User talk:Amelia.Gerlicher/Archive

Hi--Thanks so much for your participation. You have created great pages.

We would greatly appreciate your input on the help and tutorial pages. After drafting and multiple rewrites, well, they all look the same to me anymore. I want them to very clear and easy to use. If you have any comments or suggestions please email Solveig.

Thanks again :)--sq 20:15, 27 June 2006 (MDT)

Thanks so much for your suggestions. You are doing great work on the Mass research guide. I will be at the BYU conference tommorrow and at the FGS conference in Boston at the end of the month. Stop by and say hi if your close by. Thanks again. --sq 14:04, 31 July 2006 (MDT)

Hi, WeRelate will feature ancestor pages in a few weeks and GEDCOM uploads about December, 2006. Ancestor pages will make posting biographies very simple. This has brought up some licensing issues. Please read [[Licensing_issues_discussion_page|]] and give us your opinion. This is the notice we're sending to our registered users. Thanks for your input in this matter. If you have any other comments, feel free to respond. Thanks --sq 16:08, 14 August 2006 (MDT)

Topics


Thank you for your comments on page titles

I think this latest solution is much better than what I had started out with, and I wouldn't have considered it without your thoughtful comments. Thanks.--Dallan 18:33, 24 August 2006 (MDT)


Thank you for your comments on image uploading

I wanted to thank your for your comments. I added a new license for copyrighted works before 1964 without renewal, as well as another case for works published without copyright notices before 1978. I've also added autocompletion on the image filename field in the person and family pages so you don't have to memorize the image title. I'll fix the "re-upload doesn't re-select the license" bug tomorrow.--Dallan 22:35, 13 November 2006 (MST)


Pedigree Migration Map

Hi, Just wanted to show off the Pedigree Migration Map. It is colored coded for vital information for children, spouse, subject, and six ancestors. You can click on the individuals you want to see at the top of the screen. What do you think? --Dallan 23:04, 22 November 2006 (MST)


Family Tree Explorer

Hi,

We just launched a early release of the Family Tree Explorer. In case you'd like to try it out, I've taken the pages that you've created and added them to a tree called "mytree". So when you launch Family Tree Explorer, you should be able to click on File then Open to view your tree. I'd be interested to get any feedback you have. We're going to be working on it intensely over the next several weeks, so this is a great time to have some input into how it will turn out.--Dallan 23:35, 20 January 2007 (MST)

Dear Amelia,

I have created a page for the William Morrow of Ireland

My user name is CMorrow. Can you link it into your page.

Cheers

chris


You found a bug

Thank-you for your comment on WeRelate talk:Sources. You found a bug with search: if you leave the "place" field empty but enter something in the "located in" field, the search ignores the "located in" field. I'm going to fix this.--09:51, 8 May 2007 (MDT)


Can I get a gedcom for Lovejoy? [23 October 2007]

Hi, it was great to see your input on my Maddocks lines and Lovejoy.

Can you send me your gedcom file so I can merge it with mine? I will send you mine also if you want.

My Maddocks Web page is here:

http://www.pearception.org/phpged/index.php?ctype=gedcom&ged=maddocks01.ged

My email: catchall@sisna.com

Thank you!

Larry Maddocks 801-759-1604 (my cell; call any time except between 2-7 am  :-)--Waterart 12:39, 21 October 2007 (EDT)


Thanks for the William Bassett link -- I especially appreciate the footnoting.--Hh219 13:03, 23 October 2007 (EDT)


Mayflower Lines [24 October 2007]

Hi Amelia The line you have picked up on, is my proven descent from Francis Cooke of the Mayflower.

Since this is still very new to me, I am not sure what you are saying that I might change?

Bonnie--Bboops 03:48, 24 October 2007 (EDT)


Merging [26 November 2007]

Thanks Amelia for merging the Phelps/Griswold family duplicate pages. What a feat that was! <g> I come across families all the time that need merged, but after a few early attempts and experiencing linking problems in the process, I have since chickened out. I may give it another try though. Thanks again! --Ronni 14:26, 26 November 2007 (EST)


Savage and Jeremiah Tibbetts [24 December 2007]

The Savage reference on Jeremiah Tibbetts is very cool. I was hoping someone would give me that on CD-ROM for Christmas, but no luck yet. Before I try to educate myself on using it via the stuff you put in the source write-up, do you have a page number on that stuff? I'm propogating the reference and fragments of it...

Thanks! jrm03063--Jrm03063 09:27, 24 December 2007 (EST)


Your Opinion / NEHGR source citation convention? [12 January 2008]

Source style, S1 vs. S2 on the Person:Samuel Tibbetts (1) page. Your S2 is more economical in the sense that a web browser can easily jump you to the paper citation, which yields all the needed Source:The New England Historical and Genealogical Register information. S1 is more like what we might typically see published, but it yields a bit of irritating duplication as it gets used on different pages. I'm not sure what I prefer, but would like to follow a common convention.--Jrm03063 14:50, 11 January 2008 (EST)


There is no WeRelate convention. For a discussion of what it shoulc be, check out the talk:Source Committee page. In my opinion, the best possible citation is probably a cross between the two - a link to the source page, followed by periodical (if relevant), page number, and notes. I don't think the NEHGR page should be linked in a source citation, because it's not a source, it provides no useful information, and requires way too much effort to achieve that lack of usefulness because the source entry is not formatted to facilitate it. But I go back and forth on this because I haven't recorded page numbers for most of the specific information from articles, it's pretty much redundant to provide the periodical information if it's already in the link. And as far as books and other sources go, since the publication information is all on the source page [theoretically], I don't bother typing it out as part of the citation.--Amelia.Gerlicher 17:26, 11 January 2008 (EST)

I wasn't looking for anything as grand as an overall convention - that sort of thing will develop over time in the wiki tradition. I just knew that you and I had some overlap and wanted to have some broad sense of a convention. Thanks...--Jrm03063 08:44, 12 January 2008 (EST)


MorrowT.ged Imported Successfully [25 January 2008]

The pages from your GEDCOM have been generated successfully. You may view them by launching the Family Tree Explorer and opening the family tree into which this GEDCOM was imported.

For questions or problems, leave a message for Dallan or send an email to dallan@WeRelate.org.

--WeRelate agent 22:17, 25 January 2008 (EST)

Doolittle & Ashley 27 Jan 2008

Amelia, thanks for the updates to the pages of Eunice Doolittle, Samuel Ashley, et al. I appreciate the additional source information, which I am incorporating into my own offline database. Thank you. Jillaine


Nicholas Disborough and Elizabeth STRICKLAND [30 January 2008]

I see you took off one of Nicholas' three wives, namely Elizabeth Strickland. I could not find a place on this site for sources. Could you tell me what sources you have for his wives? Larry Maddocks 801-759-1604 catchall at sisna . com--Waterart 23:25, 29 January 2008 (EST)


Changes/Quigley [6 February 2008]

I am confused as to what you are doing. I am being notified you are making changes to pages I have entered, but the changes elude me. are you trying to merge overlapping entries? Please edify me.

On another note, I see you have listed Quigley's in Wisconsin as a family of interest. My Great grandmother was Eliza Quigley who married Joseph Gray about 1852 and they first lived at a place called Brass Ball Wisconsin in Kenosha County. I remember seeing it as a child. There was a brass ball about the size of a grapefruit hanging from wires in the middle of an intersection. I don't believe the place consisted of any more than just one gas station. It wa practically right on the Illinois-Wisconsin state line, maybe 10 miles from lake Michigan. They moved to Lake Villa Illinois shortly after and remained there,no more than 5 miles from Brass Ball.

I believe I have found Eliza with parents John and Mary (how unique) in Kenosha County in the 1850 census. Both parents aged 60 and are said to be born in Ireland and Eliza in Connecticut.

From the 1880 census:

Eliza GRAY Female Other Information: Birth Year <1832> Birthplace CT Age 48 Occupation Keeping House Marital Status M <Married> Race W <White> Head of Household Joseph Gray Relation Wife Father's Birthplace IRE Mother's Birthplace IRE

Source Information: Census Place Antioch, Lake, Illinois Family History Library Film 1254221 NA Film Number T9-0221 Page Number 632D

Joseph Gray was born in Londonderry to Scottish parents and emigrated alone to Montreal at 9 yrs old where he lived with a married sister. I believe I have seen evidence that Eliza was born in Danbury, CT.

I found the following on line:

Tombstone in Old St. Marks Cemetery, Kenosha, WI Mary Quigley Born Feburary 18, 1818 in Donegal County, Ireland Died January 7, 1909. Headstone: Gray Granite, Artwork: Cross on horizontal surface, scrolls on top of front surface. (possible older sister?--Scot 18:12, 6 February 2008 (EST)


Parentage of Robert Fuller 3 [1 March 2008]

Amelia,

You have added parents for Robert Fuller (John Fuller and Ann Collinge), but you did not cite any sources. I think parentage, especially for the earlier immigrants should always be sourced before they are added as their is often a lot of bad secondary sources and leaps of faith associated with this in many family histories that I think we all want to avoid. Do you have a source for this?

If so, it would be great to bring this line back further in time as you are suggesting.

Cheers,

Jeff--Jbernard 14:30, 29 February 2008 (EST)


Amelia,

I saw your note on my talk page on this topic. Thanks. I'll visit the Robert Fuller talk page to pursue this further. Thanks for merging all these trees/lines. I'm still new on this and trying to figure out how to do that.

Best regards,

Jeff--Jbernard 00:10, 1 March 2008 (EST)


Changing Nickolas Snow [3 March 2008]

Dear Miss Gerlicher,

Hi I am kaye 1966. I believe you changed my tree on MyRelate. I am afraid I am a novice just beginning to learn about MyRelate. I am having some difficulty. I can not determain the changes made. If you will so kind to tell me how I can view the changes and what you knew to make those changes.

Thank you so much, Kaye1966--Kaye1966 15:35, 3 March 2008 (EST)


Atherton [7 March 2008]

Hi Amelia

Are you also a Mayflower?

Seems we have much in common.

I am still trying to figure out how werelate really works, so I am not very good on the editing end. Looks like you have mastered it. Would you do me a favor and give me a quick tutorial? Every time I go through the tutorial, I just smiss something, or just mess up.

Thanks, Bonnie--Bboops 10:27, 7 March 2008 (EST)


Your updates to my family tree [8 March 2008]

Thank you so much for your efforts, Amelia. I notice you have made many changes, especially to collateral lines but sometimes to my direct ancestry as well. I especially appreciate the sources you add. I started this as a personal hobby directed to my husband's and my direct lines with little regard for collateral data. You have expanded this to make my tree much more useful to other researchers. With your efforts, perhaps we can one day either (1) correct much of the erroneous data out there or (2) at least provide all the versions with sources, thus allowing future researchers to weigh the evidence for themselves. Best, Doris--Doriswh 09:07, 8 March 2008 (EST)


Baileywick update [30 March 2008]

Amelia,

Thank you for the correction and update!

My granddaughter's name is Amelia!

Regards,

Joseph.--JFBailey 14:29, 30 March 2008 (EDT)


Birth of Benjamin [23 April 2008]

Jane Dabinott married Thomas Newberry in 1630, when she was 15.

But she is shown as having Benjamin in 1624, which would be six years before she was married. And she would be nine years old when she bore Benjamin.

Is her birth date wrong? Or is Benjamin's?

Just trying to make sense of this. Thanks.

Dick Holmes--Osmond 00:33, 23 April 2008 (EDT)


WeRelate time disappearing [29 May 2008]

Hi Amelia, I will miss your contributions to WeRelate. Hope that you can return soon. --Beth 08:09, 29 May 2008 (EDT)

Thanks...when will depend on how compliant my newborn is ;-)

Congratulations and enjoy your newborn. He or she will be grown before you know it. --Beth 11:49, 29 May 2008 (EDT)

Hello... [19 June 2008]

It's good to see you back working. You have a ruthless streak with respect to this stuff that I've come to appreciate. :)--Jrm03063 16:18, 17 June 2008 (EDT)


Hi, I'm relatively new here. Seeing all the duplicates bugs me so I've been merging files as I go along. Many of the ones I've merged I see you've done work on after the fact. Am I causing problems for you? Don't want to make more work. Also, I thought in the past I was able to delete pages like, unknown m. unknown, but don't seem to be able to now. (I saw you did delete one of these I am talking about.) Anyhow, let me know if you'd prefer I didn't merge these duplicates together. Angela--Feenerty 18:24, 18 June 2008 (EDT)

By all means, keep merging! I haven't run into any place where I think we've worked at cross purposes. If I've accidently set myself to watch a page you'd like to delete, let me know and I'll take that off.--Amelia 19:40, 18 June 2008 (EDT)

okey dokey--Feenerty 21:30, 18 June 2008 (EDT)


Mayflower destined for Hudson Bay? [20 June 2008]

Your templates are lovely, but the Mayflower Template says the destination was supposed to be Hudson Bay. The river Hudson maybe, the Chesapeake Bay maybe, but Hudson Bay - early settlers of Churchill perhaps?--Jrm03063 15:36, 20 June 2008 (EDT)


Volunteer Hours [23 July 2008]

Hi Amelia, How are you and the baby? Hope all is well. You have done some really nice work on the website. I really appreciate your efforts to clean things up and contribute research helps. I have often wondered what your background is. Anyway, I was wondering if you could estimate the time you have spent on developing sources and cleaning up, and record it at the WeRelate:Administrator_log. I need to track volunteer hours in order to keep our non-profit status. Thanks again for all you do.--sq 13:02, 23 July 2008 (EDT)


Thanks [24 July 2008]

Thanks for recording your time. We really do appreciate your contributions to the website.--sq 14:27, 24 July 2008 (EDT)


Source:Missouri, 1910 federal census : soundex and population schedules [25 July 2008]

Hi Amelia, I was going through the Category:Speedy delete and was wondering what the plan is. The FHLC collection is redundant, frustrating, poorly organized and generally difficult to navigate. OK, so that's an understatement. In the beginning, we "crawled" FamilySearch and uploaded the results into the source directory. We have spent hours and hours reorganizing their sources. Spencer is currently adding several thousand more FHLC links that we identified to the place database. They were always there, but the place name was spelled differently. UGh! Our current system with the indexing and search capacity is much better than what FamilySearch has. But, it still needs a lot of work. I really appreciate the time you have been donating to the project. You have been a great help.

Before I delete all those pages, I was wondering if you would mind sharing your ideas. All the FHLC pages on WeRelate are real items from the FHLC catalog. Some items are redundant and have simply spelled the title a little differently. Some items are duplicates. Some items from the catalog are blank. Have you found these population schedule films in another entry? Or, do you have a better indexing plan? If the information doesn't appear elsewhere, I'm not sure that categories are the solution. Most of our users are not all that wiki-savvy and don't know what categories are.

Thanks so much for your time and input. :)--sq 12:54, 25 July 2008 (EDT)

I posted a more complete explanation here. The short answer on the 1910 source is that I listed it as a link on the Category:1910 Missouri census page, and figure that it's more useful there than as a source page, since it's not something you should cite, and it's unlikely there's much to discuss about the FHL's microfilm.--Amelia 15:35, 25 July 2008 (EDT)

Lease.ged Imported Successfully [13 August 2008]

The pages from your GEDCOM have been generated successfully. You may view them by launching the Family Tree Explorer and opening the family tree into which this GEDCOM was imported.

For questions or problems, leave a message for Dallan or send an email to dallan@WeRelate.org.

--WeRelate agent 10:32, 13 August 2008 (EDT)

Kelsey Merge [30 September 2008]

I noticed you had updated some of Kelsey info. Very exciting! This is the first time any of my data has had any activity. I was able to review and merge some sketchy data I had into some much better info. This makes my tree much better. This is the power of WeRelate. I love it! Thanks!--Srblac 20:55, 29 September 2008 (EDT)


Thanks and DNA project [6 October 2008]

Hi Amelia,

Your contributions to WeRelate are wonderful; thank you. Question about your DNA project; I tried several links but never found an actual table listing the marker results for each participant. Interested in viewing the results and the lineages established. I am not a Morrow; I am the administrator of the Coker DNA site. --Beth 20:56, 6 October 2008 (EDT)


Merge not quite right [19 October 2008]

Hi Amelia,

On Family:James Allen and Margaret Coppin (1) the merged page shows a child born in 1722 when the father died in 1657; something not quite right?? --Beth 23:10, 19 October 2008 (EDT)

It's junk from the original gedcom. The merge worked fine.--Amelia 00:05, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

Okay, great. --Beth 00:09, 20 October 2008 (EDT)


What does it mean to... ? [7 November 2008]

"Propagating changes to a family member"?

I keep seeing this comment related to changes you make on pages that I'm watching. English please? Thanks! Jillaine 14:25, 2 November 2008 (EST)

It's the system. It means the page was changed because the data that is displayed on it that came from another page was changed, so the system passed the change through (propagated). Like when a person's birthydate is changed, the family page changes.--Amelia 14:52, 2 November 2008 (EST)
Thanks for the explanation. And by the way, I'm tracking your changes on pages on my watchlist. You rock. Thanks for all your hard work. And you have a baby on hip as well??? Wow... Impressive. Jillaine 17:21, 2 November 2008 (EST)

Amelia,

Thanks again for your good edits -- this time to elizabeth george. I like the link you added to the talk page. I will follow that example in the future. Ultimately, I'll track down the source for that argument and put it back on the main page (if you don't beat me to it!) Jillaine 08:03, 7 November 2008 (EST)


COLE family [5 November 2008]

I see that you have information on the COLE family that is in my tree. I have not done a lot of looking at the commonalities, however I plan on it. I was wondering if you have the COLE family as a Mayflower Family? Thanks for the links as up until now I have seen NO activity on my pages.

Heather--Gendigger 08:12, 4 November 2008 (EST)

No, there were no Coles on the Mayflower. See Mayflower Passenger List. Immigrant James Cole came to Plymouth in 1633. --Amelia 19:18, 4 November 2008 (EST)

Thank you for the information.--Gendigger 22:31, 4 November 2008 (EST)


Stanley & Bertha Hall [8 November 2008]

Hi Amelia,

I received the notification from WeRelate that you made some updates. It's not clear, what changes/ updates you made and I'm just curious how you are related. You can contact me off-line at david7dog@yahoo.com.

Thanks, Dave--David7dog 15:45, 8 November 2008 (EST)

I merged duplicate entries, and since they were almost exactly duplicates, the main effect was to change the later entries to redirect to the earlier ones. The email you got should have specified that there was a merge; if not, let Dallan know about the bug.--Amelia 15:52, 8 November 2008 (EST)

work on my tree [19 November 2008]

You have been picking away at the people in my tree for some time - not that I have any complaints about it - you are welcome to do so. My problem is I got an email from the we relate people requesting that I merge my duplicates or have my tree removed from the site.

I don't have time to do any merging, so I assume my data is going to self destruct. If you still want to go through it, it is available on Rootsweb in the World Connect section. The name of the database is and always will be marr794. Here is a direct link:

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=marr794&I11.x=24&I11.y=8

Sorry. I wish I had time to really work this site, but I am overloaded as it is.

Ann Marr--Marr794 20:49, 16 November 2008 (EST)


Oooh... I just looked at her WorldConnect GEDCOM. If the version of same on WeRelate is anything like it, DO NOT delete it. She's done nice work, and shared her documentation. Keep it keep it!!! ;-) jillaine 20:58, 16 November 2008 (EST)


I won't delete the tree myself - it will be done by the administrators of the site. I am going to delete the email I got without responding to it - that is the best I can do. And sometime in the future, I might have time to work my way through this site.

