A colour coded longevity chart

As I said in my recent Facebook post, I love a good colour coded chart!

Colour coded birthplaces charts have been doing the rounds, sparked off by J Paul Hawthorne. I confess I didn’t see his original post – I understand the trees doing the rounds are mostly based on an Excel template he provided. He certainly added a lot of colour to my recent genealogy reading!

I have been using various sorts of visual cues in my charts for a very long time. I’ll say it again – I love a good colour coded chart! The ability to add visual cues to charts is one of my must-have genealogy software features. Family Historian has exceptional capabilities in this respect but, and it’s a big but, you need to be comfortable with functions and formulas to get the most from it. Fortunately, I eat functions and formulas for breakfast.

On this occasion I was further inspired by Pauleen Cass, who took the colour coded chart in a different direction and added Health Inheritance information to her chart.

I’ve created a longevity diagram scheme with a different colour for each decade of life attained, 90+ being the top age bracket. I picked a colour-blind safe set of colours from the Colorbrewer website with a deep red/orange for childhood deaths through to a deep blue for those aged 90+. I’ve used grey for living/no age at death information.

I would really like to have fewer yellow boxes and more deep blue boxes on my tree! The two orange boxes aren’t so much of a concern for my own personal wellbeing – I survived having my children and I’m not likely to be lost at sea.

The nice thing about having a diagram scheme set up within your genealogy software is that you can then use it to look at other parts of your tree with no fuss.

My ancestors Robert Mack and Jane Mercer lost too many young children. Looking at the three grey boxes below – Eliza would have been no more than 15 and the second Robert no more than 10. I have information that Alexander at least lived to early adulthood, but I don’t know what became of him after that. My ancestor Catherine with the palest of blue boxes looks suddenly quite robust compared to the rest of her family.

Although Family Historian diagram schemes involve some setting up, they can be easily shared among users. Download the scheme, double click to install. Easy.

I’m thinking of giving this diagram scheme a few more tweaks – perhaps to use age at death estimates so more of those I-know-they-must-be-red boxes will show as such, and contributing it to the Family Historian User Group website.

Rearranging a genealogy jigsaw

I’ve been having a lot of fun fitting together the puzzle pieces of the Allsop family of Tissington, Derbyshire, England. In doing so, I’ve learnt more about the capabilities of my genealogy software package, Family Historian.

Partial transcripts and images of the parish records for Tissington are on FamilySearch. I’ve gone through these, starting with the transcriptions and looked at every relevant image (plus a few) to make any corrections (not many) and add in the information not included in the transcripts (quite a lot) in a spreadsheet. I’ve also found census entries for anyone called Allsop who lived in or was born in Tissington and done the same thing plus added in a few bits and pieces from other sources.

Now the fun begins!

I used a plugin to load the spreadsheets into my Family Historian software giving me a file with lots of mini trees - and lots of duplicated people.

I started out by setting up the columns in the individual record view to be sorted by given name then estimated birth date (Family Historian has functions to calculate that) – and a columns relating to birth, baptism, marriage, census, death and burial. For the census I set the display up to show the place, if I had a census entry for the person, or a strike through if the census was before their earliest possible birth date, or after their last possible death date.

Clicking the image below should take you to a full size view.



Some duplicates were easy to spot, such as following a family group through the census. I merged any that appeared clear cut. I was left with a few more substantial trees, and quite a lot of stray small family groups and individuals. It was a good start, but time for a new approach if I wanted to get any further.

This is when I tried something with my software that I haven’t done before. I knew that there was an option to insert an additional tree into a chart, but I hadn’t ever made use of it as I had thought of it as mostly a presentation feature. It occured to me that I could use it as an analysis feature.

To get started I ran the standard “All Facts” query and sorted it by date. Starting with the earliest fact – the baptism of Richard Alsop, son of John and Jane Alsop on 15 May 1673 – I created an all-relatives chart. I then went down the list of facts and inserted an extra ‘tree’ for each fact not yet represented on the main chart.

