Family Book Creator Hint

I previously made a post regarding the inclusion of a typed copy of a person's obituary within the context of their death fact. My intention was for this obituary to appear as a distinct paragraph. However, I encountered challenges as the obituary did not consistently print separately. Sometimes it would start right after the death date, and the burial information to appear as a new sentence following the obituary.

The manual stated that by default, leading and trailing blank lines are removed from the note, rendering the extra effort of inserting a blank beginning and ending line was futile. The Family Book Creator manual features a section on note formatting. In this context, the Label field could serve as a mere descriptor. For instance, with a Person Note, the label could read "Person Notes:", and the note would follow immediately. Alternatively, in my case, I could label it as "Obituary:".

Regrettably, this approach did not yield the desired outcome. My aim is for the obituary to be presented as a new paragraph. Furthermore, the word "Obituary" is sometimes used within my death notes, potentially leading to confusion. Moreover, the issue of the burial fact immediately following the obituary persists.

In my exploration of the Family Book Creator manual, I discovered support for special text formatting tags, along with the use of the "<Text>" placeholder to indicate the actual text and its desired formatting. Examining these special tags, I speculated that a line break or new paragraph tag might be effective. My initial attempt involved "<br><Text><br>", which achieved a line break. 

Yet, my preference was for a blank line, leading me to experiment with "<p><Text></p>" for a new paragraph.

This time, the results were considerably more satisfactory. To further emphasize the obituary's distinction, I even tried "<p>----------<br><Text><br>----------</p>". 

One final point to consider in this matter pertains to the modification of the Death fact note label in the four sections of the book, as outlined in the "Items to Include" section. This modification applies not only to the Primary person but also to their partner. The situation becomes more nuanced when dealing with children listed in the family section. For those children with their own dedicated section, I omitted the death fact note entirely. This is because their section adheres to the settings of the Primary person. Conversely, children without a distinct section necessitate proper formatting of their death fact since they lack another section for their information.

I recommend conducting experimentation with your settings on a subset of data to gauge the resulting outcomes. It was not immediately apparent to me what this manual page entailed, as it lacked illustrative examples. My insight into note formatting was gleaned from a Facebook Group post by fellow users of the Family Book Creator.

Remember to have fun and Just Do Genealogy!

Harness the potential of Ancestry's records

Have you been fully harnessing the potential of Ancestry's vast records? Are you taking the time to explore each facet of the available information within those records? Consider this: when there are multiple clickable names associated with a single record, it's often a good idea to investigate all of them. Let me illustrate with an example. During my research on Henry Erbrecht and his wife Louisa Quasius, an Ancestry hint directed me to a marriage record for their child, Edmund. Despite some spelling errors, I was confident that these were indeed the individuals I was seeking.

Upon examining this record, I found it to be a treasure trove of valuable information. It included essential details such as the groom's and bride's names, the date and location of the marriage, and an added bonus: the names of the groom's parents. Yet, the real revelation came when I ventured further. Clicking on the bride's name led me to an alteration in the information displayed, now revealing the identity of the bride's parents.

A curious pattern emerged when I scrutinized both the groom's and bride's perspectives. Notably, the mothers' names were presented as their married surnames. Intrigued by this inconsistency, I probed deeper by clicking on the mothers' names, which brought about another layer of transformation. To my delight, the groom's mother's maiden name, Sessions, was disclosed, as well as the bride's mother's maiden name, Leber.

Although Sessions appeared to deviate from Quasius, I entertained the possibility of obscured handwriting or transcription errors. Driven by this hypothesis, I referred to a FamilySearch Record linked on Ancestry. Here, I confirmed that Edmund's mother was indeed listed as Louisa Quasius. Moreover, the record pinpointed their origin as Tigerton, Wisconsin—an alignment with my existing knowledge about the family.

Intriguingly, my pursuit of knowledge didn't cease with the mothers' names. I delved into the fathers' names on both sides, only to find that the perspective shifted again. However, disappointingly, no fresh insights emerged from this particular angle of investigation. 

Remember to have fun and Just Do Genealogy!

Family Book Creator - Formatting Notes in FTM

Another helpful hint when using Family Book Creator (FBC). This is a continuation of my learning the Family Book Creator software and how I input the data into my Family Tree Maker (FTM) tree.

