Insights Into Our Future And Our Past

Recently I was working at the research desk in the Family History Library. A patron came into the library in hopes of finding information about her American Indian ancestors. She wanted to find the records for the school that her ancestor attended. She asked, “I want to find the Carlisle Indian school records.”

My first reaction was a big, silent “gulp” because I have no experience in American Indian research. I had no idea where the Carlisle school was located so I asked her if she knew what state the school was in. She replied, “Pennsylvania.”

I knew that a lot of instructions for American Indian research had already been added to the FamilySearch Research Wiki, so I was hopeful that the article about Pennsylvania American Indian records would help me be successful in assisting this patron with her search.

From the home page on FamilySearch Research Wiki, I clicked on United States, then I selected Pennsylvania, and finally American Indians.

There are no words to describe how excited I was to see an explaination of the “Carlisle Indian Industrial School” right there on the first page. In addition, there was a link to the web site for the school that contained a complete history of the school. The patron and I  reviewed all the information on the Wiki about the school and the availability of records for the school. Thanks to the FamilySearch Research Wiki, the patron left that day with the knowledge she needed to continue the search for her ancestors who attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

I will admit that Zamzar is an interesting title for this post. You are probably wondering what it means. The title is actually the name of a website I discovered a few days ago. I’m actually jumping for joy because this site is going to help me with a big project I’ve had on my list of things to do for several years. With the help of the services offered on this website, I will finally be able to complete my project, and at no cost to me!

My project is to convert all my old WordPerfect documents to the Word format so I can preserve all my family history projects that I’ve worked on for the past fifteen years. I haven’t used WP for the past five years or so, and my files just sit on the hard drive. I’ve tried to open several of the files in Word, but the success rate is very low and mostly zero.

The services offered on Zamzar are file conversions, many different types of file conversions. And converting files from WP to Word is what I need. I sent a single file for conversion as a test case. I chose the free option, so the conversion didn’t cost a dime. I expected the file would be converted and made available to me in a day or so. To my surprise, less than two hours later I had the converted file. I don’t use a PC at home, but opening the new Word file on my Mac in Word for Mac was a breeze.

The next test I conducted was sending five files. This is the maximum you can send in a single request when using the free service. Of course you can send more if you pay for the service. Plus you can have a secured site where your converted files are sent after conversion when you have the paid service option.

All five files were converted and sent to me via e-mail notification in less than two hours. I figured if I sent five files every day that in a week or two I would have all my WordPerfect files converted to Word … just like magic!

A lot of blogs related to family history include news items about the new and improved resources available online for family history work. Some family history blogs are used for entirely different purposes. Over a year ago I discovered a Blog that was a transcription of an English soldier’s letters he wrote during World War I. (See WWI: Experiences of an English Soldier.) The letters were being transcribed exactly 90 years after they were written and posted to the blog. I was impressed with the project and started thinking about different ways that I could use a blog for my own family history efforts. I decided to blog about the research I had done for two different ancestors:

1. Benjamin Kingman Curtis
2. Chauncey Walker West

In both blogs I’ve started to add a history of all the research that has been done for both the Curtis and West families. My hope was to take all my research notes and add them to the blog so that children and grandchildren wouldn’t have to conduct the research all over again. I’ve also added a lot of pictures to the blog that I’ve collected over the years. Three reasons for adding pictures: to preserve them, to share them, and to provide a way for others to identify the unknowns. The West blog has multiple authors because other distant cousins wanted to share the research they have done as well.

In the future I will have a book printed directly from the contents in the blog - and I won’t have to retype anything!!! There are print-on-demand publishing companies online that can automatically generate a book from your blog (cool, huh!!!). Producing a book with my research notes will be a lot better than having my children sort through six filing cabinet drawers, don’t you think?

I’ve learned a lot about Blogs during the past year. And when I think about what got me started, it was the WWI: Experiences of an English Soldier blog that I discovered one day while surfing the web.