bother graphing so let’s look at a little more complicated case.

Suppose your ancestor was 40-50 in 1830, was listed as under 16 in 1790, and was 16-26 in the 1800 census. What age bracket do you get when you combine these data? To find out, go to your cheat sheet and find the spread of birth years represented by each column in each census and graph the data.

1790 census 1774 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 1790
1800 census 1774 XXXXXXXXXX 1784
1830 census ~~~~~ 1780 XXXXXXXXXX 1790

You can see easily that he was actually born between 1780-1784 and that he fits the data in the 1790 census as well.

Well, these have been simple examples but more complex examples abound out there in genealogy. Sometimes you can actually narrow it down to the exact birth year if everything works out just right. This simple technique, however, works just as easily on those harder examples.

Here's a url that will help you with information on how to obtain vital record information from every state:
http://vitalrec.com/index.html#USMap

QUERY THE NEWSPAPERS:
From ksellew@zebra.net (Kevin Sellew) (by way of Genealogy Records Service )
Do you know that even though there are tens of thousands of people doing genealogical research on the Internet, there are tens of thousands more who still have never touched a computer?  Do you know how to get your queries in front of these people?  Newspaper genealogy columns.

Now, with that said -- do you know the name of the genealogy column that appears in the local newspaper in each one of the areas around the country/world where you have ancestry?  Do you know the address of each of these columnists to which to send your queries and/or announcements? Do you know if any of them have e-mail addresses?

Do you know that the Mobile (Alabama) Genealogical Society's web site has a page called THE NEWS STAND that provides this information?  In many cases you can even e-mail your query to the columnist right from the web page!  Do you know how much MGS charges you to use this resource?  NOTHING.  NADA.  ZIPPO. If you already know about THE NEWS STAND and haven't visited, or haven't visited *lately*, you need to check out our latest updates.  Go to the MGS Cyber Lobby at:
http://www.siteone.com/clubs/mgs

Scroll down to (and click on) THE NEWS STAND. Currently, there are listings for almost 40 different columns which appear in newspapers in 3 Australian States, 3 Canadian Provinces and 20 United States.

The Cyber Lobby for the MGS web site can be found at:
http://www.siteone.com/clubs/mgs

Scroll down to, and click on, THE NEWS STAND. Please do not bookmark THE NEWS STAND.  Please always enter our site via the Cyber Lobby as that's where our hidden counter is.  More importantly, though, as THE NEWS STAND get larger, I will have to break it up into smaller pieces and this will cause the web address(es) to change.  So, please, for now, just bookmark the Lobby.

OLD STYLE HANDWRITING:
The internal "s" in pre-mid-nineteenth century hand writing resembled a lowercase "f". Our modern "s" form was used for an initial s, and for the second "s" of an internal pair. Thus, properly written,an internal "s" pair was written, by our standards, as "fs". But not everybody wrote them correctly, so the internal pair would often be written as "ff". Another problem arises when the second "s" of a correctly written internal pair is sloppy. The pair can then be read as a lowercase "p". Sometimes this happens even if the Second "s" is well formed. This problem particularly bites us in the case of transcribed records and indices. Modern data entry techs are often completely unaware of these orthographic problems, so we find "ss" transcribed as "ff", or if correctly written, as "p". A related problem is the use of internal "s" in printing at the time. There was an internal "s" character, which looked like a lowercase "f" without a crossbar. But printers who ran out of lowercase "s" would substitute lowercase "f". And some didn't bother even to stock lowercase "s" in their type case. The orthographic convention which seems to have been used by 18th century and earlier printers was to use the internal "s" character, or lowercase "f", for both of an internal "s" pair, so in printing you will usually find it as "ff".

RAILROAD RETIREMENT INFORMATION:
1. The Railroad retirement pension went into effect about the same time as social security in the late 1930's. Therefore only those relatives who worked for the railroad after this time will a record.

2. Railroad social security numbers start with 700-XX-XXXX. If you have a social security number starting with 700 it's a dead give away that they worked for the railroad. If they have a 700 number they should have a copy of the original social security applications.

3. They began destroying the railroad pension files after a certain length of time. My great grandfather's pension record for example, has been destroyed, but they had the social security application on microfilm. My great grandfather died in 1944.

4. If they have a pension file, it contains a wealth of information about the person you are researching. It may contain information about his spouse, marriage, work record, etc.....It's well worth the $16 fee they now charge. I believe the charge now helps to maintain the files from further destruction.

For everyone who is interested, the url for the RR retirement board:
Genealogical Information or go to:
http://www.rrb.gov/geneal.html

HOW TO REPAIR THE SPINE OF A BOOK:
There are times when the spine area of the cover is worn and needs help. Cut a piece of clear book tape 1 =BD" longer than the cover and 1 =BD" wider than the spine.Make two =BE" long cuts in the tape at top and bottom. These cuts should align with the fold of the cover. Lower book spine onto tape, being sure it is centered.

Gently roll spine from side to side for a good tape-to-spine bond. Do not roll the spine over so far that it adheres to the rest of the book tape! Using the edge of the bone folder, lift the tape up over the edge (ledge) of the book and into the crease (run bone folder up and down the crease--where the cover folds back when book is opened a couple or three times) before smoothing onto book cover. Otherwise, the book will not close properly!