I have started a new book project and decided I wanted to include some notes fields. FBC allows you to include or exclude notes and you can select which facts notes to include or exclude. Please note that there are four separate tabs controlling notes. The Primary person, this is the main person of a family section, the Partner who is the partner/spouse of the primary person. The child in the list of the children in the family section who have a main section (family section) later in the book and the child in the list of children who have no main section or will not have their own family section.

A little background about the project I am working on. I started by exporting a branch from my sister-in-law’s tree for her cousin. Then her cousin stated that she has been doing her tree using FamilySearch. For those of you who don’t know, FamilySearch is a collaborative tree, where once you get to the deceased members of your family, FS will look for a match in the collaborative tree and will want you to match your person up to an existing person in their collaborative tree (if it finds a match).  I informed the cousin, that I can download a branch of the tree, however none of the living people will be loaded into my tree.

Thus, when this happened, I got all kinds of notes and sources that really weren’t part of my research. . After I download that branch into a new tree with FTM, I merged that tree to the exported branch that I created for that cousin. Then I had to fix lots of stuff, such as place names, for consistency, and even merged a few people that the original merging of the two trees missed. Then I printed out an outline descendant report, starting at the first person, I am slowing working my way through the tree, verifying information, entering new information and so forth.

I started entering obituaries into the Death Notes field. Before I got to far with the tree, I decided to run a test book. I noticed that the death notes just blend into the previous sentence when I wanted this to print separately. Plus, I started to see notes from the tree that I merged from Family Search. Notes that I didn’t realize where there.

Thus, I decided to run the Notes Report within Family Tree maker. I saved the report as a PDF and brought it up on one monitor and FTM on the other monitor. Starting at the beginning of the report, I brought up each person. I noticed some person notes being printed in the book that I didn’t want; however, I already knew I had typed some person notes that I wanted in the book. The solution, privatize the notes that I didn’t want to be printed. To Privatize a note, click the lock icon.

FBC has controls for Person Notes and Research notes. Plus, Relationship notes for a spouse. Currently the defaults do not have the private notes printing, I would have to check the circle for that option. Research notes are typically private and thus they are excluded. I could have copied the person note to the research notes, because personally they seemed more like research notes, however, it was just easier to click on the lock and privatize the person notes to exclude them from the book.

Also, facts, such as name, birth, death have their own notes control and you can include, exclude, or include private notes. You will need to go into every fact and change each note preference (FBC) if you want to exclude any. However, I found it was easier to run my note report in FTM and click the private lock icon to privatize any note I want to exclude, rather than go into all the fact notes preferences in FBC and select exclude.

Anyway, back to my obituary note that I typed into FTM death note field. I decided to bold the first line or name for the obituary and then add a blank line before the bold text, so that it didn’t wrap into the previous sentence in the FBC book.  I italicized  the source and then added a blank line at the end of the obituary so that it left a blank line and allowed the proper formatting in the book.

Thus, I learned several lessons. Run a sample book, and see what it looks like. Then, stop and think about what you want in your book. Think about the easiest way to include or exclude that information in the book. Plus, proofing smaller sample sections of the book, is easier than trying to proof the entire book.

I decided by leaving the FBC defaults to print notes, then on future books, I won’t be missing any needed note, since my goal is to have FBC setup the same for all my books. I do print my sample test books without the graphical trees and without any pictures, so that I can concentrate on spelling errors, and formatting issues. Then when I am ready for my final proof of the book, I add the graphical tree and any picture option I might want. As in previous posts, I still might need to do some manual edit, but ultimately, you will want to enter the data into FTM in a way that requires the least number of manual edit after you generate your book with FBC.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

Family Book Creator – Manual Edits

As previously mentioned in a couple of my prior posts, I have been working on a family book for my sister-in-law’s family. I want to cover some of the manual edits that I did for this book. These modifications were done using a Windows PC and Word. 

Family book creator is a very powerful program; however, the author of this program can’t anticipate every user’s desires when it comes to publishing a book. The book has the ability to print enhanced Pedigree Charts which displays the graphic representation of their direct-line ancestors and the children of the couple. This option is basically an all or nothing type of feature. Either you have it for every married couple, or you don’t have any at all. Since, I want something different; then, I must do some manual edits to remove the ones I don’t want.  

