DACS General Meeting
March 2013
Meeting Review:
Geneaology—Toni McKeen

By Richard Teasdale

The topic of the DACS March 2013 general meeting was Genealogy and Computers. Guest speaker Toni McKeen spoke about how to do genealogical research using computers and the internet. In addition to explaining why she does genealogy, Toni offered some practical tips about how to get started.

Toni McKeen has 28 years of experience as a genealogical researcher and she teaches classes in genealogy at the Ridgefield senior center. She explained some of the reasons why people do genealogy: it's fun, it helps one learn about oneself, it's a journey that takes you to places where you've never been before, etc. A major reason is the opportunity to pass on family history to new generations - although young people might not be interested today, some day they will be.

The major sources of information that genealogists employ to do their research remain the same today as they were before the internet age: documents and stories.

There are many types of document that provide family history information. Genealogy is never "done" - there are always more documents to find. What has changed radically is the way that documents can be found and accessed.

The internet is a huge source of information. In the past, researchers had to go to libraries or the places where their ancestors lived to gather information. Today they can go to many different websites to do so. Toni recommends ancestry.com. It costs $150/year to be a member but is user-friendly and well worth the money. Ancestry.com provides online access to many different types of record, including census, immigration, naturalization, and military records, city directories, vital records, obituaries, and cemetery records.

Another good online source of information is familysearch.org. Run by the Mormons, it is free and has millions of online-accessible records, including many from other countries. The Mormons have offices worldwide but locally, the Newtown office is very helpful to people in our area who are researching their ancestors.

Steve Morse, the designer of the Intel 8086 chip, wrote software for doing genealogical web searches. His software is available to the public at www.stevemorse.org.

Other sites that Toni has found useful include findagrave.com and italiangen.org.

Another major source of genealogical information is stories that are told by word-of-mouth. Stories tend to get lost and need to be documented. The researcher has to keep in mind, however, that word-of-mouth evidence can sometimes be unreliable so caution is needed. Like a journalist, the genealogist has to check "facts" in every way he or she can.

The basic rules of genealogical research are: (1) start with yourself (2) start with census records (3) find every census record for all of your family members (4) research the family not the name (5) read the whole document (6) research "sideways" as well as forward and back. (The last of these rules means that more than the researcher's own direct line of descent should be included, e.g. uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. are necessary parts of the complete picture.)

Toni recommends the following genealogical software: Family Tree Maker (for PCs) and Reunion (for Macs). These programs allow the researcher to organize all information found. There are websites where family tree information can be stored, notably ancestry.com, but for privacy reasons you should use your own computer instead.

Toni recommends that family history researchers write a book of family information. They should let all family members know what they are doing so that everyone has an opportunity to contribute. The Past is the Present that we give to the Future!

Toni McKeen's e-mail address is tonimckeen47@hotmail.com, and she is happy to answer follow-up questions that anyone may have.