Do you have any genealogy documents hiding in your home?

This article is a timely reminder of what can happen if you have unfiled genealogical documents lying around at home.

Do you have any genealogy documents hiding in your home? - Organize Your Family History:

In an extreme example of the perils of letting household filing pile up, I found my grandfather’s birth record over the weekend.

Over the last few years, I’d put some effort into figuring where he was born. It was mysterious to me because the census records said he was born in Oregon, yet his residence was always Washington. My father, his son, had no recollection of any family history in Oregon. Two years ago, I blogged about it when I discovered a birth announcement in a Portland paper. At that time I said I had written away to the state archives for a copy of the birth certificate. Alas, I received a letter from the Oregon Health Authority saying that no birth record was found.

The problem is, even when you have rediscovered such long-lost documents, how do you file them so you can find them again?

My solution, for the last 25 years, has been to use the Research Data Filer (RDF), but, since it is that old, it really needs an update, or at least another program that will perform the same function.

It's a question I've been asking for years, but I'm not sure we are any closer to the answer. At one point I wondered if Clooz might be the answer, but it seems so much more complex. One of the advantages of RDF was that it did one job, and it did it well and simply. Clooz seems much too complex.

Are there any programmers out there who would be willing to reverse engineer RDF, and produce something that would work as well, or better, and also import data from the old version?


 

Review: BillionGraves Plus - GeneaBloggersGeneaBloggers

BillionGraves is one of the better ways of recording gravestones in cemeteries, and here's a review of the Plus version that is about to be released.

Review: BillionGraves Plus - GeneaBloggersGeneaBloggers:

The folks at BillionGraves have given me a behind-the-scenes look at BillionGraves Plus and after putting it through several tests with my own search criteria, I can say that going premium is definitely worth the price!

DNA Tests Prove Retired Postman Has Over 1,300 Illegimitate Children Infamous Tribune

"The father was the milkman" is a somewhat clichéd old joke, but perhaps there is more truth to it than many people realise.DNA Tests Prove Retired Postman Has Over 1,300 Illegimitate Children Infamous Tribune:

Private investigator Sid Roy never could have imagined a simple gig would end up in a 15-year quest for the truth. “It all started in 2001 when two different men that had nothing to do with each other hired me to find their biological father. I was astounded after further investigation to realize they both originated from the same person. That is when the mystery started unraveling and it became a personal mission of mine, whenever I had some free time, I’d try and track down other testimonies. Eventually, DNA testing became really cheap and easy to use and helped me gather a lot of information in the latest years,” he acknowledges.

... unless, of course, this story is itself one of those clichéd old jokes. All it actually says is that two people had the same father, and it says nothing about how the father was discovered, or how DNA testing was done on the other alleged children.