Olenberg.Org Genealogy Forms, Help, Searches, Software, Etc

Comments on LDS/Mormon Jewish Records & Genealogy Guides:

The free, helpful, genealogical guides from the LDS/Mormon Church, above, have been created in connection with the church's genealogy archival & research efforts, for Jewish genealogical researchers, among others.

The Mormon Church has the belief that people can be baptised or, in their words, "sealed" to their children & descendants after death. Because of their preoccupation with this belief, they have, for over a hundred years, made an extensive, worldwide effort to track down every person that has ever lived by microfilming millions of individual records, or record indexes, of births, deaths, marriages, etc.

You may disagree with their philosophy, or vehimently protest what some people consider to be a "conversion" of their ancestors without their consent. Nevertheless, the church's efforts have preserved, and made accessible, an enormous number of these worldwide records. Like it, or not, it is hardly possible to make an effective genealogy search of the extant records without taking advantage of their free, or inexpensive, resources and data.

Instructions for GenealogyJ:

GenealogyJ is a free script that will work with most web browsers, and in nearly any computer that permits running Javascripts, to display Gedcom files, the generally accepted geneology data file standard. It is not fancy, but will suffice if you do not have a geneology program. Download the 2nd file in the GenealogyJ download list (less than 1 megabyte) to your computer's "desktop" or anywhere that you will be able to find it. Locate the file and "click" it to decompress it into a directory. Copy your GEDCOM file (file extension: .ged) into the same directory & rename it "full.ged". Download/"save-as" this file: family.html into the same directory. Open that file in the local directory, family, with your browser. That's all there is to it.

FAMILY TREE BUILDER FOR WINDOWS

Family Tree Builder (FTB) is a FREE program for the Windows operating system, developed in Israel, that lets you view or "build" family trees. There is room for much more than names & birth/marriage/death dates. You can download and install your own copy of (FTB) by clicking our home page link for it. Especially nice about FTB is that it is bilinual. Enter information in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Spanish. etc, and it will translate your entries into the corresponding English section.

With a copy of the current family data file, you will not need to start with a blank page! Registered family members can request the Family Data File from the webmaster, and download it to their computer's desktop. Then, when running FTB, the user can click "FILE" and "Import GEDCOM" and browse to the downloaded file. With that file i,ported into FTB, the user will be "off and running" with a lot of family history (nearly 300 family members and ancestors) already in place! Because this file is in the standard format for genealogical data, called GEDCOM, it will work with FTB and any geneological software that accepts this standard format genealogy data file.

HINT 1: When viewing the family tree at myHERITAGE you can get a wider view by moving the "generations" slider, at the top of the webpage, to the right.
HINT 2: To get from one family "branch" that you are viewing, to another "branch", you will have to find the connection between the branches, usually the connection is an ancestor (parent, grandparent, etc) or a marriage that connects the two family branches. (It makes sense once you try it.) The other option is to find the ancestor or relative that you want to view, in the list at the left.
NOTE: In the Family Data File, a bit less than 10% of the ancestors are not identified. These unknowns are necessary because they are the "link" between branches...generally to connect the siblings, at the "base" of two "branches", when the details of their parents are not known.

Share Your Findings: If you enter data or details, that you have collected and which was not in the original data file, you can click "FILE", and "Export GEDCOM" back to your desktop. If you then email the file to the webmaster, your version of the file can be merged with other data and the new, bigger file can be made available here AND at myHERITAGE.com so everyone can share it! If you get more information in the future, you can request the most current data file again, and import it into FTB again! (And then export/email your modified file to the webmaster once more.)

SECURITY: The online version of Family Tree Builder shows living persons as "private". Names and contact information are not listed. Also, any family data file, that is posted online, will always be an abridged version of the full data file, with street address, phone information and email addresses expunged from it. The file that is available, on request from the webmaster, to registered family members, not "censored". By the way, in general, every attempt has been made to protect your contact information on our website. It will not be intentionally supplied to anyone else without your prior permission, to protect your personal security. But, you can always email another family member who has registered at Olenberg.org by clicking on the user profile in the List of Users. When you do that, only you and the person you emailed will have each other's email address.

We are concerned...about the security of your identity and confidential information. As you can see, above, efforts have been taken so that the family data file protects your confidentiality. Many further security steps you can take are to be found in a security article in the general help file directory.

OBS 06-19-2008 / 06-07-2009