Preserving a Blog

For the past few days I have been trying to preserve my genealogy blog of the past 14 years in a format that I can add to my Memories items in FamilySearch, (After all, I have spent the past month preserving old documents, and this seems like a worthwhile addition.)

I tried googling a solution, but when I tried the process that I found, It involved backing up a few blog postings as an XML file that I could not seem to do anything with.

After a few hours of puttering with this, I decided to see if I could find the Word file that I had created a few years ago. I found it, but it just had 2006-2009. Still it was a starting point. I decided to to use Copy and Paste to copy the postings from the blog itself into the Word file. This worked quite well. It was not the automatic solution that I hoped for but it was workable.

In the process of copying and pasting, I found a reference in my blog to software called blogspot2docx, that copies only the text, without the photos. I think I will try it on my FHC blog, I can let you know how it worked.

It apparently did not work. No file was created.

I also tried https://www.web2pdfconvert.com/ but it only copied the most recent few postings out of the 115.

Then I tried a process that worked:
Sign in blogger.com
Use the drop-down list in the upper left to select which blog

Click the "Try the new Blogger" button 

Click Settings > Posts > Max posts shown on the main page
I changed the default number to include all the postings

I opened the blog and used Ctrl+end to verify that all postings were visible now

Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C to copy the entire blog to the Windows clipboard.

Opened a new Word file 

Used Ctrl+V to paste the complete blog into the Word document

Printed the Word document to PDF (Selecting Microsoft print to PDF as the "printer")  

It took me maybe 10 minutes to figure this out and create the PDF file,

On my main blog it took at least 10 hours, largely spent fixing the apparently random areas of text that came up in tiny 9 or 10 point fonts that were too small to be easily read.

So if anyone else has the question of how to save an entire blog, this seems like the best answer, at least at present.

McNeilands or Knilands?

On Wednesday, I had an excited phone call from my cousin Darlene about a DNA match and tree in Ancestry.com. I decided to also look in FamilySearch, where I spent a few hours of quality time identifying sources and merging duplicate records. 

Why are we excited? My 2GGM was Jane McNeilands (we have never seen how she spelled the name), married to Andrew Buchanan. Up to this point, I do not remember Knilands ever coming up as a variation of McNeilands, But Rebecca Knilands who married James Forbis is called "Rebecca Neilands" in one of the original sources. 

The earliest records we have for Jane are the christenings of some of her children in the Church of Ireland in Castlederg. This was during 1815-1824, when she was living in Learmore townland, which borders on Magherakeel, where some of the Knilands lived. There was also an 1808 document referring to Robert Knilands of Mourne Beg, Termonamongan and a 1910 pension application by Fanny Knielands of Creeduff townland. The Irish Townland Map became "my new best friend." (These townlands are typically less than a square mile in area, so they are highly specific.)

https://www.townlands.ie/tyrone/ 

A search of the 1901 Census of Ireland found various Kniland families in County Tyrone, all located between Castlederg and Killeter, so probably all related. 

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ 

The relationship of the DNA match to Darlene is estimated by AncestryDNA as "5th to 8th cousin". This is at the limits for autosomal DNA, so it may not be reliable. (8 cM across 2 segments) But the fact that the small townlands are adjacent and that the names are variations of the same surname seems to indicate that it is not just a random match. 

I believe that my 2GGM is a member of this Knilands family. I would appreciate knowing of any further advances by any Knilands researchers. After many years with absolutely no progress on our McNeilands/Knilands line, this is looking positive.

So it seems like a breakthrough, that may lead to further break-throughs.

Bill

blog: http://billbuchanan.blogspot.com

site: http://billbuchanan.byethost17.com/