Contents

Instructions

Keith Ludlow collected details of over 9000 members of the Ludlow family mostly from birth, marriage and death certificates held in Britain. The data were left on Keith’s Personal computer in a fortran binary file, with associated text files. Tony and Steve Ludlow retrieved the data and converted it to a prolog database, from which it has been possible to generate Excel and comma delimited files that can be downloaded. There is no restriction on access, Keith would have wanted it that way.

A GEDCOM file of Keith’s database has been prepared and can be used to recreate the entire database provided you have suitable software, such as Legacy or Brother’s Keeper. The program that produces the GEDCOM file from Keith’s data has been improved in July 2005 and there are now two versions of the GEDCOM file. They both contain the same genealogical informmation but the current version displays dates more clearly than the original. These versions are now of hiustorical interest because they will never be changed.

In future, all corrections and additions will be made to a file: keithplus.ged. We recommend that you use keithplus.ged but we provide access to the original in case there are users out there who need to download it.

Getting and using the current GEDCOM file

1. First download the GEDCOM file from the web site by clicking on: http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/keith/ludlowged.exe. It is a self-extracting file (314KB) created 1 Aug 2005.

   Clicking should start a download and the messages will depend on the web browser you use. It may ask if you want to save or open the file, choose ‘save’. Make a note too of where the file is being saved.

2. When the download is complete, double click on the file ‘ludlowged.exe’.
3. The file will self extract after asking you where to put the extracted file called ‘ludlow.ged’. Note, the extracted file will be over 3MB.
4. Start your genealogy program. It is a good idea to start your genealogy program in a fresh directory to avoid mixing the new data with any entries you already have. It could take a while to find and delete 9248 entries if you decide after all that you don’t want them merged with your existing data.
5. Click on ‘File’ and then ‘Gedcom’ and then ‘Import’. (The names may be different in other packages but the logic will be similar.)
6. Answer any questions appropriately.
7. When the import is complete you can start to explore the data. In my system 4190 is Keith Edmund Ludlow and you should be able to display Keith’s ancestors back for 14 generations.
8. The numbering may be a little different from 4300 onwards. This is due to unused record numbers in Keith’s database (4300 is the first unused number). Differences will be greater still if you have merged with an existing database.
9. When you quit your program you will probably find a file full of errror messages. The Brother’s Keeper error file is called GED.LST and is now reduced to three errors using version 6.1.18. These are due to typing errors by Keith and will be sorted but I am extremely cautious about changing the original data files. There are several thousand comments using version 6.1 but only three are significant.
10. When you examine the details of individuals you may find some duplication. There are entries for both birth and birth register and similarly for death and death register, marriage and marriage register. This is because of a difference between Keith’s design and GEDCOM which meant I had to put some data in twice or leave other data out.
11. There are sometimes two copies of the marriage register entry. This occurs where the marriage register entries for husband and wife differ in Keith’s database. I thought it best to include both entries rather than choose one, so the Prolog program detects differences and puts both entries in the family section of the GEDCOM file.
12. If you have any problems, email me at: tony@ludlowgenealogy.org. I’ll help if I can.
13. Let me know if you succeed. I can put you on my mailing list so that you will hear of any errors or updates. It is especially interresting to hear how you get on with other genealogy packages or even with a ‘Mac’.

Downloading the original GEDCOM file

The extracted file will be called ‘ludloworiginal.ged’.

Validation files

1. Keith’s raw data as an ascii file (3MB) downloaded as a self-extracting file (247KB): http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/stkathasc.exe.
2. The same data as an Excel spreadsheet (5.6MB) stored as a self-extracting file (1034KB): http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/ludlowxls.exe.
3. The same data as a comma delimitted file (.csv) (3MB) for entry into non-Excel sheets and data bases. It is stored as a self-extracting file (249KB): http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/ludlowcsv.exe.
4. The prolog program used to create the GEDCOM file (38KB): http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/ludlowged.pl. This has very extensive comments which can be viewed with Notepad or any text editor.
5. Output to check the prolog program used to create the GEDCOM file. This output file is called gedtest.txt and may be understood in the context of the prolog program ludlowged.pl. It is a self-extracting file (70KB): http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/gedtesttxt.exe. It has the following sections:
   1. The step by step identification of families and their children (2581 lines).
   2. The identification of families with no children (lines 2582 to 3787).
   3. Identifies 13 families where the siblings are not a subset of the children recorded in the individual record each parent (lines 3788 to 3802).
   4. Compares marriage register entries recorded for husband and wife. Finds 23 where the spouse does not match (lines 3803 to 3872).
   5. Tests to find cases where the same spouse occurs in more thn one family. This is allowed but is a useful check (lines 3873 to 4022 at end).

   These errors will be studied over the next few weeks but I am cautious about proposing corrections prematurely.

6. The prolog program used to create the original GEDCOM file (38KB) is also available: http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/keithoriginal/ludloworiginalged.pl. This has very extensive comments which can be viewed with Notepad or any text editor.
7. Output to check the original prolog program used to create the GEDCOM file is also available. This output file is called gedtest.txt and may be understood in the context of the prolog program ludlowged.pl. It is a self-extracting file (70KB): http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/keithoriginal/gedtestoriginaltxt.exe.
8. The prolog program used to create the comma-delimmited file (9KB): http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/ludlowcsv.pl.
9. An earlier program in SAS written by Steven Ludlow (Keith’s cousin) (6KB). It operates on the ascii file described above: http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/steve.sas

Further details of the steps in converting the data are given in http://www.ludlowgenealogy.org/webhistory/.