Kindo Family Blog

It’s back to school time, and maybe you’re thinking you need to know more about genealogy techniques and methods. One way to learn about genealogy is to take an online  course. Here are a few suggestions to get you started: Introduction to Genealogy from National Genealogical Society (U.S.) Most genealogists take this course first. It is very American-centric, but the techniques can be applied to any country’s vital statistics. There are more advance courses for specific regions and resources (e.g. wills). Introduction to Genealogy is an online course for those who have done little, if any, research on their families. It is open to anyone who wishes to enroll. Members of the National Genealogical Society (NGS) receive a tuition discount. Family History Personal Enrichment Classes Learn from Brigham Young University about research in the United States, France and Germany. These are non-credit courses, so there are no exams! Certificate in Genealogical Studies The National Institute for Genealogical Studies has joined forces with the Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto to provide web-based courses for both family historians and professional genealogists. Canadian-based. GenClass Online classes in a variety of genealogical topics are conducted online by qualified, experienced instructors. Each four-week class includes a detailed course curriculum and online class meetings for $29.95. A more comprehensive listing, along with seminars, workshops and classes, can be found in my book.

Boris family tree is full of surprises. Not only does his family tree disclose Turkish and noble relatives but also royal antecedents.

Indeed, on the one hand his great grandfather was Ali Kemal, Minister of the Interior in the government of Damat Ferid Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, his great, grandmother was the illegitimate daughter of Prince Paul von Rothenburg. The latter is linked to the Royal British Family as the great, great Grandson of George II but also to the Swedish and Dutch royals and the Romanoffs.

Therefore, we can easily understand Boris when he described himself as a “one-man melting point”

For those who want to know more, the Mayor’s royal antecedents are revealed in an episode of the BBC documentary Who do You Think You Are? screened on 20 August.

It’s always fun to get feedback from you Kindo users. Here’s a virtual postcard that arrived yesterday:

Hi!
These days, I’m showing my cousin, which I “found” through Kindo, around in the town. Kindo has actually enabled me to get back in touch with some of my many cousins. I now know who they are and just not some names my parents mention.

So Kindo - thanks! //CJ

Thanks yourself CJ!

Modern genealogy programs all have a way to output your data to paper, at least  by GEDCOM. Some common output forms are:

Ahnentafel :  a numeric list with all male ancestors assigned odd numbers and all female ancestors assigned even numbers.

Pedigree Charts: using the same numbering system as above, this is the familiar branching chart. It can run from left to right, or be formatted as a fan or a tree.

Outline or narrative: A format where the earliest known ancestor is the beginning, and spouses and children are listed, in many cases with notes on major life milestones, careers, etc.

But these are not the only ways to display your research. Especially at a family reunion, you may want to try these formats:

Time Line: Starting with the earliest known ancestor, show the names of all by birthdate. Add historical events to understand your ancestor’s life better, including a location timeline for your ancestor, entering in where he was for each date.  Show the cousin relationships by entering dates of birth on a timeline and putting your common ancestor in parenthesis.

Fabric: You can create a family tree in the pedigree chart of your choice using photographs and the transfer paper that allows you to iron images onto cloth. You can do this with quilt blocks, t-shirts, tablecloths, and many other textiles.

Photograph Collage: Scan in old photographs of ancestors, print them out and create a pedigree chart, framed and captioned with names and dates.

Maps: Show the migration of your ancestors with map pins attached to names and dates. You can find outline maps at  http://www.eduplace.com/ss/ssmaps/. Use different colors for different generations!

If you see someone with squinting eyes today, chances are that he or she has observed this morning’s solar eclipse. In most countries it was only a partial one, but if you e.g. are one of our users on Greenland (yes we do have users there), you had the rare opportunity to observe a total eclipse!

However, this makes me think of one of my family’s stories - you know, that kind of stories that all families have and are told over and over again.

As I said, partial eclipses happen every now and then, but the total are really rare. My grandmother was a primary school teacher in the northern part of Sweden back in the 1950’s. For a long time, newspapers had written about the astronomical sensation that would occur and my grandma had pedagogically prepared her class and told them to bring sooted glass to look through from the school yard.

The other class in the little school had a more old school (ok, sorry for that one) teacher. My grandma, aged 32, tried without any progress to convince her to also let her kids have the chance to observe the phenomenon. It could maybe be regarded as a field study in nature science? The old woman refused - the kids should have their grammary class as normal, there’s a curriculum to follow, right?

- Why would we give them extra break just for something stupid as a total solar eclipse, they can see it next time!

Well, maybe not - the next similar event in Sweden won’t come until the year 2126! In other words, something that makes Halley’s comet look like a yo-yo! Maybe it’s these poor kids that moved to Greenland!

In my book,Genealogy Online 8th Edition, the first chapter is about how to begin your genealogy project. For a detailed description, read my book ;D. But here is a short version of how to get started.

