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Using Facebook for genealogy

I've discovered that Facebook is a VERY useful application for genealogy, not perfect, but useful.

Indeed, most genealogy tools allow you to work with data from over a 100 years ago. That's good when you are researching with ancestors. However for working with contemporary kins, I had not found anything better than the phone book.
MyHeritage tried to bridge that gap, helping you get in touch with other people by comparing last names (rarely useful) and pictures with automated tools (not many people upload pictures, so not very useful).

I was lucky many years ago to meet a remote cousin of my grand mother who gave me lots of data on the family. I expanded his research into contemporary kins, and have updated it quite a bit. Nevertheless I was stuck with many loose ends, with people bearing names very different to my surnames.

That's where Facebook comes in handy :

1) I started searching every single remote cousin (in one instance, we are more than 450 direct descendants of Daniel ULRICHSEN for example) on Facebook. I only had last names. For some of them I only got 1 match (mind you, people from Chile, Argentina, Brasil, Canada, USA, Australia, Germany...). I send them a message asking them to confirm their ancestry. So far I haven't got ANY wrong answer back. Building on them, I've started correcting and expanding sections of the family tree (closed to 21,000 members now), with dates, places, more names, pictures. I couldn't have done that so simply without the Internet and a social network. The only other way would have been to go to the central phone authority office, and look at the phone booth of every country and contact every one...

2) we've created groups on Facebook (a bit tedious when a. some people belong to many same surnames, b. when you need to tell a new member to subscribe to a new name). On one group, we are already 41 people in 3 days. Most of us have never met in person, or hardly new each other before.
Of course these groups now allow us to exchange pictures, videos, news about the family, which is really nice.

What I lack now are
- a newsfeed per group only
- the ability to map geographic locations for each person on a map
- possibly a closer integration with a family tree (I've tried a few of those genealogy apps on facebook, nah...). Ideally whenever I update something on geneanet that is relavant to a group, it would get posted automatically ??? ? (day dreaming here...)
- an easier way to manage group subscriptions (integration between geneanet and ancestor last names  ???? - doing it again)

I had written about it a while ago, when commenting on Geni. This might work.

The only remaining track of my great-great-grandfather Stanislaus Hannig in Berlin

DSC06313.JPG
Originally uploaded by rsepulveda

in the registry of Lichterfelde cemetary, a district of Berlin. His grave is gone, his house is gone. Only this book is still a living memory that he once lived and died in Lichterfelde.

+ 2 march 1917... RIP.

Update on the descendants of Heinrich HANNIG ULRIKSEN

Cousin Cristobal OVIEDO GONZALEZ has helped correct many mistakes on that branch of the family. Pictures of the family coming up, and hopefully one from Amanda, a 3-month old baby, the youngest in that branch :)

Update on 10 sep 2007 : we have updated this family branch again with new games, mistake corrections and new pictures. Enjoy !

Boda de Gianna y Marcelo FERRADA

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Originally uploaded by Marcelo_Gianna

En esta foto, estan parados detras de la mama de Marcelo, Lia SCHULZ HANNIG, Manuel CASTRO, Laura CASTRO SCHULZ y Daniel CASTRO SCHULZ.

Huge ULRIKSEN family gathering last night in Santiago, Chile

Constanza OLIVA SCHULZ, Teresa ULRIKSEN FABRES, Doris SCHULZ HANNIG, Susy ULRIKSEN JOLLY, Nelda HANNIG KORTWICH, Ingrid ULRIKSEN LISTER
Originally uploaded by rsepulveda

More than 60 cousins got together last night in Santiago, all descendants of Daniel ULRICHSEN, who should have been very proud :)

In the picture : Constanza OLIVA SCHULZ (my 1st degree cousin), Teresa ULRIKSEN FABRES, Doris SCHULZ HANNIG (my mother), Susy ULRIKSEN JOLLY, Nelda HANNIG KORTWICH (my grand-mother), Ingrid ULRIKSEN LISTER

Ulriksen descendants meet up

  Ulriksen descendants meet up 
  Originally uploaded by rsepulveda

in Paris on June 21st, 2007, 3 descendants of Daniel ULRICHSEN met up: Christian ULRIKSEN RUIZ, Rodrigo SEPULVEDA SCHULZ, Daniel VIÑAR ULRIKSEN

Update on another branch of the ULRIKSEN JOLLY

Guillermo ULRIKSEN JOLLY writes in to update us on the weddings of his sons, and sends in pictures of his branch of the family. Great, he was the last one missing :) we are now expecting an update on the dates of birth, etc.

Update on tree of President German RIESCO

Enrique VENEGAS FLORES sent me an email to correct a bad source in the tree. He also sent me his tree link.

Indeed, full of information, and in particular a huge chunk of the genealogy of President RIESCO that I tried to update. Lots more in this tree I'm sure.

Updating the LEBEGUE - THOMAS family

It's been almost 3 years since we've updated this branch of the tree. I found a mailing list today on Cousins77 with a few names similar to ours : THOMAS, LEBEGUE, DABON.