Ann Marr--Marr794 21:18, 16 November 2008 (EST)


Ann, Amelia has "sway" with the administrators. That's why I posted here: encouraging her to do what she can so that your tree is not deleted. The fact that she's been merging elements of it with others makes me think it won't be deleted anyway. Hopefully Amelia will respond and clarify. Thanks! jillaine 22:17, 16 November 2008 (EST)

Here's the story: There are about 120 users with more than 100 pages in their trees that probably need to be merged. Most of them have only 100-200 pages to merge, but some have more than 1000. We recently sent out an email to these users asking for their help in merging. We told them that if they were not interested in helping to merge, that their trees would be deleted. The reason is that many of the trees that I've seen aren't all that great, and it doesn't seem fair to ask the "duplicate review committee" to merge an estimated 200,000 people by themselves. However, if a tree has a lot of good data and the committee doesn't mind merging it, I certainly won't delete it.

I'm not planning to delete trees until early next year. We'll contact users again between now and the end of the year and tell them how many of their pages have already been merged and ask again if they'd like to get involved. I figured that early next year we'd list the trees with a lot of duplicates where the owners haven't gotten involved in the merge process. The duplicate review committee can decide whether or not to keep the trees. So if you'd like to keep Ann Marr's tree that's fine with me.

An exception to the above is that roughly 10% of the people we have contacted have "unsubscribed" from WeRelate - they've clicked on the "unsubscribe" link in one of the email notifications that we've sent them so they no longer receive any email notifications from WeRelate. I want to review the contributions made by these users to see if they're still active at all, and if they're not I'd like to list their trees sooner (in the next week or so) and ask the committee to decide whether or not to keep those trees.

Just as an FYI, if a tree is deleted, pages that are being watched by others (i.e., pages that have been merged with others' pages) won't be deleted. Just pages that are being watched only by the original contributor get deleted.

How does that sound?--Dallan 21:09, 18 November 2008 (EST)


I would like the option to request exceptions for entire trees. And this woman's would be one of them. I.e., the quality of her research is so high that I don't think we should delete ANY of her tree. jillaine 21:42, 18 November 2008 (EST)

That's the idea - anyone could say: please don't delete this user's tree -- I'll help merge the duplicates. And the entire tree would not be deleted.--Dallan 00:45, 19 November 2008 (EST)

I'll help merge the duplicates! ;-) -- jillaine 15:22, 19 November 2008 (EST)

Jonathan Fairbanks (5)]] [19 November 2008]

Great stuff you've got here. Thanks!! Linda--Lmuessig 23:55, 18 November 2008 (EST)


George and Phoebe Parkhurst [3 December 2008]

Hi Amelia How could Benjamin be a son of the above couple? His date of birth being almost 20 years after Joseph, and his mother dying in the early 1640's?

Bonnie--Bboops 13:22, 3 December 2008 (EST)

If you look at [Person:Benjamin Parkhurst (1)}Benjamin's record]], you'll see that there are alternate theories regarding his birthdate and parentage.--Amelia 21:56, 3 December 2008 (EST)

Redundant category [7 December 2008]

why did you add back the redundant Category:Notable people for, for instance, U.S. Presidents? --ceyockey 18:13, 6 December 2008 (EST)

Because it's not redundant. It adds the Presidents to the Notable people category without having to add it to every single one of their pages. That the presidents is also a sub-category is just a navigational thing.--Amelia 18:15, 6 December 2008 (EST)

The template adds the Presidents to the subcategory. Categories are meant to split content into bite-sized chunks - which is why using Category:Notable people alone will indeed lead to a single category with thousands of entries - i.e. practically useless when mature. --ceyockey 23:11, 6 December 2008 (EST)
The template adds all the Presidents to the Category Notable People and adds U.S. Presidents as a subcategory to that category. The discussion at the Talk page is intended to not have thousands of people on the category page, only those that are truly notable. The subcategories then add additional interesting categories of people. What goes in the category and what should be sub-categories are different questions, but I have to think that Presidents qualify for both under pretty much any criteria.--Amelia 10:38, 7 December 2008 (EST)

Page Title Naming [19 January 2009]

Amelia,

The conversation at the Watercooler is slower than a Quaker meeting for business and I'm finding it very frustrating. I'm sure I've contributed to what makes it frustrating as my ignorance of werelate personalities and protocols is slowly chipped away.

But given that you raised this issue, I figure you care about it. And given your tremendous contribution to werelate, I respect your views a great deal. I'd like both to reach agreement with you and address the concerns I've raised if at all possible. However, I see no progress towards such a goal possible thru the current "conversation" happening at the watercooler.

Do you have any suggestions for how we might proceed?

Respectfully,

jillaine 08:51, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Well, if you want my opinion, it's to keep to the rules as originally described. (Keep in mind I was part of the discussion about how to name people a couple years ago, so I've previously been convinced of the usefulness of this approach.) I think the best answer is that pages are named in a consistent way with First Name Last Name (number). This is not a place for discretion or duplicates. Put appropriate prefixes and suffixes in the name fields so they come up in search. If you're concerned about improper merging mixing up the data, then put the proper dates and what's improper in a section on the page (like the "discredited ancestry" sections) -- something like "This is Thomas Carter of Woburn (1650-1712) married to Jane Smith. Information on other Thomas Carter's of Massachusetts can be found here." --Amelia 13:04, 16 January 2009 (EST)
I tried to change Thomas Carter (reverend of woburn) back to Person:Thomas Carter (3) and it wouldn't let me.
I didn't want to "go back" in the history because other changes have been made since then.
Please advise on how to get this guy (and the other two) back to their original names.
(The other two may not have the same problem; I'll check.) jillaine 15:01, 16 January 2009 (EST)
I just tried to use the History feature to return Thomas Carter (Blacksmith of Charlestown) back to his original name but the Page Title didn't change as I expected. So I'm giving up returning these folks to their origins until I learn more about how to do it. jillaine 15:06, 16 January 2009 (EST)
Ugh, you're right it's annoying. What I did was 1) go to the page you want to have as the name (I did Thomas Carter (3)). 2) Delete the redirect and put in the years for the person you want this to be. 3) Go to the specially named one (i.e. Rev. of Woburn) 4) Find dups and compare with the one you just edited (or, if you have to, go to Admin -> Compare pages and put in the two page titles). 5) Merge the info on the specially named one into the 'clean' name.--Amelia 15:30, 16 January 2009 (EST)
Thanks for figuring out and sharing the how-to. I'm running out of time on another deadline (oh yeah, work, that stuff that pays the rent), and I'm traveling tomorrow, so I won't be able to get to the other two for a few days. But I will. Thanks, Amelia. jillaine 16:29, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Okay, here it is 5:30 am in California. My east coast clock is still clearly in control. All that said, the thomas carters of early massachusetts are back to their original names. Phew! We good now, Amelia? :-) jillaine 08:34, 19 January 2009 (EST)


Murdo MacKenzie & Ann Maclean [20 January 2009]

Hello Amelia,WeRelate informs me you are showing an interest in Murdo MacKenzie & Ann Maclean.Do you have any connection to these names. Kind regards, Sheila MacKenzie.--Durry42 15:11, 20 January 2009 (EST)


Request for Comment [28 January 2009]

Hi Amelia, I see that you've been doing some mopping up of some recent merges I made. Did I make a mistake in how I did the merges? If so I'd like to avoid it in the future. Thanks! --JoshHansen 18:00, 25 January 2009 (EST)

You'll have to remind me which were yours -- I do a lot of merges.--Amelia 20:50, 25 January 2009 (EST)

These are the changes I was talking about. Sorry the formatting's not very good:

  • 16:55 Family:John Cornwall and Martha Peck (1) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Add data from merged page(s): Family:John Cornwall and Martha Peck (3), Family:John Cornwall and Martha Peck (2) - review/undo)
  • m 16:55 Family:William Cornwell and Mary Unknown (1) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Propagate changes to Person:John Cornwall (2))
  • 16:55 Person:John Cornwall (2) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Add data from merged page(s): Person:John Cornwall (11), Person:John Cornwall (4) in merge of Family:John Cornwall and Martha Peck (1) - review/undo)
  • 16:55 Person:Martha Peck (2) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Add data from merged page(s): Person:Martha Peck (16) in merge of Family:John Cornwall and Martha Peck (1) - review/undo)
  • m 16:40 Family:Nathaniel Andrews and Sarah Peck (1) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Propagate changes to Person:Sarah Peck (33))
  • 16:40 Person:Sarah Peck (33) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Add data from merged page(s): Person:Sarah Peck (42) - review/undo)
  • m 16:40 Family:Ebenezer Clark and Sarah Peck (1) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Propagate changes to Person:Sarah Peck (33))
  • m 16:40 Family:Joseph Benton and Sarah Peck (2) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Propagate changes to Person:Sarah Peck (33))
  • m 16:40 Family:Paul Peck and Martha Hale (1) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Propagate changes to Person:Sarah Peck (33))
  • m 16:40 Family:Josiah Royce and Sarah Peck (1) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Propagate changes to Person:Sarah Peck (33))
  • 14:41 Person:Mary Moss (24) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Add data from merged page(s): Person:Mary Moss (35) - review/undo)
  • m 14:41 Family:John Peck and Mary Moss (1) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Propagate changes to Person:Mary Moss (35))
  • m 12:16 Family:Abraham Doolittle and Joan Allen (1) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Propagate changes to Person:Joan Allen (9))
  • 12:15 Person:Abraham Doolittle (2) (diff; hist) . . Amelia.Gerlicher (Talk | contribs) (Add data from merged page(s): Person:Abraham Doolittle (21) in merge of Family:Abraham Doolittle and Joan Allen (1) - review/undo)--JoshHansen 00:21, 27 January 2009 (EST)


That looks like I was just merging additional duplicates that showed up on my list after you did the merges. -- i.e. a merge for a child and her spouse showed up when the child was merged as part of the parents' merge. That's not a mistake on your part -- the work just keeps going on.--Amelia 10:48, 27 January 2009 (EST)

Alright, just checking. Merge on! --JoshHansen 01:20, 28 January 2009 (EST)

Person:William Allgar (1) [3 February 2009]

Hi, Are you connected with Awputnam? I am checking questionable merges and I noticed that you did some work on Person:William Allgar (1) who was later merged with Person:William Marlar (1) they seem to have no information in common other that a marriage to Person:Margaret Parye (1). Although it is possible that these two men were the same individual, the death dates are off by 27 years and she could have just as easily been married to two different men with the first name of William.

Thoughts? --sq 12:02, 3 February 2009 (EST)

I have no connection to Awputnam, and I'm not seeing the merge you mention. If you reverted it, it doesn't show in the history. I don't think it's real likely these are the same men, and am not real convinced that it's the same Margaret Parye, actually, given the two large families that seem to overlap, but I don't know enough to fight it.--Amelia 23:02, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Jacob Mast [15 February 2009]

Good Morning Amelia:

I got an email regarding you making a change to Jacob Mast. I was wondering what that change was. Jacob Mast is my 4th Ggrandfather. The information I have is from extracted records on microfilm Thanks for getting back to me.

Joan Wipff Glasgow--Joankwg1940 11:44, 15 February 2009 (EST)


He was linked as his own child, and there were two family pages for his marriage. I removed the link and merged the pages.--Amelia 11:50, 15 February 2009 (EST)

What child was he linked to. In my database he was correct. Somehow it got changed or????--Joankwg1940 11:55, 15 February 2009 (EST)


Are you related to Jacob Mast, or were you just cleaning up stuff? Joan Wipff Glasgow--Joankwg1940 11:58, 15 February 2009 (EST)


He was linked to himself. Jacob 7 was the child of Jacob Mast and Christina Keppler (1) and the spouse of both that couple and Jacob Mast and Christina Keppler (2). And now that I look at it, I didn't get to the merge for some reason. I'm not related, I'm going through M names in need of merging.--Amelia 12:04, 15 February 2009 (EST)


Elizabeth Crispe [21 February 2009]

Amelia,

Sorry I let that wrong birth date for Elizabeth Crispe slip by when I was doing a merge. I have the same information in my records from the History of Watertown that you cite. Are we cousins on this line? --Susan Irish 22:52, 20 February 2009 (EST)

That's the joy of wiki... you've got somebody proofreading for you :-) I actually do have a connection to Elizabeth, unlike most of the people I'm watching -- my husband is descended from her daugther Hannah m. Obadiah Sawtell.--Amelia 23:24, 20 February 2009 (EST)

Are we talking about Hannah Lawrence who married Obadiah Sawtell? If so, I have this in my husband's line, too, but a side Sawtell branch that twists like a pretzel through the Farwells and Burbages to the Barbers. -- jillaine 08:59, 21 February 2009 (EST)

Thanks [23 February 2009]

Thanks for straightening up those sources on Thomas Hale (9). Later! --JoshHansen 00:04, 23 February 2009 (EST)


Merges [24 February 2009]

Hi, I am helping to clean up the abandoned gedcoms. The feeling is that we may want to delete gedcoms of people who have elected not to recieve email from WeRelate. We can't colaborate with people who do not want to be contacted. You have merged many of the pages from these gedcoms and are not watching those pages. The unwatched pages would be deleted. Would you mind taking a look at WeRelate_talk:Duplicate_review#Unsubscribers_with_a_lot_of_duplicates_.5B24_February_2009.5D and giving us your opinion on these gedcoms. I don't want to do a global delete on a gedcom that is important to you. Thanks. :)--sq 13:45, 24 February 2009 (EST)


Sleepless in Bethesda [5 March 2009]

Couldn't sleep tonight; did a bunch of work on Great Migration Ships. Added several ships and did some other cleanup. Now going to try to get a couple hours shut-eye before I have to get up for work. G'night (or g'morning, as the case may be). -- jillaine 04:19, 5 March 2009 (EST)


Your Doolittle Connection? [12 March 2009]

Hi Amelia,

What's your DOOLITTLE connection? They are woven interestingly through my husband's line:

  • He is directly descended from a daughter (Abigail, 1668-1746) of the emigrating Abraham Doolittle.
  • He has a gr-gr.... grandmother Hannah (Miller) (Barber) who was the second wife of Amzi Doolittle (1737-1830), who was son of Benjamin of Northfield. THEIR story is quite an interesting one, and I am more than half-convinced that my husband's ancestor (youngest son of Hannah, legally by her first husband) was actually conceived with Amzi. Talk about an interesting DNA study that would be...

And I think I've seen other Doolittle weavings into my husband's side branches.

You?

-- Jillaine jillaine 22:26, 10 March 2009 (EDT)


Actually, I think I figured it out; you (or someone in your family) is descended from Amzi's sister Eunice. Right? jillaine 06:04, 11 March 2009 (EDT)
Yes -- it's actually my all maternal line (Eunice>Tirzah>Eunice>Sarah>Affa>Sarah>etc.).--Amelia 00:56, 12 March 2009 (EDT)
I noticed that, all those maternal steps down. Cool. Makes me want to look at what my "direct" maternal line is and how far back I have that-- for both Philip and myself. mmm... oh goodie, another project! -- Jillaine jillaine 10:56, 12 March 2009 (EDT)
Oh darn! I have QUITE a challenge on both sides! I have brick walls only four maternal steps up on both my line and my husband's! Not good at all! -- jillaine 11:02, 12 March 2009 (EDT)

Thanks for your additions [24 March 2009]

Thanks for your additions to my family tree - I am new at this after inheriting my father's work he had done for many years on our family genealogy. I didn't have much interest in it when he was alive and now am very regretful that I wasn't more interested when he could have explained what he was doing, shared his excitement about this hobby, etc. He did it many years ago the hard way - without the Internet! I do remember his excitement when he told us we were related to Pricilla Alden. Thanks again. Betty Wolff--Finallyretired 08:33, 24 March 2009 (EDT)



Help:Formatting [29 April 2009]

Amelia, it looks like some text was deleted from the Help:Formatting page after your edits. Are you still editing it?--Jennifer (JBS66) 11:27, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

I didn't delete anything (on purpose) but I bracketed the reference to the Scotland page because the instructions are inconsistant with the text on that page. ~----

I see now - there was just an extra ! at the end of the comment you added (I removed it). I posted a note to Dallan to clarify that Scotland example and then I was going to edit the help. I really like your idea of commenting it out in the meantime though!--Jennifer (JBS66) 12:26, 29 April 2009 (EDT)


Minor Edits [1 May 2009]

Happy to comply. I'm new here and haven't caught on to all the "amenities". Regards.. Neal--Neal Gardner 13:26, 30 April 2009 (EDT)


And I edited the Help:Editing page to clarify how "minor edit" works. jillaine 08:02, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

Samuel Morrow, Madison Co, TN [5 May 2009]

I'm new to the we relate site but saw where someone had sent in a test that was a decendent of Samuel Morrow and Sarah McKnight. I'm confused as to the results. Are there results that show who he was descended from? Can you explain to me, PLEASE? I'm a descendent of Samuel and Sarah, as follows:

Samuel J. Morrow m. Sarah F. McKnight children:

  (1)  William Jackson Morrow m. Mary M. Nanney
   children: (a)  Horace Hood Morrow
             (b)  Charles Whitfield Morrow died in 1919; killed during WWI in France
             (c)  Hugh Samuel Jackson Morrow
             (d)  Thomas Battle "Turley" Morrow
             (e)  Wade Cleveland Morrow m. Lillie Leandra Jones
             children:
                  1. Donald (twin of Dora) - deceased by age 2 - died bet. 1912 & 1914*
                  2. Dora (twin of Donald) - deceased by age 2 - died bet. 1912 & 1914*
                  3. Katie Mai - deceased by about age 4 - died bet. 1912 & 1914*
                  4. Thomas "Turley" - died at about age 9 - died bet. 1912 & 1914*
                  5. Charles "Charlie" (deceased) m. Clara Wheeler (deceased)
                  children:
                     a. Thomas (deceased)
                     b. Jimmy Dayle
                  6. John Jackson (deceased) - never married; no children
                  7. Lessie Lee (deceased) m. James Loines (deceased)- no children
                  8. Mable (deceased) m. _____ Glozier (deceased)- children all girls
                  9. Edna Hazel Elizabeth (deceased) m. William Carl Thrasher (deceased)
                  children:
                     a. Helen Christine (deceased) m. Robert Hart (deceased)
                     b. George Wade (killed in lawn mowing accident) m. three times so won't list at this time
                     c. Ramona Laverne m. Porter Eugene Tucker (deceased)
                     d. Thomas Ray m. Helen Christine (can't remember maiden name at the moment)
                     e. John William Stanley m. married three times so won't list at this time
                     f. Mary Alice - died in 1949
                     g. Clare Paulette b. 1950 m. James Billy Richard Johnson
                     children:
                        -1- Derek Richard m. Lisa Elaine Haddock
                        -2- Melissa Paulette m. Billy Gene Franks (This is ME!!)
                        -3- Kristy Elizabeth m. Jimmy Dewayne Calton
  • Donald, Dora, Katie, and Thomas all died in 1912 or 1914 (my notes are not in front of me so I apologize for not knowing exactly). Their cause of death is not known at this time but I want to find out. Their death certificates and records are located at Curry Funeral Home in Dyersburg in the location of the body storage. If there are any persons in line for funerals and are placed in the storage area, no one is allowed to enter the room to research information. Needless to say, I haven't gotten in there - YET!

