Erin

I have been working (almost daily for the last three months) on Zittel Zygology mentioned in this post. The idea of working on connecting family lines for two DNA matches has exploded to epic proportions. I am currently working on connecting lines for 20 known DNA matches to my Zittel line. It looks a bit like this…

Scapple chart of Zittel descendants

Descendants of Johannes Zittel and Elisabeth Stempfel

There are over 50 couples in the first five generations and more than 50 children (most with spouses and even more children) so far in the sixth and seventh generations. (Seventh generation not shown on chart.)

I’ve written and deleted several posts about how this is coming together in my Research Quandaries notebook. Maybe once I finish up trailing the descendants of the oldest son of Peter Zittel and Rosina Hauck (far left of chart), I will get something posted. In the meantime, can I just sing the praises of Sticky Notes? My (laptop) desktop looks like this…

The Sticky Notes app is another of those things that you might not know you have on your computer unless you hunt it down. Click on the magnifying glass next to the Windows icon and search “sticky notes.” Then open the Sticky Notes app. Clicking on the + sign opens a new note.

Click on the menu icon (the three dots). From there you can change the background color, see a list of all your notes, or delete the current note. The notes can be resized vertically and horizontally. The icons at the bottom of the note are to change the text of your note: Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, and Bulleted List. The last icon is used to insert a picture into your note. Your notes are saved until you delete them. I usually close down the computer with my notes still open on the desktop and they are all there when I restart it.

I am using Sticky Notes to jot down the list of names from the indexes for the communes in Bas-Rhin where I need to then go and look up the original record in a different register. I also have a list of citations to copy and edit once I add the source to my OneNote pages for a person/couple. Extremely helpful! I only wish there was a way to permanently pin a note to stay on top of the browser window I am currently viewing.

I’d be drowning in paper if not for OneNote and Sticky Notes! (You’re welcome.)

Until the next time,
~Erin


Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “Digital Sticky Notes.” My Family History Files, 11 December 2020 (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/organization/digital-sticky-notes/ : [access date]).

Please do not copy without attribution and link back to this page.


A reader contacted me recently to ask the how my notebooks look in OneNote for Win10. I’ve taken a few screen shots of the same page in my Schraven notebook to show you a comparison. The main difference for me, and why I prefer ON2016, is that my Sections are shown across the top of the notebook and Pages are down the left side.

This is Henry Schraven’s Section in my Schraven notebook in ON2016. DNA connections that listed Henry and his wife, Christina Jansen, in their trees accidentally led me to figuring out that my father is a Schraven and not a Williamson. The Schraven surname stood out because there was this “family friend” named Jack Schraven that my brothers and I called Uncle Jack. Jack was Henry’s grandson and my grandfather.

One of the main differences between ON2016 and ON for Win10 is the way you navigate through your Notebooks and Sections because of the way they are displayed. This Section showing my father’s paternal line is a Section Group. In ON2016, to go back to the main Section of my notebook or to navigate to the other Section Groups (Non-Direct Line and A to Z Surnames), I need to click the Green Arrow. Clicking the Down Arrow brings up a list of the rest of my ON Notebooks.

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This is how that same page looks in ON for Win10.

In this view, the Navigation Pane is open — indicated by the purple icon. On the left are the Notebook Sections (note that all of the Sections and Section Groups can be seen) and on the right, the list of Pages in the current Section. When you click the Down Arrow, the Navigation Pane switches to show a list of your ON Notebooks.

You can close the Navigation Pane completely by clicking on the Navigation Pane icon as shown below.

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Or you can have the Navigation Pane opened all the time by using the Legacy option. To see a list of your ON Notebooks, click the Arrow.

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To turn on the Legacy option, click the Settings Menu (the three dots) on the top right of your screen > Choose Settings > Scroll down to > Navigation > Legacy navigation panes. You will have to restart OneNote when activating or deactivating the Legacy navigation option.

Until next time,

~Erin

[Disclaimer: There is no candlestick maker involved in this story. It just sounded good.] I found out that I come from a long line  of bakers in Preuschdorf, France. (Four generations!) And just an FYI, the baker’s daughter married the butcher in Buffalo.

This post is actually about the Timeline Template I created in OneNote that I never use. Why don’t I use it? Mostly because I don’t like the tables in OneNote. I don’t like that I am unable to merge and split cells. I especially do not like how thin and light the lines are around the cells. (I have old eyeballs. Give me black lines around the cells, please.) I make my Timelines in MSWord and attach the file and a printout to the person’s Timeline page. I set the page orientation in Word to Landscape so I have more space across the page for all my columns. I have written about using timelines before. I will link to Anne Mitchell’s video again about how and why to create timelines  at the bottom of this post if you want to view it later. The problem with the previous timeline example is the person in the example is not my real paternal grandfather. (I like to refer to him as my faux grandfather.) Yes, that whole DNA tree implosion thing I hinted about before. That timeline annoys me since it is a reminder of how much time I spent researching the wrong surname.

I have a new Timeline example though. I went back to my Büsch / Cuntz line and created a Timeline from the records that I have gathered during my research over the last couple months. I posted about initial research I conducted and concluded on this line a few weeks ago and the next round of research I was going to conduct. I finished that research and then created a Family Timeline in Word for this couple.

