Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

It’s been a while since I’ve put my full effort into getting Behold to that next level that would include GEDCOM export and editing. In fact, I have to admit that I really haven’t made a lot of changes to Behold except for bug fixes and a 64-bit executable since 2017.

What I did start doing in February 2018 is working on my own family tree again after maybe a 15 year hiatus. I chose MyHeritage as my primary online platform and I add my information through both their online system and through MyHeritage’s Family Tree Builder software that stores its database locally on my computer. The two fully sync to each other very nicely with private data about living people only stored on my computer. I keep up with all the Record Matches and Smart Matches that MyHeritage generously provides from its huge record collection and its millions of family trees. There’s very little need for me anymore  to manually search for Census records, vital records or cemetery stones. Most are sent to me without any effort on my part.

MyHeritage also automatically searches the main one-world collaborative trees  to help me locate my relatives in those trees. These include FamilySearch, Geni, and WikiTree.

The one difficulty in using MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Geni, WikiTree (and also Ancestry), or using desktop programs like Family Tree Builder, RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, etc., is seeing what data you have. All these program let you enter your data on forms that contain some of the data in fields. But for extra details and to see more of the data, you need to press buttons to open additional windows. Some programs don’t let you open more than window form at a time. Your data is compartmentalized and you never can see everything at once.

Maybe the programs have reports you can run, but each report is usually for a specific purpose, and rarely is there an “everything” report for you. I’ve never been satisfied by this, and that’s one of the reasons why I built Behold.

Dear Myrtle and WikiTree

A few weeks ago, Pat Richley Erickson aka Dear Myrtle, was a genealogy guest star for the WikiTree Challenge. Pat writes in her blog post: Thank-you WikiTree Volunteers:

Pat concludes that post by saying:

Now perhaps you understand what a great deal of work I have to do correlating new findings with my current genealogy database.

Over the next week, Pat went to work. She downloaded a GEDCOM of her WikiTree relatives and loaded it into RootsMagic 7. She wanted to compare side by side what was in WikiTree’s version of her tree, and what she had already compiled in RootsMagic. Pat had a Mini-Myrt session to describe what she had done:

I was very interested in seeing how Pat was going to do this, and she ran into problems. She could not see all the data from WikiTree all together as she hoped it would be. Pat saw I was in attendance and asked me if I use software that does show all the data. And I said yes, my own software Behold.

So Pat arranged that I return for her next MiniMyrt session and demo how Behold displays her WikiTree data. I did and Pat wrote up about this in her blog post: MiniMyrt - Behold Software and Myrt’s WikiTree GEDCOM File

This is what Pat’s GEDCOM from WikiTree looked like when loaded into Behold:

Each of her earliest ancestors was shown in the treeview on the left. Pat could easily see her brick walls broken by looking through that list for ancestors she did not recognize. Thomas Player was one of those ancestors.

The GEDCOM includes a link to Thomas Player on WikiTree. Behold displays this as a hyperlink that will open that page in your browser. Also included as a hyperlink is an image on WikiTree which is a picture of Parish Banns and that as well can be opened from Behold with a single click.

Most importantly, the WikiTree user profile is included as a Note. You can read what the WikiTreers added as Thomas Player’s profile and that includes the sources they used. They will allow Pat to check the sources and verify for herself that this Thomas Player indeed does (or does not) belong as a new ancestor at the top of her tree.

When trying earlier to load the GEDCOM into her RootsMagic program, this is what Pat could see for Thomas Player

Very little information is shown on the person page itself. The “Note” button can be clicked to bring up the WikiTree note which is good, but that is an extra step. However that Note window is modal, meaning you can’t do anything else in RootsMagic or look at anything else until you close it again.

RootsMagic does import the link to Thomas Player on WikiTree. It does so as an address and you have to click the “Address” button (opening another modal window) to see it: And the link is not a hyperlink, but you can click on the “Visit website” button to open it in a browser.

