ThinkGenealogy

I recently learned from my cousin, Carol, that  my 2nd Great Grandfather, Lewis DeMott Bunce (1827-1894), received a patent for improvements to the butter churn.

Inventor: Lewis D Bunce

Invention: Churn (improvements)

Patent No.: 337, 238

Patented: Mar. 2, 1886

Short extract from the patent:

My invention relates to the improvement in churns, the object of the same being to provide a churn in which the dasher and dasher-operating mechanism, either or both, can be readily removed from the churn body when it is desired to cleanse the parts or remove the butter.

A further object is to provide a churn in which the motion of the cream while being agitated will be steady and regular, which will permit a section of the cover to be left off while churning without danger of throwing a portion of cream out of the churn.

A further object is to provide a churn with side wings and dasher adapted to be adjusted vertically to accommodate them to varying quantities of cream in the churn.

It is exciting to see that one of my ancestors was an inventor.

Let me know if you have an ancestor that was an inventor or received a patent.

PROVO, Utah – May 26, 2011 – Memorial Day is coming soon, and AppTime (http://www.apptime.com), the group behind the family history app MobileTree (http://www.mobiletree.me), has a new project they’re thrilled to share. It’s called BillionGraves.com, it’s as ambitious a project as the word “billion” makes it sound, and they want you to take it with you to the cemetery this Memorial Day.

“It’s a huge opportunity for everyone in family history,” says Rob Moncur, the head developer for the BillionGraves.com website. “We want people from all over the world to be able work together and pool resources so everyone can find the ancestors they’re looking for.”

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The Canadian TV comedy, Corner Gas, takes place in the fictional small town of Dog River located in Saskatchewan.

In this episode, Hank and Oscar are hired to complete the census. The humorous result shows a genealogist’s worst case scenario for census enumerators:

NOTE: Those not familiar with the TV series might not know that the second house Hank and Oscar visit is Oscar’s own home.

Trying to do your research, do you ever feel like Hank & Oscar were hired to count your ancestor?

Or should I say, “Stardate 41986.0”?

I am not a huge Star Trek fan (no clothing, action figures, of collection of DVDs), but I do enjoy the show.  This year I introduced the TV series to my sons and it is a great father-sons moment that we share as we watch episodes of TNG together via Tivo.

A few weeks ago, we watched episode 26 from the first season. It was based in the 24th century when officers from the Enterprise come across on old earth satellite that turns out to be a cryonics capsule housing some frozen earth inhabitants from approximately 300 years in the past.

I don’t want to focus on the whole cryonic piece but it does setup the scene for some 24th century family history.  It is also interesting that the woman in the episode gets a chance to meet her 5th great grandson when she returns to earth.

Here are some clips from the episode:

Think back to 1988 in the world of genealogy. There was no internet as we know it today. No Ancestry.com or FamilySearch or the multitude of genealogy sites and blogs. The cutting edge genealogy software was PAF 2.1 for DOS, Apple PRO-DOS, and Macintosh.

What else was happening in the sphere of family history in 1988?

How close do you think we are to what was presented in the episode?

What is your vision of family history research in the year 2364?

Would you like to visit your 5th great grandchild? What would you say?

How would you like a visit from a past ancestor? Who would you want it to be? Who would you not want to visit you?

Now go and research an ancestor that no one has researched before.

What if you could talk to your deceased ancestors?

What would you like them to tell you?

Now there is a fun way to bring your ancestor photos to life and let them tell their own stories in their “own” voices. Crazy Talk Animator lets you add realistic animations to your photographs and record your own dialog. The software takes care of moving the mouth on the photo and synching it with what you said.

Here is a short video sample that I created with the 15-day trial version of the software. I hope the watermarks don’t distract too much from the effect. I did this after playing with the software for about 2 hours.

Back in April 2009, I created a video that showed my dream for how citing online sources should be done (see blog post).  It would be a partnership between online record repositories and desktop genealogy software.  I created a prototype close enough to the real thing to prove that it could be done and to help others visualize how it would work.  I even created a survey to get feedback from others. 

Over 300 people responded to the survey and at the end of the trial period I sent a copy of the results to all participants that provided an e-mail. I planned on blogging about the results but got discouraged at the time.

Two events have happened this week to get me thinking about this again. The first was a comment on my blog by Bruce. He has a website for his personal family history and wanted to know how to go about setting up the site to do citations like the video demonstrated. It saddened me to tell him that it is not possible to do this yet without cooperation from the desktop genealogy software vendors. The second was a direct message via Twitter from fellow genealogy software innovator, Dean.  He contacted me to say that my blog was mentioned in a discussion today at RootsTech on how to handle sources.

Maybe it is time for me to publish the survey results from 2 years ago.

What type of people responded to the survey? People like you and me.  The majority are non-professional researches (plain Jane/Joe family historians)  many of whom belong to local genealogy societies.  Some have visited courthouses, the National Archives, or the Family History Library, but almost all had done research on the internet in the last week. They used sites like Ancestry, Footnote, and FamilySearch and desktop software like RootsMagic, Legacy, Family Tree Maker, and PAF.  Over 99% thought citing sources was important but 75% thought it was difficult to do it.  Over 90% thought that there should be one standard citation guide and 57% were using “Evidence Explained.” When asked if they were interested in the solution provided in the video, 93% said they were interested.

There are more details and nuggets in the survey results.

Maybe we can explore them more in future posts.