Class: THE NAUVOO DATABANK
©Copyright 2007 by Donald R. Snow
Sections of the Class Notes
WELCOME
AND
INTRODUCTION TO CLASS
-
Instructors are Elder and Sister Donald R. and
Diane M. Snow of the England London Mission, Hyde Park Family History Centre
(snowd@math.byu.edu, dms34@juno.com)
- These notes with active Internet links are
posted on theUtah Valley
PAF Users Group website
http://uvpafug.org
under Class Outlines, Don's
Listings.
- This class is a discussion of the Folio computer text
file called The Nauvoo Databank.
ABOUT THE NAUVOO
DATABANK
- Computer text file compiled by many missionaries and
others under the direction of Dr. Milton V. Backman Jr., Retired Professor of
Church History, Brigham Young University, of information about the early LDS
Church and its members up to about 1900
- Mostly text, but
includes some images of people and places
- This
is a text file, NOT a genealogical database,
i.e. it is NOT a FH database of individuals
like the EarlyLDS database at http://earlylds.com .
- Only available to the public on computers at a few
places, e.g. the Nauvoo FHC, several FHC's in Utah, the Hyde Park FHC in
London, England -- parts are available elsewhere, as noted below
- The text is a Folio file, so it is completely
searchable with the full power of the Folio 4 search engine (earlier versions
of the file were for Folio 3)
- When intalled on a FHC computer it is opened by
clicking on the Nauvoo Databank icon or by clicking on the Folio 4 icon,
and then File/Open and tell it where to find the Nauvoo Databank --
sometimes takes a long time to open, so be patient
- Some parts are available elsewhere, as noted.
(Please let me know, if you find other parts online. -- DRS)
- LDS Family History Suite CD contains the Susan
Easton-Black Membership Records of the Early LDS Church, Harvey Black's
Early Seventies Records, many of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers books,
much of the LDS Historical Library, and other items
- LDS Family History Suite #2 CD contains the above, except
it does not contain Harvey Black's Early Seventies
Records
- Marie
Taylor's web page shows where to find parts of the
LDS FH Suite CD's on the Internet, including some of the LDS Historical
Library -- http://www.warnes.net/Teslacorp/GenealogyLinks
- Ancestry.com, which is no longer free at FHC's, has some of these
records posted online at http://www.ancestry.com
- Susan
Easton-Black's Membership of the Early LDS Church volumes are now online
at http://www.worldvitalrecords.com
.
CONTENTS OF THE
NAUVOO DATABANK
- BIBLIOGRAPHIES
- Mormons and Their Neighbors, compiled by Marvin
Wiggins - an index to biographical
references from 1820
to Present. Nauvoo Databank has about 75,000 references, but
updated online version at BYU Library web
site http://hbllmedia.lib.byu.edu/Ancestry/ has
100,000 references. The records are located at Harold B. Lee Library,
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602, and copies of the original
records can be obtained by writing to them.
- Guide to Mormon Diaries and Autobiographies (1977),
compiled by Davis Bitton -- also on FH Suite CD's
- Guide
to Mormon Manuscripts to 1846 (1977), compiled by
Andrus and Bennett -- also on FH Suite CD's
- VITAL
RECORDS (Emphasizing Nauvoo Region,
1839-1846)
- Early Priesthood Holders -- Biographical
Information from Seventies Records & other sources
- Early Seventies, compiled by Harvey Black -- on FH
Suite CD (on FH Suite 1, but not on FH Suite 2)
- Seventies Ordained Before 1850; Seventies Ordained
After 1849; Autobiographies of early Seventies
- Biographical Information from High Priest Records
- Index of
Minutes From High Council (Nauvoo)
- Index of Minutes From Teachers Quorum
- Record of Members 1841-1845
- 1842
LDS Census
- Excerpts from 1842 Personal Property Tax Record
-- Primarily records from townships where many Latter-day Saints
gathered -- some of the tax records from around Nauvoo are online at http://www.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=4221
- Nauvoo List of Members
- Daily Log of Persons Entering Nauvoo
- Members of Nauvoo Legion
- Missouri Petitions
- Marriages in the
Nauvoo Region -- many are online at
Illinois Online Marriage Records Index now http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/marriage.html
- Inscriptions Found on Tombstones and Monuments in
Early LDS Burial Grounds -- lists of names from Old Nauvoo Burial Ground
Kiosk and on Nauvoo Parley Street Kiosk
- Pioneers of 1847 -- see
lists at http://lds.org/churchhistory/library/pioneercompanylist-chronological/0,15765,3968-1,00.html
- Members of the Mormon Battalion (List) -- online roster
and info
at http://www.mormonbattalion.com/history/roster.html
- Ellsworth and McArthur Handcart Companies 1856 --
online rosters and info at http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/library/pioneercompany/0,15797,4017-1-111,00.html and http://lds.org/churchhistory/library/pioneercompany/0,15797,4017-1-195,00.html
- Willie and Martin Handcart Company -- online rosters and
info at http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/library/pioneercompany/0,15797,4017-1-319,00.html
, http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/library/pioneercompany/0,15797,4017-1-192,00.html ,
and http://www.handcart.com/default.htm
- MEMBERSHIP
OF THE LDS CHURCH 1830 TO 1858 (50 volumes, compiled
by Susan Easton-Black)
- EARLY
RLDS MEMBERSHIP RECORDS (6 volumes, compiled
by Susan Easton-Black)
- BIOGRAPHIES
- AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
AND BIOGRAPHIES OF EARLY
LATTER-DAY SAINTS
- Writings -- primarily unpublished writings of and
about early Latter-day Saints and their contemporaries. This
collection contains over 550 autobiographies, journals or diaries kept by
early Latter-day Saints; letters and reminiscences (such as
reminiscences of Joseph Smith by more than 60 Latter-day Saints);
and over 170 biographies of early Latter-day saints, primarily
residents of Nauvoo or vicinity.