I have much more detail including more information regarding children. I have recently been trying to locate the children of my great-grandfather's brother, Thomas. I know he had two sons but wether they had sons or not - I have no clue. My cousin, Jimmy Dayle (the LAST Morrow, as we call him) has been wanting to participate in the DNA testing but I don't know if he ever has. I can't afford to have the testing done on myself let alone on anyone else. I'm hoping that you will be able to answer my questions and maybe my small list of family will help fill in a few gaps for someone else. I will be more than happy to provide more information if you need it.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Melissa--Copslady551 21:00, 4 May 2009 (EDT)


Person: Charles Curtis 1860-1936 [13 June 2009]

Hello Amelia,

I wanted to check with you first on this. This week I am researching Vice President Charles Curtis for another project. I noticed he had a WeRelate Person page that you are watching, probably uploaded by someone else it looks like. I would be interested in researching and then adding his maternal (American Indian) side. How does that sound to you?

Debbie Freeman --DFree 11:30, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

Fabulous. I'm not watching him for any particular interest other than that I generally watch all 'notable' people I edit so they don't get deleted. There shouldn't ever be any reason that anyone would say no to such an idea anyway :-) --Amelia 12:01, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

Hello Amelia, I have just added a website source for Vice President Charles Curtis. Would you please double check that I did this correctly, or suggest? Thanks Debbie Freeman --DFree 21:57, 12 June 2009 (EDT)

Fixed. At first I took off the source link, then realized there is actually a WeRelate page for it, so I moved the commentary and contact information there. --Amelia 00:02, 13 June 2009 (EDT)

Thank You for your help. Debbie Freeman--DFree 00:47, 13 June 2009 (EDT)


Nice clean-up work on Roger Conant [29 June 2009]

Just perused your clean-up of the Roger Conant page. Nice work, Amelia.

-- jillaine 08:01, 29 June 2009 (EDT)


Doolittle [4 July 2009]

Amelia, I hope you don't mind but I did some minor cleanup on the Doolittle article you pointed to on Dallan's talk page. Not trying to get in the way, just some obvious fixes. If you don't like same, please feel free to revert. Also, I didn't bother to kill the additional Loulemann references, as that's part of the bone of contention at the moment. But in truth, they don't seem to add anything useful, and deleting them would be consistent with recent discussions on the WaterCooler. Q 19:39, 4 July 2009 (EDT)

No problem, that narrative was just added, and I haven't gotten around to comparing it to whatever I've got. Thanks -- --Amelia 19:42, 4 July 2009 (EDT)

[5 July 2009]

I'm sorry about the duplications. I was working all day today on merging matching families and I just wasn't checking my e-mail to get the messages about changes you were making. I'm glad you told me that I need to match sources as I haven't really done that yet. I may be confused on a couple of points. When I'm matching families, am I not supposed to check one of my sources if it is already showing up in the other family. I was under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that I was supposed to do so as a confirmation. But maybe that it what is contributing to unnecessary duplication. Bear with me. I'm still learning your system.

Lou Lehmann--Loulehmann 22:47, 4 July 2009 (EDT)


Clarifications [6 July 2009]

Amelia,

 I honestly don't recall doing repeat edits on the Doolittle and Bingham pages.   I do want to thank you for the clarifications that I'm not supposed to check data or sources which are already there on the page being compared.   Unfortunately I have already done it the wrong way on numerous pages, in fact all of my matched families.   I hope this doesn't present too big a a problem.   I will certain change my ways for future editing.  I'm now working on matching sources as you suggested but I am currently rather ill so I don't know when I will have it done.   When I do complete that matching, should I go ahead and import?

Lou Lehmann--Loulehmann 15:36, 6 July 2009 (EDT)

It's not a problem, really, just anal folk like me will go in and edit all those pages to make the changes! Small in the big picture. Don't worry about getting the sources done, just get better. Much better to merge them before they go live, but yes, go ahead and import when you're done. And welcome! --Amelia 23:18, 6 July 2009 (EDT)

Michael Martin and Mattie Green (1) Redirect [15 July 2009]

Amelia, I assume that the merge took your record for Myda Martin (my grandmother) and updated your record where she was still living. I am new to We Relate. Does this mean we are related through Myda? Or you a system administrator/volunteer?

Thank you for this system. Michael Helmantoler--Mhelmantoler 11:15, 15 July 2009 (EDT)

I was just volunteer merging. If one of those "living" records is supposed to be Myda, go ahead and delete it.--Amelia 12:02, 15 July 2009 (EDT)

trees vs register [15 July 2009]

Amelia, I just read of your dislike of 'trees' and have to agree with you!! I'm still very wiki-challenged but I just wrote a bit on Dallan's todo list talk page: my thoughts on trees and a suggestion for their replacement. Not being a programmer, I have no idea if it's workable or not. I wondered if you would look at it and tell me if there is any hope of getting a register instead of 'trees'. I think it would be very helpful to newbies to see something familiar. I wrote it here: [1]. That may not have been the best place to put it, but I wasn't ready to display my ignorance at the watercooler.--Janiejac 16:32, 15 July 2009 (EDT)


Thanks so much [21 July 2009]

Hi,

Thanks so much for helping out. I really appreciate it. Could you let me know when you last patrolled the person namespace?

Thanks again, --sq 21:34, 21 July 2009 (EDT)

Last night, although there wasn't much by anyone new.--Amelia 21:38, 21 July 2009 (EDT)

Source Page Title Examples [29 July 2009]

Amelia, on the Help:Source Page Title Examples page, would you please use the talk page to explain why you think various things should be changed? You haven't signed any of the changes you've made -- several of which other people aren't agreeing with -- and we shouldn't have to examine the History to figure out who thinks what. This is meant to be a discussion. --Mike (mksmith) 16:35, 29 July 2009 (EDT)

Sorry, I did mean to do that and forgot.--Amelia 23:49, 29 July 2009 (EDT)

An unlooked for linkage... [30 July 2009]

I was just inspecting some of the changes resulting from the wikipedia refresh, and I noted that the link for the WP page to US Presidents is now being swapped out for your US Presidents category page. I'm sure it's just a side effect of all the automatic linking that the agent does - your category page being sourced from WP - but it's a cool freebie. --Jrm03063 17:44, 30 July 2009 (EDT)

That was actually intended on my part - I thought it would be a good way to cross-link the category structure and prioritize WR links. And a list of presidents is probably more expected here than a multi-page description of every detail of the office of the president. I've done senator and secretary of state too.--Amelia 19:06, 30 July 2009 (EDT)

category census [23 August 2009]

Amelia, are you saying that the the word census as used in the category is not always lower case? Can't get the other page to load and need to leave.--Beth 12:02, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

The formats are: 1XXX U.S. Census, 1XXX State census, and State census records. (state is rthe state name). The middle one is the one that goes on each census page, the other two are its parent categories.--Amelia 13:09, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

Hi Amelia, if I had known that I was going to do this much typing on my laptop, I would have brought my keyboard. I am always hitting the wrong button accidentally with something because I don't hold my hands correctly to type on this laptop. Anyway it can't be too late. The categories just don't make sense and how can we expect new arrivals to remember this. I was going to change mine while I was editing the census pages for the source update. I can work on this after I finish this source update while I am working on the duplicate pages project. I promise I will finish before I exit WeRelate if I decide to do so. Now I am going back and try to muddle through the discussion regarding government/church records.--Beth 21:57, 21 August 2009 (EDT)
Well, if we're going to fix anything, it should be the "U.S. Census" categories, which is out of whack with both the others and the WP rules on category naming. I've done several hundred of the others (there being exponentially more of them), and once they're done, they're done, so I'm not sure what you're proposing? Oh, and good luck on that discussion, it's going to drive me insane.--Amelia 23:37, 21 August 2009 (EDT)
Hi Amelia, I just returned home about an hour ago. Made it through Atlanta with no problems. Okay let's propose to change the "U.S. Census" categories. Then they will all be lower case. --Beth 15:21, 22 August 2009 (EDT)
Go for it, but I don't have any time to devote to that project, so it's all you (and whichever of Dallan's kids has spare time ;-) --Amelia 16:00, 22 August 2009 (EDT)
I did, but must be the wrong place. [2] --Beth 21:00, 23 August 2009 (EDT)
If you all are having this much trouble with census sources, perhaps that should indicate the rules should be revisited. I saw as soon as I came to this site that I was going to have a problem with WR conventions for census sources. And I knew then that I was going to keep all my census sources as MySources because I refuse to go back to change them. And if keeping them as MySources is not acceptable or will be something someone else will have to deal with; then I'd better know it now before I go any further.
For U. S. Federal census I use one source for each year so that does not require a lot of different sources. Sometimes the year will be duplicated if the respository is different. By having the title start with the year, this keeps down the number of sources needed. I don't need a new source for every location! The location is put in the citation detail. From my perspective, my way is much simpler! Just my 2 cents worth. This is what happens when I butt into a conversation where I don't know what is going on. <grin> --Janiejac 00:15, 22 August 2009 (EDT)
I'll take that in the spirit intended Janie. The way the site does census sources need have nothing to do with the way you do them. I do mine the same way you do in my own database. But this is perhaps the one source where the rules are well and set, and I'm certainly going to fight changing them now! ;-) (and this discussion is over the categories to put them in, which is a technical issue that normal users won't have to deal with, hopefully.) --Amelia 00:19, 22 August 2009 (EDT)
OK, good. I remember reading the discussion some time ago about how to do it and I got resistant right then. I just didn't want MySources to become or cause a problem down the road! I'm glad y'all do the technical stuff. That's way beyond this wiki-challenged old lady.--Janiejac 00:30, 22 August 2009 (EDT)

Book vs. Govt/Church Record [21 August 2009]

I couldn't bear to add any more ones and zeroes to the topic over in source rename, so I'm following up with you here. Hope you don't mind.

Now that Dallan has added back in the fields I needed, I'll go back and change as appropriate, but could you advise me, please? On the following? Should they be Gov/Church?

  1. Source:Vital records of Sandwich, Massachusetts to 1885
  2. Source:Wilmington records of births, marriages, and deaths, from 1730 to 1898
  3. Source:Dutchess County, NY, probate records, 1787-1865 : register of wills and letters testamentary and of administration in the Surrogate's office, Poughkeepsie, NY

Thanks!

-- jillaine 16:31, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

Ugh. These are wonderful examples of why I hate this rule. These are all vital records, and nobody except the catalog has any clue who their "authors" are. But based on the rules set by Dallan, only the second one could I justify officially calling a Gov/church record. All the "compiler" really did in that case was copy an older set of records. (There's got to be a 'transcriber' exception to the author rule, because otherwise every census transcription gets its own page, and that's just ridiculous.) But it could probably go either way, you're the human, you call it ;-) --Amelia 16:42, 21 August 2009 (EDT)


Done. Thanks. btw, i concur. jillaine 16:50, 21 August 2009 (EDT)



Done for the Day! [22 August 2009]

Okay, I've been doing this for hours. Time to stop. Wish you lived nearby. I'd invite you over for dinner (bbq) and a good stiff drink! ;-) Oh. Um, if you're Mormon, I've got some decaf iced tea! ;-)

cya around. take a break.

-- Jillaine--jillaine 18:25, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

Thanks. (Not Mormon ;-) --Amelia 18:26, 21 August 2009 (EDT)
Okay Jillaine, I wasn't invited but you can fix me a v & t. --Beth 21:59, 21 August 2009 (EDT)
Is it really wrong for me to want to throw a WR girls happy-hour/bbq? I would SO love to do that, inviting all the "girls" from here. And Beth, really? what's it going to take for us to convince you to stick around? I hate seeing references to your "exiting"! And Janie, don't worry about your census names. I do exactly the same thing and leave them as MySources. And Amelia, you haven't shared what your favorite cocktail is (or other food-related soul-appeasing fix, if not booze). I had a good night's sleep and have a couple of hours this morning to go check sources before going off to a mostly-all-day event. jillaine 07:08, 22 August 2009 (EDT)

A margarita or a glass of wine will do. I'm also disappearing for most of the day, and will endeavor not to check my email on my phone, because when I read and can't respond I just get grumpy :-)


Mourt's Relation [22 August 2009]

Hi Amelia,

On Source:Mourt's relation : a journal of the Pilgrims of Plymouth, are you sure that the book referred to in the FHL catalog and the book on books.google are the same? The one on Google doesn't mention "A Journal of the Pilgrims of Plymouth"; its full title is "Mourt's relation or journal of the plantation at Plymouth with an Introduction and Notes." Also, the one on Google has 158 pages and, according to the FHL catalog, the other one has only 97. I wonder if the Google one is actually a 2nd edition.

The reason I ask is that its on the page of sources I'm going through for the Source Renaming Project.

Thanks, Amy--Ajcrow 18:41, 22 August 2009 (EDT)

Hi Amy,

You know, I have no idea. I think what happened is that I was looking at Google Books and just added it as a link when I went to cite the source, not thinking more of it. If you can't tell one way or the other, though, I would leave it, since the text is apt to be from the original either way, and the important citations are all going to be to the original text. Note on the source page that they might be different, though.--Amelia 23:06, 22 August 2009 (EDT)


I don't think we should tell [23 August 2009]

I think it would be a wise idea that we not let on that you and I are one and the same person. ;-)

-- jillaine 14:02, 23 August 2009 (EDT)

It might complicate things, yes. ;-) --Amelia 14:15, 23 August 2009 (EDT)


Early Records of the Arnold Family [28 August 2009]

Hello Amelia,

This was on my Source Rename Project list. Do you want to edit this? Is this a duplicate you want to merge? I can't really find anything wrong with this. Debbie Freeman --DFree 21:18, 28 August 2009 (EDT)

It's on your "you've touched this page so please review it" list? Or the duplicates list? You're right, it's correct as it is (the rename will drop the quotes, which is why it's showing up at all, I would imagine).--Amelia 00:25, 29 August 2009 (EDT)
Duplicate List I think. Debbie Freeman --DFree 00:57, 29 August 2009 (EDT)
Found it. It's the quotes. Ignore it.--Amelia 00:59, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

Source Questions... [5 September 2009]

I just saw your change to Source:History of Hamilton County, Ohio : with illustrations and biographical sketches, which is cool. I was wondering a couple things:

  • Should the page title be changed to include the author's name up front?
  • Is there any convention developing on source page sub-titles being mixed or all upper case?

Thanks... --Jrm03063 12:40, 5 September 2009 (EDT)

The titles are being changed automatically shortly (when exactly is a moving target - duplicates are being fixed right now). As long as the first author and the title are correct, the page will be renamed correctly. Where subtitles are used in the title to differentiate them from similar books, they are being capitalized. I don't think there's a standard otherwise.--Amelia 17:15, 5 September 2009 (EDT)



Hello Amelia from Amelia : ) [7 September 2009]

Hello there,

(I thought I had responded to you, but I totally spaced, forgive the delay)

It is odd to see someone with the name Amelia. It's not very common, is it? My mom thought Amy was short for Amelia, so for most of my life I was called Amy. Now I go by Amelia, which is my real name. On WeRelate I guess I will sign myself as Amelia J. or Amelia buckaroo : ) Very nice to meet you, and thank you for the kind note. It does seem like there are many ways to do the transcription thing.... I have had some good suggestions. I'm about 80% done with the actual typing and am creating the family tree, so I should be able to upload the whole thing in the next week or so.

I'm glad I finally dove into WeRelate... I have known about it for awhile, but until this project presented itself, I didn't have a clear idea on what to contribute. It would be a massive project to clean up my database for uploading here. Also, I clearly have some learning to do on the different naming conventions, etc. thanks again, talk to you soon, Amelia J.--88buckaroo 21:45, 6 September 2009 (EDT)


Brackett Genealogy source cleanup question [8 September 2009]

Hello Amelia,

I decided to direct this to you after reviewing all the different places where Sources are being discussed (Portal talk source, WeRelate talk source review, WeRelate source renaming project... etc.)

There are 2 source pages for the Brackett Genealogy by H. I. Brackett, 1907

1)[[http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Source:Ancestry.com_-_Brackett_genealogy_:_descendants_of_Anthony_Brackett_of_Portsmouth_and_Captain_Richard_Brackett_of_Braintree_with_biographies_o Source:Ancestry.com - Brackett genealogy : descendants of Anthony Brackett .....]]

and 2) [[http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Source:Brackett_genealogy_:_descendants_of_Anthony_Brackett_of_Portsmouth%2C_and_Captain_Richard_Brackett_of_Braintree_:_with_biographies_of_the_immigrant_fathers%2C_their Source:Brackett genealogy : descendants of Anthony Brackett ...]]

it seems like these two would have probably been addressed in the recent source cleanup project, so I wanted to check with someone first before I jumped in.

My initial interest was to add a link to my website, where I have partial transcripts of this title. I, of course, want to add this link to the 1907 version, for copyright reasons. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the 2nd version is just a 1986 reprint... if so, I assume it should not have it's own page.. is that correct? (from something you said on the watercooler "And, in the course of that project, we've confirmed what is said above: Different editions get different pages, but transcriptions and reprints do not.--Amelia 12:36, 5 September 2009 (EDT)")

If so, I would like to combine these into one source and take the "Ancestry.com" out of the title. I will also add the repository Heritage Quest online. Do you guys consider HQ a paid site? I think of it as free because many people can access it with their library cards.

Don't worry : ) I won't be directly asking you ALL my newbie questions : ) but this seemed like an area where you are a go-to person and from the various lists, it seems like a title that has already been cleaned up. Is there a way to tell if a particular source page has been cleaned up?

thank you for any help you can give me on this, also, if it is appropriate to link to partial transcripts on my own web page. Amelia J. (t.o.a. the other amelia : )--88buckaroo 13:20, 7 September 2009 (EDT)

Hi Amelia,
You're exactly right. The FHC version is a reprint, so these are duplicates. The thing to do is pick one, put all the information on that one, and make sure the fields are all correct (title, publication, author, etc.) For the other one, put {{Speedy Delete|Duplicate}} in the notes field. Then an administrator can delete it. You're coming across this in the middle of the duplicates project, but because of the way the subtitles worked on these, it didn't get picked up on the duplicates list, so your fixing it now is perfect timing. If they had been cleaned up already, there wouldn't be two of them, or one would already say speedy delete. You don't have to rename the source itself, because that will be taken care of automatically as part of the renaming project.
I think HQ is listed in various ways, but I think you're right that it's "free" to the vast majority of people. The repository page for it explains that if people don't know what it is.
Good luck. Let me know if you have any other questions ;-)
--Amelia 20:55, 7 September 2009 (EDT)

thank you very much. that is very clear and helpful. I'm glad you told me about the speedy delete... that would have thrown me : ) hope you had a good weekend : ) Amelia J. (t.o.a.)--88buckaroo 21:36, 7 September 2009 (EDT)


Ferree First Four Generations Project [22 October 2009]

My name is Charles Heisterkamp (kamp3genealogy@netscape.net). I note that we share an interest in members of the Morrow family. I have placed the first FIVE generations of the Ferree family in America on WeRelate. I hope to improve the primary documentation through a cooperative effort to locate wills, land records, etc. I do have more extensive data on some of their descendants. I would be happy to exchange information with you.

I have read your comments on your DNA Project and have looked at your Rootsweb file. I believe we both have information that is currently not on the other persons file.

Have a great day. Charles--Ckamp3 20:32, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

I'm sorry, you're going to have to be more specific. I don't think I know anything about anyone named Ferree.--Amelia 23:35, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

Members of the Daniel Ferree family descendants and a Morrow family married. Joseph Morrow (1769) married Sarah Gillian, Ewing Morrow (~1774) married Eliz. Gilliam, and Mary E. Morrow (~1809) married Jos. D. Ferree. I thought these Morrows were part of the family you are studying. Perhaps I am mistaken. Thanks for your reply. Charles

Both Joseph and Ewing are of interest because they are related to the people in the Morrow DNA Project. Their parents and relationship are a matter of speculation, and if you have any information, I"d be glad to hear it. However, because of the nature of the project, we don't follow women or collateral lines, hence my lack of knowledge of Ferree.--Amelia 00:43, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

Thank you for the above information. I'll focus on the information you have posted at Rootsweb.

