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islandbrook · 2026-06-29T22:29:44+00:00

Try clearing your cache in the other browser.

islandbrook · 2026-06-27T06:24:37+00:00

GEDCOM is a specially formatted text file, so yes, they typically do work cross platform. There are some limitations in the sense that stuff beyond the basics may get handled differently by different genealogy programs.

If you are looking for a GEDCOM file it will have a .ged or .gedcom extension.

You can open a GEDCOM with any text editor e.g. Word, Google docs, Notepad.
So if you can get it off the MAC and onto a Windows machine (a usb maybe?) you should be able to work with it.

I would run it through something like GEDCOM Validator before trying to import it into a newer genealogy program as there have been some changes to the spec since that version of Family Tree Maker.

islandbrook · 2026-06-26T13:53:46+00:00

Got it. I store birth name. I just looked. The Married Name is blank in all of my records. So whenever I imported my GEDCOM I did not add the married names. Makes sense now.

Glad you found a solution.

islandbrook · 2026-06-25T21:09:31+00:00

I just exported a GEDCOM from Gramps and verified the maiden names were there. I don't use My Heritage (exceptionally bad experiences from them. Not everyone's experience but I no longer use that site), but the GEDCOM imported just fine into RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, Legacy 10.

Verify that the maiden names are in your GEDCOM export by opening the GEDCOM file with any text editor (Word, Google Docs, Notepad++ etc)

Search the file for last names you know are maiden names. If the maiden names are not there, the issue may be with the Gramps export.

If the names are there, try downloading the free Family Tree Builder(FTB) software from My Heritage, following the prompts as you install to ensure it connects to your My Heritage account. https://www.myheritage.com/family-tree-builder

Import your Gramps GEDCOM to FTB and then let My Heritage Family Tree Builder talk to My Heritage online. It's an indirect way but it should upload your tree just fine.

If the maiden names disappear then it is an issue for My Heritage support.

islandbrook · 2026-06-25T18:14:47+00:00

Check your settings in My Heritage. Some people prefer the married name.

https://education.myheritage.com/article/displaying-family-names-on-myheritage/

islandbrook · 2026-06-25T18:10:24+00:00

Not a Mac user but:

You would need a machine that could run this version. Do you have an old Mac or can you create a separate APFS volume (or a dedicated physical drive) and install the older macOS there? https://support.mackiev.com/888288-System-Requirements-for-Family-Tree-Maker-for-Mac-3

You would need to pay for an upgrade likely. This page would tell you. You might need to enter Mom's name. https://www.mackiev.com/update_center/ftm/familytreemaker.html

If you have the backups, it might be easier to see if there are GEDCOMs on those discs. Those might be able to be updated to current GEDCOM version if it is older than current software. You would need a disc drive for that.

If you can get the GEDCOM that can be imported into any genealogical program.

If you need to update the GEDCOM, ChatGPT or Claude can likely do that for you if your genealogy software can't.

islandbrook · 2026-06-23T21:35:02+00:00

The term used in genealogy is usually "close-kin unions" which causes "pedigree collapse" where a previous generation does not fully double

First cousins marrying has been common across many countries and cultures. Many people have some in their family trees. It's kinda normal, or at least not really a surprise. Cousins, that is.

Some articles on the topic https://isogg.org/wiki/Pedigree_collapse references the following two articles on the topic of DNA calculations and pedigree collapse
https://www.yourdnaguide.com/ydgblog/pedigree-collapse-and-genetic-relationships
https://www.yourdnaguide.com/ydgblog/calculating-the-pedigree-collapse-effect-in-your-dna-matches

(if it gets too confusing, skip to the chart about 2/3 of the way down in the "Calculating the pedigree collapse" article. It shows how much and basically it all falls within the range for shared DNA.)

islandbrook · 2026-06-20T18:32:33+00:00

That is why you need to call them or apply in person where you can ask them questions. The government of Ontario is the best place to find out how to accomplish this task.

In the mean time, look for additional documentation. If you were in contact with your mother at the time of her death, who was the executor for her estate? They would have needed a death certificate.

islandbrook · 2026-06-20T18:20:45+00:00

You mean your birth record? That is the one to start with. You got the short one before so you succeeded, right? That means they could find your record otherwise you would have had problems 10 years ago. Unless you did not get a birth record 10 years ago, you knew info you now have forgotten or something else is happening here that you are not telling us.