- Excerpts
from some of these and many other early LDS writings are are
online at http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/
and http://www.ldsinfobase.net/lds_stuff.html#periodicals
- Collection
of "Writings" is also in a separate folder with
Nauvoo
Databank and they can be downloaded from there without the
sources that Folio puts in for each paragraph
- LDS
HISTORICAL LIBRARY
PRINCIPLES
AND HELPS FOR SEARCHING IN FOLIO
- Start with minimal info and add more to narrow down
the search if you get too many hits -- entering too much search data at the
start may eliminate some hits due to spelling and/or data entry
errors
- Folio searches are powerful when you learn the
techniques
- "QUERY" -- for simple queries click on the word "Search"
at the top left of the screen, then "Query" (F3 does the same thing)
- Entering the string (of characters) 'Joseph Smith'
(without the quote marks), then clicking OK gives all pages with Joseph
or Smith or both words, with the search terms highlighted on the page
- Case of search terms does not matter, so searching
for 'Joseph Smith' gives same hits as 'joseph smith'
- You see the number of PAGES with hits on them, not
the number of hits, e.g. 1/50, which means Page 1 out of 50 pages with
hits on them -- there may be one or many hits on each page
- Clicking on the big forward double arrows takes you
to the next hit (F4 does the same) which may still be on the same page so it
still says 1/50 -- you may have to go ahead several hits before the page
changes so you see 2/50.
- Clicking on the small forward double arrows takes
you to the next page of hits and you see 2/50, then 3/50, etc.
- If there is only one hit per page, then
both sets of double arrows do the same thing.
- The back double arrows go back one hit or one page
of hits, respectively.
- With this type of Query searching for 'Joseph Smith'
gives hits with things like Joseph A. Banks and George A. Smith on
the page
- Clicking
Prev gives you the past few searches you have
done, so you can reuse or modify them.
- "ADVANCED QUERY" -- has more search options; click
on the word "Search" at the top left of the screen, then "Advanced Query"
(F2 does same)
- Now entering the string 'joseph Smith' (without
the quotes) first shows that the word Joseph occurs in the Databank 85667
times, then Smith occurs 79984 times, and both on the same page occurs 48842
times
- Adding more words, e.g. Jr., shows
Jr. occurs
9071 times
and these
three words occur on the same page 2942 times in the Databank --
but these may not all refer to the same person on that page,
e.g. you may get a page with Lovina
Jane Smith; Joseph
City,
Arizona; and Brigham Young Jr.
- Adding quotes, e.g. "Joseph Smith"
(including the quotes), gives hits with the words in that order (36,072
hits)
- "joseph smith jr." (1402 hits) gives words in that
order, and it includes "joseph smith, jr." with a comma, so punctuation
is ignored
- Adding quote marks and then @5, e.g. "Joseph
Smith"@5 finds occurrences of Joseph and Smith within 5 words of each
other (46,004 hits), so you get Joseph Smith; Smith Joseph; Joseph F.
Smith; Joseph Fielding Smith; Smith, Robert Evan Joseph;
etc., everything you got before plus more
- Experiment with the number of words to include
-- the larger the number the more hits -- using @2 means just
those two words together, but in either order
- @ searches are powerful and allow finding things
that you can't find by searching straight text,
e.g. "wells teacher"@5 finds teachers
by the name of Wells, etc..
