Avoiding Danger when Checking Missed Calls on My iPhone

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I have been getting a lot of incoming calls from unknown telephone numbers recently on my iPhone.

Here is a recent example: 763-275-1399.

I didn’t recognize the area code. Later, in my missed call log, the iPhone indicated that the call was from Becker, MN. I don’t know anybody in this little town (pop. 4,500 according to Wikipedia). When I went to the Reverse Phone Lookup on Whitepages on the Internet, the report I got was that this number was probably a “Scam or Fraud” source. This free service identified the number as being made over VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol (a method of making telephone calls using a computer). Furthermore, the number was flagged as “Telemarketer” by others receiving calls from it, and, even more scary, as having a Spam/Fraud Potential of “High Risk.”

I’m picturing somebody sitting in in front of a computer in his or her bedroom making calls to try to scam money from unsuspecting mobile phone users.

In the last two months, I have declined to pick up more than a dozen calls to my iPhone from unknown telephone numbers. Checking them out later on Whitepages produces the same report: Scam or Fraud.

So, here is what my practice will be going forward: If I don’t recognize a telephone number and particularly if I don’t know anybody in the area code it was made from, I won’t pick up. Then I check the Reverse Phone Search feature of Whitepages before possibly calling back.

Sadly, the same is true with my land line telephone number (yes, I still have a land line, also). I screen the calls by letting them go into voice mail. Most leave no message, which tells me that the caller was a telemarketer–or worse!

 

 

 

 

A Gift of Family Info from Finland

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My brother Walfrid has maintained regular correspondence with cousins in Finland. Recently, I asked him exactly what the relationship was. He responded with his best explanation. I entered the info in my Ancestry.com tree.

There were some missing “leaves” so I decided last evening to contact our cousin Matti myself by email and ask for more information. This morning, I opened my email and there was Matti’s answer with the specific info I was looking for–and much more! Here is what our cousin provided:

I add my information with pleasure [and he proceeded to do just that]
I also add the tables from Martti Huuskonen´s book “Huuskosen suvun vaiheita”, where you can see following:
– Aatami (1798) in table 156
– Kustaa (1828, my side) in table 158
– Otto (1832, your side) in table 161
There is also a book from Leila Ahto, ”Huuskosten sukuseura : 1955-2005 : dokumentteja ja muita muisteloita”, where are many documents (unfortunately in finnish, maybe Wally from OK [Walfrid] can help to translate) according [to] correspondence between “official” Huuskosten sukuseura and later founded Martti Huuskonen´s “Läntisten Huuskosten sukuhaaran kerho”.
I am not sure if they are interesting, but anyway I attach them.

The whole point of this post is that if I hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t have received this package of information.

Now I will be spending time, working with Walfrid (who can read Finnish) and using Google Translate, to mine additional family history information from the package cousin Matti has provided.

Learning about German Genealogical Research

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While attending the Monday (7 Aug 2017) evening meeting of the East Cuyahoga County Genealogical Society,  I announced that the Cuyahoga Valley Genealogical Society would be holding a FREE seminar on German genealogical research on Saturday, 9 Sep 2017, at the Independence (Ohio) Civic Center. I mentioned that the presenter was a representative the Palatines to America organization (see below for details).

Afterward, ECCGS member Jerry Kliot took the time to mention to me about viewing on television a program that featured the immigration of Palatine Germans to America and how a group of them figured importantly in the American Revolution.

Following the meeting, he took the time to look up details of the television show and pass them on to me by email:

The episode of The Generations Project on the BYU channel is called “PJ & Heidi” and the Palatine section starts 28 minutes into the episode. It first aired on 4/26/2011. The version I watched was aired on 8/6/2017 at 7:00AM.

Jerry

I did some Google research and was able to learn that the episode was available over the Internet. I emailed back to him:

Thanks, Jerry, for providing this info.

I was able to view The Generations Project episode by going to this page: https://www.byutv.org/Watch/dd8e2680-2f71-4596-8a8d-f35854379940
In our conversation, do you remember my suggestion that the key battle you talked about in the episode was possibly the Battle of Oriskany? I don’t know of any ancestors who participated in it, but I have seen many references to it in my research into ancestors on my mother’s side who lived in that general area of upstate New York.
One of the experts featured in the episode was Don Teeple. I have collateral ancestors named Teeple in Montgomery County, New York, so maybe we are related somehow.
As for my direct-line German ancestors, they came later and from other regions of present-day Germany, so far as I know.
Thanks again, Jerry.
Watching this episode of the Brigham Young University television series enhanced my knowledge of the history of emigration from Germany. I am looking forward to the seminar on Sep 9.  Here are details from the Cuyahoga Valley Genealogical Society website:

“Finding your German Roots” and “The 19th Century Traveler”

Independence Civic Center, 6316 Selig Blvd. – Independence
September 9, 2017, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Presented by Nancy Ottman

CVGS will kick off the 2017-18 season with a special Saturday meeting featuring two presentations by Nancy Ottman of the Ohio Chapter of Palatines to America. “Finding your German Roots” includes such topics as gathering and recording family information, understanding naming patterns, primary and secondary documentation, and German church and civil records. “The 19th Century German Traveler” reviews causes for emigration, ports of embarkation, ports of arrival and a transcription of one German traveler’s diary from Germany to America.

Nancy is a member of the Ohio Genealogical Society, Palatines to America, and the Kansas Genealogical Society. She has spoken to numerous genealogical and historical societies and fraternal organizations, as well as the Columbus Metropolitan Library. In 2014 she completed a study with the University of North Carolina on American gravestones and cemeteries. Nancy was recently published in Your Genealogy Today magazine.

I have several ancestors that trace their roots back to Germany, so I am taking advantage of every opportunity to learn more about German genealogical research. If you have the same interest, maybe we’ll see you in Independence on Sep. 9.

 

MyHeritage Acquires the Legacy Family Tree Software and Webinar Platform

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Another major acquisition in the genealogy database and software space! See the following MyHeritage announcement:

We’re delighted to announce today that we’ve acquired Millennia Corporation, makers of the popular Legacy Family Tree genealogy desktop software and well-attended genealogy webinar platform, Legacy Family Tree Webinars. This is our 9th acquisition to date. We consider Legacy’s products to be highly complementary to our wide range of features and services. The acquisition will introduce MyHeritage users to Legacy’s valuable genealogical webinars, and will also provide Legacy’s hundreds of thousands of users with improved resources and access to new services.

Legacy’s webinars, which have been around since 2010, have become the most popular source of education in the genealogy industry. Viewers enjoy talks accompanied by presentations and tutorials on a wide variety of genealogy content from the comfort of their own homes while learning from speakers who are leaders in their field, such as Judy G. Russell, Blaine Bettinger, Lisa Louise Cooke, and Thomas MacEntee. Topics include genealogical research methodology, DNA, historical records, and more. The webinars will continue to feature diverse and high-quality educational content. The webinar platform will also enjoy infrastructure upgrades to support larger audiences.

Legacy Family Tree’s desktop software has been in existence for twenty years and is consistently ranked (along with MyHeritage’s Family Tree Builder) among the top genealogy software products in the industry. Legacy Family Tree software will continue operating as before, enjoying improvements backed by MyHeritage’s innovative technological resources. We plan to release a new version of Legacy Family Tree software, Legacy Family Tree 10, together. Version 10 will include the optional capability to sync family trees to the MyHeritage website and allow users to make updates to their family trees on the Legacy software using the MyHeritage mobile app.

We are also continuing to develop our Family Tree Builder software separately, and it will not be merged with Legacy’s software. At MyHeritage, we value giving our users the ability to choose their preferred genealogy tools, and allow them to work offline with robust functionality. While some other companies no longer develop genealogy software, we believe that people should be able to discover and preserve their family history on whatever platform they are comfortable with.

We welcome Legacy’s users to MyHeritage to enhance their genealogical research with our advanced products and services. Legacy Family Tree users will now be able to take advantage of MyHeritage’s world-class website features for online family trees, research their family history through historical records, and utilize MyHeritage DNA tests for genealogy and ethnicity.

To celebrate the acquisition, we offer all users of MyHeritage a limited time discount of 50% on annual Legacy Family Tree Webinars memberships through August 13th. We encourage our users to check out the webinar series on FamilyTreeWebinars.com and take advantage of this opportunity to discover an exciting and fun world of genealogical wisdom delivered by the top experts.

We extend a warm welcome to Dave, Ken, Geoff, Luc and the rest of the Legacy team who are joining the growing MyHeritage team, and we look forward to the road ahead, as we work together to make family history easier and more accessible for everyone.

 

Ancestry.com Serious about Developing Its People Resources

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The following announcement was issued recently by Ancestry.com:

LEHI, Utah and SAN FRANCISCO, July 31, 2017 — Ancestry, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, today announced that Evan Wittenberg, most recently the Senior Vice President of People at Box, Inc., has joined the company in the new position of Chief People Officer. Wittenberg brings an extensive track record of helping world-class organizations grow and foster their talent while evolving their cultures to support continued expansion.