Many of the ‘trees’ consisted of one or two names only. I could drag and drop the trees around, so I placed each ‘tree’ near to where I thought it might belong. I could also insert or draw shapes and text on the chart all from within Family Historian. Below is a marked up portion of the multiple tree chart. The coloured loops show the people from different ‘trees’ who I think may be the same person.



You can see that I had five separate records in the late 1660s and early 1700s containing a Robert Allsop.

• Baptism of Robert son of John and Jane in 1677
• Marriage to Mary Wragg 1703
• Birth of a son Thomas to Robert and Mary in 1704
• Burial of Mary, wife of Robert, in 1728 (no age given), and
• Burial of Robert in 1729 (no age or relationships given).

It didn’t seem so obvious when I was looking at a long list of names and dates as it does, to me, on the chart.

I also think that the Thomas who married Elizabeth Goodwin in the chart above may be the same person who married Martha, a few years later. The Thomas who married Martha is most likely my 6x great-grandfather, so I’m quite interested to know who his parents were.

Blowe is a zoomed out view of the multiple tree chart. I counted 27 separate trees within the full version (which was very wide!), most of which I will be able to combine together now that I’ve seen how the pieces fit. A few individuals who I am not (yet?) able to fit in to the main family tree are sitting to the side.



For now I consider this little exercise to be an experiment and a learning experience. I’m very happy with how it’s working and I’m having a lot of fun. Sliding the different ‘trees’ into place really does feel like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

The plugin is plugged in

Well, that got a bit out of hand!

My little proof-of-concept experiment for a flexible CSV import plugin for Family Historian grew into a little project to actually make such a plugin… and then expanded into a project to make one good enough for the Family Historian plugin store… with assorted extra features thrown in along the way!

Getting the plugin to import the information took a little work. Trying to make a useful interface, and to cover the situations that could arise if people don’t use it exactly the same way I do took a lot longer! Aside from a bit of frustration at times playing whack-a-mole with bugs, I enjoyed the process. For each problem (just about), I found a solution. I’m not a programmer. I have no illusion that it is brilliant code – but it does the job.

Last weekend I submitted it to Family Historian. It has now been approved and is in the plugin store. I do hope it will make life easier for some genies out there!

Plugin progress

Here’s the final message from the latest trial run of my ‘Import CSV’ plugin for Family Historian. 35 seconds feels like a long time to wait but it’s certainly a lot faster than entering 10,000+ names by hand.. with source citations, I might add!

Plugging away at a plugin

I had good intentions of writing up a post after Congress 2015. I started, but never quite finished. Somewhere along the way I got distracted by a project that hadn’t even been on my to-do list, but has since because the primary focus of my attention.

Since Congress, in my spare moments, I have been chipping away at writing a Family Historian plugin. It started when I was talking to Jill Ball at Congress. She mentioned that she had looked at the CSV import plugins currently available but they hadn’t quite met her needs. The goal of a “CSV import” plug-in is to move spreadsheet style information into a family history package.

I have a few ideas about how a flexible CSV import tool might work… one you could customise without having to get into the code. Sparked by Jill’s comment, I tried a few proof-of-concept experiments and my little obsession project grew from there.

As at today, I have a plugin that seems to work as intended. I’m thinking about refining it to a point where I could submit it to the Family Historian plugin store so that anyone who has Family Historian can use it.

Right now I’m on the lookout for a few more sample files to try it with. Please leave a comment if you have something that might fit the bill and I’ll get in touch with you.

Wrapped up in technology

One of the things that I most enjoy, and that causes me most frustration, with family history research is all the little side tracks. Frustration, because I never seem to get to where I’m aiming (but I do have fun along the way).

I am particularly susceptible to getting wrapped up in the technology. I’m still enjoying Family Historian genealogy software, but find myself (happily) side-tracked into trying to write plugins for the program.

You see, I aspire to be lazy and I am prepared to devote a great deal of time and effort into pursuit of this goal. Up to and including learning just enough of a scripting language embedded in my software to make the computer do anything that I deem too boring and repetitive to do myself.