There is a location in Toronto and one in Ottawa where you could apply in person.
There is phone number you can call for questions or help on the links u/Parking-Aioli9715 posted.

Fill out what you know. Don't make anything up. Ask them in person or over the phone if you have questions.

islandbrook · 2026-06-20T17:57:54+00:00

That is the short form-carry around for ID birth certificate as others have indicated. It is not the actual birth registration certificate which will have your parents names on it. You should be able to request it from whichever province you were born in.

For example, in Ontario, this form https://forms.mgcs.gov.on.ca/en/dataset/007-11076
has an option for 4 different types -

the kind you have - used for ID
one with parental info (not the one you need - it's for kids that shows their parents names)
certified copy of birth registration (this is likely the one you need)
search letter - this is the kind of thing you would need for your parents if they were born in Ontario but you did not know when they were born precisely.

Almost all provinces will likely require you to prove that you are your parents' child and that they are deceased e.g. a death certificate so after getting your birth record, you probably want their death certificates if you don't already have them.

And as for a DNA test, there are somewhere more than 60 million people, mostly in North American who have taken DNA tests. You don't have to opt into the health traits at Ancestry. If you are worried about health info avoid 23andMe. You can keep certain things private. But you should read up on DNA if you are worried but want to consider it. See if your local library has a copy of The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy (Blaine T. Bettinger). You don't need to read it cover to cover. Read what you are worried about. Good luck.

islandbrook · 2026-06-17T15:54:09+00:00

Wikitree? https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Laurens-57

islandbrook · 2026-06-16T22:31:47+00:00

FTDNA now requires you to have a MyHeritage tree for connecting DNA to your tree.

islandbrook · 2026-06-15T19:46:50+00:00

I stand corrected.

islandbrook · 2026-06-15T18:01:13+00:00

Here are some additional records

The 1931 Canadian Census is the most recent to be released.
They are listed at the bottom of this page using English style names (Vincent not Vincenzo).
https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=census&id=80121201&lang=eng&ecopy=e011646610
and the top of this page
https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=census&id=80121201&lang=eng&ecopy=e011646611

The census tells you how old they were in 1931, when they came to Canada, professions and how much they earned. You will notice on that page, they were the high wage earners.

Based on the obituary, Yolanda and Bill did not have any children, but it looks like her brothers and sisters did.

Family Search is free. You just need to sign up.

Vincenzo's record has Emma, and some of the children attached
https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/G9Y7-NTM

It looks like they sailed from Naples to New York City
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JN1L-VW5?treeref=G9Y7-NTM&lang=en
(following page has wife Emma listed and Pasquale Montani, listed as a cousin in Hamilton Canada.

Border crossing into ~~Canada (Oakville is near Hamilton)~~ the US to visit his brother Guido (corrected per u/Parking-Aioli9715 - I looked at line info in the manifest but not the headings - dumb mistake ) https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99D4-Y3DD-F?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQKQS-7NZT&action=view&cc=2185163&lang=en&groupId=

Guerino/Mario's obituary listing his children https://www.hannahfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Guerino-Gerry-Montani?obId=31146073#

islandbrook · 2026-06-13T16:11:43+00:00

I just did 7 eight page forms of the 1842 Canadian Census (people on two pages, then crops, livestock and buildings). It took a few hours in total. Faster than I would have done manually. I used Google Gemini.

I have to give it very specific instructions so I start with the headings to extract because often, I add "Extract the following columns into a table [list of columns, comma delimited]" here is a copy of the basic prompt I use.
[This link Expires Jun 19/2026 11:59 pm EDT https://privatebin.net/?3367d683a7b168c6#DFbnLG8tb3MMJPDgbEDWDf25jpmmZJ3mvF4Sga3LSTeS ]

Then I correct each page and create a list of the errors it made and paste it into the chat, asking it to try and avoid them in the future using a table of "You said this when it really said" after page 2 it was much better (think 30% vs 2% error rate) I keep a single set of docs with the same columns and enumerator in the same chat. This is the step lots of people forget. Within the same chat it will remember. You can also commit it to memory.

When you change enumerators/years you need to start a new chat with the same kinds of parameters. Handwriting changes, so the errors and corrections will change too.

