I have changed my  My e-mail address to bigler492@q.com  I wanted every one to know who want to talk to me.

When I was stationed in Germany with the military, I was able to go to Switzerland. In the town of Bern, most all of the people that lived there were Biglers.  while staying over night there, we were told of the town of Biglen. We went to the town of Biglen and met the minister of the only church in the town. He took us into the room where many records were stores back to the beginning of the town in 609 AD There was at this time no Biglers living in the town.

In my research I could not connect to  any of the Biglers. It was not until there was a book that was written on the history of the town of Ingelsheim, Alsace Loraine, France that I found the records of The Marx Bigler, his parents and children. In this book there were 3 generations of the family. I took the family group sheet of Marx’s Great-Grand parents Heinrich Bigler of 1612, that first came to the town of Ingelsheim, when it was not much of a town then, and sent it to a researcher who found the records back to  the first Bigler of this line that had a record, Uli Bigler. His  family records were made from the church records of the town of Muri Bein Bern, Switzerland.   There was no other records because when Uli lived there , there was no town, just farm land until his last 3 children were born and were christened. It was all that the researcher could find. I have a copy of the christening records which listed  Uli’s first children and Wife. These records are in German and translated in to English by a renowned  researcher. He sent to me the records both in German and English. It is this that I have put into my web site.

If you’re in the Northern Utah area you might be interested in the Layton Personal Ancestral File Users Group (LPAFUG).

LPFUG meets the last Wednesday of every month at 7:15 pm at the Layton Hills Family History Center (LHFHC), 2300 North 1200 West, Layton, Utah 84041.

PAF helps you manage your family history (genealogy) information, creates pedigree files, and family group sheets.

Here’s your chance to share your expertise, ask questions, and learn how to use PAF.

No cost to join in!

Many of you already know, the standard genealogy software for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been PAF (Personal Ancestral File). The software hasn’t seen an update in a long, long time, and most people have moved on to Legacy.

I just read a Church Memo: no future development is planned for PAF. Instead, the Church is developing an online tool that will enable you to import your GEDCOM file and use it online. They are advising that you do not import large GEDCOMs for various reasons. They do not plan to offer an “offline” software, but assure us that there will be 3rd party applications that will be enabled to sync with the new online tool.

No ETA regarding its public availability was mentioned.

Most Family Historians we know use either Legacy or PAF as their family history/genealogy software of choice. While both of these programs do their jobs well, neither has really pushed the envelope of what can be done or how data is entered or presented. We’re not saying that’s a bad thing, but we’re not alone in our observations.

The folks over at Vertigo have used Microsoft’s latest technologies to “re-write” how family history works – or at least how you input and view your data.

Though the power of WPF (Microsoft’s new presentation engine) Family.Show has the ability to display your family tree in ways that you wouldn’t have imagined.

The program can import your GEDCOM file.

Those of you familiar with this site will notice a significant change that we underwent today.

We upgraded

We upgraded from WordPress 2.1 to WordPress 2.6 (and applied the permalinks patch).

We converted most of our information from pages to posts

We did this for a few reasons; posts are easier to update and maintain than pages (in our experience), post are more quickly indexed in search engines (which will make your task of finding the information you need faster and easier), and we generally have more flexibility in adding content than we did before. Unfortunately, this also means that search engines and bookmarks that point to the old pages will now be redirected to the homepage, but from there you can use our search box (over there on the left) to quickly find what you’re looking for.

We changed over our theme

We really liked the old one, but it wasn’t compatible with WordPress 2.6, so this one seems to do what we need it to do without being overly “heavy” (again, the point here is to help you find what you’re looking for that much faster).

We changed from categories to tags

Tags are the new in-thing, and they work much better for what we’re trying to do. Categories, by definition, are hierarchical, so there has to be a rigid structure. This can be limiting in the way we arrange our information. Tags, on the other hand are, by definition, NON-hierarchical. This means we can add valuable meta-information to our articles and histories, without being shackled down to pre-established categories.

Google Ads

We had some Yahoo Ads running on the site before, that never paid off for us, so now we’ve switched over to Google Ads. Most of the feedback that we got from you (our readers) was that the Yahoo Ads either weren’t all that relevant to the article, or you just didn’t trust Yahoo as much as you do Google. You asked, we listened, and we now have Google Ads running in the sidebars and at the bottom of the page. If you see something you’re interested in feel free to click. This ultimately helps us to keep the site running.

Health

Ed health has been degrading over the last several months. Team that up with his new “job” helping people over the phone with getting up and running with their family histories, and, well, he doesn’t have a lot of extra time, and that which he does is precious to his family.

Natalie and I are trying to help him compile the histories that he has for personal use first, and will likely then publish them here as well.

Thank you for sticking with us and for all the thoughts and prayers for Ed!

- Joe

What is Genealogy?

According to wikipedia:

Genealogy is the study and tracing of family pedigrees. This involves the collection of the names of relatives, both living and deceased, and establishing the relationships among them based on primary, secondary and/or circumstantial evidence or documentation, thus building up a cohesive family tree. Genealogy (often misspelled “genealogy”) is often also referred to as family history, although these terms may be used distinctly: the former being the basic study of who is related to whom; the latter involving more “fleshing out” of the lives and personal histories of the individuals involved.

What Surnames are in the Bigler Family Tree?

• Bigler
• Porter
• Landis (Swiss)
• Harley (Swiss)
• Rinehart or Rinehard (Swiss)

What Surnames are in the Dobson Family Tree?

• Dobson
• Neves

Didn’t find what you’re looking for?

Here are some links that may help you:

• www.Ancestry.com
• www.FamilySearch.org
• www.genealogy.com

2006-12 (Dec)

With the old version of the site showing its age, we decided it was time to overhaul the design and work some magic on the back-end.

What does this mean to you

Hopefully more information, and easier to find. Not only that, but you’ll be able to post comments on the content to (hopefully) help others out there with whatever information you can impart.

What does this mean to us

Since the site is now modular and database driven, we’ll be able to make updates faster, add new content in a more timely fashion, and get more in touch with you, our loyal readers.

Work in progress

As we’re migrating over to the new system some links may not work, some images may be broken, and who know what other bugs may be lurking out there. When you come across one of these bugs, please reply to this post (we probably know about it and are working on it, but just in case we’re not), give us the details, what page you were on, what link you clicked, what happened that wasn’t what you expected, etc.

Thank you

Thanks for your patience and your visits in the past! We hope that things will only get better from here!