So far I have only made plugins for my own use. I have some ideas in mind that maybe, if I’m brave enough, I might try to write and publish to the plugin store for any Family Historian v5 user to download.

Getting technical with Family Historian software

I’m feeling rather chuffed with myself tonight.

My genealogy software, Family Historian, is very customisable. Even more so now that version 5 has introduced “plugins”, which allow users to download or write their own code to act on their data.

I’m not a programmer and coding looked daunting - really not something I wanted to commit time to learning - but a comment on Geniaus’ post Fresh Eyes gave me an idea. I borrowed heavily from the sample plugins and ones other users have created and had a go at creating my own plugin. To my delight, it works!

The plugin creates a source record for an Australian electoral roll entry. When I run the plugin I get a pop-up box like this:

The box prompts for all the changing parts of the source record. I have set the State “Victoria” to appear as a default, as 99% of the entries I make will be for Victoria. The plugin then adds a new source record to my file like this:

Australian Electoral Commission. Electoral roll. State of Victoria, Division of Bourke, Subdivision Mitchell, Black entries for 1931; digital images, Australian Electoral Rolls 1903-1980, Ancestry.com.au (www.ancestry.com.au: accessed 29 October 2011).

It also adds some bits and pieces in other parts of the source record. It’s probably not technically perfect, but it’s so easy and perfectly consistent from record to record.

Then I got greedy. I wanted my plugin to do more. I managed to find what I needed in the help file and now after I see the initial box, a prompt for multimedia files comes up. It only works for multimedia items that have already been added to Family Historian, but that suits me fine. I have a lot of unlinked images of electoral roll pages attached to my file that I need to make my way through. This speeds the process up considerably.

I’ve also set up a custom query that lists the electoral roll images that haven’t been linked to sources, so I know what I still have left to enter. In Family Historian the query results are usually live, clickable links to records. I can use this to my advantage in my data entry process as well.

Now my process for setting up a source record for an electoral roll page/pages is:

• Run the query to identify unlinked electoral roll entries.
• Highlight the multimedia items I want to use in the query results.
• Run the plugin – complete the boxes show above.
• Click “OK” when the multimedia box pops up (the records I highlighted are preloaded).

And that’s it. The source record is created with the image(s) attached.

I should just say, you don’t have to do this kind of thing to get good use out of Family Historian, but it’s rather nice that you can.

Deaths in my tree on Friday the 13th

When I realised the date, I thought I would see if Family Historian could produce a list of people who died on a Friday the 13th.

No problem! Family Historian allows you to filter on just the day (13th) and just the day of the week (Friday) without needing to do anything too complex. I quickly identified three people who died on a Friday 13th. Curiously, all three were from Scotland.

They were:

James Couper, the two year old son of William Couper and Anne McKenzie. He died of croup on Friday 13th March 1857 at Portmahomack, Ross, Scotland.

Elizabeth Sinclair died in Lybster, Latheron, Caithness, Scotland at age 93 on Friday 13 May 1864. I think she is my 5xgreat-grandmother, but I need to gather more evidence to be sure I have the right Elizabeth Sinclair.

Alexander Miller died a pauper at the age of 74 after six months suffering from chronic bronchitis on Friday 13th April 1877 at Bardfellister, Clyth, Latheron, Caithness, Scotland. He is my 4xgreat-grandfather.

If you are related to any of these people, please get in touch. I’d love to exchange information.

Changing genealogy software – how it’s going

I recently mentioned that I’m changing genealogy software. Three weeks on, I’m still happy that I made the right decision.

The most surprising thing to me has been feeling like a newbie! I’m used to being very proficient in the software I use – not expert, but better than average. I knew there would be a learning curve but I didn’t anticipate the newbie feeling that came with it. I’ve got a lot of clicking on menu items and trying things out to do!

The transfer itself was reasonably smooth. I found that 232 people had been detached from their parents on import. I think this was due to a flaw in the GEDCOM export for some (but not all?!) of the people in my old database. Fortunately I had an error listing which told me who the people affected were, and their parent families. It took me about 1.5 hours to link everyone up again. That was not how I wanted to spend my time, but not the end of the world, either.