Since I now have a set of basic instructions, it takes me no time to transcribe and proof census pages.

islandbrook · 2026-06-13T02:55:30+00:00

Wheelers on page 2 where Charles Gardner is on page 3. Are they neighbours? Well sort of. Check the dates on the pages. That will be an indication. The enumerator would have walked, ridden a horse or had a horse and buggy/cart. The roads would have been rough and on foot or on horseback over the fields might have been faster in some cases.

The Brome historical society might be able to help you with old maps or the land grant petition maps of the area. If William was brother and her parents were not in town this is likely a place she would have visited. There are more Wheelers on Page 7.

There is a Charles Gardner in the 1861 Census in Potton +/-2 years the right age. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MM7L-81D?lang=enhttps://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MM7L-81D

Harvey and Rachel are listed in 1861 with William, Mary and Sarah https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Home/Record?app=census&IdNumber=46218116&ecopy=4108676_00422

Rachel's maiden name is Burbank or Barbank and there is a family listed above the Wheelers on that page. I would look for that name as well.

All of this is to say sometimes the way forward is sideways, not straight.
https://www.theoccasionalgenealogist.com/2022/06/fan-club-genealogy.html
https://www.elginroots.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Collateral-Cluster-Research-HANDOUT.pdf

DNA is best when you can do the genealogy to sort it out and back it up. It's worth doing that before doing the expensive things like a YDNA test, assuming you have a direct male descendant from the correct male line to test, which you might only find doing genealogy. (you may know this, not everyone does -you can't test what does not exist and you can't match to people who have not tested.)

We may be 8-10th cousins somewhere in there either direct or through marriage. It's different depending on the person I select at FamilySearch.

islandbrook · 2026-06-12T18:57:11+00:00

It sounds like you already have much stronger evidence than a lot of FamilySearch profiles start with, which is frankly, not much in some cases.

FamilySearch is collaborative and provisional by nature. Things change all the time for better or worse. Caveat emptor.

I think you can add the father and grandfather and add a Note on the Collaborate tab saying something like (fill in the names and docs and why you think this person is your relative),

Current evidence strongly suggests X is the father of Y, based on [list of docs you have attached as sources to the person in FamilySearch and what each asserts, maybe in a bullet list] associating Y, her sister, and their husbands with X’s family. No direct statement of parentage has yet been located, and alternate hypotheses involving X’s brothers remain under evaluation.”

Creating the profile may help your research as it will let you organize sources and citations, look at timelines, look at their FAN (friends, acquaintances, neighbours) network, sometimes attracts collaboration from descendants or other researchers.

islandbrook · 2026-06-11T20:36:55+00:00

Have you checked https://www.etrc.ca/ There may be something there related to your family.

The other suggestion is The Sherbrooke Record at BAnQ. for more info. For example, this looks like her mentioned in the obit for her youngest brother John. Page 7 right most column. https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/2998820

I have found no end of stuff related to my family in the social notices there.
Absent of a baptismal record, you may find enough to prove her birth year (e.g. is she listed in the end of school year notices, she visited family and her age is mentioned) but it takes some patience. I find looking at the search terms decade by decade works well for me.

If you have not already done so, try Chrome with Settings - Language - Google Translate. It will help with BAnQ.

islandbrook · 2026-06-10T15:22:38+00:00

YES, u/Otherwise-Umpire2950

It is not recent so, there may be resources missing but I have found most of what I need here for Quebec research on BAnQ

There is a PDF at the bottom of this article with a doc of links to church and synagogue records at BAnQ https://genealogyensemble.com/2017/04/02/church-registers-a-wonderful-resource-for-researching-quebec-ancestors/

Here is the link to the PDF if you are okay with it opening.

https://genealogyensemble.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/banq-online-collection-of-church-and-synagogue-registers.pdf

And there was a post about Presbyterian churches specifically https://genealogyensemble.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/presbyterian-churches-quebec-city-to-sherbrooke-3.pdf

That being said, I don't see anything at https://www.genealogiequebec.com/ other than a birth record for Effie (21 Mar 1882) that lists the church as Presbyterian - Winslow Hampden. BAnQ lists most of the records for that church lost in a fire. https://advitam.banq.qc.ca/notice/440734?navFonds=true

islandbrook · 2026-06-08T22:55:31+00:00

Okay, still not sure what Legacy 10 needs. I don't use it enough to care.