Open cover and contents away from the cover which is lying flat on the work surface so that the inside of the cover is exposed. Fold the corresponding strip of tape over and onto the inside back cover. Using a bone folder, smooth onto cover surface. Fold the other end of tape to the inside in the same manner. Close book. Repeat procedure for other cover/contents. The last step is to hold the book in one hand and, using a bone folder, fold down the top and bottom center flaps into the inside against the back of the book cover (in open area between book cover and spine.

GENEALOGICAL BOOK URLS - from Debbie Kilgore :
Advanced Book Exchange: http://www.abebooks.com/
Amazon Books: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/generic-quicksearch-query/002-8969282-4418
Ancestor Publishers: http://www.firstct.com/fv/ancpub.html
Ancestor’s Attic: http://members.tripod.com/~ancestorsattic/index.html
Appleton’s Genealogy: http://www.moobasi.com/genealogy/
Back Tracks Genealogy Books: http://www.naxs.com/abingdon/backtrak/catalog.htm
Barbara Green’s Used Genealogy Books: http://www.wavenet.com/~genbooks/
Barnes & Noble: http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?keyword=Genealogy&match=exact&options=and&userid=5SZI139GF5
Blair’s Books Service: http://www.glbco.com/
Borders.com: http://www.borders.com/sections/section_11807.html
Books We Own List: http://www.rootsweb.com/~bwo/index.html
Boyd Publishing Company: http://www.firstct.com/fv/boyd-pub.html
Broad View Books, Used Genealogy Books: http://broadviewbooks.com/
Broken Arrow Publishing: http://clanhuston.com/books.htm
Compuology: http://www.compuology.com/
Cyndi’s List-Books, Microfilm & Microfiche: http://www.cyndislist.com/books.htm
Essex Genealogy Books: http://www.hertge.com/essex/
Everton American Books: http://www.everton.com/ambooks.html
Family Line Genealogy Publications: http://pages.prodigy.com/Strawn/family.htm
Family Tree Bookshop, Easton MD: http://www.bluecrab.org/famtree/
Frontier Press-Genealogical and Historical Books: http://www.doit.com/frontier/frontier.cgi
Genealogical & Historical BookSource: http://www.omegaweb.co.uk/books/books.html
Genealogical Publishing Company: http://www.genealogical.com/
Genealogy Books: http://www.bakingmasters.com/bookstore/gen.htm
Genealogy Books, Disks, CD-ROMs for sale: http://www.genealogy-books.com/
Genealogy Books for Sale - Records from TN, VA, NC and KY: http://www.genealogical.com
Genealogy Canada: http://www.buckingham-press.com/
Genealogy Online-Iberian Publishing: http://www.iberian.com/frames/
Genealogy Records Service: http://www.genrecords.com/
Genealogy Shoppe: http://members.aol.com/GenShoppe/genshoppe.htm Genealogy Unlimited, Inc.: http://www.itsnet.com/home/genun/public_html/
Golden West Marketing: http://www.greenheart.com/rdietz/
Gorin Genealogical Publishing: http://members.aol.com/kygen/gorin.htm
Hearthstone Bookshop: http://www.hearthstonebooks.com/
Heritage Qeust Genealogy Books: http://www.heritagequest.com/genealogy/books/
Higginson Book Co.: http://www.higginsonbooks.com/
History House Books: http://www.historyhouse.com/
Janet's Used Genealogy & History Books: http://home.earthlink.net/~janetml/
Kentucky Books: http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/books.html
MacBeth Genealogical Services: http://www.macbeth.com.au/
Making of America: http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa/index.html
McDowell Publications, Genealogy & History & Publications: http://members.aol.com/sammcpub/index.html
Mechling Associates, Inc. Genealogy and History Books: http://members.aol.com/armechling/mechweb.html
Park Genealogical Books: http://www.parkbooks.com/
Picton Press: http://www.midcoast.com/~picton/
SK Publications: http://www.skpub.com/genie/
Tattered Cover Book Store: http://www.tatteredcover.com/cgi-bin/tcpages.pl
Tuttle Antiquarian Books: http://abaa-booknet.com/alldlrs/ne/05701tut.html
Westland Publications Genealogy: http://www.theriver.com/westlandpubn/index.html
Willow Bend Books: http://www.WillowBendBooks.com
Ye Olde Genealogie Shoppe: http://www.yogs.com/

TO DOWNLOAD FREE GENEALOGY CHARTS AND FORMS:
http://www.genrecords.com/forms.htm

MAP WEBSITE:
They have maps of just about every area imaginable: http://kartoserver.frw.ruu.nl/html/staff/oddens/mapsatl1.htm

This site will locate cities across the nation and the world, will calculate mileage between two cities, and will show a map of the two locations: http://www.indo.com/distance/

Find what county a city is in at the Geographic Name server: http://www.mit.edu:8001/geo

US SURNAME DISTRIBUTION LIST - get a map of the US showing distribution of people with a particular surname within the 50 states: http://www.hamrick.com/names/

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