The Federation of Genealogical Societies and RootsTech held
their joint conference last week in Salt Lake City. That’s four days of doubled
up, non-stop genealogy. It doesn’t get any better than that does it? Thursday,
I attended three sessions. Narrowing each hour down to one session was a
challenge. There were many high quality offerings each hour. Somehow I managed.
Here are my top three take-aways from each session.
How Old Did He Have
To Be? Judy Russell aka The Legal Genealogist
The short answer: look to the law. Of course, Judy would say
that. After all, she is The Legal Genealogist! Seriously though here are three
things I learned:
1.
Age is one of the most important
elements we have to distinguish one person from another. So determining how old
a person was (or when he was born) is a must.
2.
What the law says about how old a
person had to be to do this or that is critical.
3.
Judy went over the hierarchy of
the law. Now I know why I should have paid attention to my high school history
classes! When you’re trying to determine how old someone had to be, investigate
the laws in this order:
a.
Federal and state constitutions
b.
Statutory law – federal, state
and territorial
c.
Common law
I don’t want to give away anymore. So if you want all the details,
well, you’ll just have to order a recording of Judy’s talk from Fleetwood Recordings.
A Pine Post
Four Inches Square: Staking a Claim on Mining Records – Jen Baldwin
This was my favorite session of the conference. It’s a specialty
topic and one I’m keenly interested in. That’s because I have ancestors who
staked mining claims in Colorado, an area of Jen’s expertise. Jen knows her
stuff and she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty to learn. Plus, she’s a great
speaker. I think we will be seeing much, much more of Jen.
So what did I learn?
1.
Know your mining districts. When
the miner staked a claim it was with the mining district where the land was
located. The districts usually follow the local ridges and valleys.
2.
The mining districts kept books
of these claims. Usually the original is the only copy that exists. Often the
local courthouse has no idea these books exist or that they have them. This is
where a willingness to get your hands dirty comes in.
3.
Jen talked about how to get the
claim number so you can obtain a copy of the deed.
I learned so much from this talk it’s hard to boil it down to
three points. And it wouldn’t be fair to Jen if I share too much. If you have
ancestors who were miners, especially in the west, consider getting a recording
of the lecture from Fleetwood Onsite. It’s item number 24944.
Putting to work what I learned will definitely keep me busy.
Batch
Processing of Photos and Their Metadata Using XnViewMP – Randy Whited
Last year I attended Randy’s session on a similar topic. He’s a
good teacher, taking us step by step through several common situations where
genealogists need to manipulate metadata in images.
If you don’t know what metadata is, here’s a simple definition:
it’s information about information or an object. In this case, your image file.
My top 3 take-aways:
1.
You can use XnViewMP to create a
text file that lists files in a particular folder. In other words you can
create a master list of all your images. If you save it as a csv file, you can
then open the file in Excel and create a spreadsheet.
2.
One of the most useful features
(for me anyway) is mass renaming of your image files. You know how your camera
automatically names the files with a rather useless name like IMG997? You can
use the batch rename feature to give them a meaningful name all in one fell
swoop.
3.
When we work with jpg files, we
have to be careful not to resave them too many times because they are what is
termed a “lossy” format. In other words, each time you save your jpg image, a
little bit of the data in the file is lost. Over time this results in loss of
clarity of the picture. Editing the metadata is “loss less.” Your jpg file will
not degrade by making changes to and saving the metadata in the file. I worry
about these things. So I had to know.
I hope you learned a few new things from these tidbits. I’ll be
back soon with Friday’s highlights.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Fleetwood Onsite. I
did purchase a recording of the conference with my hard earned money though.
That way I can drive town (or wherever) happily listening to my favorite
speakers and learning more about genealogy.
URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2015/02/fgsrootstech-2015-what-i-learned-on.html
© 2015, copyright Michelle Goodrum