They were all researched by M. Jean COUSIN. I emailed him, and only a couple of hours later I got an email with extra information (3 generations and part confirmation of my hypothesis...).

I'm now stuck with a person : on the grave there are 3 persons I can't identify:
* Marguertie REMY, died after 6 days in 1895. Who's she the daughter of ? Definitely her mother must be a THOMAS ?
* Sophie MANCELLE, spouse DABON (and not widow), died at 64 in 1889 (meaning she was born in 1825). Who's she maried to ? M. Cousin sent me a "Marie Anne Sophie MANCEL 1776-1826). Very close, but at least one generation apart.
* Edmond THOMAS, died at 14 in 1851. My guess is that he is the brother of Adolphine THOMAS.

I think I need to go to the AD 77 again...

In the meantime, on Geneanet and on patro.com, I found many folks relating to the DABON in Moret-sur-Loing. 2 other branches too in Hericy and Montereau (close by). Looking for a link there as well.

Prof. Pablo ULRIKSEN UGARTE has died

Surfing the Web, we found an obituary for Profesor Pablo ULRIKSEN UGARTE, who died in December 2005. More information about him here.

His obituary mentions 5 children; we only have 4 in the tree. Are we missing someone, or is it a mistake ?

update on the GANA ULRIKSEN branch

Reverand Daniel GANA ULRIKSEN writes in to update his branch of the family, announce the birth of his grand-daughter Sophie Elisabeth, and sends in also some pictures. We've also updated part of his wife's family tree. This picture also came with this anchor:

El diácono Daniel Gana, chileno radicado en Canadá, junto a su señora Carmen. Él fue quien represento a los diáconos de habla hispana en el Encuentro Mundial de la Juventud en toronto 2002.  Estuvo en el escenario junto al Papa Juan Pablo II.

update on the RAURICH ULRIKSEN branch

Kurt RAURICH SOTO writes in to update some information on his daughters, to update us on the death of father and uncle Percy and Ronnie RAURICH ULRIKSEN respectively. Thanks for the update.

updating the 17-19th century tree branches

Our family tree is strongly connected to the core founding families of Chile. These were first described for the general public in the 3 volumes of "Familias Fundadoras de Chile" (using stuff from Mujica, La Cuadra Gormaz, Nobleza colonial de Chile, and others). I've typed in all the tables at the end to provide for a skeleton to the tree, but only according to research additional information there.

Our tree was first connected there to the VERGARA family through Arturo SIVORI VERGARA x Teresa ULRIKSEN FABRES. We have found a few other touchpoints mroe recently between our family tree and the general Chilean tree.

We are now again connected to the VERGARA, MONTT, CORREA, ORTIZ de GAETE and many more families through the parents of Inès JOLLY MONGE, on her maternal side.

Had we not typed in for the past many years the branches of more famous families, these connections would not have happened so easily.

We took the occasion to update some tree branches recently, as we connected brothers ans sisters together, individuals known with different variations of their last names, etc.

Two more recent resources have been :
. Bibioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile listing members of parliament (bios, dates, pictures): http://biografias.bcn.cl/pags/biografias/
. a new version of Mauricio Pilleux's site: www.genealog.cl, with a largely updated listing of data.

Lots of new pictures on the ULRIKSEN JOLLY tree branch

   

Priscila ULRIKSEN RUIZ has sent in lots of new pictures, information about her recent wedding (congrats!), and a few corrections on the family tree for the ULRIKSEN JOLLY family branch. Thanks!

 

Other family members from the same branch or other branches can of course do the same :)

Looking for an online social family network

My online family tree has now more than 18,000 members in it. I'm also part of the Roglo database, soon approaching the with over 2m members. It's getting very difficult for me to keep track of all my family contacts (I use the NOTE field in every person's file, but it's not easily searchable and manageable), send them updates about the tree (I use the sepulveda.org blog), or enabling them to subscribe to a ping for an update on any particular branch of the family tree.

The Geneweb software I'm using is not allowing it, nor is the service hosting the tree for me.
I'm really in the need for a social family network hosted service.

Hence I looked again at Geni today.

Its interface is very slick and seems to have a lot of the bells & whistles I'm looking for : but after playing with it for a few minutes, there's no appeal. It's not for me. I'm a pro-am genealogist, with many thousand people in my database, meaning I need to manage many different communities (by ancestor mainly), that can interact or not between themselves.

I understand the simplicity of Geni for adding new family members (good for rookie genealogists), but in my case, there's no way I'm going to start retyping everything, and although I might look into importing my GEDCOM file to Geni (THIS FEATURE IS NOT AVAILABLE? crazy), I will always maintain it inside geneweb. Hence I need social features added on top on my existing tool.

I also need a way to easily manage pictures for a community (I currently use Flickr Albums for this), so that everyone interested in this community can browse through them. Pictures in my case include at least:
. pictures taken of original documents (such as birth, marriage, death certificates)
. pictures taken at cemeteries, places: documenting the life of the person
. pictures of individuals at family reunions.
Of course, my guess is that we should start to use video soon as well.