I can also include Portraits for people. Again, it’s sort of an all or nothing type of situation. If I attached a photo to the person, it will print. I could have unattached the portraits for individuals in FTM that I don't want to print in the book, however, I found doing it in the book was easier for me. I am printing a descendant book to include 6 generations of the family, this is the entire family. Before any of my edits, it was 593 pages long, my finished product is 441 pages long. This may not seem like a lot, however not printing 152 pages, can make a big difference in the price of a book. Keep in mind that when generating a book with two sided printing, the book will start every generation on it's own page, and it's an odd number page, so that the new generation will appear on the top side of the page. Thus you may end up with some blank even pages before a new generation is started. This is okay.

My goal: To have the enhanced Pedigree chart for the family of the starting person and Generation 1 (their children) only. To have portraits for the starting person, generations 1 and generation 2 only. I don't need the rest, because I don't have a picture for every individual and I don't want to offend anyone by including or excluding their picture. Your goal may be different than mine.

Therefore, starting at the end of the book, with the last person in the book, I will remove the enhanced pedigree charts I don’t want, along with an extra line. 

I click anywhere on the last person’s pedigree chart. In the left upper corner of the chart an enhanced plus should appear. Right click on the enhanced plus to bring up a drop-down menu. Then select “Delete Table”. This will place your cursor on the line above the person’s reference number, press the [delete] key on your keyboard to delete this line. This is an extra line, that really isn’t needed, there is still spacing between the two family sections.

I continue in this manner moving up the report, deleting the enhanced pedigree charts. You may notice that you don’t always have to click to bring up the enhance plus. This is because you haven't click out of the active screen. Just continue deleting the table and then delete the blank line. You may also notice that you can't always see the reference number of the person you are working on, don’t worry, just press the delete key once to delete the blank line and then move onto the next pedigree chart. 

If you goof up, don’t forget to select the undo button in word to undo your last action. You will find it above the main menu, it's the backwards circle arrow shown next tot he floppy disk.

As I continued to work my way up the book, I came across some portraits I wanted to delete. If you click near the portrait, an enhanced plus should appear. Right click on the enhanced plus bring up the drop-down menu and select “Delete Table” to remove the portrait and the name below the portrait.

However, you will notice that the photo is gone, however the words didn’t move over and fill in the space. This is because there is another table creating this paragraph that needs to be adjusted. Thus, click in the paragraph next to the blank space and you will see an enhanced plus located slightly above and to the left of the reference number of this person. Left click on it to highlight the entire paragraph, where you can easily see the empty space. Next, gently hover your mouse over the spot where the left white space touches the gray space, you will see a double arrow, then click, hold, and drag the gray space to all the way to the right. The words should move with the gray space. If you make an error, you can always undo and then try again. 

I had to use a slightly different method if multiple children had pictures associated with them. I could delete each individual picture using my method. However, the table for the words, was a bigger table and included multiple children. Thus, I had to delete all their individual pictures first and then I was able to modify the table containing the words, by sliding the gray space to the right. This fixed all the children's verbiage at the same time.

One final challenge. If the last child or children of the previous family had individual photos, the table might include both their individual verbiage and the enhanced pedigree chart of the next family unit. Thus, you are unable delete the table for the enhanced pedigree chart by itself without deleting everything, because it’s part of the verbiage table. You will need to delete the rows of this enhanced pedigree chart. Then you can delete the individual photos and finally move the gray box to the right to expand the words. 

Thus, you will need to highlight the rows that make up the enhanced pedigree chart.  Left Click on the space right above the reference number. Click your mouse and hold, drag, and highlight moving your mouse up the page, slowly. If you highlight the words for the person above the chart, you went to far, bring it down until only the chart is highlighted. Release the mouse button.  Then right click, select “Delete Rows”, then select “delete entire rows”. Then press Delete if there appears to be an extra blank line remaining. 

This might seem like a big undertaking; however, you are basically repeating your steps over and over again. Thus, take your time.  You can always save your work as you finish deleting a table and before moving to a new table. You may want to make a copy of your file before you start. If you goof up too big, you can always go back to the beginning. Also, the undo button is your friend, just press it until you get back to a point where you can start over. Save your work, especially if you are going to take a break. Even if it only a short bathroom break, save your work!

