5 Nov 2015 – Health History

When we do our family tree, we focus on births, deaths, marriages, and other significant events.  One very important piece of information is generally missing.  As you do your genealogical research, take the time to gather health history as well.  This is helpful information for you, your family and your doctor, especially for diseases that are hereditary.

There are several options to gather health information.  For deceased persons in my tree, I generally add cause of death as a fact to my tree.  You can also upload documents and attach to your tree.  Be mindful what information you share especially if you make your tree accessible to the public.

The March of Dimes has a very comprehensive  family-health-history-form that could be completed and attached as a fact to your family tree.  This form is pretty involved.

Other useful sites include:

My Family Health

Tracing Your Health History at Genealogy.com

My Family Health Portrait

Know Your Family Health History at FamilySearch

Family Health History Toolkit

Ancestry.com – Creating a Health History (requires Family Tree Maker software)

 

Between The Dashes

28 Sep 2015 – Genealogy Apps!

There are a lot of genealogy apps available to build and update your family tree on the go.  If you have an online family tree, always check to see if there is an app for you phone.  The following are apps are free, but require online accounts (some free and some with fees).  Some recommendations:

  • Ancestry – Explore more than 14 billion records, photos and stories with hints to help build your family tree.  Add family members to your tree from Facebook.  Syncs across all devices.  This is a paid service.  Also syncs with Apple Watch.
  • Ancestry Shoebox – allows you to scan photos with your phone.  You can upload to Ancestry or share with family and friends.
  • Find A Grave – one of the many databases accessible via Ancestry (as well as directly online) with more than 100 million graves from around the world.

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