Using Legacy for a village database.
Hi everyone,
I should have begun here by introducing myself: I am an amateur researcher from Transylvania (present day Romania, Europe). I use Legacy in an bit unconventional way, as I am not using separate family files for families, but rather a single large file per village. This way I can see the genealogical image of an entire village and the families within. I am using Legacy 8 - which helps me get a lot of valuable statistical information from my files concerning names, dates, places, etc.
I am also an authorized translator for English, Hungarian and Romanian, so in case you get stuck with a Hungarian or Romanian text (you never know), don't hesitate to contact me, I'll be glad to help.
I think that is a great use of the program. Similar to a one name study, only a one village study.
ReplyDeleteYou are doing what some of us refer to as a one-place study. I am so impressed as it seems you are quite far into it. What is the timeframe for your study and do you follow families only when they are part of the village or also if and when they leave. I am also working on a one-place study - mine is Plate Cove East, Newfoundland. Perhaps this should be one of our topics for a LVUG hangout. I would love to know how others are using their Legacy program to keep track of specialty family history projects. Thanks for posting Domokos Nagy-Vajda in our Getting to Know You section.
ReplyDeleteThe place I am currently researching - my native village - is officially called Dumbravioara, Mures county, Romania, inhabited mostly by Hungarians. The current name is very recent though, the village was renamed after Transylvania's last annexation by Romania (1945). The ancient official - and current Hungarian name is Sáromberke. The place is almost 800 years old, but we have consistent genealogical data only since 1753 as far as the population is concerned. Some noble families that lived here can be traced back to the 12th century AD. The period I work with is 1753 to present.
ReplyDeleteI basically take every available genealogical source (church records, civilian records, books, census records, etc) and enter all the data into Legacy, as they come, from page 1 to the last page. This way I make sure not to forget anything. I mostly work from the Index view to see if the person of interest is already in the database or not. If I happen to enter a name twice, the program warns me and offers to merge records.
I usually don't research a family if they moved out, but I do record the exact date and place of the event (of leaving). Some descendants move back later - in these cases I try to link the descendant back to his/her roots. I also research special cases (eg. emigrations to the USA, Canada, Australia)
I have to take extra care when entering place names, because of the "historical instability" of the area. I always enter the name of the place as it was at the moment of the event. This is important in our case, because this village has exchanged "master" several times during history (first it belonged to the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, then the Principality of Transylvania, then The Grand Principality of Transylvania within the Habsburgic Empire, then Austro-Hungarian Empire, then the Kingdom of Romania, then the Kingdom of Hungary then the People's Republic of Romania, etc. ). Fortunately Legacy can handle all this with ease. In fact, I can honestly say that for me this is the most suitable program of this kind I have tried so far. I have to work a bit with the mapping of my locations - but it's worth the effort.
I like this method, because this file is a sort of a village database, but is also serves as a family file. If anyone is interested I can still generate his/her family chart in seconds.
Wonderful summary and thanks for sharing. Your community is lucky to have such a terrific local historian putting this together - what a treasure. I love one-place studies.
ReplyDeleteTotally fascinating! Thanks for the information and background Domokos Nagy-Vajda
ReplyDeleteWhat a great project! Do you have plans to publish your research?
ReplyDeleteI agree that Legacy is a great program for these types of specialized genealogy/family history projects. I use Legacy for both my one-name study and my one-place study. I use other programs in conjunction with it (Excel workbooks are wonderful) and I do love how you can download certain reports and indexes into a csv file (that would be Excel for me).
ReplyDeleteI second Karin Coppernoll comment/question - what an amazing local history to provide to the community Domokos Nagy-Vajda. We should all be doing our part to keep local and community history alive for future generations.
Nice to hear about your village study and using Legacy for it .Domokos Nagy-Vajda . I am a new user of Legacy and beginning to see the merits of it. I like your tip of working from the Index view as you enter your data. How large was your village in 1913 ( 1913 gazetteer of Hungary ).I work on a village too that is extinct in Hungary called Derenk but it is a small place.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the tardy reply. Sáromberke had a population of just over 1000 people in 1913. As I progress with my work, I start to see the the limitations involved - the most important is time. :) I simply don't seem to have enough time to do my work as I would like to. Your work with Derenk sounds very interesting. I think I read about the village somewhere. The name of governor Horthy pops to my mind for some reason. It was a Polish settlement somwhere in Northern Hungary, right? But maybe I am mistaken, many Hungarian settlement names sound similar... Good luck with your work!
ReplyDeleteDomokos Nagy-Vajda I think every single family historian feels that s/he does not have enough time to get research done or information written up. The key is to realize that doing a little bit every day or every week will help you get something done each year, and something done each year will help you accomplish great things over a lifetime.
ReplyDeleteAnd it doesn't hurt to have someone to help - be sure to encourage a family member or a friend and with your research encourage this as a local school project - students finding out more about their local area's history, families and culture would be a great thing - they could use videos, interviews and drawings (get them to map your area with Google maps and overlays). Lots of possibilities here and just keep at it! All the best.