GRANDMA Online 1. What is GrandmaOnline.org? This website provides online search capability for the GRANDMA database. GRANDMA is the Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry. In practice, it is a database of people of Low German Mennonite ancestry who originate from Prussia (now Poland) and South Russia (now Ukraine.) Over 1.3 million individuals are listed where each individual is assigned a permanent number, the GRANDMA number, usually shown with a pound sign ( # ). 2. Login. Send your browser to http://grandmaonline.org. Enter your Username (which is not case-sensitive) and password (which is casesensitive.) Then click the Continue button. The Guest Access feature will be described later. It allows you to share some genealogical information with someone without an account or to embed some information in another we site. If the password is lost, it can be recovered when you click on Lost your password? You will need to enter either you username or the email address on record. The username and password will be emailed to the address on record. Please bear in mind that if the email address that we have is no longer correct, we have no way to get your correct credentials to you. In that case you must contact the Accounts page in the online store: (https://www.grandmaonline.org/gmolstore/pc/contact.asp 3. Welcome Screen. Simply clicking on Continue or pressing the Enter key will take you to the search page. From this page you can also `view announcements. If new features or changes have been made, you can read the description. (Click on Show/Hide... to read entries back to the beginning of the log.) 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 1 of 9
4. Searches. The Search Page has many options shown below. There are some important things to keep in mind about the Search Form as a whole. First, this page is used to search for an Individual. Below the Individual Search there is a link to Pair Searches where you can form powerful searches by using the combination. There is also a link to a page which is not a search for a person but for a relationship. Second, there are two lists where names that you will come back to are stored. 5. Individual Search: This form provides many different sources of information to a part of the search. The important concept to remember is that each field that is entered narrows the search. Then, if information in a field is not present in the database, the search may fail to find the individual for whom you search. Given name and Surname with spelling variations included. When the checkmark is present, the entered names are converted to codes that enable all spelling variations to be included. For the given name, the middle name is stripped, and the first name is converted to a numerical code that covers all variants. (Names that are not in the database are lumped together in a single code.) For example, if you enter Johnny David, David is discarded. Then Johnny will be converted to the code jo. That code represents John, Johan, Johann, Hans, Juan, Johnny and more. For the Surname, a similar process takes place using a list of Low German Mennonite list of surnames. For example, if you enter Frantz, the surname will be converted to 073, the same code as is used for surnames Franz, Franzen, Frantzen, Fransen, and Frank. Hint: The search with the box checked is usually the place to start. Given name and Surname without the Spelling Variations. In this case, you must enter the name exactly as it appears in the database. Middle names, if entered, are part of the search. So if you know that the 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 2 of 9
database has the name Johnny, it will not return results with the names John or Johann. This may narrow the search results conveniently, but it also might inadvertantly eliminate the one that you for which you are searching. To be more precise, the name must start with the letters that you enter. If you enter Fra only, it would include also Franco and Frazier. Birth Year can be used to narrow the search. After you enter the year, there are three different options: You can specify whether you want results to include only that your, or whether you want to make that a lower or hight cutoff. Probably of greater importance is the margin when you have a rough idea of the birth date but are not certain. Entering a number for the margin may help encompass the actual year for the individual that you seek. For example, if you enter that the year equals 1928 with a margin of 2, you will get results with birthdates between 1926 and 1930. For example, if you enter the name Johnny Classen with nothing else specified, you would get over 1800 results. But if you enter 1900 for the year, it would return only 11. Specifying a 2-year margin will increase the results to 41. Note: If the database does not have the date for your target and you specify a date or date range, that individual will not be in the results. Other locations and years: You can specify Birth, Death, Baptism and/or Immigration locations, but remember that whatever you enter must be found exactly in the entry in the database. For example, if you enter Kan in Baptism location, it would return results where Kansas and Kanorado occur, but it would not find KS. The Death Year, Baptism Year, and Immigration Year also must match exactly. Hints: Interesting information can be mined where no name is entered. A few examples: Enter only the Baptism information of Fairview and 1901 and you will find that there were 5 baptisms. How many people immigrated through Galveston? How many people are listed as born in Hillsboro in 1875? 6. Bookmarks and History. Two categories of lists allow you to keep track of individuals that you are working on. From the Individual Profile, you can explicitly mark names to be stored in the Bookmark List. They will stay in that list until explicitly removed. On the other hand, the Session History list includes individuals for which you opened the profile during the current session; when you close the session, that name list will empty. For both the Bookmark list and the Session History, you can click on the name and display the Individual Profile. 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 3 of 9