Additional uses are comments, events organization (family reunions, weddings, baptisms, etc.), bulletin board, etc. And not to be forgotten, heavy use of maps such as Google Earth for :
. different places where a person has lived
. where they are now
. where they are born, buried, etc.

Finally, the one feature I like about LinkedIn is the updated profile features that tells me what my friends are up to. I'd love the same thing on what my family members are up to.

There must be a way to create a mashup of all of this.

There's an interesting discussion about Geni and all its competitors on Techcrunch (mainly based on the valuation, which I don't care much for).

Geni’s family tree builder is really nice but MyFamily.com was the first to realize the market, Amigila.com was the first to build a Flash-based family tree tool. Famiva went limited beta with the viral family tree concept before Geni.

Famiva’s Java-applet based animated family network visualizer is also cool, plus it has many features designed to keep families stay current and keep coming back. MyHeritage and KinKafe are also worth a look. And then there’s the flashy Famundo. Geni is not alone in the Family 2.0 space.

I haven't tested all the services mentionned above yet (anyone that might help ?), but I was thinking more about maybe mixing NING or PeopleAggregator with Geneanet. Has anyone done it yet ?

If I were to start a new company today, this would probably be in the top of the list:

. something I care for

. something that can (OR NOT) be very scalable: at least for me, I see a heavy need, and I would be very much willing to pay for, in the hundreds of euros / year.

tracing my SEPULVEDA CASTILLO ancestry

On my trips to the Civil Registry (central office) in Santiago de Chile this January, I went to the Index section. There you only have access to lists and lists of names PER TOWN AND YEAR. A fantastic way to trace back your ancestors. The latest clues I had *** 2 years ago *** was that Guillermo SEPULVEDA CASTILLO was connected to a small town called Los Sauces, near Angol.

Hence there we go, browsing for all the SEPULVEDAs and CASTILLOs in the index of Los Sauces, for years 1880-1910 approximately (in case you find a death certificate, a wedding certificate, a birth certificate).

And there I found only ONE death certificate for Etelvina CASTILLO, daughter of Juan de Dios CASTILLO and Dolores BURGO(S?). Maybe the one ?

I also found one death certificate for Eduvijes SEPULVEDA (not a very common name), male, son of José Maria SEPULVEDA x Nieves CONCHA. Were these the parents ? Remember, the birth certificate of Guillermo said he was a "natural" child, meaning his parents were not married when he was born. I couldn't find a wedding certificate for Etelvina and Eduvije...

Hum... You don't have much information more on the index certificates. You have to ask there for a facsimile. Minimum 3 weeks. Then as I was travelling back to Europe, I had to find someone (my mom) to get the facsimiles, scan them, send them to me...

So here a few months later, I'm with both death certificates (where the parents are mentionned, they do not appear in the indexes...); Eduvijes and Etelvina were married to other people. Was this an outside-matrimony affair ? or were they married later ?

Big problem. I would need to go back and investigate more. But as usual, a little trip to the Mormon sites might help (reminder: they DO NOT publish online all their material. You have to go to a temple, takes 2 months to order a microfilm, only 1 or 2 at the time... You'd better have patience).

Now it's easier to check as I have parents. So there I type in the ADVANCED SEARCH:

"José Eduvije" + "SEPULVEDA" + "exact spelling".

And total surprise, I've found the couple, married a couple of years later, with a typo in the spelling of her. Hurray !

Parents for Etelvina here are correct, but not for José Eduvije. The certificate I had found was not the one. Dates coincide here too. So here we are, ONE generation up on this side of my family. (The nice thing is that it had a batch no for the Mormon films. This usually helps in tracing the other indexes online.)

I'll need to find the original of this wedding certificate now. Also start taking to churches now (since we are passed Civil Registry creation dates) for original death certificates of the parents, their wedding certificates, and birth certificates of parents and kids.

The ULRIKSENs are planning a big family reunion soon in Chile

In the past few days, Susy ULRIKSEN JOLLY has been circulating emails and documents, in order to prepare for a big meeting among all descendants of Daniel ULRICHSEN. There's even an Excel sheet with all emails going on.

If you are interested, leave a message or contact her directly. Emails have been copied in the notes section of every person concerned. You'll need a pass to access them though.

Missed posting about Geneweb 5.0

I posted this last february on my other blog:

Our good guru Daniel de Rauglaudre has released at last version 5.0 of his great genealogical software Geneweb. He's been running an experimental version on his site for at least a year now, and he has finally packaged it for many OSes. The previous stable version 4.10 was over 2 years old.
A 5.01 version is in the works. The change log is missing, but if you read the distribution list, you'll get a good grasp of what is involved.

Update: in the meantime, Geneanet.org has updated the version of its hosted geneweb infrastructure. That's where we run our family tree. Enjoy.

Using Microsoft's Silverlight to create nice graphical trees

 

Found it here: http://www.vertigo.com/familyshow.aspx I couldn't make the program work yet on my PC. I'll keep trying.