I had decided (Once again! Since I have made this decision before…) a while back that I wanted to tackle one of my direct-line ancestral couples per week — getting all their sources gathered, downloaded, cited and uploaded to Ancestry and WikiTree. (Since I’m fairly certain I don’t have 25 more years left to spend on research, this is important to me.) While working on this couple, I realized that while a week might be long enough for a couple that has less than 10 records or a couple that much of the research is already done, it may not be enough for other couples in my lines that need more research. For Georg Heinrich Büsch and Catherina Barbara Cuntz, I now have 28 records, 16 that are in French; so a week was not going to be long enough to finish up everything I wanted to accomplish. I haven’t even looked at land and probate records yet, nor completed my searches in the Buffalo City Directories. (Which will be the plan for the next time I visit this couple. Hopefully the records aren’t going anywhere in the meantime.) The new plan is to work on one ancestral couple for as long as it takes to find the usual records I might not already have in my tree — birth, marriage, death and census — while not get totally sidetracked — and then move on to the next couple. I had a similar plan years ago but got lost in caregiver duties and never had enough time for research. (Regarding only spending a week on each couple… That also doesn’t take into account the time I need to spend on ongoing research on the dilemmas in my Research Quandaries notebook because continuing research on those has to continue as well. Then there is all the quilting and fiber art related projects. Let’s not forget the Rosetta Stone French lessons either. I almost forgot about the gardening on the patio! Who needs Netflix? I could hold an online class on how to stay busy at home during a pandemic.)

My stack of couples on scrap paper.

I had 50 couples with just some basic info on a scrap piece of paper to start. (There are 0 couples for my mother’s paternal line so the number would be higher if I knew my mother’s paternity.) Of course, I got sidetracked on the Büsch / Cuntz line. It’s inevitable. I did manage to not fall too far down the rabbit hole and to rein myself back in. Although I ended up going back two more generations, (Because rooting around in church records from the 1700s seemed like a fun challenge!) I didn’t get carried away researching all the children for the  new couples and then on down each of those lines. (You know I was tempted!) I found a few records for the new generations which then added three more couples to my pile and then went back to my original couple like a good little researcher. (In real life, I am in introvert and do not talk this much. Really. Truly.)

When I left off with this couple, I was going to go back through birth and death records searching for more children. I also looked for the death records for the deceased parents mentioned in the marriage record. The parents still living at the time of the marriage both died before Henry and Barbara emigrated so I added them to the timeline as well. Because the death records mention their parents names, I got started down the rabbit hole. (Who doesn’t want to go a few generations farther back when the names are right there?) When I was digging further into these lines, I just made some notes in the table I had created for Henry and Barbara’s marriage record. I have copied that table over to the Sections for both fathers on their Initial Research pages and made notes about the next generation back. The second Initial Research for Georg Heinrich Büsch page looked like this when I finished:

 

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The first page of the Georg Heinrich Büsch Family Timeline  in Word looks like this:

The citations for all the records I found are listed below the table. Here is a link to the PDF so you can view the whole thing.

 

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Once the Timeline is done, it can be attached to the Timeline page in the Person’s Section under > Insert > choose File Attachment > Insert Printout. A Word file icon appears at the top of the page and your Word pages are added as screenshots to the page.

You cannot edit the Word pages in OneNote. You must reopen the file in Word. To reopen the Timeline from OneNote, right click on the File Icon > choose Open. If you have made any changes to the Timeline in Word, you can refresh the printout (screenshots) in OneNote by right clicking on the file icon > choose Refresh Printout. (See below.)

 

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Georg Heinrich’s Section and all the other Sections I created for new family members as I needed them are now all neatly tucked back into the Buisch Surname Notebook where they belong. Note that Georg Heinrich’s new Initial Research page has a list of the next three items to research.

 

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I have added the sources to WikiTree.com for Georg Heinrich Büsch and Catherina Barbara Cuntz and I will be adding the citations and sources to Ancestry over the next few days and then it’s on to the next couple in the pile. I am not looking forward to doing the citations on Ancestry. I have contemplated uploading the Timeline PDF and calling it good but I won’t.  The Cuntz Cold Case Sub-Section of my Research Quandaries notebook is officially closed. I’m doing a genealogy happy dance. (In my head. Because: Introvert.) Oh, and in case you are wondering, the baker’s daughter, Eva Elisabeth Büsch, married the butcher, Wilhelm Friedrich Beidinger/Baitinger on 26 June 1845 in Buffalo, Erie, New York.1

Until next time,

~Erin


1 “New York, Church Records, 1660-1954,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPZJ-SYVS : 10 October 2019), Wilhelm Friedrick Baidinger and Elisabeth Büsch, 26 Jun 1845; citing multiple churches, Marriage, Erie, New York, United States.


Creating Timelines: A 15 minute tutorial by Anne Mitchell (AKA: Ancestry Anne)


Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “The Butcher, Baker and Candlestick Maker.” My Family History Files, 22 May 2020, (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/onenote/the-butcher-baker-and-candlestick-maker/ : [access date]).

Please do not copy without attribution and link back to this page.


 

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A bit about me


Erin Williamson Klein
New York to Nevada
Started my research in 1993

Following the GPS!

Sourced Database Statistics:

2 of 2 people identified as parents
4 of 4 people identified as grandparents
8 of 8 people identified as great-grandparents
16 of 16 people identified as 2x great-parents
30 of 32 people identified as 3x great-grandparents
44 of 64 people identified as 4x great-grandparents
52 of 128 people identified as 5x great-grandparents
32 of 256 people identified as 6x great-grandparents
14 of 512 people identified as 7x great-grandparents
8 of 1024 people identified as 8x great-grandparents

Participating In:

WikiTree worldwide family tree
+ more ... join me @ WikiTree


Camp 2020 Writer logo
November 2020 NanoWriMo
50,404 of 50,000 words written about my ancestors.