June 26th meeting

Great stories from our members about their personal genealogy research over the last 6 weeks.

There will be no DIRT meetings in July 2019.

The main discussion was on "Using Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets for Genealogy".  After reviewing some very basic Excel concepts, we jumped right into some examples of using this for genealogy.  One source was Thomas McEntee Research Log: Click here, then scroll down on the page until you see the list of resources: select Genealogy Research Log.   As we discussed uses for excel, this became more of a "what would you use it for, would it be useful to you" instead of a "basic features of Excel". So it was decided our time would be spent showing ways to use it, then during our next DIRT meeting in August to have everyone build or use their own spreadsheet and show more tips.

I did show how to export your data from Family Tree Maker to a .csv file, then to convert this to Excel and have all your choosen data automatically populate an Excel table, saving lots of re-typing of information.  I will post a video "how-to" do this in the coming days.

June 12th meeting

We covered the following

1) Research questions and reading a tips on reading a U.S. census: click here
2) how to prepare for a Research Trip handout: Click here
3) How to prepare for a Family Reunion: Click here
    - interview questionnaire: Click here
    - family genealogy questionnaire: Click here

We will not have any DIRT meetings on July 10 or July 24th.