7. Search Results. The results of the search are shown in a list for you to select your target individual. The example at the right is for a search for Heinz Ratzlaff with none of the location or date parameters selected. There are a number of characteristics that this list illustrates: The heading shows the GRANDMA Search Code, in this case, \193he. The numeric part represents all forms of the surname, Ratzlaff. he represents forms of Heinz. The computer searches using that code. Multiple spellings of Ratzlaff are shown; in this case, Retzlaff. Multiple forms of the given name are shown: Heinrich, Henry, Heinz. Exact dates are shown when the person is known to have died or to be older than 92. For persons not considered deceased, a birth range is shown. In this list, the GRANDMA number for each individual is shown. 8. Search using the Married Name. Normally, searches for married women are based on the birth surname. However, the married name can be used if a left curly brace is prepended. For example, if you are looking for someone whose married name is Katharina Ratzlaff but you do not know her birth name, enter Katharina and {Ratzlaff. The result lists individuals with a married name of Ratzlaff. This search correctly includes Katharina Wedel who married a Ratzlaff. 9. Search using the GRANDMA Search Code or the GRANDMA number. In a previous section, the GRANDMA Search Code was introduced, made up of a code for the given name and a code for the surname. Some researchers are very familiar with these codes, and for them it might be more convenient to enter a code rather than the name. For example, instead of entering Heinz and Ratzlaff as shown earlier, the GRANDMA Search Code can be entered in the Surname field. If the GRANDMA number is known, it can be entered (with the # sign) in the Surname field. In that case, no search is necessary, and the Individual Profile will be displayed. 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 4 of 9
10. Individual Profile. This table presents the data that is present in the database for the selected individual. Each row of data presents an attribute that is found for that individual in the database. If Burial data is not found, for example, that row will not be displayed. Each Family is represented by a spouse (who might not be known.) Then the children are listed. A plus sign ( + ) indicates that the individual is/was married. Where known, the child s birth date is shown, followed by the GRANDMA number. The Individual Profile is displayed when one clicks on the blue link. The Father and Mother are similarly displayed. For many individuals, there are Notes. Although these are extremely useful as references, they are not always included. In the database, there is a field to indicate the Last Update of part of the Individual Profile birth and death dates, for example. That field is not updated for other information, such as when a child is added to the family. Click on Printer-Friendly to produce an image without links, table lines, information extraneous to the printed image, and colors. 11. Pair Searches. One helpful way to narrow a search is to use a combination of two related people. In the Search page, select Pair Searches. It will bring up the search form shown below. Enter the names of the pair and select the search type. Remember that all the fields do not have to be filled. A list of pairs that meet the criteria will be displayed. Note that in this case, providing the husband s full name but only the wife s given name is sufficient to yield a manageable list of results. 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 5 of 9
12. Relationship Search. This function searches for genealogical relationships rather than for persons. The conversation often called the Mennonite Game is a search for a genealogical relationship in the form of a common ancestor. The two names can be entered in the form. Hint: It can be useful to locate the two candidates first so that they appear in the Bookmarks or in the Session History. Then, if you click on the green 1 box, the GRANDMA number will be transferred to the Relative 1 Surname space. Similarly, clicking on the green 2 will transfer that GRANDMA number to Relative 2. The search using the two names will usually produce lists of candidates for each name. From those lists, you can find the persons for whom to find the relationship and continue the Relationship Search. The actual search needs to build tables of thousands of ancestors and cross-compare them, so it can require up to a minute. There may be a number of common ancestors, and each chart will be shown. A single result is shown. 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 6 of 9
13. Ancestry Tree. The Ancestry Tree is a useful summary of the ancestry, although only limited information will be provided in the limited space. In the example below, notice that only 5 generations are shown. Each name in the tree is a link. Clicking on that link will lead to a tree for that person. The Printer-Friendly link produces a display without links and some extraneous information. 14. Ahnentafel Chart. The meaning of the word Ahnentafel is actually a numbering system for the ancestors of a target individual. For purposes of this chart, it is a list of the ancestors in Ahnentafel numbering order. Additionally, they are listed in narrative form. While the ancestry tree is limited in the number of ancestry members that can be displayed on a page or screen and in the amount of data that can be displayed, the Ahnentafel Chart has no such limit. In GRANDMA Online, the Ahnentafel Chart is prepared in.rtf format that can be downloaded, edited, and printed. 15. Descendants Report. This report displays descendants up to 5 generations. Each member of the report links to that person s Individual Profile. 16. Relatives Chart. This search will list relatives grouped by the relationships. List your Great-Grand Uncles or Third Cousin Twice Removed, etc. (We don t know why.) Selecting just a few categories can yield tens of thousands of 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 7 of 9
results and take up to 15 minutes! 17. Sharing and Guest Access. You may share an Individual Profile with contacts who does not have a GrandmaOnline account using Guest Access. Provide your contacts with the GRANDMA number. Ask them to open the location https://grandmaonline.org/guest. The contact must enter the GRANDMA number, and the link will lead to the Individual Profile. The Individual Profile includes links to Ancestry Tree and Descendants but no links to individuals or to searches. You may also use a Command-Line option in order make single click access. This syntax is also useful for embedding in other web sites. 18. My Account. Updates and changes to your account can be made through the My Account link in the footer. Subscription. You can view your expiration date at the top of the My Account page. Change Password. Change Email Address. Be sure that a working Email address is listed for your account. If you lose your password, you can request that it be sent to your Email address, but if that address is not correct, there is no way to make contact. Research entries. (See below.) 19. Research. GRANDMA Online has set up a protocol whereby people who are interested in the same person can be connected. Among the links on the Individual Profile page, find the link Researcher List. This link will only appear in Profiles where the Individual is considered to be deceased. Clicking on this link for the first time will lead to a page to join a Research Group for the individual. Clicking on that link will place your name in a list that can be seen by any member of the list. Nobody has access to the list unless that person is also a member, registered with an Email address. Questions can be raised on the Research Group page. The questions will be seen by members on the list as will 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 8 of 9
responses to the questions. 20. Photographs. A new method for display of photographs is under development. Watch for updates. 11/14/2017 Help for GrandmaOnline.org Page 9 of 9