Gene Notes

Some random and some not-so-random thoughts on family history.

Friday, December 28, 2018

The First Obituary I Found on the Internet

I found this obituary way back in 1997, just a year after the person died.

From the Kansas City (MO) Star:
Mrs Elizabeth Mary Harding, 102   (MO) - Wednesday, January 10, 1996. Elizabeth Mary Harding, 102, Kansas City, MO, passed away January 8, 1996, at Armour Memorial Home, 8100 Wornall Road, Kansas City, MO, where she had lived for the past 30 years. Services will be 2 p.m. Thursday, at the Royer Chapel, Oak Grove, MO; burial will follow in Oak Grove Cemetery.
A memorial service will be 1 p.m. Friday, January 12, at Armour Memorial Home. Friends may call 1-2 p.m. Thursday, at the Royer Chapel. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the First Methodist Church of Oak Grove, 1501 Harding St., Oak Grove, MO 64075, or to Armour Memorial Hospital.
Mrs. Harding was born in Waverly, MO, and moved to Kansas City, MO, at the age of 5. She attended elementary and high school while living in the Kansas City area. She attended Central Missouri State College in Warrensburg, MO. She taught school in Oak Grove, MO, for eight years prior to her marriage. She was a member of the Oak Grove Methodist Church for 59 years, and taught the Seekers Sunday School class for over 20 years.
After moving to Armour Memorial Home, she was a member for 28 years at Central United Methodist Church. She was a charter member of the Order of the Eastern Star for over 50 years, in Oak Grove, MO. Her husband, Walter B. Harding, died in 1953.
One son, William B. Harding, preceded her in death in 1976. She is survived by a son, Bryson F. Harding, Johnson City, TN; one granddaughter, Marsha Lynn Ratzel, Prairie Village, KS; and three great-grandchildren, Sarah, Allison and Eric.



Copyright 2010-2018, ACK for Gene Notes

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Is It Just Me That's Irritated Beyond Belief.

The last time that Ancestry updated their databases was October 25, 2018. Really? Do I get a two month break on my membership? I think they are concentrating too much on DNA and even then, I wonder.

Anyone else irritated?

Copyright 2010-2018, ACK for Gene Notes

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Panic Time! What Happens When ...

The other day I wrote about my search for Nathaniel Davidson, my great great great grandfather on my dad's Percival side. What I didn't mention at the time is the near heart attack I had when I discovered I couldn't open a lot of Word Documents that I imported into my Mac from my old Windows computer. These documents were letters I had painstakingly transcribed years ago (1990) from letters my dad and I photocopied from a scrapbook my late Aunt Shirley did for her late husband, John Stearns Percival, my dad's brother. My uncle died in 1982.

Now, I still have the copies of the letters and the original transcriptions. But it is a lot easier to go to that file on my computer and insert it into a blog. I immediately went looking for a program that would read them and convert them into .rtf files.  I tried a couple and finally settled on The Document Converter. After setting up a trial subscription for 7 days, I got busy. The premise is simple, the program uploads your file into their cloud, converts it and shoots it back to you in the format you desire. I was very happy with my results.

The nice thing about the program is that it is not limited to converting document files to rtf. You can convert to pdf, you can convert image files and convert into html or xml.

Copyright 2010-2018, ACK for Gene Notes