The Parish Banns object is included in RootsMagic as a Media item. You have to click on the “Media” button to bring it up in another modal window. And the url in this case is not clickable. You’ll have to copy and paste it into your browser.

RootsMagic also shows 3 unidentified reference numbers that puzzled Pat:

RootsMagic does not show the value of the GEDCOM TYPE tag, whereas looking at them in Behold shows them for what they are:

Once you know what they are and realize they are pretty useless, you can hide them in Behold.

A week later (on April 14), Pat had another Mini-Myrt session where she showed how she’s using Behold to help her with her find the new ancestor information that was added to WikiTree so that she could verify it.

Pat may continue to discuss this work on future Mini-Myrt sessions each Wednesday. Here’s the Mini-Myrt registration form if you would like to attend.

Thoughts and Ideas

My goal from Behold’s Everything Report is to make all your data available to you in the most useful way possible. I add relevant family events to each person’s information, include helpful checks and extras such a list of living and deceased relatives at death for verifying with obituaries.

What I’ve noticed though is that the GEDCOMs from the online family trees, specifically MyHeritage, Ancestry, FamilySearch, WikiTree and Geni, have a lot data included with their owne tags and embedded formatting that don’t follow the GEDCOM standard. As a result, many programs will not read, interpret or display a lot of that data correctly.

A program that does understand the data can present it much better, and a program like Behold is designed to display all the data, more conveniently and all together. Behold can allow a WikiTreer to see all their data, rather than just one page or one person at a time. I personally find Behold’s data display very useful whenever I work with my WikiTree data, and I expect others would as well.

As part of my development of Version 1.3 of Behold, I’ll be putting in a bit of effort to make WikiTree’s notes look better. WikiTree does not have formally specified sources, but includes them in their notes as “ref” values or as bulleted free-form text in a sources section. I should be able to extract these to allow the sources to be included in the Sources section that Behold displays.

For Version 1.3, I’ll also be working on including customizations to make Behold better display customized data from MyHeritage, Ancestry, FamilySearch and Geni as well. It should be fun.

• Wed Apr 28:  Hilary Gadsby shows how the WikiTree GEDCOM looks when it is loaded into Family Historian.
• Wed May 5:  “Do we need more than 1 additional meetup about WikiTree?”
• Wed May 12:  Sheri Snodgrass shows how the WikiTree GEDCOM looks when it is loaded into Family Tree Maker.

@WikiTree #WikiTreeChallenge

Wikitree with over 25 million profiles, is the 3rd largest collaborative family tree, after FamilySearch Family Tree and Geni. As the name suggests, the site is designed like a wiki, giving all users ability to contribute and change (preferably with sources) and collaborate about the contents of any page.

The goals of the site is to strive for accuracy through collaboration.

But I’m not here to tell you about the site. You can go to WikiTree and find out that for yourself.

What I wanted to tell you about is one absolutely amazing activity that the WikiTreers thought up and are taking on.in 2021, their Year of Accuracy. This don’t-miss event is their WikiTree Challenge.

Each week, they focus on one guest star who is very well known in the genealogical world. Previous to appearing, this special guest has his/her ancestors entered onto WikiTree. The guest appears Wednesday evening in a live kick-off event where Sarah Callis acts as host and is joined by Eowyn Langholf, Mindy Silva and the team captain for the week who do the work to coordinate the event. They review the guest’s family tree together asking the guest about his/her challenges and brick walls.

Then dozens of volunteer WikiTreers work all week on the guest’s tree. They collaborate with each other to find new sources, make the tree more accurate and even break down a few brick walls finding new ancestors and relatives that the guest didn’t know about.

The next Wednesday, Sarah and gang are back with the guest to review what was done, what information was uncovered and to get the guest’s reactions to all this new research.

It is impressive how much the diligent WikiTeam uncovers. They summarize each week with a scoresheet that lists all the researchers involved and how much each has added to the guest’s tree. That’s the “Challenge” part.

This event will be taking place all year, with a new guest almost every week.

