Family History

This is the home page for learning more about the history of my family, in a broad sense. There are three main sections: Photos (viewing photos in various ways); Genealogy (viewing information about families in various ways); Directions (details about how to do various tasks if you are not sure where to start).

Photos

Browse photos (via Subsets) - Here you can get an overview of all the photos organized by source, collection, year, grouping, keyword, people within photo, place of photo and so on
Restrict photos - Here you can have a more intelligent browsing by specifying restrictions on which ones to view. This a versatile option and very effective (but only reflects the amount of processing of the photos that has been done so far), but takes a little bit of effort. Items to restrict by: Name, year, place, source, grouping, keyword and then they can be combined by using AND, OR, or AND NOT and also a sort order can be specified.
FastRestrict photos - This is similar to the previous one with the advantage that you might be able to find your photos more quickly, though it has less flexibility.
Search photos - This allows one to search for a (partial or complete) string within the annotation, label, description, comments, or transcription (if applicable), or all of these. Quite handy to look for text associated with a photo.
Other options: Photos with Questions Random Photos Recent Additions Recent Edits
Transcriptions - list of transcriptions of various public documents and photos (somewhere between Photos and Genealogy).

Genealogy

There are five major, distinct ways of obtaining information at the database-driven portion of this site.

By date - here, picking either a year, or year and month, or an actual day or range of these, all selected records occurring in the specified time frame will be shown.
By name - here, you choose a name (and possibly related persons) and then choose which records to view for this person.
By place - here, by picking a broad (such as a state or country) or narrow (actual city) specification, all specified records from this location will be presented.
By type - here, one chooses what type of records to view and then one can restrict further by specifying a last name or state.
By summary - here, one chooses what type of records to view and then one is presented a summary list of all names of that type that are linked to take the user to that specific record.

Directions

Below are some common tasks that one may wish to undertake to gain a greater genealogical understanding of a family or family member. If you have others that you think would be worth adding here, let me know by using the Contact menu. Actually, the best way to learn what is here is to choose play around and try things. You won't break anything (not to say that that are no bugs, but you won't create them, but you may uncover them - please let me know then, OK) and you can always come back to this page by using the Home button on the upper left or any of the other menus at the top. Enjoy.

To view a database-generated biography of a person - use By name, choose the person, and then choose the last item "Database-generated Biography"
To find all the censuses in which a particular person (or family) was in -- use the By name link, choose person, how much of family to include (perhaps best to only include the person) and then choose census records.
To find all the census records at a particular place -- use the By place link, choose the place, and then choose census records.
To find all the census records for a given year - use the By date link, choose year of interest, and then choose census records
To learn more about the people with a given last name - choose By type, choose last name, and optionally choose state
To learn about all the birth and death information about the extended family of a particular person - use the By name link, find the name of the person, choose who all to choose (self, parents, spouses, children and so on) and then choose births and deaths. Also include the records for these if you wish to see more details.
To see all those born in a given year - use the By date link, choose the year, and then births.
To see all those born with a particular birthday - use the By date link, choose the month and date, and then births. Alternatively, use the By name link, find a person with the desired birthday, and then click on the day of the month to view all with this birthday.
To see all photos from a given year - use either By date link, choose the year and then photos or use the By summary link and choose Photos By Year
To view all tombstone information known about a family or place (or both) - use the By type link, choose Burial Records and then optionally choose a name and/or State