I appreciate how much effort is needed for the project you are doing - and that adding other material can significantly increase the work required. As a physician, as well as a genealogist, I have found many instances where collateral material has led to better information about a study that is name based. In addition there are developments in maternal genetics that may, in the near future, be of benefit. Have a great day and thanks for the followups. Charles


Your DNA Morrow page [24 October 2009]

Hi Amelia, I just saw your Morrow DNA page and am impressed. I would like very much to do something like that for the Jackson Project (FTDNA). I am not the project administrator. I have a Jackson web site and am working closely with the former administrator of the Jackson Project. The Jacksons have over 270 men tested now with 30 men whose results indicate a relationship to the Jackson line I am following (Hempstead Jacksons). I'd like to start out doing a page just for those 30 men; most of those 30 are already in my data base, but though most are connected, some are what I call Broken Branches; we don't know where they connect.

Would you have any suggestions for me? Or would it seem too much like a copy-cat for me to use a layout similar to yours? I had been pondering what I could do for the Broken Branches but just wasn't sure how to present it. What you have done seems perfect. (Our Jackson admin does not want to use WorldFamilies site, so I'm thinking WeRelate could be an even better alternative.)

Any comments? --Janiejac 00:10, 25 October 2009 (EDT)

Hi Janie,

Feel free to use whatever format helps you. I've gone back and forth about where to use pages that other people can edit, but that hasn't really been an issue so far, and having the results list require my own work has worked out mostly okay...although I think it's in need of updating at the moment... Anyway, good luck - I was just getting confused over our 90 members the other day, so I think you're wise to start with 30 :-) --Amelia 00:13, 25 October 2009 (EDT)


Edward III [1 November 2009]

Amelia,

I think you have a typo in your notes on Edward III. You show his reign ending 1357, and his successor taking over in 1377.

My records show Edward III from 1327 to 1377. Could we just have a typo?

Thanks for all the good work.

    Dick Holmes--Osmond 23:18, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

Well, if you'd called me like I asked... [19 November 2009]

Seriously, what was the flipping point of all that then??--Amelia 18:28, 19 November 2009 (EST)
Well, if you'd called me liked I'd asked... ;-) Maybe *I* need to pull *YOU* off the ceiling? Jillaine 19:11, 19 November 2009 (EST)

MURRAY FAMILY OF SELKIRK SCOTLAND MATCHES MORROW FAMILY IN USA Y~DNA (37) [14 January 2010]

Morrow of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio & Gettysburg,

My name is Alexandrina Murray from Sydney Australia. My father who is 94 years old and a MURRAY has submitted a 67 marker yDNA test with Familytree DNA.The purpose of this post is to inform other members of Morrow research society etc that my father's results are now in and the 25 , 37 and 67 marker test matches with Morrow family members related to

the following 4 or 5 distinct Morrow-Murray families. My own Murrays were stated to be descended from Murray of Philiphaugh in Selkirkshire:

Thomas Morrow born 1797 married Matilda Blair- in Pennsylvania -they lived in York County in the same town as Governor Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio and his family.

Thomas Morrow and Matilda Blair were the parents of Physician- Doctor Lafayette Blair Morrow born 1830 circa in Ohio. There were a number of other siblings of this couple. The family moved to Pennsylvania- Maryland, Ohio, Illinois and elsewhere. Thomas appears to have had a brother names Abel Morrow who married Lucinda Blair- sister of Matilda. There were a number of descendants of this couple.

Thomas Morrow is said by some researchers to be a son of Governor Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio, who was the father of eleven children who survived him, and a number who died in infancy. Jeremiah Morrow born 1771 circa was a son of John Murray and Mary Lockhart of Pennsylvania. John Murray's name is cited in the historical records of Ohio to have morphed to the name Morrow in the 1770's. John Murray born 1740 circa was a son of Jeremiah Murray and his wife Sarah Murray. Jeremiah had emigrated to Gettysburg area where he was an elder in the Covenanting Kirk - dissenting United Presbyterians- in that area. This was 1745 circa. His family were of Scottish descent and hailed from the Ettrick Forest area in Selkirkshire and Traquair to Eddleston area of Peebles Shire. Originally the family were known as Murrays of Falahill(in Midlothian). Their particular line though became known as Murray of Philiphaugh.

Colonel Adam Murray defender and hero of Londonderry 1685 circa, was named in historical records of Ohio and elsewhere as the father of Jeremiah Murray senior. Samuel Murray- brother of Adam, is also a possible father of Jeremiah senior in my opinion. Samuel was a Captain in the Army and was also recorded in the annals as being at the Seige of Londonderry as brother of Adam. Adam Murray and Samuel Murray were two of the children of Gideon Murray of Philiphaugh and his wife Sarah Mackie, they had another son named John in 1711. Gideon , a Captain in the Horse Guards was expelled from Selkirkshire Scotland over to Derry at Ling in Ireland, on account of his Covenanting activities.

Alternative parents of Thomas Morrow b. 1797 may be William Morrow and Barbara Anne Zantzinger. This family were involved in the Rumsey steamboat affair and our DNA result also matches this William. William's brothers were said to have been Colonel John Morrow, Captain Charles Morrow, and perhaps James Morrow. Quite a bit of historical material has been archived regarding this family. Mr Walter Morrow (Walt Morrow) previously cited on this forum has thoroughly researched this family and noted the 'missing Thomas Morrow born 1797 circa' from this lineage.

Our DNA Matches 25/25 include descendants of Thomas Morrow and Matilda Blair , cited above, also- Matches 34/36 William Morrow and Barbara Anne Zantzinger- namely Edwin Porch Morrow & family also early Governors (judges? details shortly)

Also similar matches George Morrow who is said to have married Mary Calhoun 1755 circa in North or South Carolina , lived Georgia? Maryland and Pennsylvania (TBD). Accordingly the 25 marker test also matches 24/25 . Most importantly though the 37 marker test result has just returned with a 99% positive result of a common ancestor within a certain timeframe.

I have been in contact with Morrow family members and stated that it appears that I can trace the Morrow family back to Selkirk in Scotland.

According to the DNA result there IS a relationship between our families and MURRAY and MORROW MORRAY MORAY MURRAH are one in the same family. The morph occurred according to the transcribed name being written as heard (thick scots accents). Also citing the following comment:

" The great family of Murray whose name is pronounced as Morow in the Scottish Borders" dated 1820 circa.

Please also note that George Morrow who married Mary was arguably GEORGE MORRAY married MARY FLEMING 1763 in Pennsylvania. Perhaps he married 3 times, not twice.

Please contact me at any time for further information: I have a very extensive gedcom available 4,500 individuals. I have the Murray family tree going back to 10 to 20 generations in Scotland.

My parents were both born in Scotland and Father's family from Selkirk.

Sandie--Alexandrina Murray 02:10, 19 September 2008 (EDT) Sandie--Alexandrina 04:21, 22 August 2009 (EDT)

Note 2 User names : shall try to rectify.



Amelia, My Family Tree DNA test came back as not related to any of the Morrow lines being followed. I have records showing that my line's family name was changed from Murray to Morrow in the 1700s. Is there a way to cross reference my test with the Murray lines? Regards, Doug Morrow--Demorrow 14:24, 25 November 2008 (EST)




Hello Doug,


I have just found your comment, recently returned from Scotland and was notified by family tree DNA of yet another Morrow match to my father William Murray.

This time it was the 37 marker test.

If you would like more information on the 25, Y 37 market matches to the Morrows (David, Edwin , Howard, John, Beau & Steven) please let me know here.

Cheers

Sandie--Alexandrina 04:21, 22 August 2009 (EDT)



Henry Hansbrough [17 January 2010]

Amelia, Thank you for the clean-up you've done on the Henry Hansbrough page. It is appreciated.

Mike Flanagan CaptainFlanagan--Captainflanagan 00:02, 18 January 2010 (EST)


Danyell Broadley update [15 February 2010]

Hi Amelia,

An update re: Danyell Broadley as par: of William Bradley. I've reached an impasse finding concrete evidence that Danyell is fa of William. On Ancestry.com (of which I am not a member) there are Bingley parish records for bp & marr of several Broadley/Brodley/Bradley.

The sights which claim the fa-son relationship use "my source" type citations or IGI references without citing a parish or civil record. If the websites I found are at all accurate, the following MAY be true re: Danyell Broadley:

Daniell Broadley b 26 Jan 1588/89 in Bingley or Shipley, York, Eng

m (1) 1 Jul 1607 Elizabeth or Elsabeth Atkinson b 1589 West Riding, York, Eng

m (2) bet 1608 & 1612 Johanna Waddington b ca 1591 of Bingley, this wife supposedly mo of William.

m Annis Holdroide..No m date

m ca 1630 Elizabeth Sheaffe (this fits well with the narrative that William arrived w/step-mo, Elizabeth who m Parmlee.

Still another website claims that some of these wives m a William Broadley b 1598 to 1600. I guess someone with Ancestry access needs to check both Bingley and Shipley records for further clues. For the time being, I will change William's mother's name to Johanna Waddington. There are Bingley records for a Johanna Broadley, Daniell Broadley, William Broadley, Annis Broadley, etc. Regards..--Neal Gardner 13:22, 13 February 2010 (EST)

I would hold off changing anything just yet. I don't think I buy Joanna Waddington - i've only see that name on old IGI records tied to William, not Daniel, and I think they're being conflated. The Elisabeth Atkinson record is real, it's IGI extracted.--Amelia 18:36, 13 February 2010 (EST)

Great work Amelia ! I'll try to take a look at everything posted and get back to you. Another website for comparison is Tami's Genealogy Online: Descendants of William Bradley I, found at:

http://www.fortunecity.com/millenium/rockbridge/597/hedden/bradley.htm

Although she contends that our William Bradley is son of Wm Bradley and Joanna Waddington, she has a list of Daniel's children, into which the Wm Bradley b 1609/10 would easily fit. She gives a Michael Bradley b 14 Nov 1619 as son of Daniel Bradley & Elsabeth Atkinson, precluding (in her opinion) placing Wm Bradley b 1619 in this family. I tend not to find this highly plausible

I assume that William Bradley's will exists somewhere; I have not seen a transcript. This will supposedly makes clear (according to one researcher) that Wm is the bro(or half-bro) of Ellin (Bradley) Alling/Allen and son of another William. I would love to clear this up and find the right parents for Wm with as much detail as possible. Thanks again...later--Neal Gardner 14:20, 14 February 2010 (EST)

I think it's Daniel Bradley (Jr.)'s will that makes that clear -- the entry in Savage (quoted on the talk page) says he had no children, and so his estate went to his siblings. I wonder why Tami thinks he needs to have been born in 1619 - I would think a decade older would be equally plausible. --Amelia 15:16, 14 February 2010 (EST)

Without objection I will add the children of Danyell & Elsabeth Atkinson, as well as the out-of-wedlock child, Esther, and what appears to be the 5 children by a second wife, Elizabeth Unknown, with a note saying that her surname may be Sheaffe, but no proof as yet. --Neal Gardner 10:03, 15 February 2010 (EST)

Sure. A note indicating that the children are attributed to the wives based on the 8-year gap in between would probably also be a good idea.--Amelia 10:10, 15 February 2010 (EST)

Will do later this evening.... Thanks, Amelia..--Neal Gardner 10:52, 15 February 2010 (EST)


Wm Bradley's birthplace change [19 February 2010]

Hi Amelia,

Neal here. Curious why you changed William's birthplace from Bingley parish to Bradford, since his siblings are all recorded in Bingley. I've included a note on William's and his parents' page that describes the ancient parish of Bingley, stating that Bingley parish did not include Bradford. Also the location of West Morton included in the baptismal record for Danyell's last 5 children (Daniell Broadley de West Morton) is NNW of Bradford. Have you found a baptismal record for William in Bradford records ? --Neal Gardner 12:18, 18 February 2010 (EST)

The short answer is that that's what the source says. I don't know why the page said Bingley originally, but that was a mistake/failure to change when the 1609 date was made primary. Moreover, the website cites the Bradford Parish Register. The birth being in Bradford would explain why there is otherwise a 7 year gap between children of Daniel baptized at Bingley. Also, Daniel isn't called of West Morton until 1632. In 1613, he's of Shipley, then he's of Newclose, and then he's of West Morton.--Amelia 17:47, 18 February 2010 (EST)
At a glance, I quite agree with you. I'll keep digging though, because in that time period, Bradford was a very tiny community, consisting of about 12 families with no church; Bradford did not become a metropolis until the Industrial Revolution, taking in Shipley & Bingley. Shipley at the time wasn't much bigger, but seems to have a church, hence baptisms. Newclose is Newclose Farm whose exact location I haven't found as yet; perhaps in the Shipley area. It almost seems as though Daniell may have contracted tenancy on various farm properties, not actual ownership. The baptism for a William in 1621 in Shipley was for a William, son of William, not Daniell. Guess I'd like a look at Bradford parish records if they are somewhere online. --Neal Gardner 13:56, 19 February 2010 (EST)

Edmund Lewis and Mary Unknown (1) [26 February 2010]

Hi, I was the one who added the note "...There is no documentation to support this claim..." to Edmund Lewis and Mary Carey, so I don't disagree with the conclusion presented on this page after your recent changes. However, I just thought it might be worthwhile pointing out that you essentially changed from a specific answer to unknown without actually knowing whether the specific answer is false. In my opinion this is a problematic approach.

Of course, there is the humorous effect that this unanswered question of who Mary is, will cause some researchers to stick in the first answer they find, reverting the page back to Mary Carey. Or that people that have the Mary Carey answer in their personal databases, since there is a source saying it, will now create a duplicate page next they upload a GEDCOM.

But the fact remains that it hasn't been shown that his wife wasn't Mary Carey. So if someday, it is proved she is Mary Carey, the page will need to be renamed back. If it is disproved, there is no difference renaming Mary Carey to Mary Doe than Mary Unknown to Mary Doe.

Robert Charles Anderson is, in my opinion, the single best source, if you use only one. But he is interested in showing what is proved. In reality there are many degrees of knowing, and the question comes up should WeRelate pages show only what can be proved, or can we tolerate working hypotheses that have not been disproven, and perhaps have no better alternative? --Jrich 10:25, 26 February 2010 (EST)


I agree that this is a general dilemma for the site. However, two factors make me change records like this to "unknown." First, this is colonial New England where the universe of sources is well mined and well defined -- a maiden name offered with no birthdate or marriage date or parents, let alone no notes or sources has a very, very high probability of being wrong. Second, it can always be changed back if someone actually has a source -- and changing it to "unknown" is a big signal to everyone who thinks otherwise that they need to beat Anderson's work, where he doesn't even mention respectable speculation that her name is Carey. And in this particular case, it's one of my ancestors, and I've never seen the speculation that her name was Carey. But the tiny smidgeon of doubt I have left is why there's still a last name on her page.
If Anderson had acknowledged the possibility, or in other spaces where it's entirely possible that someone has done research that other people haven't, I wouldn't change it, although I do think it would be useful to have some guidance about when people should do so. I tend to think that if we're going to allow gedcom downloads, we have a responsibility to be conservative in names that will be taken as gospel long after the "maybe..." notes are stripped out. But that's not settled, so unless it's a pretty clear case like this, I don't usually touch it.
On the dups, I'm not positive, but I would hope that the gedcom upload would catch a new Edmund Lewis and Mary Carey (based on the redirect and the children), and there should be enough people watching that it can't be changed without thought now.

--Amelia 11:05, 26 February 2010 (EST)



Featured Page on Francis Cooke [25 March 2010]

Thanks Amelia for the suggestion of Francis Cooke for the featured page. I've taken your suggestion and added him for this week's feature.

Best regards,

Jim:)--Delijim 11:57, 25 March 2010 (EDT)


Nathaniel Hawthorne [3 April 2010]

Hi Amelia, I noticed that you removed the wikipedia information on Nathaniel Hawthorne. Can you share the reasoning on the removal? Since wikipedia is clearly in the public domain (no copyright issues with the proper attribution), don't you think it adds information that would be beneficial to other researchers? I'm not aware of any WeRelate policy that says the information on wikipedia can't be added to a person's page. Would appreciate knowing the rationale. The sources are clearly available on the wikipedia link (site).

Thanks,

Jim:)--Delijim 13:19, 2 April 2010 (EDT)


Hi Jim,

There are policies in place for use of Wikipedia content, and none of them recommend cutting and pasting as you did. Just doing that puts only static content on the page, loses all of the WP links and formatting, creates no internal WR links, lacks the proper attibution license to the authors who wrote the content you are displaying, and looks strange, because the footnotes are unconnected to any sourcing. For an article that long, the preferred approach is to import the introductory content through the {{source-wikipedia}} template (which is already on that page, a further reason to revert) and let users go back the WP page if they want more. There is no purpose in WR entirely repeating the content of long articles like the one on NH, although I have on occasion used the {{wp-article name-section name}} approach for particularly useful information on a person's parents/background (see, e.g., Anne Hutchinson).

--Amelia 16:00, 2 April 2010 (EDT)


Understand, I've seen the "discussion" regarding the use of wikipedia on WeRelate, but since it is "share-alike", and I did add the attribution, I'd appreciate it in the future if you didn't just simply delete the contribution without any communication. I've added wikipedia information to many people on WeRelate and have never had the content deleted. Thank you.--Delijim 16:39, 2 April 2010 (EDT)

The attribution is to the author, not the article, and so Dallan designed a template that points to the author list, which is another reason to use the Source-wikipedia template. I have deleted many of these types of additions for the same reasons, and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to promise not to do it again, for all the reason explained above; please don't take it as anything personal. And I didn't delete it without communication, I used the summary field to explain.--Amelia 17:17, 2 April 2010 (EDT)

[3 April 2010]

I received your message regarding Nathaniel Hawthorne's page. In your previous messages, you said absolutely nothing about a template being populated this weekend on his page (first I've heard of this). You gave an example (Anne Marbury/Hutchinson above) and I tried to emulate that example on Hawthorne's page as best I could. I believe you are "assuming" that everyone is as knowledgeable regarding the WP templates as you, but that is not the case. Unfortunately, I have seen no simple instructions on how to build the wp templates, so as long as some of the WP information is populated on Hawthorne's page that will be good enough for me. Since you seem to have claimed "ownership" over Hawthorne's page, I will let you have at it and delete whatever contribution I've added.

Regards.


