The Secret History of Your Name

Posted on February 28, 2016February 28, 2016 by admin

What secrets do your last name keep?

Ancestry.com has created an exciting new tool that allows you to find out the history of your last name and what it might reveal about your ancestors.

To check this tool out, go to Ancestry.com’s site here.

ps – A little bit of a hint, try entering other family names you may know in your family history.

1 Assist Care’s Caregivers not only help with things like cooking and cleaning, they can also help the seniors they care for do their family history, giving those receiving care with a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

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Have You Seen: 7 Lessons That Can Lead to Family History Breakthroughs

Posted on February 26, 2016February 26, 2016 by admin

RootsTech 2016, the largest conference in the world focused on family history technology is all wrapped up.

FamilySearch, the conference’s organizer has published a set of 7 lessons you can use for “Family History Breakthroughs.” Some are obvious, like “Family History is for Everyone.” Some are not so obvious, like how to make your family tree public.

To read the entire list, check out the post here.

Did you know 1 Assist Care has helped our client’s do family history with them while providing care? It has helped our clients feel a sense of purpose as they work towards a goal and service while in their homes. Call us for more information! 208-557-4215

Get everyone involved in family history.

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Cemeteries and Funeral Homes: Two Quick Phone Calls That Could Change The Game on Finding Information on an Ancestor

Posted on March 17, 2014February 25, 2015 by admin

Yesterday, the Scottish Genealogy group on Facebook posted a great nugget concerning two phone calls you can make to find out additional information concerning a deceased ancestor.

When you are looking for your ancestor, don’t stop at the obituary or the gravestone inscription. Call or write to the cemetery and ask:

Who purchased the plot
What address was given for the person who purchased the plot
Whether any other family members are buried in the same plot

The cemetery office may also tell you the names of any other people with the same surname who are buried at the cemetery.

While you are at it, contact the funeral home listed in the obituary. Funeral homes keep detailed records about the individuals that they care for. This can be a valuable resource.

The funeral home will have:

A copy of the program or the card given to those who attend the service,
A copy of the death record they issued for the family and information on the next of kin.

If an autopsy was performed, the funeral home may supply you with the information for the name and address of the coroner as well, which will allow you to contact that resource for detailed information on the cause of death and the details surrounding the death.

It will not hurt to ask the funeral home if they will provide you with:

The name of the deceased’s family physician
The name of the insurance company
The name of the clergy that performed the service.
They might even be able to provide you with information about where to find a will for the deceased.

In Idaho Falls and Ammon, there are four funeral homes you can reach out to. Rexburg and Rigby each have one, while St. Anthony has two.

1 Assist Care of the Valley Senior Care: Assisted Living At Home is a home care company located in Rexburg, Idaho. We provide provide weekly family history tips on our blog to help others with their family history work and genealogy.

We also provide assisted living services in the home to seniors in Idaho Falls, Rexburg, Driggs, Ashton, and everywhere in between. For some of our elderly clients, that includes doing family history with them.

To find out more about how we can help keep your elderly loved one home and safe rather than putting them into a nursing home, call us at 208-557-4215.

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Doing Family History in 1 Minute: How to Get Started With Family History Indexing in 3 Steps

Posted on March 2, 2014February 25, 2015 by admin

Great news. FamilySearch has a new version of their indexing program.

Here are three simple steps to start indexing. Follow these three simple steps and in less than ten minutes, you will officially be ready to index.

Step 1: Know what indexing is.

Here is a quick video that explains what it is. It is less than two minutes.

Step 2: Register to be an indexer on FamilySearch.

Step 3. Download the software. You need a Windows or Apple based computer to do this. (If you have an iPad, you can download an app as well, but that is another post)

This super short video takes you through steps 2 and 3.

Finished the three steps?

Fantastic! Now you are all ready!

Stay tuned next week to learn how to start indexing. Make sure to subscribe to the blog and like us on facebook to get updates on family history tips. You can do both of those on the upper right of this web page.

1 Assist Care of the Valley Senior Care: Assisted Living At Home is a home care company located in Rexburg, Idaho. We provide assisted living services in the home to seniors in Idaho Falls, Rexburg, Driggs, Ashton, and everywhere in between. For some of our elderly clients, that includes doing family history with them.

We also provide weekly family history tips on our blog to help others with their family history work.

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How to Solve Four Family History Problems in a Minute or Less Using One Tool – Puzzilla

Posted on February 9, 2014February 25, 2015 by admin

Sometimes the hardest thing about doing family history is in knowing where to start. Now in less than a minute, you will know exactly where to begin.

RootsTech 2014 is come and gone. We hope you were able to view some of it online if you could not see it in person.

If not, you can view videos the the RootsTech website.

One fascinating item we learned about from the conference comes from Puzilla. Simply by logging it, in less than a minute you are able to see who has yet to be found and attached to your genealogy file (as recorded in FamilySearch.org).

In order to use the tool, you do need to have a FamilySearch account and you will need to have uploaded your family history to FamilySearch.

To the right below is an example of my family history, as shown in Puzzilla. I can see that on my mother’s side it goes back a couple generations. On my father’s side it goes back a few more. I can see where each line stops so I know where to begin my search

Here are four reasons I love this new tool

Sometimes the hardest thing about doing family history is in knowing where to start.
Now in less than a minute, you will know exactly where to begin.
Why do family history when my family has already done all the work?
Now you can see exactly what has been done and what still needs to be done.
I get stuck trying to find one bit of information for one person and want to give up.
I can now take a break for a little bit on that line and work another line. Success creates success. If you get hung up on one line, you can get frustrated and give up. But the positive feelings you get coupled with the lessons learned when succeeding on another name or line will help you when you return to the other name you took a break from.
I have to scroll through name after name to see what has been done and what hasn’t, zooming in and out. I get lost.
By choosing how many generations back you want to go, you can see immediately instantly what lines are missing and which are completely in a single view.

Give Puzzilla a try.

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Great News for Family History / Genealogy Fans in East Idaho

Posted on February 2, 2014February 25, 2015 by admin

This week FamilySearch announced that 15 classes from their RootsTech Conference will be shown on the Internet for free!

This is exciting news for two reasons.

First, for many of us, making the trip to Salt Lake for the conference from Rexburg or Idaho Falls or Ashton or Driggs is not very easy.

The second reason is that the full conference costs $239, but these online sessions will be absolutely free! Here is the schedule of the classes that will be broadcast.

Which will you be watching and why? Leave a comment below.

Thursday, February 6

10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family from My Couch by Tammy Hepps

1 p.m. to 2 p.m., FamilySearch Family Tree: What’s New and What’s Next by Ron Tanner

2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Intro to DNA for Genealogists by James Rader

4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Genealogy in the Cloud by Randy Hoffman

5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Sharing Your Family with Multimedia by Michael LeClerc

Friday, February 7

10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Storytelling Super Powers: How to Come Off as Your Family’s Genealogy Hero by David Adelman

1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Tweets, Links, Pins, and Posts: Break Down Genealogical Brick Walls with Social Media by Lisa Alzo

2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Getting the Most Out of Ancestry.com by Crista Cowen

4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Finding Family and Ancestors Outside the USA with New Technologies by Daniel Horowitz

5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Do It Yourself Photo Restoration by Ancestry Insider

Saturday, February 8

10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Become an iPad Power User by Lisa Louise Cooke

1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Information Overload: Managing Online Searches and Their Results by D. Josh Taylor

2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., A Beginner’s Guide to Going Paperless by Randy Whited

4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., How to Interview Yourself for a Personal History by Tom Taylor

5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Five Ways to Do Genealogy in Your Sleep by Deborah Gamble

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