One final step needs to be done when you have completely, removed all the enhanced pedigree charts and portraits you don’t want, you will need to have the document, reindexed and the table of contents needs to be updated. 

Press, Ctrl + A to highlight the entire document. Then you need to press F9. I was given a popup box to either select “Update Page #’s Only” or “Update Entire Table”. I chose to update the entire table. 

My biggest advice, is practice these skills. Try running a small practice book. Practice your deleting skills and then update the entire table. Verify that the page numbers are now index properly and the table of contents are correct. 

Don't be afraid to run test reports by experimenting by selecting and deselecting features. Even though I suggest making as many changes within your FTM file before creating a book, you still may need to make some modifications once the book generates. In my opinion, this is why FBC is such a wonderful tool, I can customize it to what I want.

Good luck in your book project!

How Far to build out one’s trees?

 

In many of the Genealogy FaceBook groups I belong, the big question is how far out do you build a tree and should I have separate trees for my family.

Let’s talk about the number of trees. When I started my genealogy journey, was I unmarried and thus I created one tree. I decided I would include not only my direct line, but my ancestor’s children. I started before computers, and was using paper forms and three-ring binders. This method worked good in the beginning because I really wasn’t finding a lot of information.

Then came the personal computer and genealogy software. I still didn’t build down my trees too much, being newer at this, I wasn’t always sure if I had the correct children. Then the internet was born, and more and more information are available online. Also, DNA came into the picture.

I have morphed into three main trees. My family, my husband’s family, and my half-siblings father’s family. There is overlap between the trees. My siblings and their descendants are in both my family tree and their father’s family tree. My husband, parents and our children and grandchild are in both my family tree and my husband’s family tree.

How far out do I build my tree? A lot farther than I did when I started. If you look at a family group sheet, it has both the husband and wife along with their parents. Thus, I enter that information into my tree too. Why do I include the spouse’s parents? Basically, to see if in-laws are marrying into my family in different places. I have had siblings marry cousins of mine. The cousins aren't necessarily siblings, some are and some aren’t. I have had an aunt married one gentleman and her niece marry her stepson. So, I like to figure out when in-laws are related to each other. 

I also, figure out all the descendants of my ancestors. Reason: these make great books, such as the “Goodwin Family”, where I would start with my oldest known Goodwin Ancestor and include all their descendants. Another Reason: those living descendants are the one’s taking DNA test and are showing up as your matches. I don’t know these people and thus the names are not always recognized because names change whenever a female descendant gets married. Thus, the more people I have in my family tree, the easier it is to figure out who my DNA matches are. 

Thus, DNA is a major reason to have one tree. For example, I had my half-siblings tested, now which tree do I attach their DNA to? Their tree which only has their father’s line or my tree which has our mother’s ancestry in? I can only attach the results to one tree. I guess I could have them take two test (waste of money) and attach one test to one tree and the other test to the other tree. However, I have created a special DNA Tree where I merge their father’s tree to my tree to create a DNA tree. At first, I was only including a couple of generations of descendants in this merged tree. I am now at the point; I almost need to merge our two complete trees and just work from there. I am hesitant, because I am the home person in my tree and my oldest brother is the home person of my sibling’s tree. It does get confusing when I look at someone and I see no direct relationship. My DNA tree is not a working tree, I don’t make changes in this tree. I recreate this tree about once a year and attach all the DNA tests that I manage in Ancestry to their profiles in the tree. 

So back to our questions: Should I create separate trees for my family? If you create one tree for each of your grandparent’s think of overlap in the trees. You for example, would be in each tree, all their descendants would be in multiple trees, unless you are going to end the tree at your grandparent level. However, think of all the people who will be missing from these trees if you don’t include them. Plus, when your cousin ask you how are you related to so and so? How hard is that going to be to figure out, or how easy it would be to calculate if they are in your tree. 

Plus, family trees are not like trees at all but more like spider webs where they connect in more than one spot. A person, from your maternal grandfather’s family might marry into your paternal grandmother’s family. What about in-law siblings where one marries into your maternal grandfather’s family and the other into your paternal grandmother’s family. If the trees are separate, you might not see this. Have you seen funeral announcements of old, where they list everyone who attended a funeral, you might see your paternal grandmother’s first cousin attending your maternal grandfather’s 2nd cousin’s funeral, why? Because the first cousin’s wife is the sister of the 2nd cousin’s husband. 

