How many of you do all of your RootsMagic data entry manually?
I do. I don’t like all the other stuff that comes in if I use Ancestry or FamilySearch files. Plus, I would rather verify on my own. FamilySearch especially I have found has a lot of entries in Family Trees that don’t make sense. One example: Mother is too young for birth of child. Also, the information coming in may have different formats for places than what I do. Personally I don’t like the standard for places. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a place is a township, county or just the name of a town. I prefer to have the words township and county in my places.
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Absolutely I agree completely. I hate a string of place names with no indication of what is a community, township, or a county, especially if it is just a place and a state name. Is it a city and state or a county and state?
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I agree with you all-- I always use township, county and state and I enter all my info manually–I have hints from Ancestry and Familysearch turned off as half of the hints I receive are not for my relatives-I have My Heritage and the other one turned on just to see what the hints are but most of the time their hints are for someone else also or they have the family totally messed up as are the family files on Ancestry and now familysearch–if I come to a dead end on a person’s line, I will go and check out the family files on Ancestry and familysearch myself and then try to verify the info
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I learned one the other day. On a whim, I typed in ______ family in Google and ran across a gold mine of information on one line of my family. A 615 page pdf file!
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YES!!! I have found a lot of info by doing that --but will suggest you try others besides Google such as Yahoo and Bing–some things show up on one but not the others–but Google Books is a good source also
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Yes, I enter everything manually and don’t download anything from anywhere. Ancestry is just one tool in my research - in fact I probably find more information in other places nowadays and although I used it extensively in the early days of my research I rarely go to Family Search nowadays.
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Terry–I hate familysearch’s new search engine ( worse than Ancestry’s)-- that said have you ever tried just browsing their records? There are a lot of records that they have scanned BUT have NOT yet indexed–so it takes a little time and patience on your part --it also depends on what records they have for each county and state BUT I have found wills and probates, pension payment records for widows and kids of Civil War Vets and the original baptismal church record entries for my g-grandfather and his siblings–a Tulsa judge denied permission to my friend to access the records for the guardianship of her g-uncle ( 1920-1975) and I found over 300 pages on familysearch-- and if you can find the Call Number Film/Fiche Number , you can pull those records up under Catalog-- a library gave me the Call Number Film/Fiche Number for the actual Church Marriage records ( Baptism/ deaths etc are there also) and I was able to find the marriage records for all of my ancestors going back to 1848–all records EXCEPT one listed the parents of the couple–which is HUGE as I never thought I would find the names of the parents for my g-grandfather who immigrated by himself from Germany ( too many of them on Ancestry)
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Thanks Nancy but my research is 90% UK with a few percent each in AUS, NZ, CAN and USA. We do a few things differently here - as you probably know, lots of stuff is in the public domain. My birth and marriage (but not my death) details are on Ancestry, FindMyPast and most likely a few other places. Most CofE baptism, marriage and burial registers (at least those not still in use) are now in the care of county archives and many have been scanned. Lots of these are on on Ancestry or FindMyPast. I used to view the actual records in the archives. I probably use up to fifty different websites for different parts of my research.
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@nkess – In an effort to break through my particular adobe wall (I have a double-great grandfather in one of my mother’s lines that I can’t find anywhere), I started browsing Family Search’s New Mexico Catholic Church records, extracting every instance that I could find of 8 surnames, and weaving families together. Over the course of about 30 years of research, my database now consists of about 65,000 names and 21,000 families (not all related to me!), and I’m planning to publish it on the web for other New Mexico researchers to use. In the process, I’ve learned a lot about New Mexico history and daily life – but I still haven’t found my double-great grandfather… 
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@Soprano91396 --I was lucky that the St Louie Co. Library were the ones who originally scanned the records ( and some are on Ancestry BUT not all)–I was asking for look-ups from them last year when the rest of the world was in chaos–think they finally got tired of me and told me how I could look them up myself…
try checking the big county library and historical society–I was told that I could actually make an appointment with the Archdiocese record keeping section to search records myself
also are you sure he was married in New Mexico and are you sure you know all of his names-- I have found that almost every one of my Mom’s ancestors 1st name was JOHN BUT they went by their 2nd ( or 3rd ) name-- took me over 10 years to prove that John and Eve’s marriage was for Sebastian and Genevieve --he used his first name unknown to us, his last name was mangled and she used a nickname–BTW-- familysearch says they have dump tons more of their records into the database
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Thank you, Nancy. @nkess
I am really excited that ALL of the microfilm rolls that you used to have to request from the family history library in Salt Lake City, are now digitized and available on the FamilySearch website, under the “Catalog” tab. I’m sure that was a BIG project!