WikiTree Challenge deserves your attention and publicity!

Think of it. Where else can you find your genealogy super-stars talking about their own genealogy? Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is noted for presenting the genealogies of his special guests on Finding Your Roots on PBS. It was so much fun to hear Dr. Gates talk about his own ancestry, and then a week later in the big reveal, was provided with information about his own family that was new to him. At one point he had to call his wife over to show her what was discovered.

All the shows are taped. You can go back and watch them if you missed them. But it is so much more fun to go there while its live and join the chat.

Here’s a list of the challenges they’ve had already, and a link to the videos so you can watch:

Week 1: January 6
      - AJ Jacobs (Journalist & everyone’s cousin): Kickoff, January 6

Week 2: January 13
      - AJ Jacobs (Journalist & everyone’s cousin): Reveal
      - CeCe Moore (The Genetic Detective): Kickoff

Week 3: January 20
      - CeCe Moore (The Genetic Detective): Reveal
      - Jonny Perl (DNA Painter): Kickoff

Week 4: January 27
      - Jonny Perl (DNA Painter): Reveal
      - Jen Baldwin (Ancestral Journeys): Kickoff 

Week 6: February 3
      - Jen Baldwin (Ancestral Journeys): Reveal
      - Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Finding Your Roots): Kickoff

Week 7: February 10
      - Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Finding Your Roots): Reveal
      - Judy Russell (The Legal Genealogist): Kickoff

Week 8: February 17
      - Judy Russell (The Legal Genealogist): Reveal
      - a break for all the WikiTreers

Week 9: February 24
      - Thomas MacEntee (High-Definition Genealogy): Kickoff

Week 10: March 3
      - Thomas MacEntee (High-Definition Genealogy): Reveal
      - Katherine Willson (Social Media Genealogy): Kickoff

Katherine will have her reveal next week on March 10. Look who is also scheduled for March:

- Pat Richley-Erickson (Dear Myrtle)
- Rob Warthen (DNAGedcom)
- Dallan Quass (RootsFinder)
- Ellen Thompson Jennings (Family History Hound)

And following that, April has been announced:

- Tim Janzen (Genetic Genealogy expert)
- Cheri Hudson Passey (Carolina Girl Genealogy)
- Connie Knox (GenealogyTV.org)

Do make sure you check out this WikiTree LiveCast recorded Feb 27 as a RootsTech Special, recapping the first 7 weeks of the Challenge.

The Challenge is going to be continuing all 2021, so expect many more great guest stars to be revealed.

In addition to the Wednesday LiveCasts, they also have a weekly recap every Saturday, discussing how research is progressing for the guest of the week. For all of their past LiveCasts, see the WikiTree Video list on YouTube.

For information on upcoming LiveCasts, follow @WikiTreers on Twitter or go to the WikiTree page on Facebook.

If you want the challenge of working with others to break through the brick walls of your genealogy heroes, then join WikiTree (it’s free) and sign up for some future challenges.

Here’s a great presentation prepared for WikiTreers who want to take on the WikiTree challenge and work to improve the profiles of the guest stars.

This is fantastic stuff. It’s so much fun to join in the live chat every Wednesday night. Hope to see you there.

Like hundreds of thousands of you, I had been looking forward to this year’s version of #RootsTech2021,  which is completely online and free to everyone.

I have attended RootsTech in Salt Lake City three times in person, in 2012, 2014 and 2017. I couldn’t go from 2018 to 2020, but those years RootsTech had started live streaming their keynotes and one track of their talks, so there was lots I was able to enjoy from home. They also introduced the RootsTech App which helped to know what was going on. Those of us not there were still live tweeting with the hashtag: #notatrootstech

This year, due to the circumstances, RootsTech Connect has been forced to be all online. It was very different. I’d like to go over the parts of the conference that I enjoyed the most.