So how far out do you build a tree? For me, I build out as far as I can. I include the parents of spouses who marry into my family. I have expanded some of those spouse’s family lines to figure out if they are related to others with the same surname. I include all my distant cousins, because we share a common ancestor. I even include spouses of spouses? If my relative’s spouse was married before or after being married to my relative, I include their spouse too. I include their children with said spouse. Reason: Some families view their family different then blood lines, I have seen step-children listed as children in census records and obituaries. By placing them into their proper place, I will know exactly how we are related and why I don’t match DNA with someone. 

Does this make for big trees, yes it does. However, with computers, handling such big trees is no problem at all. I usually only work on a branch at a time, print reports for only a branch at a time. Thus, I am usually working only on a small subset of my big tree at any given time.

For a little background, my trees are created using Family Tree Maker (FTM) a genealogy software program that resides on my computer. I can merge trees, export branches of my tree to share with family members (this doesn’t remove them from my tree). A genealogy software program is a very powerful tool. If you are using only Ancestry for your tree, you won’t have all these capabilities. Thus, if you start with multiple trees, you won’t be able to merge them without purchasing a genealogy software program. Keep in mind, that all software genealogy programs don’t talk directly with Ancestry and thus you will need to export a GEDCOM (genealogy file) from Ancestry to load into your software program. You will lose all your images. However, FTM talks to Ancestry and you won’t lose your images. 

So, whether you are a beginner or been doing genealogy for many years, its always good to review how you are doing genealogy and think about how far to build out your tree and how many tree’s should you have.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

Family Book Creator - Fact Descriptions

As previously mentioned in my prior post, I have been working on a family book for my sister-in-law and using Family Book Creator (FBC) for generating this book.

One doesn’t realize the results of one choice until one generates a book. For example, let’s talk about Fact Descriptions.

I sometimes use the description field for major fact types of Birth, Marriage, Death, and Burial Facts. For birth fact descriptions, besides stating a hospital, I might use, Twin or Triple to denote this person is a twin or triple and thus is why I have siblings born on the same day. I have used adopted if the person was adopted.

For Marriage descriptions, I do like to put in the Church name, if known, however I have been known to put in 1st marriage, 2nd marriage and so on. 

For Death descriptions, besides the name of the long care facility or hospital, I have put in cause of death, such as car accident, shooting accident, murdered, etc.…

For burial description, I usually put in the cemetery name, however, I have inputted, cremated or body donated to science.

Therefore, you can see, I don’t necessarily have the same type of information in the description field for each fact. FBC does offer, many description style options. Plus, each fact can be customized in FBC to have its own description style. The default style is “at description in place| Sentence. Description.” The results of this option: If the description contains more than two words and the last character is a punctuation mark (“.”, “!”, or “?”) the description will be shown as an additional sentence. Otherwise, the description will be shown as a location detail before a given place. If no place is given the description will be handled as an additional sentence. 

I also noticed that the description doesn’t always print in each spot where the fact is printed. 

My first example is the use of Twin. I have 28 individuals who are labeled as a twin. I have a set of twins, Jerrold and Jerome who are both married and have children. Thus, when they print in their parent’s family section, the description is not printing. However, when they print in their family section, the description does use the word “at” before twin.

Thus, I decided to move Twin to the suffix field of the name and place it inside parentheses. Now it prints wherever his name prints. Therefore, before his children are listed in his family section, in his children’s Family Sections where he is listed as the parent, also in the index. 

Now what if I have a complete sentence in the description the result stated it should print as a separate sentence after the fact. I have an individual who died in a plane crash and once I changed the description verbiage to a sentence with a period at the end, it printed perfectly.

 My main take away from this, is be conscious on what you are typing in your description fields.  The more we can have the data the way we want in the Family Tree Maker file, the less we must manually modify in the generated Word document. 

If you want to see what you have in your description fields for a fact, I ran a quick filter. I “filter in” everyone who had a “death” “description” that “is not blank.” I had 128 individuals. I clicked on the first individual and looked at their description. I said the sentence out loud, He or She died at “description” in Location on date. If it made sense, I left it. If it didn’t make sense, I turned the description into a sentence. This didn’t take me very long at all. Run this for your Birth, Marriage, and Burial facts. 