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I create all my own entries. That said, I do use Webhints, but just as it says on the tin - as hints. Back in the mists of time, before I had my own desktop FH software I created a number if trees on Ancestry. When I eventually found a program that I liked (Reunion, I’m on a Mac), I imported them via GEDCOM. So I still have some excruciating Ancestry-type sources in my database that I’m gradually weeding out, together with some of the almost equally horrible ones of my own making in my early RM days, when I didn’t really understand what I was doing. This job is much easier in RM 8, incidentally, I think because the fonts are so much easier on the eye - I can actually see what I’m doing!
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@NickiZ All of my New Mexico Families database entries are done by hand. I’ve found too many errors in both FamilySearch and Ancestry trees to take them at face value, so I decided very early on that I would only include information from primary records that I had extracted myself – that way, all mistakes are mine alone (mine mine MINE!! You can’t have them!!) 
Seriously, if I’m going to publish this for other researchers’ use, it behooves me to have the most accurate information that I can.
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I enter everything manually even though Its laborsome; however, I utilize the Webhints as they are a great resource. Trust but verify. I don’t fully trust anything in online services or databases unless I can find the source document image or identify an individual as the primary source, not even if its from my own family member’s online tree.
I learned the hard way years ago with reckless downloading, it took me years to cleanup most of my database.Transcripts by services may have errors or match the wrong person to a document. All sorts of questionable data, links, typos and educated guesses gets uploaded by users without sources, albeit well-intentioned. Online it then spreads like a virus across the user community, especially in user trees e.g., FamilySearch, Ancestry, and downloaded into multiple persons’ home databases (especially beginners), and up it goes again to repeat the cycle.
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It’s hard enough trying to keep my own stuff in uniform format. (When you say something like “Los Angeles, CA”, do you mean the city or the county?) Then there’s dating - you have to see the original records, sometimes, to know if that’s really December or if it should be February.
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With FamilySearch, before I transfer any data, I go into FS and thoroughly check through all the people and associated families I am interested in. Adding in or declining all the source hints, combining duplicates and detaching errors takes time but then I am satisfied I am taking in decent data. Spending the extra time linking their FS sources to the events is a pain but worth it to show me where it came from if I later find conflicting data from elsewhere. Loads of box ticking. But I think I get good data and am leaving better sorted out trees on FamilySearch for others.
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Yes, I also do that. As you say, tedious but it leaves things in much better shape for others as well as yourself. I tend to add my well researched data to FS as a new person and then merge that person in with what are often a fair number of duplicates and some rubbish (in my opinion, of course). But I do ensure that there are plenty of sources, not just the vital facts, as otherwise how would anyone be able to judge the probable correctness of your deductions.
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I enter everything into my master RM databases manually but I also keep “Research” databases that I can throw anything into and use to accept hints from Ancestry etc. and the mess doesn’t matter. I then have more lines to research and source properly and load into the master neatly.
It allows the download of media linked to a hint when I don’t have an Ancestry subscription!
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When using dates, I prefer to use YYYY/MM/DD in general use; however, to remove any ambiguity, I use DD/MMM/YYYY throughout my database, where ‘MMM’ is a three letter abbreviation for the month in question, resolving the question, “Is 10/12 December 10 or October 12?”
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Yes, I much prefer to do all my entry myself. I seem to get to know more about what the individuals were as to their daily routines actions etc. , by looking at neighbors on censusess, church records etc. It is just more satisfying.
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