Jim, please don't get defensive. I linked to the WP policies in the first place because we obviously weren't on the same page. That page explains what to do -- one only needs to add a {{source-wikipedia}} template, which was already done on this page and I assumed you had seen that. (And it's true that the weekly update fact is not publicized, but I was adding that to point out that you don't have to add the WP template, and that doing so was going to cause problems beyond me just getting annoyed.) Given those facts, I failed to understand what was going on when you made your changes that directly contradicted what I had written previously. I have no more claimed "ownership" over Hawthorne than I've claimed to own any other page I care about, which is to say that I take responsibility for making sure that edits to the page don't cause problems like the duplication introduced by your edits here.
The Ann Marbury page looks the way it does - i.e. different than what Hawthorne should look like at this point -- because the source template hasn't been populated yet. When it is, the Wp- template will be created with the custom content. The example was meant to point out that that page has three templates on it, which include both teh standard template (which pulls in only the top section of the WP article) and section-specific templates.
Obviously this is not the ideal way for us to communicate, because we're ascribing the worst motives to each other, and in public no less, and I apologize if I offended have.
--Amelia 23:20, 2 April 2010 (EDT)


Not a problem Amelia, I prefer verbal communication, too. Unfortunately, you can't read "tone" in someone's written words. I'd recommend that someone revise the WeRelate wikipedia policy page to make it easier for anyone to understand, so it can be spelled out easily (make the instructions easier and have a "how to" section at the top). If you have time to do this (since you understand it much more than I do), I'd be happy to us it as the feature page it in the next few weeks.. I think this would be a benefit of the many contributors that don't fully understand the correct way to add wikipedia content to WeRelate. Although I do consider myself fairly intelligent, HTML is not my "stong suit", and have basically picked it up along the way from a few of the other contributors here. I can follow directions fairly well, so if you'd be so kind to come up with some simple instructions on "how to add wikipedia content" (with some guidelines on just adding that information that is genealogically/biographically related), that would be great. Deal? Thanks:)

When I was reading the WeRelate "policy" page that you linked (which I had read earlier), I was perhaps more interested in the "spririted debate" that was listed below between those that thought wikipedia was 1) the greatest thing since sliced bread, and 2) that wikipedia was something brought by the devil. I happen to think that wikipedia does have some merit in adding the biographical content on WeRelate if for anything to add the story of a famous person's life. It makes a much better read than a blank page, which unfortunately most person pages on WeRelate currently are.

--Delijim



John Sevier Page [31 May 2010]

I noticed you were at the top of the list of those watching the John Sevier page. Did you create it? Would you like to have other tidbits?

I've checked watch page. If you answer here, I'll get an e-mail.--Schmelzer 19:02, 30 May 2010 (EDT)

Hi. I don't know by what criteria they order the watchers, but it's not by contribution...I actually made only one pretty minor edit on that page fairly recently. The way you find that is to check the "History" link at the top of the page on the right. But regardless, if you have additional information to the article, please go ahead and add it. Anyone watching who is interested will find out (that's the whole point of watching!). Regards, and welcome. --Amelia 20:14, 30 May 2010 (EDT)

I have access to data involving John Sevier that I only wrote sketchy notes about. Such as selling land in 1806 Overton County, Tennessee to Benjamin Hinshaw including improvements made by David SMELSER. I think he was also listed in the Knoxville newspaper advertising loosing a horse and a reward.--Schmelzer 20:20, 30 May 2010 (EDT)


Joseph Ball and Mary Montague [10 July 2010]

Just wanted to say thanks for changing this family Joseph Ball and Mary Montague, agree 1000% with your comments, hopefully the "Montague" fallacy will die out eventually.

Best regards,

Jim:)--Delijim 21:00, 31 May 2010 (EDT)


If only! That and the Mary "Bennett" theory. Nobody knows the family name of the Widow Johnson.--Craig Kilby, Mary Ball Washington Museum & Library, Lancaster, VA.--Persisto 15:46, 10 July 2010 (EDT)


I can't find any comments by Amanda on this topic. Where are they?--Persisto 17:03, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

Presumably here, but I think he misunderstood, as I didn't make any substantive comments.--Amelia 17:05, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

This is why I just give up on this project. One person wrote to me (hadn't seen that until today) that he was dismayed because I had deleted the MONTAGUE name as maiden name of wife of Col. Joseph Ball. He had added a website from the House of Montague as proof that she was a Montague, when in fact the web site DISPROVES it, as has long been known.

Then somebody had morphed James-3 Ball (William-2, William-1) into Col. Joseph-2 Ball (William-1) and had it all COMPLETELY screwed up. Again, citing this famous Ryland book which is so full of holes, I don't know why anybody takes it seriously. I have TRIED to change this but end up getting nowhere but dead ends with "Link this" and "link that" and after I do that, I still can't get it posted.

This is site is really getting on my nerves. If I want bad genealogy, I can go to ancestry.com or familysearch.org and have an orgy.--Persisto 17:46, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

I don't know what 'link this' and 'link that' means or what you can't get posted; the reason I'm here instead of ancestry is that I can make the bad genealogy go away... --Amelia 17:59, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

Citations for John Sackett [14 June 2010]

Thanks Amelia.... For arranging the citations for the information I gathered re: John Sackett's will, death & probate dates. I ran out of time here at the library to cite properly before they closed the doors; just enough time to restore the info and wait till today to get back to the library. Regards...--Neal Gardner 11:09, 14 June 2010 (EDT)


Epping Forest? NOT! [1 January 2011]

I don't why I keep beating my head against a wall on the topic of Joseph Ball. It just keeps being changed/removed by people who are not that knowledgable on the subject. Joseph Ball did not die at "Epping Forest." There was no place by that name until 1843. It was simply known as the "The Forest" or "The Forest Quarter." It is clear by the deeds of gift to his children shortly before his marriage to the Widow Johnson that this is where he then lived. He repeated this same language in his will (where I now dwell), but the personal property he bequeathed to his wife was all inventoried at his plantation in Morattico, including his horses Bush and Dragon. I wrote a short essay on this topic for the Henry Ford Museum if anyone is interested in it. For now, please DELETE the death place as "Epping Forest." That is almost as bad as the Montague junk.--Persisto 15:41, 10 July 2010 (EDT)


P.S. to the note. I am a volunteer at the Mary Ball Washington Museum & Library in Lancaster County, Virginia. We have more material and better sources (which keep being wiped out) than this book you keep citing. If there is one thing we know, it is the Ball Family.--Persisto 15:44, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

That's fantastic. I'm thrilled you know about this family. Please, please go ahead and edit and fix it - that is the beauty of a wiki after all. But this information is not on the Joseph Ball page, and your last edit, which only had a note in the summary field which is hard to find, didn't mention Epping, it only mentioned Oakley. How is anyone supposed to know that Roberts is wrong if you don't enter and cite the correct information? And I don't think I wiped any sources out, if I did, I apologize.

And how was I supposed to that somebody used Roberts as "the source" and wiped out all of my previous information and sources? I explained why I changed the "death date" and then you changed wiped that out too. I am getting very frustrated with this site. I keep editing this family and it keeps being re-edited and messed up. I am giving up.--Persisto 15:57, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

Please don't leave over a misunderstanding. What sources are you talking about that were deleted? This is the page showing my changes: [3] The sources you put in the notes were put in the source fields, not deleted. Your death date change says "Previous death date was date his will his was proved. He did not die at "Oakley", which he had given to his son-in-law Rawleigh Chinn, and which was named later." So I put in the probate date, changed the death date to "after" the date given in Roberts (which you didn't mention was a problem), and put in the Epping place. I didn't delete anything. I apologize that I didn't notice that you had taken out "Epping Forest" when your note referenced Oakley. I know it's frustrating to have people remove changes you know are right/better, but it's hard to know which changes are correct when there is no source information on the page other than author names. I also don't understand your first sentence. I added Roberts as a source months ago, and then when you edited the death date making it less specific, I specifically referenced Roberts on the more specific date. I don't know what more I can do.--Amelia 16:07, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

Maybe I just don't quite get this site. I was shown what I had written about the DEATH date, and you deleted than and made a comment that the birth dates were in conflict. I did notice you changed the death date information to be correct and added the probate date. Is it it possible to put a "Between" for dates of anything?

I find the site extremely difficult to use. For example, I wrote a comment on deleting Epping Forest but there was not way to "save it" or explain it. Surely there must be, because I did so yesterday on the death date. Anyway, it just way too much brain damage for me. And suppose we got it all fixed up just right, and then the next person comes along and changes it all back again? What's the point in it?--Persisto 16:21, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

Agreed, there is a learning curve. Thank you for attempting it! You put the death date information into the summary field at the end of the page, which is a fine place to put it, but the only people who see that are people watching the page who get an email about the change (and people who look at the history, but that's rare). The best thing to do when you make a change to a piece of information like this that you know is "common wisdom" is to hit the "plus" in the notes column next to the event, and put the information in there. That way it will appear on the page for anyone reading it.
I don't quite know how you saw a page that showed the birth conflict information replaced the death date, but it's possible. What happens is that the wiki software isn't entirely capable of dealing with fields in the page, and sometimes the 'show changes' view is a little goofy. Not ideal, obviously. What actually happened was that the birth date comment (which is probably some system-generated nonsense, but I try not to assume) was moved from the general personal history field into a note regarding the birthdate.
Yes, you can put a "between" date in (there are no constraints on the information in the date field), except that I don't know what that does for searches on date fields, so I typically don't do it.
The idea is that, although anyone can change the page, the information on the page will eventually become self-evidently good enough - i.e. good sources, text, etc. - that people will not change it unless they think their information is better, and that will be rare the better the page get. And if that added information is not better, than the people watching fix it. It's the same principle as Wikipedia, which isn't perfect but works reasonably well once you have critical mass. We're still getting there, and we're still working on how to educate new users to 1) avoid putting in unreliable information and 2) document what they do enter so others can evaluate it. --Amelia 16:33, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

I tried to correct the parents of the Ball family in question, which had been changed from the correct parents (James-3 Ball and Mary Conway) to the totally incorrect parents (Joseph-2 Ball and Mary ---- (NOT MONTAGUE) Johnson Ball Hewes). I retyped the proper names for both parents. This I was not allowed to do when I hit "submit." I was told to find them in the existing database, which I did. Still wouldn't let me do it. I also tried to add Margaret Lester Hill's book as a source, which is in the "existing" list twice, but not listed as a resource on any of the Ball data that I originally submitted and added this in detail as a source (wiped out by somebody). No could do either. I just gave up on it. This site is so frigging hard to use and even you do succeed, someone else just comes along after you and wipes it all out. I would love to know who this Ryland clown is and why his book is considered superior to anything else on the Ball family published much more recently and more studiously and much better documented. I guess I really just don't get it.--Persisto 19:19, 10 July 2010 (EDT)


I don't know what to tell you. The site is not easy, it's unlike anything else out there, but all of what you describe is in the help, so me explaining it won't help at this point. I can't fix it, either, because I don't know what person you're talking about who has the wrong parents, or who Ryland is. (If you're talking about Roberts, he's been researching presidential ancestors for NEHGS for 30 years and generally surveys the most reliable and recently published sources.) James Ball and Mary Conway are here Family:James Ball and Mary Conway Daingerfield (1) (although that page is incorrectly named - it should have Mary's maiden name). Hill is here: Source:Margaret Lester Hill. Ball Families of Virginia's Northern Neck an Outline. Copy those page titles to where you want them. Or just make notes on the pages in question and someone else will fix it. But again, you can't assume that others know what you do and know that your information should not be touched because it is right. If you have issues with the content that is there, you need to post your reasoning and sources in a format others understand, which can be done using the free notes field if you can't figure out the rest. But terse author names, for example, are not very helpful - there are over 1600 sources with Hill as an author - nor do I know what you mean when you say "anything else on the Ball family published much more recently and more studiously and much better documented" and therefore I can't look at a source and tell if it's somehow better or worse than that.--Amelia 20:28, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

(If you're talking about Roberts, he's been researching presidential ancestors for NEHGS for 30 years and generally surveys the most reliable and recently published sources.)

You are right. It is the Roberts person. I know that all the powers that be at WR think he is infallible, but my experience with him re the Ball Family tells me he is all wet. He doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. He not only regurgitates a lot of bad genealogy, but creates a whole new mess of it. And when all of my well sourced material is erased and this stuff gets replaced because he said so, based on NOTHING, is what tells me to get off this supposedly professional site. I'll stick to the facts, not the fiction. Bye bye.--Persisto 22:17, 10 July 2010 (EDT)


You wrote:

. How is anyone supposed to know that Roberts is wrong if you don't enter and cite the correct information?

This is the problem. Roberts has no source, and there is no source to prove he had no source. It simply did not happen. How do you prove a negative? I guess I could try the Common Knowledge option. This is what drives me nuts here. Who is this Roberts dude to write this stuff, about which he knows nothing, and why is he "THE AUTHORITY" here? I'd really like to know. What ever Ivory Tower he is sitting in, he needs to come down from the clouds and do some real research and get his facts straight. I'd be happy to teach him.--Persisto 23:15, 10 July 2010 (EDT)


This is a site for collaboration. Your objections to the changes should be on the talk page for the person. If you have evidence that certain allegations are not true; then you should add that to the person page. Attacking members or the site serve no useful function. --Beth 02:42, 11 July 2010 (EDT)


Thanks Beth. Persisto, Roberts has been around forever and his books have pages of authorities. They don't, by their nature, cite fact by fact, nor is he perfect when he's tracing hundreds of people. No source is perfect, and he's not "the authority" just because he's been added as a source to a page. I submit, however, that his work is better researched than most genealogy out there, let alone what's cited on this site. But if you have issues with what he says because he has no basis for it, say that on the page. Or (better) explain why it's inconsistent with known facts from some other source. (And he takes submissions from the public, so if you would like to "teach" him, you ought to go ahead.) And for the record, there are no "powers that be" at WeRelate deciding a source is good or bad. One user (me) entered Roberts because there were no other sources on many of these pages. The entire point of having a wiki is to have the best information rise to the top. There are no "professional" criteria or goals here other than hope for the wisdom of the crowd. Attacking me and everything on the site because I entered information found in a published source about which you've offered no concrete criticism (of the information or the source) serves nothing. Please stop.--Amelia 12:26, 11 July 2010 (EDT)

Ditto from me. Argue it out with facts on the page. There are error by every author. People like Roberts (and Anderson and Wakefield and etc.) are cited often because they are recognizable, available, knowledgeable, thorough, and have low error rates. So generally, in practice, they tend to trump other researchers, especially earlier ones. But nobody is infallible. Emotion doesn't change the facts, and only by presenting a coherent discussion based on facts on the pertinent page where all the interested researchers can read it and evaluate it and perhaps respond to it, will you effectively inform people of such errors and reach a consensus about the correct data. --Jrich 13:12, 11 July 2010 (EDT)

A word about Roberts. He is more of a compiler than a researcher. He works at the NEHGS library, has compiled the Revisions to Weis' "Ancestral Roots",D"Royal descents of 600 American Colonists", The ancestries of American Presidents with large contributions from the late William Addams Reitsweisner of the Library of Congress. He is also the author of "Notable Kin", genealogies of famous Americans. Persisto may be an expert on the Ball family, but to dismiss Gary Boyd Roberts in general displays an ignorance in American genealogy overall.--Scot 21:07, 31 December 2010 (EST)


Mervyn work [16 August 2010]

nice cleanup on the Mervyn pages, Amelia. Thanks. Jillaine 07:31, 16 August 2010 (EDT)



Abraham Clark, signer of Declaration [23 September 2010]

This is Neal. I noticed the special "Signers of the Declaration of Independence" banner when visiting Oliver Wolcott's page (one of my 'distant cousins') I also have another signer in my family, Abraham Clark (5), son of Thomas & Hannah [Winans] Clark of NJ. Can you advise me how to get the banner with the links placed on his page ?--Neal Gardner 12:22, 23 September 2010 (EDT)

Hi Neal. That's a template anyone is welcome to help spread around. The template is called {{Declaration of Independence}}. To put it at the bottom of the page, use <show_source_images_notes/> {{Declaration of Independence}}. Then, if you would, go and edit the template itself so that it contains a link to Abraham Clark (Template:Declaration of Independence) - just change the generic "Clark" link to his name with the WR link. Any other questions, let me know. Thanks!--Amelia 14:00, 23 September 2010 (EDT)

Thanks Amelia !--Neal Gardner 15:34, 23 September 2010 (EDT)


Amelia, I think I messed up linking Abraham Clark. Changed template, but made mistakes linking. Ugh..--Neal Gardner 16:05, 23 September 2010 (EDT)

You just forgot "Person:" - easy to do because the template is copied from WP, which doesn't use namespaces. All fixed.--Amelia 16:29, 23 September 2010 (EDT)



Question re Source format: [11 November 2010]

Hi Amelia - I'm looking at Source:Atlantic County Historical Society. Yearbook, with Historical and Genealogical Journal (Atlantic County Historical Society); its Page Name seems to be formatted both as a book [Author. Title] and as a journal [Title. (Publisher)]. I can't decide which is preferable; It is an annual publication and is categorized at WorldCat as a journal/magazine. Should the page name be changed to clarify one way or the other? --Brenda (kennebec1) 17:32, 11 November 2010 (EST)


Jenkins/Sebring [25 November 2010]

Hello Amelia,

I see that you were trying to add some info to Lorenzo Jenkins and Mary Sebring, they are my Great x3 Grandparents. I can't really tell what you were trying to add, is there some info you have that I don't have listed?

Are you related to them, by chance? If so, do you have any idea when Mary died and where she is buried?

Look forward to hearing from you, my e-mail address is: kmrob@insightbb.com.

Thanks!

Rob Schultz--Kmrob 08:04, 25 November 2010 (EST)

Hi Rob,
What happened was that I merged two identical pages for Lorenzo Jenkins and Mary Sebring. Because they were identical, nothing actually shows up as "added" on the change page. You were the only watcher on both, so you probably created both pages at some point by accident. I'm not related, but I do have some Jenkins lines, and that's how I came across the pages needing merging.
Regards,
Amelia --Amelia 13:00, 25 November 2010 (EST)

Robert Andrews' page [6 December 2010]

Hi Amelia,

I don't know what you did on Robert Andrews' page, but the text in the "History" section runs forever to the right. I don't know how to fix it. Tried. --Neal Gardner 17:43, 6 December 2010 (EST)

Sorry, somebody who better understands IE's freakiness is going to have to address that. It doesn't do it on the other three browsers I more regularly use, and the history shows it's been that way since before I touched it.--Amelia 17:54, 6 December 2010 (EST)

Thanks Amelia,

Somehow I fixed it, but I have no idea how....maybe by lining everything up to the left-hand margin ?--Neal Gardner 18:00, 6 December 2010 (EST)



Place names [22 November 2012]

You and I are working at cross purposes.

You just changed Jonathan Brewster's page and the standard place Preston, New London, Connecticut, United States was given the alias Preston, New London, Connecticut, and similarly for Norwich.

I nearly edited the page to undo this but decided not to, out of respect. However, removing information-less aliases from places is something which I try to remember to do every time I change a page. If the alias is no different than the standard name, I think it is better to use to use the standard name to result in a more uniform appearance of the pages. Aliases should only be used if there is some significant difference, as possibly with a historical name such as Monomoy for Chatham. I also think it is disrespectful of global users to assume it is sufficient to stop at the state level without displaying the country, like everybody should be familiar with US states. It is not like you are changing the qualitative nature of the information being presented?

I agree it is the display length is increased by adding the country, but I find that most place aliases are rarely visible on the edit screen, which is an even bigger problem in my opinion. Many times I have edited the visible part of the place, without realizing there was an alias on the end that never got fixed. If length is the issue, I would question why USA can't be used for the country name, possibly even postal abbreviations for the states? USA is probably more accurate than United States (of what?).