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

 

Family Book Creator – When Cousins Marry

I am working on a descendant book for my sister-in-law where eight descendants of her primary couple have married each other.

I printed out a book last year and it was brought to my attention that a marrying cousin couple wasn’t showing up properly. The children were printing under one spouse, however the other spouse had nothing. She didn't even look like she had been married.

Example One

Let me first say that I love Family Book Creator (FBC). I tried the trial version many years ago and saw it does what I want it to do. So, I decided to buy the program. Family Book Creator is a plugin for Family Tree Maker (FTM). It creates beautiful books from the Family Tree Maker software database. Even though FTM does have its own book option, however, in my opinion, I found that FBC books look nicer.

Also, FBC has many options and settings you can specify for your book. This can be overwhelming and I highly recommend you familiarize yourself with the user guide. I printed out the guide which has about 112 pages. This way I could write my own notes on the manual pages to help further explain the settings and which one's I preferred.

Anyway, I could not find in the FBC user guide if there was a way to fix my printing problem. I went to the Facebook User Group for FBC and asked about this situation. A fellow group member stated that it should print some kind of verbiage of “duplicated family”. Thus, I went back to FBC and restored the defaults and ran the program. Sure enough, it does print the verbiage and only lists the children under one of the spouses and refers to the other spouse in both places.

Example Two

However, the defaults are not the settings I wanted, so I started to play with the settings, and I found out some interesting things. You will find the defaults settings explained later. I didn't want a Family Section for every couple, only couples who had children.

The type of book I was generating was a Descendant style book using the Register Style and Organized by generations. I was trying to keep the book simple and chose not to include the generation indicators. You can read more about Generation Indicators in the FBC user manual. Since this doesn’t affect my situation, I am not going to explain it here.

My challenge has to do with family sections which is controlled under Book Items -> Main Part -> Individuals to include -> Family Sections. The “Family sections’ area allows you to specify which family members are going to have their own family sections in the book. 

Under Family Sections, one can select several options All Individuals, Individuals with children or spouses, Individuals with children and Only living Individuals.

When you start with the primary couple, it will print their information first in paragraph form and then list their children, giving them a birth order number, (Roman numerals in my case) from oldest to youngest. When a family section is created for a child, it will have a “+” symbol and a reference number to indicate that this individual will appear later in the book in their own Family Sections.

All Individuals – will generate a Family Section for every person, even if they never married or had children.

Individuals with children or spouse (default) – will generate a Family Section for every person who had offspring whether they married or not and every person who married but didn’t have offspring.

Individuals with children – will generate a Family section for every person who had offspring whether they married or not.

All Living Individuals – I did not try this option. I knew I wanted more than living individuals.

Below the drop down for the four above options is a check box – Use single section per relationship.

When this is checked (default), it creates single sections within the Family Section for each partner and their children. Thus, it prints a paragraph or two about the primary person of the Family Section followed by the marriage information for each relationship, where it will cross-reference to a later section of the primary person about each relationship. Then it will print information about the first relationship and list all their children, then the second relationship and their children and so on.

When this is unchecked, it creates a combined family section. It starts with the primary person, then a paragraphs about the different spouses, their facts and marriage facts, in order of marriage. The children are listed at the end with the children with the first spouse and then the second spouse and so on. 

Please note that the spouse order is control through FTM. If you have known marriage dates, it will sort the spouses by marriage date. If a marriage date is missing for one or all marriages, it will print based on spouse order, you will need to go into the spouses and set the order of spouses.. Thus, if you don’t know a marriage date, you will want to make sure to put the spouses in the proper order with the first marriage listed first and so on. Refer to your FTM companion guide to see how to set spouse order.

Scenario One: Thus, the FBC defaults have Family Sections to print for Individuals with children or spouse and the check box is checked for Use single sections per relationship. This is why it prints properly, as shown in the Example Two. However, I didn’t want my book to print with either of these options. It made my book too long by printing Family Sections for all married/childless couples, instead of printing their spouse information under the child section of their parent’s Family Section.