To begin your genealogy, begin with yourself.  Collect the information that you know for certain about yourself, your spouse, and your children. The data you want are birth, marriage, graduation, and other major life milestones. The documentation would ideally be the original certificates; such documents are considered primary sources. A primary source is an original piece of information that documents an event: a death certificate, an adoption order, a birth certificate, a military record, a marriage license,  a divorce decree, etc. Photographs, with the people in them identified and the date on back, can also be valuable. Such documents are considered primary sources because they reflect data recorded close to the time and place of an event.

If possible, scan in your sources of information on your immediate family.

Now, you’re ready to begin gathering data on one surname. A good place to begin is interviewing family members—parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws. Ask them for stories, names, dates, and places of the people  and events in the family.  It’s a good idea, and lots of fun, to record these interviews. You’ll cherish the audio or video later, I promise.

You can also gather secondary sources to expand your information: A secondary source is a source that may cite an original source but is not the source itself: an obituary, wedding story, or birth notice in a newspaper; a printed genealogy; a Web site genealogy, etc.  When possible, get documents to back up what you’re told. Family Bibles, newspapers, diaries, wills, and letters can help here. A good question to ask at this point is whether any genealogy of the family has been published. Understand that such a work is still a secondary source, not a primary source. However, if such a genealogy has good documentation included, citing primary sources, you might find it a great help.

Now you’ve got a good start on your genealogy!

The Swedish newspaper GÖTEBORGS-POSTEN has published a two page article about Nils and Kindo in their section about people. The headline reads something like this: “Nils is planting trees on the Internet.”

Yeah, not only Nils, Kindo allows everybody to start his family tree on the Internet Thanks anyway to London-based journalist Susan Gotensparre for coming over to our office, taking all those nice pictures and writing an interesting article.

Something funny to add: As you can see from the picture below, he has come a long way

Eight years ago I was touring France  with a group of 30 students (including my two children), three teachers and about 5 other adults. We learned so much about records and history in France! If you have some French genealogy, you might want to check out these sites:

• Footnote has some documents related to the Bastille
• This site has a list of all those executed by the guillotine. It’s in French, so you may need to translate it.
• Alliance Genealogie is another French site
• Notre Temps.com is a French portal aimed at seniors, with a Genealogy Beginners Guide. It has searches of several French databases and articles highlighting genealogy. This site is exclusively in French.
• The French president’s site has a page (in English) on the history of 14 July.
• Cyndi’s List has a whole page of links related to France.
• This clip from Casablanca c’est formidable!
• And this site has the French National Anthem’s history and lyrics.

With Kindo’s successful Hindi launch let us take a look at the various ways to enable Hindi support on Windows and Mac environment.

Windows XP

Enable support for Indian languages (Indic) on your computer. Windows XP has inbuilt Indian languages features. If you enable these features, you will be able to view the Hindi pages much better. You must have at least 10 MB of free hard disk space. Before starting, please close any open programs.

1. Launch Control Panel (from the Start button)
2. Go to Regional and Language Options.
3. Select the Languages tab.
4. Check (click) the line marked Install files for complex scripts and right to left languages (including Thai) When you check this line, a new window will appear, which will give a list of languages that will be installed. This list includes Indic. (You need atleast 10MB of hard disk space and need to restart you computer).

If Windows XP users are unable to read Hindi text on the website:

* Go to View menu of your browser followed by the Encoding submenu
* Select Unicode (UTF-8) option. If the Autoselect option is available check it.

The above steps will allow Winxp users to view Hindi
For writing in Hindi you can download Baraha Software.

For instructions on Hindi support for Mac please visit the following link.

The Kindo team is proud to announce that we are now available in ‘Hindi’ which is amongst the most widely spoken languages across the world. We have also become one of the first social network in Hindi at all.

The successful Hindi launch is a collaborative effort of our dedicated translation & development team members who have worked to ensure the smooth rollout. So far no social network has paid much attention to Hindi, but for Kindo it was an easy choice. Hindi is among the top 5 languages spoken in the world, with over 500 million native speakers, 330 million in India alone. Of India’s Internet users, 44% prefer Hindi to English on the net.

Nils Hammar said, “We’re excited about this launch”. “We believe Internet access and usage will grow among Hindi speakers over the next few years, and that many Indians will want to use the service in their mother tongue. Apart from connecting typical Indian homes, Kindo will provide great assistance to families of many Indians who are based all over the world. Kindo is meant for all generations so it’s Important to make everyone feel at home.”

For Indians, the family is central to the daily life, which is another reason why Kindo decided to launch in Hindi.

To make this release a reality, the translation team has looked towards multiple issues like installation of the correct fonts-package on operating systems (Windows & Mac), cross-browser compatibility with Hindi (Mozilla Firefox and IE). The structured approach to ensure high quality involved the usage of multiple translation interfaces like google’s indic and translate engine.