I realize this is mostly opinion and preference, but I would like to hear your justification to see if I have overlooked some important consideration. I don't think it is all that useful to be working at cross purposes. --Jrich 22:26, 19 January 2011 (EST)

Hi Jrich,
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "information-less aliases", but I gather that you're referring to removing United States from place names for display purposes. The reasoning is simple: there was no United States when Jonathan Brewster was alive. As a matter of course, I remove USA from events that occurred before 1776. I realize that technically the country could or even should be something - England? United Kingdom? Kingdom of England? But I don't claim to know what's precisely correct, we've had problems with different people having different ideas about how to denote the colonies before, and it changed over time. Lopping off the obviously incorrect (just as I'd change the alias to the town or county or state name of the time if I can tell that it's different) seems a reasonable way to express where the event occurred and is recorded without either getting overly complicated or being clearly wrong. And thanks for asking... --Amelia 13:28, 20 January 2011 (EST)
By information-less alias, I mean that it conveys nothing more than the standard place name would have if left alone, and maybe hinders communication by removing "United States" as suggested above. And the United States is not incorrect as a place name, since the convention is to name places with their name in 1900, when the United States was a nation. It seems when assessed from the point of understandability, people will realize based on the dates, that the standard place name is clearly not an accurate historical name.
Further I don't believe you used the strictly historical name, either. Readers would look at the burial location of Preston, New London, Connecticut and assume it was a modern place name 1) Preston wasn't formed for nearly another 30 years after Jonathan's death, 2) New London county wasn't formed until 7 years after his death, 3) you would probably have to call it Colony of Connecticut to make it clear that it is not the state you are talking about, and then 4) as you pointed out, do you call it England, or possibly New England, or something else? Does your attempt to differentiate colonial US versus national US really require this, or do the dates communicate it sufficiently without all this mess? Do you intend to get bogged down in deciding which charter was in effect at each event and find out the official name of the governing entity at the time? There are some cases where aliases may make sense, such as referring to Salem Village, instead of Danvers, Massachusetts, when touching on the witch trials, but I don't think this case is one of them. --Jrich 14:24, 20 January 2011 (EST)
Hi Jrich,
Perhaps we have different philosophies on edits. I make them if I can make it better, even if I don't know enough to make something perfect. Perfection shouldn't be the enemy of the good, and the beauty of the wiki is that we can build on each other. Since I think it's better to not have the wrong country, I remove it if I happen to be doing something on the page.
The rule isn't that place names for events should be as they were in 1900. That's the rule for standardized places used in place pages. One major point of having the ability to have aliases is that the time-specific aliases can point back to that one place page. Person/family pages can and should use time-appropriate place names where possible and known - for example, events occurring in what is now West Virginia should link to the West Virginia pages using Virginia place names appropriate to the time period. You're right that this isn't always easy, and I don't intend to get "bogged down" every time I see a place name to verify that it's historically correct. But if I know it's not, then I'll change it.
If the place names are still not the best on the Jonathan Brewster page, then someone should fix them. I wasn't aware that they weren't right when I made those changes, but I still think it's worth it to remove what was obviously wrong. I don't think using "Colony of Connecticut" is any more proper than using New London County, which we don't do as a matter of form. And your last question about what we call the sovereign entity with jurisdiction is exactly the reason that I haven't overtly made a choice one way or the other. If the community here can come up with a convention, I'm glad to follow it, but in the meantime I think it's better to have just the colony name than to have the wrong country. I just don't agree that this makes anything "mess" since it's both an easy to follow rule and more correct than the alternative. Your theory that "some aliases" make sense but others don't doesn't sound like a rule than can be similarly applied by lots of people; if you have a more concrete rule to distinguish when you think it's appropriate, I'd love to hear it.
Since I know other admins and New England researchers watch my page, if anyone else has an opinion, feel free to chime in. Having a generally agreed on rule on this situation and other similar ones would be useful. Regards --Amelia 19:19, 20 January 2011 (EST)
I don't get it how it was better. You remove United States because it didn't exist, but you think New London belongs there even though it didn't exist? It used to say Preston, New London, Connecticut, United States, and I know where that location is. How is Preston, New London, Connecticut any more communicative? It is not historically accurate. It is not a different name that one needs to recognize in the literature. It seems like an arbitrary shortening of the name that follows no consistent system. In a cooperative environment, that is not better, that causes difficulties for others. If you are going to strive for historical accuracy, it needs to be done completely, and not just based on what is known off the top of your head, or my head, or whoever happens to be doing the input. (That, by the way, would be incredibly difficult and I would argue against that. In any event, it is an inexact science to start with, given parcels of land marked by this tree, that pile of stones.) I am arguing that the full standard name is better in this case, because everybody should know how to deal with it, and it causes less headaches on the edit screen.
I think we need to ask what are we supposed to be doing with a place field. Obviously it is linking to a place page. But it is specifying a location. In 1900 Preston, New London, Connecticut, United States was a region whose center could be translated into some name-independent coordinates like longitude and latitude, or whatever. By fixing the year at 1900, we resolve ambiguities over boundary changes, and if some day such software is added, WeRelate could automatically generate all sorts of maps from this name. All place names are time dependent, but the physical location exists independent of time. We are not specifying a government entity in the Place field, so using modern names for the location is not implying those entities existed at that date. So I see no value in removing United States from those places. --Jrich 21:12, 20 January 2011 (EST)


I'm never quite sure if questions like this are the reason I like this site or the reason I should leave so I can stop pondering them for hours...
I agree that 1) we need a clearly communicated rule on what the place should be; 2) Preston, New London, Connecticut is less than ideal for an event that occurred in 1659; 3) there are a lot of places on this site where that that is simpler and easier to determine is the better course; 4) place pages should be fixed in time for consistency (and since all aliases link back to the 1900 place page, the software linking you mention would still work); and 5) it's impossible to achieve complete historical accuracy. I don't agree, however, that 5) means we can't have some practices that make things more accurate than using the 1900 name, and I think expressing events in particular people's lives involves questions beyond ease and simplicity of use. I don't think it enhances a page to imply that people lived somewhere that didn't exist in their time, be it the United States, West Virginia, or Czechoslovakia, so I do think there is value in improving historical accuracy in place names on person/family pages.
I also think by focusing on Preston, we're conflating two different problems: a) what to do about the American colonies (which is the general issue I was trying to deal with, and one that is susceptible to a stated rule); and b) what to do about cities/counties that change over time (which is a much more difficult and nuanced issue that defies a blanket rule because there will be cases with no knowable answer). The difficulties of the latter problem don't have to prevent us from addressing the former, and we don't have to make entries that can be correctly historically identified incorrect just so we have a solution to the hard questions.
Therefore, even in the Preston case, I still think it's an improvement to remove 'United States' when it's not warranted. Ideally, the place will be historically correct just with that change, which it probably will be in the majority of cases. In any case, it will be more correct than it was before, and I think getting better on the continuum of perfect is better than throwing our hands up in the air and saying we can never make things better because there are some cases where we can't make it perfect. (And in this particular case, the place should probably be changed to Norwich, Connecticut.)--Amelia 19:40, 21 January 2011 (EST)
Well I hope we don't, but suspect we might, end up working at cross-purposes, because if you create an alias of Norwich, Connecticut for Norwich, New London, Connecticut, United States, I don't see how I would recognize that versus the GEDCOM upload that just used Norwich, Connecticut and the GEDCOM process linked it to the standard page leaving the original as an alias. I intend to keep deleting aliases that are the same as the modern place names.
Today I fixed a red location where the visible alias Salisbury, Essex, Massachusetts hid the invalid place name of Salisbury, Essex, England. Somebody editing this might only see, on the edit screen, the England part of the place name, and fix it by changing the county to Wiltshire, in which it would turn a nice blue color, and perhaps miss that the displayed alias still referred to Massachusetts.
Because of problems like the above, Dallan has proposed in the new formats, to be implemented someday, to separate the standard place name from the alias, and to display the two fields separately. What do you think people will say when the standard place is Norwich, New London, Connecticut, United States and next to it, the alias field says Norwich, Connecticut? After all, what tells them that somebody is trying to be historically accurate (i.e., my reason for suggesting something like "Colony of Connecticut" is needed if you want to do this)? I think most people will say, "Why did they bother?" and erase the alias as information-less.
I am not arguing that historical accuracy isn't good, although I think expecting it will be executed well, or that many people will do it, is naive. I just think it is misguided to try and embed a history lesson into the place name field, and that if you want to present the historically accurate name for where an event happened, there are loads of opportunities for those type of discussions in the narrative or as part of the source citation. So I don't understand the urgency to do this in the place field.
There is a situation I know, if you push me I'll find the page, where the father lived in Salem, Mass. all his life. His death and the births of all his children are recorded in the Salem vital records so he was considered "of Salem". His youngest son inherited the homestead and lived there all his life. The son's death is recorded in the Beverly vital records because he died after their part of Salem split off to become Beverly. In this case, we can place the homestead in the part of Salem that became Beverly, so technically the father's death location should be Beverly by the 1900 convention, but the historically accurate name at the time was Salem. But how many people aren't going to be confused by a place [[Place:Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts, United States|Salem, Massachusetts]]? They're going to say, "If you want Salem, why not just use the place Salem, Essex, Massachusetts, United States?" These situations need to be explained somewhere on the page but trying to forces aliases to do the job of a more thorough explanation is only going to result in confusion, and inconsistency of execution from individual to individual. --Jrich 23:17, 21 January 2011 (EST)
P.S. I had been picking on Preston in previous postings which was the burial location. But not in any way because it was the burial location. Later, in pondering this issue, I realized there is another discussion waiting us, about whether burial location is less tightly coupled to the date than say birth or death locations. In other words, the grave site is longer lived than just the date the burial occurred on. Are we more interested in where the burial event per se occurred, or perhaps are we interested in where the grave is so it can be visited by a living person? Presumably they are the same locations, but communicating the location to somebody so they could find the grave would use the modern place name as opposed to the historical place name you might use if you were only interested in the instantaneous burial event. I don't think this subtlety was not part of either side of the above discussion, and I just mention this issue in passing. --Jrich 23:31, 21 January 2011 (EST)

It seems that WeRelate's system is what's causing all of this to-do and the mention of another new rule is too much; I just had to but in: my oldie but very good PAF program lets me handle this place naming like this: he died in Mason (now Jackson)County, Virginia (now West Virginia). It's simple and tells both the original location and what the place is currently called. It's a shame WeRelate can't come up with a way for places to be so easily done and easily remembered! This gal isn't going to remember all the different rules for every different situation. Remember the goal is or was 'drop-dead easy! --Janiejac 01:33, 22 January 2011 (EST)



Entirely unconvinced by "some people won't understand", with Jrich on burials being additionally complicated, with Janiejac on wishing there were an easier way (although aliases of that form are possible, automatic would be greatly preferable), and really tired of thinking about it. This issue needs a broader airing than our personal preferences.--Amelia 02:16, 22 January 2011 (EST)


Any rule other than the place as it existed in 1900 will be impossible to implement. A couple of years ago when I worked on Portugal place names, Dallan and I had several discussions on this issue. Most genealogy research is focused on pre 1900 events as people born after that are usually known to, and closely related to living persons and are not of genealogical interest to a large number of people. In Portugal, the place heirarchy was changed by tha Salazar regime in the 30's, again after the 1975 revolution and now will change again because it does not conform to EEC standards. Yet, if you ask a Portuguese person where they come from, they will invariably respond with, The Algarve, Alentejo, The Minho or whatever was the name of the traditional province prior to Salazar, usually what it was known as in 1900. In the US, formation of counties, cities and towns has been a more or less continuous process and to know and understand exactly where and what a particular place was known as at the time of an event, is often impossible to determine, especially with property defined by metes and bounds. None of us, I suspect, has the place names of every location in his or her data entered correctly for either the 1900 criterion or contemporary at the time of the event. I have a man who was born, married and died in the same place in Virginia. But when he was born it was BrunswickCo., Lunenburg Co. when he married and Halifax Co. when he died. I am sure all of us have a fairly high pecentage of such cases, many of which can never be resolved with certainty. As a result, our database will never be perfect, but conforming to the full place name as it existed in 1900 should be the standard. If it is certain that the contemporary place name was something else, that can be mentioned in the narrative or in a note.--Scot 13:06, 22 January 2011 (EST)


Dear god, people. Is how we do an alias on a page REALLY worth spending this much time and aether on? This just does NOT seem a battle worth spending time on. Don't we have better things to do with our time? Jillaine 12:36, 25 January 2011 (EST)

Well since I (and others, I've noticed) have been making it habit of removing aliases that match the standard place name, and Amelia on this page was adding them, we are kind of working at cross purposes, presenting the possibility that one of us could be undoing what the other one explicitly did. So I think yes, a discussion is in order, and it turns out both we feel strongly about our respective beliefs (surprise, genealogists are like that!). We need to reach a consensus - that takes some kind of polling of opinions - so add yours. Of course, don't expect people not to have an opinion on it. --Jrich 12:57, 25 January 2011 (EST)

Okay: my opinion is that both of you could be better spending your time on something for more useful than editing place name fields, much less bickering about how you each are doing so. As long as the link takes people to the correct place page, how important is it really what that link looks like? I'd rather see better editing of the Place pages to describe the issues you've raised here. I.e., from 1620-1700, this place was named xxxx; from 1700-1776, it was named yyyyy; etc. etc... You both make really remarkable contributions here; just seems a pitiful waste of energy and time to see this kind of exchange happening. What this feels like is proofreading of a manuscript several drafts before it's even close to being ready to go to press. There's so much more important work to be done on the content before we get around to making sure the punctuation is inside or outside of the quotation marks. If you get my drift. Jillaine 17:37, 25 January 2011 (EST)



English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers [12 February 2011]

Hi Amelia - I'm looking at this title as part of my Maine review, and I wonder if the subject should be migration? These types of books (with brief blurbs on a long list of people) are very hard to categorize. Anyway, I'm writing up a paragraph on reviewing Biography subject sources, and I thought it would be useful to get your thoughts on this source.--Brenda (kennebec1) 08:22, 12 February 2011 (EST)

Hi Brenda - Are you talking the subject dropdown or the category? I'd say migration is probably just fine as the subject - that's what the Great Migration series uses. There's also a Puritan Great Migration category that it should probably have.--Amelia 09:39, 12 February 2011 (EST)

Civil War category [10 April 2011]

Hi Amelia! Since we don't seem to be getting any more feedback on the war category topic on the Watercooler, do you want to go ahead and start marking the Civil War veterans using the structure we talked about? Civil War -> Civil War veterans -> state Civil War veterans-> regiment (with ordinal number and type of regiment spelled out in full and using a sort key so the vets will sort by surname instead of all under P for Person, listed by first name) With the sesquicentennial starting this week, I think this could be a good PR opportunity for WR. (I'd love to do something similar with War of 1812, but can't come up with a good way to structure the sub-categories.) Thoughts? -- Amy (Ajcrow) 09:38, 9 April 2011 (EDT)


I agree we should just get started. Let's put the formatting on the Civil War veterans category, which I think should also have a parent category of "Veterans" (which in turn would have the other wars, and where we could ask for volunteers to help). I know nothing about the War of 1812 veterans except that it got two of my ancestors land grants :-) --Amelia 10:18, 9 April 2011 (EDT)
Sounds good! Any particular way you want to start attacking this (no pun intended <g>) With so many pages to add the category link to, I'd hate for both of us to be covering the same ground. Perhaps the best way to start would be to do a search for Person with the keyword phrase "Civil War", and then one of us can start from A and work forward and the other can start with Z and work backward? -- Amy 10:33, 9 April 2011 (EDT)
Mm. You're ambitious :-) I think attaching the categories to everyone is a pretty significant task, and most people probably won't have the regiment information available to link anyway. I was thinking of approaching it more like the census categories - I set up the architecture (or at least most of the top levels) and started populating those with a combination of my own ancestors and others that filled holes (i.e. if I needed an 1850 Virginia record I went and found one). Eventually enough other people saw the setup and started adding the category as well. So in that vein maybe we start with trying to get at least a couple categories per state? I have a handful of ancestors I could start with, and then maybe start with Wisconsin (there being no Wyoming) and see what I find. Looking on Wikipedia to see if they have lists of regiments, I see that they do, and they have, at least in a lot of cases, a regiment-specific article we could put on the category page. (This also inspired me to see what they have on the War of 1812 - nothing comprehensible!)--Amelia 10:50, 9 April 2011 (EDT)
I do tend to think big :-) I do like your approach of getting some of the infrastructure down first. It would be nice to have at least one regiment from each state represented in the sub-categories. One thought -- how do you want to handle generals and other ranking staff? They weren't "attached" to a specific regiment. We could either put them directly under state Civil War veterans or we could create a category for "Staff". Or we could bypass this structure completely and put them under Civil War figures (or whatever that category is called). If we do that, I'd recommend adding a note at the top of each state's category page saying something to the effect of "For Generals associated with this state, please see Category:U.S. Civil War Figures". The more I think about it, the more I think I like that option. -- Amy 11:50, 9 April 2011 (EDT)

Amelia - I made one slight change to the structure. Rather than "Civil War veterans," I titled that sub-category "American Civil War veterans." That should allow us to grow Category:Veterans to include veterans of foreign conflicts as well. Hope you don't mind. On a related note, I created these categories: Category:Veterans, Category:American Civil War veterans, Category:Ohio Civil War veterans, and 3 categories for Ohio regiments. BTW, we'll have to add the number as a sort key on the link from the regiment to the state veterans page. (Otherwise, it sorts oddly; for example, 173rd sorted ahead of 1st without the key.) -- Amy 12:56, 9 April 2011 (EDT)

All that sounds excellent. I was thinking about generals myself, and I kind of like the "Figures" solution - I would think they all have WP entries, which is generally the cue for 'notable people' anyway? I don't know what to do about other staff, though, I don't have a good enough sense of how things were organized.--Amelia 19:49, 9 April 2011 (EDT)

So what do wed about Union v. Confederate? I've got a TN ancestor in the 8th Tennessee Cavalry. Not the Union one, the Confederal one. Looking at the latter article, it looks like the Confederate units were not nearly so predictably named, but were largely duplicative. I don't know how many states this is a problem in, though, it may just be Tennessee?--Amelia 01:40, 10 April 2011 (EDT)

It's not just a Tennessee thing. Every Confederate state except for SC had at least one Union regiment. What I thought we could do would be to list the Confederate units as they are (eg, 8th Tennessee Cavalry), and designate the Union ones (eg, 8th Tennessee Cavalry (Union)). Perhaps at the top of the page for the CSA states, we should say "All units are Confederate unless otherwise noted." There are some irregularly named units; I think we'll just have to figure those out individually as we come to them.
Something I came across last night and didn't know what to do with is US Navy. (Obviously, this would also apply to the CSA Navy.) How about instead of state Civil War veterans, we have US Navy veterans
and CSA Navy veterans, then the link on the Person page would be the name of the ship. We could do something similar for members of US Army regiments (US Army veterans -> 27th United States Colored Troops)-- Amy 08:51, 10 April 2011 (EDT)
All that sounds good.--Amelia 10:48, 10 April 2011 (EDT)
I am excited about your project. How may I help? I have a subscription to Footnote which has images of the Compiled CSA records. Usually there is a card with a description of the regiment. The CSA regiments frequently combined and changed names during the war. I created some categories relating to the CSA. Please incorporate these categories in your system and make any changes to the categories that you feel are necessary. The parent category is Category:U.S. Civil War.--Beth 11:29, 10 April 2011 (EDT)



Sorting regiments and the Military category [12 April 2011]

Hi, Amelia. I discovered that the leading zeros to sort the regiments was putting those categories under "0", which would probably confuse some people. (I don't know why it's displaying the first character of the sort key like that.) I amended the instructions to put 2 leading spaces before regiments less than 10 and one leading space for regiments 10-99. I hope that's alright with you.