Scenario Two: Then, I changed the Family sections to print for Individuals with children and left the check box checked. The family section with children only prints under one of the couples and the other spouse prints like they are unmarried, as shown in Example One.

Scenario Three: Next, I went back to the Family sections to print for Individuals with children or spouse and unchecked the box for use single sections per relationship. This time it printed Family Sections for each spouse with children. The children did reference the same additional Family Sections for each of them. However, no duplicated family verbiage printed. See Example Three below.

Example Three

Scenario Four: Then, I changed the Family sections to print for Individuals with children and left the check box unchecked. I got the same results as Scenario Two which is Example One; where the family section with children only prints with one of the couples and the other spouse prints like they are unmarried. This was the setting I had for my original book. 

This led me to a suggested made by one of the users of the FB group. He suggested that I create the custom fact of FBC_HasFamilySection. The FBC user guide explains how to create this fact. The guide stated you might want a section for an individual with no children or no spouse (which are the defaults) to print because you have a lot of pictures or person notes that you want to put in their own family section without having to select All Individuals to get that same family section. I have come across some family members who are clergy or nuns and it might be nice to put that information into their own Family Section instead of it printing in the child section of their Parent's Family section.

Therefore, I went back to the report I generated with the defaults (Scenario One - Example Two). I identified the four spouses that had a Family Section, but the children didn’t print under them. These are the four spouses in Scenario Four - Example One that didn't print their spouse information in my original book. After creating the custom fact for my tree, I input “true” in the description of that custom fact for my four identified spouses. You might notice that my screen doesn’t match yours because I customized the View to put fields that I commonly add information into on the main input screen, instead of having to go to the person tab and add the fact and information there. Please refer to your FTM companion guide on how to Customize this view.

Finally, I used the Family Settings I desired of Individuals with children and unchecked the box for Use Single sections per relationship. This generated the same results as Scenario Three / Example Three. Since the custom FBC fact was generating a family section where one normally wasn't being generated. This was acceptable to me. 

This workaround included a couple of manual options that I could do at this point. I could add the “duplicate verbiage” to each Family Section and I could delete the children from one of the spouses so it looked like Example Two – Scenario One.  When referencing future pages, I found as I added the verbiage to Family Sections, and deleted children from one of the spouses, it might move a future Family Section I was referencing to a new page. Thus, you might want to verify the pages numbers after you manually type that verbiage for all the Family Sections. I just used the Find command and looked for the word duplicated. I selected each one and verified that the page referenced was correct. If it was wrong, I just fix it.

I know this might still seem a little confusing, please take your time and reread anything that is confusing. I have a programmer’s background and thus, this was standard practice when I tested out programs I wrote. I would try different scenarios and see if I achieved the desired results. The creator of FBC, Stefan Harms reached out to me after seeing my question in the FBC user group. Thus I have sent an email to him with my examples, and explanations. Whether he can duplicate the same results and if he is able to modify the program to handle all situations for marrying cousins is yet to be seen. For me, it doesn’t matter at this point, since I now understand what is happening and I have developed a work around.

Thus, don’t be afraid to try different settings to better understand what the program can do for you. There is a lot more for me to learn and try. I look forward to using FBC for many years yet to come. 

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

Family Tree Maker Hints – Burial Date

I have been working on a family book for my sister-in-law. Actually, it’s an updated version of the book I created last year. Last year, in the spring, we started on her mother’s maiden name family tree. Someone gave her a binder with computer pages that looked like it was generated through Family Tree Maker. This book appeared to be created in the early 2000’s.

Anyway, my sister-in-law was in charged of the family reunion which they held in August of last year. Thus, I had a pressing time table. I didn’t get as much time as I would like to proof read the book. I created the book using the plugin “Family Book Creator.”

In my opinion, FBC is a wonderful tool for generating books. It has many options and I have only used it a couple of times, as an experiment to see what it does and it was quite a few years ago.

Anyway, fast forward to today. I have entered corrections and new information into my FTM software and generated the book. Even though FBC has many options, there are some things I would like to do differently. Such as, the graphical tree that it can include, I like it for the primary person and the 1st generation of children, however, I wish I could turn it off for the remainder of the book. My work around, I manually remove all the graphical trees that I don’t want in the Word document that it creates. This reduces the size of my book, dramatically.