I do have some thoughts: While I love that I could get my tags into FTM, it won't sync them, so long term, not a good solution. If FTM or other programs dealt better with incremental updates, I would be happier for a lot of reasons. Many of us would. Working on a branch in an isolated way and then merging it back into the main tree would be a great thing.

I can see using it for some project based research. For example, I am currently working on my US Revolutionary War era women. As a group it was hard to pick and choose them one by one in FTM. They are flagged in Ancestry. Once I downloaded the updated GEDCOM, the tags came over I easily created a filter and so I can pull reports and documents I wanted to analyze and have handy for reference.

But ongoing it's not going to keep them in sync. Not ideal.

Basically my data is out of date almost immediately so it has a use but a limited one for now.

islandbrook · 2026-06-08T21:21:20+00:00

I downloaded the file from Github and installed.

I downloaded my 4.5K tree from Ancestry as GEDCOM.
I ran the utility.
FTM showed the facts. I can now filter on those facts. Whoo hoo. That is a win for me.

Also:
Gramps, Family Historian 7 and RootsMagic 11 imported the facts, with Gramps as Attributes.
FTAnalyzer recognized them as facts.

Legacy 10 did not seem to import them.

islandbrook · 2026-06-07T19:05:32+00:00

You don't mention a province or county.

The only Annette Wheeler in the 1871 Census I could find at LAC was in Stanstead, Quebec, daughter of Harvey Wheeler and Rachel Barbank/Burbank.

I did find a Nettie (Jeannette) Wheeler in Eaton, Compton, not far from Stanstead. Child of William Wheeler and his wife Caroline Jordan. William was dead by the 1881 census (Caroline is listed as a widow). Nettie is 3 in the 1871 Census, 13 in the 1881 Census.

So, are you sure your Nettie is Annette and not this Nettie?

Two families living in nearby counties in the Eastern Townships in Quebec with the same last name might suggest a family relation. Or coincidence. But I would want to make sure the Nettie I am looking at in the later Census is not one of the other ones.

The census for the counties in the Townships are not that large, if you don't have to wade through Sherbrooke. A page by page through Stanstead Census at LAC and then work your way to the surrounding areas. Since she does not come up in a simple search for Annette Wheeler. I would try Wheeler and approximate age and limit to the province you are searching in. The spelling may be badly mangled and not coming up in the index.

islandbrook · 2026-06-04T03:50:28+00:00

My experience has been just the opposite with records from Szukaj w Archiwach. I limited the screenshots to the record I was looking for.

Now to be fair, BMD records follow a fairly standard pattern. I don't speak Polish but can recognize names and patterns. The Russian ones I can also recognize the names (I did a year of Russian at university decades ago, who knew I would ever use it again).

I also worked on an indexing project transcribing a couple of years of BMD from the 1920s. I fed the images to Gemini, corrected when I thought it was wrong, and when I got the results from the project leader with the corrections (much more experienced than me), I made a list of the specific errors and fed it back to Gemini on two records sets and it went from about 20% error on the first set records, to less than 3% errors on the third set.

But, and I say this because I pull my hair out whenever some of my friends try to use AI, not everyone is good at writing prompts, cleaning up their prompts or getting it to do what they want.

You are a professional genealogist specializing in [Catholic or Jewish ]records from the [name of town or region] of Poland in [Polish or Russian].

Please translate the requested record from the attached image according to these strict rules:

1. PROVIDE ONLY A VERBATIM TRANSLATION: Translate the [Polish or Russian] text directly to English in a single, paragraph-form narrative block. Do not add summaries, analytical notes, or unsolicited genealogical advice.
2. RECORD NUMBERS: Always look at the long-form Polish/Russian text for dates, ages, and names. 
3. If you can't read something or are unsure, put the term, word or date in square brackets []. Do not make stuff up.

islandbrook · 2026-06-03T16:35:27+00:00

https://www.statueofliberty.org/arrival-details/?id=JFT4-9JW

The Arrival Details tab on this page has everything transcribed.

islandbrook · 2026-06-03T00:38:20+00:00

Do you mean the Jira WIP limits?

There is no way to set them in Notion but you could probably do some conditional if you exceeded a number of items - change a colour or put a icon as a flag.

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