“There is no higher priority at Ancestry today than our ability to attract and grow the world’s best talent. Very few people can match Evan’s history of leading so many great organizations through change and growth, and fewer still can come close to his track record of success,” said Tim Sullivan, chief executive officer of Ancestry. “I am incredibly proud of the team we have built and of their ability to create a company, brand and products that resonate with millions around the world. Evan will play a critical role in helping us continue to grow and develop the great people we have while attracting the high-caliber talent we need to lead us into tomorrow.”

Since 2012, Wittenberg has been the chief people officer at Box, having led the company’s Human Resources function through explosive growth and a public listing in 2015. In his leadership role, he oversaw all recruiting and talent development initiatives, in addition to compensation and benefits, performance management and succession planning. Prior to Box, Wittenberg was the Chief Talent Officer for HP; the Head of Global Leadership Development at Google; the Director of the Graduate Leadership Program at The Wharton School; and was part of the cultural integration of two world class academic medical centers which created New York Presbyterian Hospital – The University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell.

“The challenges and opportunities at Ancestry are unique,” said Wittenberg. “Here’s a company that people have known in one way for decades, as the leader in genealogy, that is now spearheading the creation of a whole new high-tech, high-science industry in consumer genomics. I’m excited to be joining an organization that recognizes the strategic importance of talent to its future, and even more excited to be playing a significant role in helping the company’s culture evolve with its business.”

Wittenberg is starting immediately in Ancestry’s San Francisco office and will oversee the company’s People and Places team, which is responsible for all HR functions including talent acquisition and development, total rewards, facilities and leadership development. One of his initial priorities is achieving the company’s aggressive hiring targets in San Francisco where it is looking to add substantial headcount in its technical, engineering and data science functions.

 

Holocaust Survivor Speaks, So We Never Forget

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I opened Randy Seaver’s blog, Genea-Musings, this morning and read his post from yesterday about a presentation given by Ruth Goldschiedover Sax and her daughter Sandra Sax Scheller at the Chula Vista Genealogical Society last Saturday (Jul 29, 2017). Sandra has written a book about Ruth’s life story with the title Try to Remember–Never Forget.

While the book cover’s Ruth’s life beginning with her childhood in Czechoslovakia and continuing to the present day in America, the really dramatic content deals with her years spent imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during WWII.

In writing the book about her mother’s life, Sandra has collected documents and artifacts that deal with her mother’s concentration camp period. They were included and discussed in the presentation. I personally found it harrowing to read Randy’s report on the presentation.

In addition to giving an overview, Randy stated:

Sharing this story is a reminder to the world that the Holocaust actually happened and that all of us must act diligently to ensure that this type of atrocity never happens again.  Ruth’s is an incredible and inspirational story of horror, survival, recovery, love, family, and success.

If you wish to read Sandra’s book about her mother’s life, it is available on Amazon in paperback. Go to Try to Remember – Never Forget

Randy’s blog is here. His report on the presentation is the second item posted on Aug. 2, 2017.

 

Baked Beans–And a Trip Down Memory Lane

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In today’s issue of The Plain Dealer, the local paper (that I have to read online on Tuesdays because it only prints papers on Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday), there was an article about a Food and Drug Administration recall of Bush’s Country Style Baked Beans. As it turned out, I had a can of this product in my pantry shelves. I jumped up and took a look at the can to see if it was part of the recall.

Doing this started me thinking about baked beans. I really like them and often include them at our family picnics or take them as my contribution to potluck events. I often use the bean pot given to me by Mrs. Mac, the housemother of my Sigma Chi fraternity chapter, when I became pinned to Mary Jane during college.

Sigma Chi bean pot

I wanted to learn more about the history of baked beans. So I opened my Google Chrome browser and searched for “origins of baked beans.” Of course, there were several “hits,” but the best was on a blog named A Brief History of Food, by Karen Miller. She posted “A Brief History of Baked Beans” on Jan 3, 2015. Here are excerpts:

When I was a young girl, my mother made Boston Baked Beans every Saturday night, served with Boston Brown Bread and hot dogs. This was a tradition in our family, and I thought that everyone ate beans on Saturdays.

Baked beans and Boston brown bread

Now our family didn’t have baked beans every Saturday night as we were growing up in Andover, Ohio, but my mother did serve them every now and then–and she did include the Boston Brown Bread and hot dogs. I haven’t had the bread in years, but reading this and seeing the photo brought back the taste immediately. I’m going to have to check on my next visit to the store to see if it is available these days.

