Website update June 2017

I updated the website a couple of days ago no significant major updates but it had been several months since the last one.

The time has been spent in trying to link some of the many smaller trees into the larger ones and whilst we have made ssome progress there is still losts to be done.

Now whilst the master database is held in the Master Genalogist (no longer available) and simply because along with Second Site it prodcues the best website for what we wanted. However its reporting has never been one of its strong points so occationally I import the database into Family Historian (a british based piece of software). Family Historian has many highly priced features including its handling of media and charts. It also has a wonderful query language, which means that you can extract almost anything in the way that you want it. Also using the Family Historian User Group (which is free to join) you can exchange almost anything with others.

One of the useful queries is called Orphans and details the number of seperate trees that you have in your file. There are over 960 in the Halstead Database and of those 320 have only 1 person in them.

I have also been trying to kill people off - not quite as easy as it soundsunless you spend a fortune on certificcates and unfortunately that is not an option. in fact many a certificate still remains a mystery. I am fortunate I suppose in that I tend only to buy birth and death certificates to solve a specific issue do they are all accounted for.

However marriage certificates are much more fun!! and of course these days you don't have to necessarily buy them as many as those that took place in a church are freely available through Ancestry or findmypast. OK you have to have a subscription but you can always visit your local library and many of those have access to one or the other and in many casees both.

You would laos have thought that all the extra information on marriages after 1837 would make them easy to solve but not always. The next blog (at the weekend) will contain the details of the marriage certificates that I have and have been unable to resolve.

If I can be of any help in your research or you have queries or additional information please contact me

Regards
John Hanson
email halstead at one-name.org