That was the only unexpected hitch, and the most serious one. The other hitches were all expected…

My main challenges now include:

• Deciding how to handle all the witnesses to other people’s events. Genbox had a “witness” feature, Family Historian doesn’t, so I will have to re-input that information… but how? For now I’m taking my time about it, reading up on forum posts and other internet discussion to see how people handle witnesses in software without “witness” features before I commit to an approach.
  Any comments on how others do this would be welcome.
• Adding details back into the source information. In most cases all the critical information transferred, but there are a few instances – mostly references to BDM index entries – where the detail, such as it was, didn’t seem to come over.
• Hooking up all my multimedia properly. This isn’t the fault of my software, I’ve obviously rearranged things without telling my database about it! Broken links are a bit more obvious in Family Historian and to some extent can be batch fixed. Again, I’m taking my time about this and trying things out before I rush in.
• Correcting errors in my information. Again, these are clearly not the fault of my software. With a slightly different view I’m spotting little errors that, I guess, used to be like part of the furniture to me.

The best surprise about Family Historian is its amazing capacity to query your data. I knew that its querying was good when I bought it, but as I’ve played with it more I’ve been thrilled with its ability to set up complex queries that run in a flash. I’m also realising just how customisable many of its other features are.

So yes, there was a little pain but I think the gain has been worth it.

An ending, and a new beginning

I've made a big decision. I’m leaving the one I love. After indecision and agonising, I'm changing genealogy software. This isn't something I take lightly as I still remember how much work it was the last time I changed (from TMG to Genbox) nearly seven years ago.

I've been thinking about it for some time but, perversely, it was Kerry Scott's post Why It Doesn't Matter Which Genealogy Software You Use way back in February that gave me the final push I needed.

That post had stayed in the back of my mind and as I agonised over the idea of changing, I went back and reread it. I thought it would persuade me to stick with what I had. No! As I read, I realized that the thing that was holding me back from changing was that I placed too high a priority on all the things I love (and will miss!) about Genbox, but things have changed, and they are no longer so relevant.

You see, in the last seven years the way I research has changed. The internet allows me to find more records, more quickly. I have always liked to trace down at least a few generations from my ancestors, but over seven years I have pushed back a few generations and 'tracing down' now involves different types of records, most notably census records.

Features that were a high priority for me seven years ago, aren’t so much now. Kerry's post helped me to realise that I will live without the special features I love. While desirable, they are not essential. Thanks Kerry for the perspective!

So having more objectively considered which features will best suit my needs, and after much experimentation and consideration, I have decided to switch to Family Historian.

Factors that weighed in on my decision:

• It appears that the product is still being actively developed. They recently put out a call for more beta testers for the upcoming version 5.
• Using GEDCOM as a native format means that I have a better idea of will go through when I upload to my family data site. I can also edit the file myself in word or even Excel if I want which makes the initial clean up much quicker and easier.
• Ancestral Sources, a free program designed to work with Family Historian, allows form based data entry for census and baptism records, with more records types coming. I find census records in particular very time-consuming to enter.
• Alternatively, merging in other GEDCOMs seems to work well, opening up the possibility of using something like Geves (described previously) for focused data collection on a branch and then importing and merging. I wouldn’t want to merge on a wider scale. My early tests looked promising.
• Auto-citation feature where you designate a source to be added to anything you add, until you tell it to stop. Genbox also does this and it’s something I would prefer to keep.
• I can live with less granularity to the source citations (Genbox allows you to set different sources for date, place, details etc of an event). So far as achieving quality citations goes, I think I’ll follow Randy Seaver’s lead and use freeform text. Again, I’ve experimented with this a bit already and I’m sure it will improve the sources that go onto the website – which is the public face of my database. This wasn’t a concern seven years ago! 
• Multimedia capabilities look promising - I need to explore that more.

Now that the decision is made I’ve no regrets and am very excited by the change. I’m looking forward to learning more about my new software!