Ms. Miller continued her blog posting with the following history lesson:

Little did I know there was a reason for preparing beans on Saturday, which stemmed from Colonial America, and our Puritan upbringing. Sunday was the Sabbath; no work was allowed on that day, and that included cooking. Most Puritans spent Sunday in church, and during the winter months, their austere places of worship were cold and drafty. Because there was no cooking there would be no warm or filling meal at the end of the day, if not for the miracle of baked beans. Beans were prepared on Saturday, and the leftovers were kept in the oven until Sunday. The wood fired ovens would hold their heat, and keep the beans warm enough so the church goers would have a hearty meal when they returned home.

Food history blogger Miller continued with other information about baked beans and the bread, including more history and her favorite recipes.

As you might imagine, other websites, including Wikipedia, offered information about baked beans and variations called stewed beans and cowboy beans (served from chuck wagons on cattle drives).

Now back to my can of Bush’s baked beans: the produce code

 

on my can was different from those specified for the recall. So I feel confident I can enjoy them in the near future, maybe with Boston Brown Bread and hot dogs. Yummy!

 

 

Conversion to LastPass

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Well, here I am again. Finally.

I have been very busy daily for more than a week with transitioning from Roboform as my password manager to LastPass. I have completed that process and checked out each of 195 different log-in/sign-in items. They all work after I updated some obsolete URLs and passwords in my Roboform database.

Roboform did a good job for me for many years, but it wasn’t working well on my iPhone. Having recently obtained an iPhone 7 to use with my Verizon account, I was very interested in a more up-to-date password manager. Roboform was created for use on desktop PCs and worked pretty well in that environment, but even with some user interface changes, it did not perform well for me in the iOS environment (iPad and iPhone).

Now I am able to have LastPass on all my devices and log in to online accounts and websites wherever I am. In fact, all I need is my master password to access LastPass wherever I am, because it was created to be cloud-based from its inception.

FYI, more than one-third of the logins are for accounts and websites related to genealogy and family history. Duh!

The fact that LastPass is easy to use on multiple devices is important. For example, anytime I need to look up a birthday, I can access my main tree on Ancestry.com with my desktop PC, laptop PC, iPad, or iPhone and find the answer.

I am happy that I invested the many hours in making the transition to LastPass.

RootsMagic Releases New Version with TreeShare with Ancestry.com

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Yesterday was an exciting day. RootsMagic finally released its TreeShare functionality with Ancestry.com. This means that a RootsMagic family tree can be linked with an Ancestry.com family tree. Hints from Ancestry will show up in the shared RootsMagic tree. And changes made in either tree can be carried over to the other.

This requires downloading an updated version of RootsMagic 7 (you need to own this database software) to your computer and going through some simple steps to activate the TreeShare functionality.  Those include downloading an Ancestry tree to RootsMagic or vice versa so that you have the same tree “in the cloud” on Ancestry and on your computer in Rootsmagic. Then you can use the full power of TreeShare to add new records to both trees.

At the moment, I have only viewed Bruce Buzbee’s video on how to do this and what the advantages are for doing so. Go here to see this relatively easy to understand video. You have to scroll down the web page to find the screen capture with the start link.

I will be trying this out today and report back. Watch this space.

 

FamilySearch Will Discontinue Microfilm Distribution

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The following announcement was made by FamilySearch.org on 26 Jun 2017:

On September 1, 2017, FamilySearch will discontinue its microfilm distribution services. (The last day to order microfilm will be on August 31, 2017.)

The change is the result of significant progress made in FamilySearch’s microfilm digitization efforts and the obsolescence of microfilm technology.
• Online access to digital images of records allows FamilySearch to reach many more people, faster and more efficiently.
• FamilySearch is a global leader in historic records preservation and access, with billions of the world’s genealogical records in its collections.
• Over 1.5 million microfilms (ca. 1.5 billion images) have been digitized by FamilySearch, including the most requested collections based on microfilm loan records worldwide.
• The remaining microfilms should be digitized by the end of 2020, and all new records from its ongoing global efforts are already using digital camera equipment.
• Family history centers will continue to provide access to relevant technology, premium subscription services, and digital records, including restricted content not available at home.

Digital images of historical records can be accessed today in three places on FamilySearch.org under Search:
• Records include historical records indexed by name or organized with an image browse.
• Books include digital copies of books from the Family History Library and other libraries.
• Catalog includes a description of genealogical materials (including books, online materials, microfilm, microfiche, etc.) in the FamilySearch collection.

When approved by priesthood leaders, centers may continue to maintain microfilm collections already on loan from FamilySearch after microfilm ordering ends. Centers have the option to return microfilm that is available online or otherwise not needed. As more images are published online, centers may reevaluate whether to retain microfilm holdings.