- WILDCARDS -- ? (Question Mark) = any single
character; * (Asterisk) =
any number of any characters
- Misspellings: try "jospeh smith"@5
-- There are 30 misspellings as "Jospeh" in the Databank.
- This indicates why you need to try various
spellings and misspellings or wildcards, e.g. search for "j*s*p*h smith"@3
- Wildcard searches take longer, but
include misspellings
- Examples
- "Joseph 1805"@5 will pick up Josephs with
an event in 1805, e.g. born, married, died, wrote letter
- "Smith Hale"@10 may find Smiths and Hales that
were married, plus lots of other extraneous hits
- "15 sep* 184?"@5 will pick up all events with dates
like September 15, 1845; Sep 15, 1840; 15 Sep in 1849; etc.
- "Vermont Smith"@10 will pick up all Smith's with a
Vermont connection within 10 words, such as lived, died, etc.
- "Vermont 1805"@5 will pick up events in Vermont
in 1805 if the year is given within 5 words of Vermont
- "joseph smith emma new york"@30 brings up
the letter
Joseph Smith wrote Emma from New York City in 1832
EXPORTING DATA
- SAVING
TEXT OR IMAGES BY HIGHLIGHTING AND COPYING
- Highlight text by
- Left click and drag to highlight a block of
text
- To highlight a large block it is easier to
click at the
top, scroll down, and hold the shift key down while clicking at the
bottom -- this highlights everything in between and is a Windows
feature that works in any Windows program
- Copying text by highlighting gets all the visible
text, including the sources at the start of each paragraph; however, it
does not get the sources that are in links as in the Susan
Easton-Black Membership of the Early LDS Church compilations
- With text highlighted you can right-click-copy (or
CTRL-C) to get it on the clipboard, then right-click-paste (or CTRL-V) to
put it into your PAF notes for a person or to another file or to an
email
- To copy an image, left click on it to get the
image box around it, then right-click-copy to put it on the
clipboard; open a document (in WordPad, WordPerfect, or
Word) or a program (such as MS Paint), and Edit/Paste or Paste
Special, then select Picture/OK.
- To print the highlighted text, click on File/Print
and click Selection
- To copy entire articles from the Autobiographies
section of the Nauvoo Databank, it is usually easier to copy them
from the Writings folder (usually a subfolder under the Nauvoo
Databank folder) and download the corresponding rtf file (rich text file)
-- has the same text, but the paragraphs aren't separated
by source notes, as in the main Databank. The files in the
Writings folder are titled alphabetically by the person's name and
can be opened with most word processing programs.
- SAVING
TEXT OR IMAGES BY TAGGING
- Tagging a record means marking it for printing or
exporting -- each paragraph is a record, so each paragraph has to be tagged
separately to export or print it (but you can highlight the whole thing in
one large block, as mentioned above)
- To tag a record put the cursor anywhere in the
paragraph, then click Edit/Tag Record (or press CTRL-T) -- you see
a red vertical line appear to the left of that paragraph
- Tag as many records as you want.
- To export all tagged records into one file,
click File/Export, and tell it where to save the file, what name
to give it, and the format you want, e.g. Generic Text
or Rich Text File -- then click Export to save
it that format.
- Exporting or printing tagged records includes
the sources even if they are not visible, as in the Susan Easton-Black
Membership of the Early LDS Church database -- the earlier
technique of highlighting and printing doesn't include sources that are not
visible as text
- To print all tagged records, click File/Print
- To
clear (delete) all tags, after exporting or printing, click Edit/Clear All Tags
CONCLUSION
- This outline has only scratched the surface of what
can be done with Folio searches and the Nauvoo Databank
- Read some
of the help instructions in the Folio program and in the
Nauvoo Databank for
more information
ASSIGNMENT
- Search for an ancestor in the Nauvoo Databank (or
use Erastus Snow). How many hits result? Go through the first few
to see how to proceed through the hits.
- Do a search for some date to see where this date
occurs in the database, e.g. 27 Jun 1844. Do an @ search, e.g. "27 jun*
1844"@5, so it will pick up various ways that the date may be written.
- Highlight some text and right-click-copy it to the
clipboard. Open a word processor, e.g. WordPad, and paste it
in. It can then be saved as a document.
- Select a few records and tag them to see the red marks down
the left column. Click on export to save off the tagged
records and copy that
into the WordPad document you opened above.
Return
to Don's
Class
Listings page or to the home page of Utah Valley PAF Users
Group .