Thus, before I go to all the work of removing these trees, I thought perhaps I need to really look over the book I created last year and see if there are any obvious things I need to fix.  

One of the things that really popped out at me was that sometimes the burial information would print before the death information. Being a programmer, I quickly saw that it was controlled by the date of the two events. Therefore, if I inputted a death date of Oct 24, 2021 and a burial date of Oct 30, 2021 then it printed in the correct order. However, if I inputted a death date of Oct 24, 2021 and a burial date of 2021 or Oct 2021, then it would sort the burial first, based on date and print that information in the paragraph first. It was like a “spoiler alert” because I reported where they are buried and then tell you about their death.

To fix this problem: Create a Filter

I returned to FTM. The challenge is how do I identify all the people who have incomplete death dates. On FTM, located beneath the Index, you will find a Filter option. When I click on that option, a filter screen will display. I click on Filter In…> and then click the All Facts option.  I use the drop-down arrow next to the Search where and select Burial. Then, next to Burial using the drop-down arrow I select Is not blank, then Okay. Next click Apply. The index will now only display those people who match my filter.   Then I click on the first person in the Index.

This person should have a Burial date. I will skip those that have a complete date and clear out the date for those people who have no date. Thus, I can use the down arrow to move through the list. I use my mouse to highlight the Burial date for incomplete dates and then press the delete key. I will need to click on that person’s name again in the index. I keep repeating this process until I am through the list of names. 

When I am done with this list, uncheck the Apply and the filter will go away and you are left with your normal Index view.

I will be sharing more hints as I work my way through the book. Next I will share a how to identify all those people who have a burial place but no Cemetery location, if you record the Cemetery name in the Description field.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

Update to Creating a Tree for RootsTech Relatives

Last year I started a stand-alone tree for my RootsTech Relatives. This year I decided that I wanted to repeat the process, however, I decided I would update what I had started last year.

My prior post “Creating a Tree for RootsTech Relatives” explains how I created the tree.

For my matches, in the FSID custom fact which stands for FamilySearch ID, I had typed Match. So, the first thing I did was use the Edit – Find and Replace function to find all the occurrences of “Match” and replace it with Match – 2022.

I had a smart filter that included all FSID contains Match, I modified it to contains 2022 and renamed the filter to 2022 Matches. I had 559 inputted matches from last year.

Then I created a new smart filter that included all FSID contains 2023 and named that filter 2023 Matches.

So, if I apply the new smart filter, the index will limit the view to only show those individuals who are my 2023 Matches. I use this view to verify that I have entered all the matches that FamilySearch has reported have joined. 

I have noticed that last year, it didn’t always show the last deceased person’s info for my relatives. This year it is giving me that information, and I am able to update my previous matches.

If this year’s match was previously entered from last year, I modify the FSID field that contains Match – 2022 to Match – 2022, 2023. 

If this year’s match is a newly entered match, then I enter Match – 2023

I have found some matches who have changed their username as in Shannonhill54 is now known as Shannon. Therefore, in the birth description, I entered 2022 = Shannonhill54. I think their former username might be their legal name and thus I don’t want to lose that name.

Thus, when I click “View Relatives”, I start at the top of my list and I type in their username into my FTM Index, if I find them, I modify their entry and verify that it’s the same. I also add those deceased people that last year wasn’t being displayed to me. If they are a new match, I start at the common ancestor and follow the path down to them, entering those individuals who are not already in my tree. Many in the lines of my matches are already in my tree and thus the process goes pretty fast.

Currently, I have very few matches, thus, keeping up with this project this year has been relatively easy (knock on wood). 

Also, it seemed that my matches are pretty low, so I made sure to look at how I am connected to my relatives on the shared tree in FamilySearch. I wanted to make sure my known ancestors were showing connected to me. I did find that my 3rd Great Grandfather wasn’t attached to his wife, so I added him.

The purpose of this Relatives tree is for giving me another hint. Perhaps, I have a DNA Match that I don’t recognize the name in my main tree, I could see if they are in this Relatives tree and then research to see if the lineage is accurate. Also, it has extended many of my branches, I can see if that new ancestor is really the parent of my proven ancestor. I might be able to extend my tree back a generation or two or more.

Have fun at RootsTech this year, whether you attend in person or virtually.