Also, I've heard from Jennifer. There's a lot of duplication/overlap within the Military category. User:BobC placed Category:Veterans under Military (which seems to make sense), but the Military category seems to have an emphasis on sources. I think we'll probably need to start discussing some of this on one of the Talk pages. -- Amy (Ajcrow) 09:01, 12 April 2011 (EDT)

Hah! I did't know you could do that (the spacing)! That's so much better. I don't like the 0 either, but didn't know what else to do. Agreed on discussing overlap and sources. Also need to figure out the Revolutionary War, which is the one most overlapping with Figures now (responded re those categories on Jennifer's page).--Amelia 10:39, 12 April 2011 (EDT)
If you don't want the leading zeros to be sorted under 0, you can preface the sort key with a dash or asterisk. So, -002, -013, -001 will sort under a - heading as 1, 2, 13. --Jennifer (JBS66) 11:53, 12 April 2011 (EDT)

Two wives, both known, but who's the mother of which children? [12 April 2011]

Last night you and I were both working on Adam Hawkes (1) [ref. The Great Migration, III:253ff.], apparently simultaneously. One issue yet to be addressed is his second wife, Sarah Hooper, daughter of William Hooper of Reading (Hooper Genealogy, 1ff). William, who is apparently not yet in the database, was twice married; each wife identified by baptismal name only (Elizabeth before 1647 when first child was born, then Ruth); and the only clue as to which children were with which wife is that the fourth and fifth children (per Hooper Genealogy although the birth of the second was not recorded at Reading) were both named Ruth which is probably as good an indicator as any. Since we do not have surnames for either wife, the genealogical impact is less that it would be if we knew their ancestry. Has a standard been developed for how to handle, on the family page, one husband, multiple wives and multiple children where the mother-child connection is unknown? Fixing Sarah Hooper (who married, second, Samuel Wardwell) and connecting her to Adam Hawkes is just a matter of finding the time to do it and does not seem to present any issues.--Jaques1724 10:34, 12 April 2011 (EDT)

Hi Jacques,
I'm not sure there's a universal solution, but there are two options. One is to set up two family pages, William and Elizabeth and William and Ruth. Put the children known to be one or the other where they belong, and put the rest of the children in both. The system will ask if the two sets of parents are duplicates, but we just ignore that. The other option is to create one family, William and Unknown, put all the children there, and note on the page what's known about the wives. The former is probably slightly preferable to deal with merging issues.--Amelia 10:46, 12 April 2011 (EDT)

Adam Hawkes / Sarah Hooper / Sarah Hawkes [12 April 2011]

Happened again. We're both in the same pages at the same time making changes. Please bear with me while I get up to speed. By the way, I haven't done any html work in about ten years. Is there a summary of the tags somewhere in the Help section?

Thanks!--Jaques1724 20:12, 12 April 2011 (EDT)

Sorry! I was just looking at recent changes and noticed the dup (which are easy to create - that's why we monitor). You're doing a great job, honestly. As for tags, we don't really use html; the wiki syntax is a little simpler. The formatting tags can be found up above the editing window - bold, italic, link, etc. More advanced options can be found at Help:Formatting. Good luck!--Amelia 20:18, 12 April 2011 (EDT)

VR template [20 April 2011]

Amelia, the template for Mass VR to 1850 is beautiful... brilliant. Thank you!--Brenda (kennebec1) 10:45, 20 April 2011 (EDT)

Thanks, though credit for the idea and design should really go to Jennifer.--Amelia 12:48, 20 April 2011 (EDT)

Civil War [20 April 2011]

Hi, Amelia. First, thanks for deleting the old WP text from Robert E. Lee's page. I meant to do that as I was adding his burial place, but got distracted and never got back to it. If it's alright with you, I'm going to propose that the Civil War veteran categories do not include the word regiment; to only add the "level" of unit if it is something other than a regiment (like a battalion). I'm also going to propose that we designate the war after the name of the regiment as "(Civil War)". (So it would be 1st Indiana Infantry (Civil War)). Sound good to you? Also, after we get this all finalized, I'll make up an article for it and copy the category talk over to the article. I think if we have an article, it might encourage more public participation, rather than it seeming like it's just an admin "thing." -- Amy (Ajcrow) 16:47, 20 April 2011 (EDT)

No problem. I agree with both ideas - sounds good.--Amelia 16:53, 20 April 2011 (EDT)

LDS Data [21 April 2011]

See Martha Brackett (1) and Peter Brackett (3). I started to edit Peter based on Gale Ion Harris' 2001 NEHGR piece on Peter Brackett of Boston and Braintree. It appears that some LDS info (dates less than 110 years ago) had been imported into three data fields. I did not edit Martha, so you can see what it looked like before. In order to save the Peter Brackett Page I had to move the LDS stuff down into the Personal History text field to preserve it pending admin guidance on how to handle this sort of thing in the future. By the way, I have to leave Peter Brackett (2) and family in somewhat of a mess, one to many marriages and children assigned to the wrong mothers. I hope to work on that this evening.--Jaques1724 11:42, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

Hi Bill,
LDS info is supposed to stay within Family Tree Explorer and can (should) be deleted from the public pages. --Amelia 12:02, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

Thanks, I'll break out the pruning shears when I get home tonight!

Pardon me for chiming in. I see the section that Amelia is referring to. While it is true as far as it goes, there was another discussion on this some time back in the context of LDS events that had been uploaded and how we wanted to handle them. I agree that they don't strictly belong in WeRelate, but the LDS didn't (at that time at least) have a great way to deal with this stuff. Considering their efforts on behalf of genealogy, I was struct that a more respectful approach was that we would host the stuff as an "LDS Event" fact on a temporary basis. When the LDS has a structured way to accept/present this sort of information on behalf of their membership, we can go back and run a bot though to purge everything that is labelled as an LDS event. --Jrm03063 14:02, 21 April 2011 (EDT)
I am pretty sure that newfamilysearch.org qualifies as a way for their members to store and share this sort of information, and I believe (I may be wrong, not being especially privy to things) that the church actually prefers this data was not made publicly available. Suffice it to say that even the most complete set of LDS ordinances tells us nothing about the genealogy of the person. --Jrich 15:07, 21 April 2011 (EDT)
I agree that "LDS Event" has outlived its usefulness. New.familysearch.org has been available to LDS Church members for a couple of years now, and I'm pretty sure they would prefer that people track LDS ordinances on their website. I'll remove the "LDS Event" type when I install the latest set of updates, which should be tomorrow. I did a quick keyword search on "LDS Event" and found it on 96 Person pages and 6 Family pages. Feel free to remove any that you find. I'll ask one of my children to remove the remainder (and explain on the talk page why).
LDS ordinances had been tracked in the Family Tree Explorer, but I recently removed the menu item that allows people to view them. In the past three years only 22 ordinances had been edited, and now that new.familysearch.org is available, it didn't make sense to me to continue to support them in the Family Tree Explorer.
Perhaps someone could update the help?--Dallan 18:43, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

One thing that might help alleviate concerns about our dropping LDS events is we could add a "FamilySearch Id" event type, where people could enter the 7-character ID of the person at FamilySearch, and we would display it with a link to FamilySearch. I'm reluctant to add this before FamilySearch becomes publicly available (probably around the end of this year), but I could be talked into it. Also, if we added FamilySearch Id, we might also want to add links to other websites that are trying to create one page per person: "Familypedia title", "Geni Id", etc.--Dallan 21:51, 21 April 2011 (EDT)


Mass VR categories [23 April 2011]

I'm rethinking the categories for the Mass VR just a bit. I know we spoke somewhere - can't find it now - about using Category:Vital records of Massachusetts, United States. We may want to go to the county level instead. This would follow the scheme being developed for source records, and would avoid us having to re-categorize these pages later on. What are your thoughts? --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:13, 23 April 2011 (EDT)

I don't think it's worth it for Mass. Unlike virtually every other state, the town and not the county is the important entity... none of the records are held at the county level and there are virtually no county-wide records, so it would just be a useless level of hierarchy. And personally, I never know what county a town is in, so it annoys me when it's done that way on other sites ;-) --Amelia 12:17, 23 April 2011 (EDT)
I didn't realize the records aren't kept at the county-level, interesting. Ok, well maybe I'll make a note about this on the Category:Sources of Massachusetts, United States page for future reference. Thanks, --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:23, 23 April 2011 (EDT)

Connecticut is like Massachusetts where the records were kept at the town level. They got published a little differently in that Barbour collected the data for towns that hadn't been separately published (Coventry, Mansfield, Woodstock, Norwich are among those that had been) and assembled them on a statewide basis. The county distinction is pretty much worthless in Connecticut. By the way, probate was and is by probate district which, simply stated, is more than one town, less than a county, and changes often. -- Jaques1724 13:06, 23 April 2011 (EDT)


My concern is that we're developing a category system for sources whereby sources at the town level would be categorized within the county level. Brenda has some great examples for Maine under Category:Sources of Maine, United States. My preference leans towards consistency, and I'd hesitate to proceed one way for Maine and another for MA and CT. Essentially, we'd be following the place name hierarchy already on the source pages. --Jennifer (JBS66) 13:32, 23 April 2011 (EDT)


Another reason for doing the county thing would be, I think, that categories could be automatically generated for sources once the place field is specified? Because as a category agnostic, the complexity of some of these category discussions is a little daunting, and is the general user adding a new source (admittedly a diminishing activity) going to understand otherwise. --Jrich 15:41, 23 April 2011 (EDT)


If you want to base your answer on the format that's universal for the United States, go ahead. Other virtues are more important to me than that kind of consistency, and I freely admit I would like Massachusetts to be an exception - it's why I avoid category structure discussions! I will say that the auto-generate problem doesn't matter so much for Mass, since we have to touch all of the town VR's already for the template - there won't be hardly any to get auto-generated.--Amelia 16:08, 23 April 2011 (EDT)


I believe that is what Dallan has in mind, to assign categories based upon the Place and Subject fields. As Brenda has brought up elsewhere, additional categories may be necessary for a given source that can't be automated in that fashion, but those can be added manually. I think the auto-generated issue does go beyond the VR's we're editing though. There are other vital records that aren't in the template that would fall into these categories. --Jennifer (JBS66) 16:49, 23 April 2011 (EDT)

Yes, but they mostly get touched anyway because I clean them up as I link to them on the main VR pages.--Amelia 16:56, 23 April 2011 (EDT)
Oh you're good! Hate to say it, but I've not been that detailed with W & Y... --Jennifer (JBS66) 17:00, 23 April 2011 (EDT)
And it's entirely possible that I may never finish the alphabet at this pace... ;-) --Amelia 17:06, 23 April 2011 (EDT)

Categories [25 April 2011]

Hi, Amelia. I seem to be on a category kick lately. I saw the category you created for U.S. House of Representatives Members from Arizona, and copied it for Ohio. It makes sense to break it out that way. I'll try to go through and update the pages that link to the U.S. House category. Also, I left a message on the Talk page for U.S. Civil War Figures. With all of our other Civil War categories saying "American Civil War," that one seemed out of place. I've updated all of the links; let me know if you have any objection to deleting the category. Thanks! -- Amy (Ajcrow) 17:07, 25 April 2011 (EDT)

Hi... I don't object to getting rid of U.S. Civil War Figures at all. For the House, I started putting people in that and the Senate category without really thinking about full build out, and finally realized it's only going to get harder to subcategorize them the more there are. I've been resisting sort keys for the same reason, since I didn't start out with them, but we might as well fix that at the same time. If you're willing to work on that, that's awesome.--Amelia 17:18, 25 April 2011 (EDT)
I went ahead and deleted U.S. Civil War Figures. I wish there was a way we could sort Person pages in categories without the sort key, but that doesn't seem to be an option. I think our best strategy is to use them from here forward and try to fix the "old" ones as we come across them. I'm certainly not going to go through all of the various categories to look for pages without a sort key! :-) But if I'm on a page anyway for some other reason, I'll add it. -- Amy (Ajcrow) 17:30, 25 April 2011 (EDT)
So apparently I'm still watching all the US House people (or most of them). Could you hit minor edit when you change the category so I don't end up with 85 emails when I get home? Thanks!--Amelia 18:21, 25 April 2011 (EDT)
Oops! Sorry about that! -- Amy 18:22, 25 April 2011 (EDT)

Morrow DNA Project [7 May 2011]

Hello,

My name is Richard Morrow. I'm interested about the Morrow DNA Project. My dad use to tell me that GOV Jeremiah Morrow was his great grandfather. GOV Morrow resided in a small town in Ohio called Lebonon. Still a small town today so it most have been much smaller in the 1800's. Since there are not many Morrows and my dad's father was born (1898) in the same small town of Lebanon, it stands to reason that the local Morrows there were related. Therefore, I believe that I am a descendant of GOV. Morrow. Would a DNA test prove that?

Richard--Rdmorrow 13:34, 29 April 2011 (EDT)

Hi Richard,
The YDNA test can tell you only if you share a common male ancestor with another participant. You have to do the research the old-fashioned way to tell *how* you're related. That said, we don't have a participant descended from Gov. Morrow, although we do have a couple with family stories indicating a relationship, and thus we would love to have one. Email me using the link under "more" with details about your grandfather and I'll see what information we have on him. --Amelia 18:16, 29 April 2011 (EDT)

Hello Amelia,

I had problems clicking on "more" as you instructed so I will edit instead. First, thanks for your timely attention. My cousin Chester Morrow provided me with the following information. My grandfather was Chester Morrow, born in Lebanon, Ohio on July 29, 1896. His parents were Wm. T. Morrow born in Lebanon, Ohio on July 19, 1872, mother was Clara T. Jordan. We know that Gov. Jeremiah Morrow raised his family in Lebanon, Ohio since 1799. Since Lebanon is a small community and probably was much smaller in the 1800's and because Morrows are few, local Morrows were probably related. Jeremiah was of Scott Irish descent and I was taught that I am of Scott Irish descent. Who are the other two Morrows claiming relationship to Gov. Morrow? I would like to contact them. Thanks for your assistance.

Richard--Rdmorrow 22:20, 29 April 2011 (EDT)

Hi Richard,
Apologies for the delay. I had this all typed out and didn't realize I never hit submit... I don't have anything in my files on the names you list (although I'm thin on Ohio) but I found some references that cast some doubt on the Gov. Morrow theory.
Chester b. Jul 1896 can be found in the 1900 census in Deerfield (same county as Lebanon) with parents William (b. Jan 1866 OH) and Pruda (b. Nov 1870). William's father William S.(?) b. Feb 1834 is living with them. William and Pruda have been married 12 years.
There is a marriage record (FS is now down, so I can't link to it) for William T. Morrow and Clara P. Jordan on 23 Jun 1888 in Preble County, Ohio. Clara is 17 (consistent with b. Nov. 1870), but William is over 21 (consistent with b. 1866, and making it unlikely he was born in 1872).
That makes it likely that census records in 1870 and 1880 in Preble County showing a family with William Morrow b. ~ 1835, wife Mary E. b. ~ 1837, and son William b. abt 1866 relate to this William.
There is a marriage record for William M. Morrow and Mary Elizabeth Anderson on 25 Feb 1858 in Preble County, but I can't find them in Preble County, or elsewhere in Ohio, in 1860. William Morrows are unfortunately common in Ohio in the 1850/1860 census, so I can't get further than that definitely.
Tantalizingly, back in Deerfield (Lebanon Co) in 1850, there is a William b. 1835 in the household of John (b. 1801) and Nancy (b. 1799). According to this unsourced WorldConnect record, John is the son of Gov. Jeremiah. William is still in that household in 1860, with no wife, but gone in 1870. I will note, however, that the Ancestral file and at least this public Ancestry tree list that William with an entirely different family that does not include your great-grandfather William.
All that to say I still recommend doing a DNA test. If you match any of the other participants, that will help narrow your search (we don't actually have anyone who can make credible claims to a relationship to Gov. Jeremiah, it's a common family story that pops up). If you have any questions, use the "contact group administrator" link on that page.
--Amelia 18:58, 7 May 2011 (EDT)

County census [5 May 2011]

County Census preferred? This is new to me. I suppose I have no real objection, but if we take this out to its logical conclusion, I can imagine sources going down to a frame on a version of a microfilm reel (is it NARA or Family search?)I would guess that I would have little problem finding any record in the Fesderal census from just the locality, the film number, and the reel number.--AZeller 15:21, 5 May 2011 (EDT)

That's why I made the edit. On WeRelate, yes, the county census is preferred as the source to link to because that's the logical unit for which a source page makes sense. Primarily because 1) transcriptions are frequently done on a county level, and thus repository and discussion information regarding them most logically goes on a county page; and 2) for information added by the less than completely organized, a name and a county will nearly always get the next person to the record using the most common online search engines and library indices, which cannot be said of a state, town, film number, or page number. State- or country-level pages are too large for discussions of enumerator weakness, geography, or "what links here" to be useful. Conversely, pages for smaller divisions would be of limited use given the effort required to create and maintain them.--Amelia 17:25, 5 May 2011 (EDT)

Sources on Pictures [1 June 2011]

I notice that you have changed a lot of pictures sources today. I am glad for it. I never know what to put. I have put a dozen or more pictures on different profiles in the last few days, a lot of them I did not get off Wikipedia. Will it be easier if I send you a list by profile name for you to look them over and make any changes? Do you have another way to find these things? Thanks for all the assistance.

Suzyq--Suzyq 22:39, 31 May 2011 (EDT)



WeRelate help pages [14 June 2011]

Hi Amelia,

Thanks for the input. Just getting started and haven't formalized any plan yet. Thinking about posting the link to the help article on the Watercooler and adding to the new user welcome message for input.