Road to RootsTech

The RootsTech site wasn’t available until Wednesday. But the people behind the conference got together about a week before and produced a series of videos called the Road to RootsTech. They were well produced, fun and information. It was great to see all the people behind the conference telling us what was coming. We sa even got a sneak peek of the website from Bryan Austad, the main programmer behind the site who was working 24/7 right up to Wednesday to be sure it would be ready.

The Website Itself

Once the website activated Wednesday morning, it was quite a beautiful site to take in. The choice of colors and graphics were very well done.

You had access to descriptions of the hundreds of sessions available, information about all the speakers, and later that day, the expo hall opened where you could visit the virtual booth and get information about and even chat with the 80 or so vendors. And you could build your personal Playlist of all the sessions you wanted to see.

DNA Sessions

DNA topics are a big interest of mine. I have been to a lot of webinars about DNA over the past year, so I was looking for something a bit different or new to me this time around.

Alison Wilde presented a session on her SCREEN Method – Alison described her structured way to record your notes on each of your DNA matches. I thought that was really innovative and well thought-out.

Also see Alison’s other video on YouTube on her advanced note taking system called AP-Screen and her website: www.AlisonWildeDNA.com

The other DNA topic that was of most interest to me was Leah Larkin’s two sessions: When Your Tree is a Banyan: Untangling Endogamy, where Leah explains the difference in endogamy between different groups of people:

See Part 1 and Part 2. Leah is also asking for more shared match data for her Endogamy study. If you are interested in helping her out, check Leah’s blog post: Contribute to the Endogamy Study.

Digitization

A month ago, I started taking an hour every night to digitize all the stuff I have in the boxes in my closet and basement, the binders in my bookshelves, and the folders in my filing cabinets. The most interesting sessions for me on that were the series of 3 sessions by Maureen Taylor, Christopher Desmond and Nancy Desmond called Unlocking the Shoebox.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.  Lots of great hints, tips and ideas.

I also noticed that ShotBox was a vendor with a virtual booth in the Expo Hall. I had heard about ShotBox several years ago, but now that I’ve actually started my digitization, I understand what types of items my sheet feeder scanner, my flat bed scanner, and my hand-held digital camera phone cannot handle well.

ShotBox had a show special on for RootsTech so I went for it.

My ShotBox should be arriving in about a week.

GEDCOM 7.0

Only a week prior to RootsTech, it became known that FamilySearch was going to announce a release candidate for GEDCOM 7.0, to replace the over 20 year-old standard that currently is in use. Because my program Behold is a GEDCOM reader, I’ve always been involved with GEDCOM and was very interested in hearing what was going to be presented. Gordon Clarke of FamilySearch had two sessions about this. I watched the two sessions Wednesday night.

But inexplicably, the sessions were removed from RootsTech on Thursday, and all information about GEDCOM 7.0 was taken down. For a timeline of what happened, see my blog post: GEDCOM 7.0.

Socializing

A genealogical conference isn’t a genealogical conference without socializing. RootsTech Connect provided the ability to chat with other attendees and speakers. I was able to get in touch with a few people I knew from past conferences and have some enjoyable live chats with them.

There were also two other sessions I very much enjoyed.

One was the Family History Fanatics RootsTech Connect 2021 Recap that was on Friday afternoon. 

There were over 70 of us watching live and we were all involved very actively in the live chat that was happening while the webinar was going on.

Then on Saturday, I attended my first ever Dear Myrt After Party. My flight time home had always prevented me previously from attending her After Party which she hosted at her home. But this time, I didn’t have to fly home.

It was a lot of fun. Rather than a webinar, this was a full virtual meeting, so we were all full participants. We had about 60 people there.

Pat set up a game for us and we split up into breakout rooms to form teams to try to find the answer to research questions on FamilySearch, Ancestry and Trove.

Conclusion

Steve Rockwood closing RootsTech Connect. 

Well, RootsTech Connect technically isn’t over. The hundreds of sessions will be available to watch for a year at the RootsTech site. I have about 30 left on my list to watch, many to help with my own personal research.

At the end of the conference, FamilySearch updated their number of attendees:

A million of us. Wow!