I think we need to rewrite the welcome message to WeRelate. The message does not enlighten prospective users regarding WeRelate. We are the only site that optimizes collaboration on place pages, source pages, and person pages.--Beth 21:17, 14 June 2011 (EDT)


French Huguenot Immigrants [15 June 2011]

Would there be value in adding a category for these folks. I have one family in my ancestry, Marriner of northern New England. I'm working on another, James Pinneo of Bristol RI and Lebanon Crank (now Columbia) CT. Some more notable families would include Bowdoin (Baudouin) of Boston - the college in Maine is named for that family; and the family of Paul Revere. There were Huguenots early in Charleston, SC and quite a few filtered into the mid-Hudson valley around New Paltz and Greene County. I haven't been thinking about this long enough to be able to suggest parameters (primarily the cutoff date for qualification), but their impact on our early history was probably proportionally greater than their numbers. Thoughts?--jaques1724 23:06, 14 June 2011 (EDT)


Help pages [18 June 2011]

Thanks Amelia for helping me with the help pages update.--Beth 21:27, 18 June 2011 (EDT)



Death location for Deborah Sampson [17 July 2011]

Hi -- the reason I did not add a location of death is that it wasn't documented in the wikipedia article; I tend not to assume that a person has died and is buried in the same place. For instance, it could have been that Sampson had succumbed while on a trek away from the town. --ceyockey 16:00, 17 July 2011 (EDT)

There's more to this. The earlier (in the colonies/states) the more likely the persons is buried in or very close to the actual place of death. Two examples: Deacon Hezekiah Brainerd of Haddam, CT, died while attending a session of the General Court in Hartford in 1727. He is buried in the old cemetery (Center Cemetery) in Hartford, about 23 miles from where he would otherwise have been buried in the Old Rock Landing Cemetery on Haddam Neck. Fast forward a little less than two hundred years. My great-grandfather, Joseph Carr, died in Minneapolis in 1909. His body was placed on a train and sent back to Island Falls, ME, for burial, approximately 1700 miles. Similarly for marriages, especially early; they tended to be recorded at the location where the couple settled rather than the actual place the marriage took place. That's probably because vital records were often tied to land records. There is a small percentage where the individual officiating is indicated, but where there is, it's often possible to identify the person officiating with a place different from that where the marriage was recorded. For example, Rev. Jonathan Merrick pretty much means the north parish of Branford, New Haven County, CT (now the town of North Branford), no matter where the marriage was recorded (often Wallingford or Cheshire).--jaques1724 17:03, 17 July 2011 (EDT)

I'm not sure what that other comment is about, but it deleted my response, which was that I don't understand the original criticism because the death place is on the WP article, and that's a perfectly valid source to cite (even if you want to question its reliability). But in this particular instance, the death is sourced on WP, to an article in the NYT, which says she died at her home in Sharon. The WR article now reflects that source.--Amelia 16:04, 17 July 2011 (EDT)

I don't know what the comment above (unsigned) is about either. If you look at the 'died' in the infobox vs. the statement of death in the text, the dates are different: 29 April in text and 27 April in Infobox. I tend to give more credence to info in the text than in infoboxes, because infoboxes are typically an afterthought; the discrepancy led me to discount the infobox as unreliable vs. the text. Thanks for going to the NYT article, which I didn't do in this case. P.S. When citing Wikipedia, I tend to cite it as a "questionable" source. --ceyockey 16:56, 17 July 2011 (EDT)
The 29 Apr in WP, which I didn't notice because I looked just at the opening, isn't sourced, but that's what it says on her grave marker. And, to appeal to a higher source, it's what it says in the Sharon vital records. So we'll go with that. The beauty of collaboration ;-) And re questionable, WP quality varies so highly (and probably averages higher than a high percentage of secondary sources) I don't find the designation useful. But then, I never think quality designations in that field are helpful; everyone has a different idea what they are supposed to mean. --Amelia 17:48, 17 July 2011 (EDT)
Sorry for the confusion (and failing to sign my previous response. The point I was trying to make was that with deaths, the farther back you go in the past, the more likely the burial is the same as the place of death (and cited two examples). In the case of marriages, the place of record is not necessarily the place where the marriage happened. If the comment was out of context, sorry. Also for any confusion created.--jaques1724 17:03, 17 July 2011 (EDT)
No worries. It's actually a good point.--Amelia 17:48, 17 July 2011 (EDT)

"inline citation" [19 July 2011]

Is there a policy against the Inline Citation link? Source:Arnold, 1891 is still a valid redirect to the full citation. I didn't create it, maybe wouldn't be my first choice, but since the redirect is there, it seems a good practice to document it. I found this same idea useful enough to create a few others, such as Source:TAG and Source:NEHGR which have value to prevent those names from being used for something else, in addition to convenience. A little surprised that you deleted this without any attempt at a discussion? --Jrich 14:00, 19 July 2011 (

I didn't delete the page, just the link on the Source page. That redirect is still valid for someone to use (it's only been used once, on a talk page). There's not a policy so much as there are multiple better ways to cite, particularly inline, and the learning curve for sources and their names is steep enough without "officially" suggesting (on this frequently cited page) that such methods are worth worrying about.--Amelia 14:51, 19 July 2011 (EDT)

If there are better ways, maybe this deserves addressing in a wider discussion, and a policy made first. I know that using this in a source generates the same citation as the full name, and I know that typing in a long source reference in the middle of a discussion is ugly, while a short form can be somewhat less disruptive to the flow of the discussion (i.e, particularly when referring to a source not cited so you can't use the ref tag). When you click on the link these create, you go to the same page, so if it is unclear what it means, it is easy to figure things out. If they are allowed to be created, then it needs to be made clear in what context they are allowed and what context they are not, perhaps conventions for naming them, etc. If not, I think that should be stated, as the use of redirects has been encouraged as a way to deal with place aliases, etc. By documenting these on the full source, it makes it less likely that each person will create their own favorite abbreviations. There are several of these inline citations documented already (172 according to a rough search, of which I may be responsible for 5 or 6), even if this particular one is only used once. To have one person removing these that were created by another person without a policy is potentially not a good situation. --Jrich 15:31, 19 July 2011 (EDT)
Given our history of long fruitless discussions, I'm going to be brief. The "better ways" are documented elsewhere and they are inconsistent with this style (and you are incorrect that a long form title is required to be displayed in text - you can either use a pipe or create a source cite and reference it; either way you should use ref tags). Highlighting their use on what must be one of the most trafficked source pages is thus a bad idea. I don't think we need a policy to deal with something this rarely used, but even if we did, highlighting a rare practice that contradicts every description of source citation on the site before developing such a policy is just asking for confusion.--Amelia 17:54, 19 July 2011 (EDT)

citation only [20 July 2011]

Hi, Amelia, I'm still working to discern the use of citation only, and have a question re: a specific resource. "Stevens, Larry. Ohio in the Civil War" has been changed from a source to a citation only. I initially chose Source because the information is general, not specific to my family. Is it Citation Only because it doesn't meet the We Relate definition of "publication, database or vital records collection?" Really appreciate your help in getting the format correct. Tamara

Your initial explanation: (bold added) If a Source page does not exist, you create one only for publications, databases, or vital records collections that of use genealogy researchers of many families, not just yours. So County History of X, yes. Joe's Family History website or Aunt Sally's death certificate, no. The latter can be a MySource if 1) you have something to say about the source itself to put on the MySource page; or 2) you're going to use it a lot and want the convenience of the link.--Gold lotus 99 12:36, 20 July 2011 (EDT)

Hi Tamara,
In general we don't include sources that are websites unless they contain significant high quality information or fit a couple exceptions (i.e. collections of cemetery transcriptions like Find A Grave). The source you created only said it was a website and didn't have a link, and the link was on the one person page it linked to. Looking further at the page, it's a borderline call because the information is not particularly original and it doesn't contain genealogical information about particular people, just the military units. If we created source pages for every piece of historical information, our database would grow by several fold. That said, military movements are often of particular use because one can be reasonably certain particular people took part. So if you want to reuse the cite and be able to discuss the source, feel free to recreate it (just edit Source:Stevens, Larry. Ohio in the Civil War). If you don't need to reuse it, that's another reason not to have it as a Source page.--Amelia 13:49, 20 July 2011 (EDT)

Oh, Amelia, somehow I missed the We Relate goal of limiting sources in number, and not including general historical sources. Makes perfect sense, and I've got it now. Have added many inappropriate sources as a result of my misunderstanding, beyond those we've already talked about. Will go back and revise.

On a related issue, I've been adding general historical sources on resource lists in articles. One example [4]. Does this create a problem? Thanks for your help in getting this right, Tamara--Gold lotus 99 15:28, 20 July 2011 (EDT)



Source page format [24 July 2011]

Hi, Amelia, Just created a new source, [5], and would appreciate your help to get it right.

Want to verify this is an appropriate source, because although it is a history, it does provide information on the people and families who were founders and leaders. (This is my home town, but the book doesn't include any of my ancestors. It's just a great resource for others.)

Is the information in the text box appropriately placed, or should that go on the talk page?

I've completed what I know from referring to my personal copy of the book. What else do I need to do to complete the source page?

Thanks again for your help in learning the protocols and their nuances. Tamara--Gold lotus 99 12:38, 23 July 2011 (EDT)

Hi Tamara,
What you have is great. The only thing I'd suggest is to add anything you know about where the book can be found or how to get one. Nice job. --Amelia 09:08, 24 July 2011 (EDT)

Thanks Amelia for the good words and suggestion. Using World Cat, I found and added (as repository) one of the 8 libraries that hold it. Is it best to add all the libraries as repositories? Or do people know that clicking on the World Cat button on the source page gives them a list of all the libraries? Best, Tamara--Gold lotus 99 11:26, 24 July 2011 (EDT)

If it's only in hard copy, I think adding one and letting people do their own research on World Cat for others is fine. --Amelia 14:35, 24 July 2011 (EDT)

Richard Jacob [24 July 2011]

Thanks for finishing the job. I was really working on the Chase family, but thought I'd get the basics of Richard(1) Jacob's family in while I was at it. Neither is one of my families, but Richard's wife Martha was an Appleton, and they are.--jaques1724 20:16, 23 July 2011 (EDT)

No problem. Not mine either, I just try to get the GM immigrants fleshed out and tied together when I can. --Amelia 09:04, 24 July 2011 (EDT)


Category:1620s Immigrants [3 August 2011]

Hi Amelia,

Thanks for your help. I may not ever venture into New England pages again because I keep sidetracking and y'all will probably be happier <g>. I just picked a family for a diversion project from an article in the NEGHS. After 4 days of online research because of my diversion <g> I discovered that the Skelton family should definitely be a member of your project. However, I have found that the category for 1620s immigrants is not used uniformly so maybe you could further define the usage on the portal to help me and others. You removed the link from the family page of Skelton and you said that it was only to be used when the ship was unknown. I found this category on one of the Mayflower pages and removed it since the ship was definitely known. Should I also remove the template from Samuel Skelton's family page and add it to the appropriate person pages? All of his children did not immigrate to Massachusetts.

Great project and I did read most of the pages. Sorry that I messed it up but thanks for fixing. Now I need to find a way to delete 2 fictitious people and remove the mother of 3 children. Next time I want get diverted. <g>--Beth 20:12, 31 July 2011 (EDT)


Hi Beth,

I totally understand what you mean about getting diverted into fixing families that you have no reason to :-) I don't know if our posts crossed, but did you see the link I left on your talk page? (I'm not sure whether your questions are as a result of it or before reading it...) Basically, people/families go in the 1620s immigrants category if the ship is unknown. If it's known, they go in the ship category, and that category is a sub-category of 1620s (or 1630s) immigrants.

I put the ships templates on the head of household and on the family page if it's reasonably clear the couple came together, even if not all the kids did. Everyone else gets the category, but I don't usually put the template everywhere because often we're guessing at which family members came. I don't actively oppose putting them on kids' pages though. Feel free to ask if anything else comes up!--Amelia 21:53, 31 July 2011 (EDT)

Yes our post crossed. I think I understand it now. --Beth 08:24, 3 August 2011 (EDT)

Postmasters general [8 August 2011]

Hi, Amelia. I just noticed that you have Samuel Osgood listed as a member of Washington's cabinet. I don't know how particular you want to be with the "Cabinet" categories, but the Postmaster General wasn't part of the cabinet until 1829 (under Pres. Jackson). -- Amy (Ajcrow) 08:33, 8 August 2011 (EDT)


Robert Hull [21 August 2011]

TGM III:460-462 has him coming in 1635 on the George, Mr. Nicholas Shapley, master. I'm adding him now and was looking for a category for that ship's passengers which I can't seem to find. Am I missing something or isn't there one yet?--jaques1724 16:49, 21 August 2011 (EDT)

There's probably not. I (and a few others) create them as the need arises, and that one doesn't sound familiar. You can use the Ships template to create the template for the bottom of the page, which also adds the category. --Amelia 16:55, 21 August 2011 (EDT)
It may be that there is no ship's list. This information comes from the personal diary of Robert Hull's son John. I think I'll defer this particular learning process until I trip over more passengers for this voyage.--jaques1724 18:50, 21 August 2011 (EDT)

Find a Grave Citations [7 September 2011]

The Source:Find A Grave page gives two options for documenting URLs. I used the first of the two examples, which is now apparently not acceptable. If what I was doing was not right, please make sure the Source page gets fixed. I'm assuming your edit on Hope Holley is the preferred method, so I'll default to that approach unless I hear differently.--jaques1724 07:30, 7 September 2011 (EDT)

You're right about the source text -- there's an extensive talk discussion that didn't get resolved, but one thing we did seem to agree on (but didn't document) was that putting URLs by themselves in note fields isn't a good usability recommendation. I have a note in to Dallan to clarify how gedcom works so that we can set a standard that works for that as well as editing and will change the Findagrave page at that point.--Amelia 11:32, 7 September 2011 (EDT)

Positive assertions about negative information... [26 September 2011]

Saw one of your recent edits to content for a Medieval personage, that the family had some specific number of children. It reminded me about something that we might be able to do. In particular, genealogy often notes that a particular marriage either had issue or not. I've often wondered if we should add that as a family fact item - so that we might later be able to run bots and other automatic procedures that would detect that information that is inconsistent. A family, for example, that is noted as barren - should never show a child. Maybe there's a way to indicate the specific number of children also - then we could check whether that was consistent or not? People who were known to never marry could also be flagged with that as a fact.

Anyway, while consistency checking is probably a long term thing to look for, preparing the data for being able to do that may be worth considering. Thoughts? --jrm03063 11:45, 26 September 2011 (EDT)

I think what you saw was just a typo fix, since I'm usually pretty leery of asserting that anyone had any particular number of children (my experiences with the 1900 census finding that question very unreliable). But at least with the no children, I agree it would be useful. Your question echoes a discussion going on here.--Amelia 12:07, 26 September 2011 (EDT)

Page edit [10 October 2011]

Sorry I edited your page. I became confused by the wording and thought you listed 2 wives as first wives. I didn't see the period after "wife" in this paragraph and misread it. "His first son Thomas was probably by his first wife. Sarah, Elizabeth, Hannah, Margaret, and John are ambiguous, but as they were not married until the 1730s, they were likely born after 1706, when Hannah seemingly passed away. David, born 1719, and the other children are likely children of his second wife Mary."

The way I read it, it seemed you gave two first wives, Hannah and Sarah. Now that I see the period, it makes sense.--Tammyhensel 20:38, 10 October 2011 (EDT)

No worries. You made me reread my notes to make it clearer, and that's never a bad thing. --Amelia 20:47, 10 October 2011 (EDT)

user needs monitoring [13 October 2011]

Amelia, User Mercyleo86 has posted some material that I deleted. --Susan Irish 01:42, 13 October 2011 (EDT)

I saw a second user post similar spam as well this morning. I deleted both pages and blocked both users. Thanks for catching that Susan! --Jennifer (JBS66) 05:53, 13 October 2011 (EDT)

George Bryant [26 October 2011]

Amelia,

I saw your addition on George Bryant. I'm assuming that George and Andrew were brothers because of their age, proximity to each other and names. I spent a fair amount of time looking for source information on their parents- to no avail. But recently, someone has added Amos Bryant and Matilda Leonard on ancestry.com. My Father saw this and recollected his grandmother speaking of Amos and Matilda. Please let me know if you come up with additional information.

Regards//Thom Bryant--Thomb 13:26, 26 October 2011 (EDT)

That was just an administrative edit so I don't have anything substantive to contribute. I'd suggest, though, that you indicate the personal recollection on the family page as an aid to others.--Amelia 18:59, 26 October 2011 (EDT)

Copyrights [30 October 2011]

I just added the pension info on Lemuel Lee. I obtained it from the Johnston County USGen website. It definitely states copyright info. Can we use this on WeRelate or do we have to obtain their permission from somewhere? Thanks. Carol--Suzyq 14:54, 26 October 2011 (EDT)

Best practice is not to put entire documents like this on a person page. Rather, extract or quote the useful parts, and link back to the original. You can do that without worrying about obtaining permission.--Amelia 11:21, 30 October 2011 (EDT)

Use of Abt Birth Year and Christening Dates [19 November 2011]

This is day two at WeRelate and I confess there is much to learn. And one is, I generally added an About Birth Year even when the christening date is known. I do this because birth years may be different than christening dates, it provides sequencing of children, and usually will display in searches for people rather than the christening date. Am I missing some functionality that makes the about or estimated birth year unnecessary?--Kpb2011 18:03, 19 November 2011 (EST)

Welcome! You're reasonin is good, but we've actually dealt with the issues you mention - chr dates show on person/family pages and appear (or are planned to) in search results. While the birth date may well be different, unless there's evidence for that, putting an estimate birth in just surpresses the known information and makes it less precise. -Amelia 18:16, 19 November 2011 (EST)

Gov. Jerimiah Morrow [9 December 2011]

Hello Amelia

In reference to our communication on April 11, 2011 about me being a descendant of Gov. Jerimiah Morrow. Gov. Morrow resided and raised his family in Lebanon, Ohio. My grandfather Chester Morrow was born in the same small town of Lebanon, Ohio. Chester's father was Wm. T. Morrow, however, you suggested that there might not be a link to the govenor because Wm. T. Morrow was born in Preble County and later moved to Lebanon where he and his wife had borned my grandfather Chester. Now, possibly a missing link here. For example, Gov. Jerimiah Morrow had a son by the name of Jerimiah Jr., who moved from Lebanon to Preble County, which is a nieghboring county just down the road from Lebanon, where he was a minister at the Fairheaven Church. He happens to be buried behind the church. Anyways, my question, do you have any records showing the names of Jerimiah Jr.'s children; possibly one being a Wm. T. Morrow? Or any record that identifies the name of Wm. T. Morrow's father? Maybe his father was Jerimiah Jr. or a son of Jerimiah Jr. I imagine Lebanon would be a likely place for Wm. T. Morrow to move to from Preble County since he probably traveled back and forth over the years as a child to visit family. I imagine that Lebanon was a familiar place to him. Also, I had a DNA test done that I am willing to share with other Morrow men to see if we are related, especially those with an oral history as myself as being related to Gov. Morrow. Looking forward to any information you might have.

Richard--Rdmorrow 01:03, 25 November 2011 (EST)


Hi Richard,

I am the Admin of the Murray surname project at Family Tree DNA. We have a number of men already in our yDNA research project who may be related to Governor Jeremiah Morrow, who was actually the son of a Murray. Do you know the details regarding his lineage? If not I can forward on to you. According to some historical records in Ohio Jeremiah Morrow was related to the family of Edwin Porch Morrow, and his father Thomas Zantzinger Morrow- both well known in early U.S. Political circles. Here is the link to Edwin's WIKI bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_P._Morrow


Descendants of these men are already participants in the Murray & Morrow yDNA projects with Family Tree DNA.

Could you please advise your Kit Number and I shall also follow up for you, to see if there are any matching families already within the project, especially if related to the above mentioned. If you did not test with Family Tree DNA, please also note that it is now possible to import results from other Labs into the FTDNA database.


Cheers Alexandrina Murray--Alexandrina 03:27, 25 November 2011 (EST)


Forgot:

Here is more data regarding the alleged relationship between this family & Governor Jeremiah Morrow.

Please see the actual WIKI entry for more details however, you will need to do your own research though as Wiki entries need scrutiny.

" Thomas Morrow was born in Boyle County, Kentucky September 3, 1836.[1]Ward, p. 221</ref> He was one of six children born to Alexander S. and Margaret (Boyd) Morrow.[2] His paternal grandparents emigrated from Scotland to Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War.[3] One branch of the family migrated to the American Midwest; from this branch came Jeremiah Morrow, U.S. Senator and governor of Ohio.[4]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Z._Morrow

Alexandrina Murray--Alexandrina 03:35, 25 November 2011 (EST)


Richard:
See here for information on Gov. Jeremiah's son Jeremiah. He had one son named Jeremiah born 1843, which is inconsistent with your family, as William T's father William was born in 1834.
Alexandrina:
We've tested Gov. Edwin Morrow's DNA, but no one in the Morrow project has a reasonable link to Gov. Jeremiah compare it to. If there's a Murray project person whose paper is reasonable, please let me know. I'll note that I've never seen any evidence of a connection between the governors that's anything other than the standard "they share a name, they must be related" wishful thinking.

--Amelia 11:13, 25 November 2011 (EST)


Amelia & Richard,

Jeremiah Murray Senior was the Grand Father of Governor Jeremiah Morrow. That Jeremiah was born 1711 circa in Londonderry Ireland, and according to various sources was a relative of Adam Murray -hero of Londonderry. That Adam Murray is definitely of Philiphaugh in Selkirk Scotland and his father was Gideon Murray b. 1618 Edinburgh, son of James Murray of Deuchar and Bethia Maule. The Philiphaugh connection is noted on Adam's memorial tombstone and there are also old ballads & songs commemorated in his name stating that he was descended from the Murrays of Philiphaugh.

Adam was born 1650 circa and it seems died 1711 circa. The battle for Londonderry was during the 1680's and his father Gideon b.1618 Edinburgh was still alive then, and was taken hostage at the time. Adam had brothers , one of whom was named James, and another Robert. The father of Jeremiah Murray senior is not known however is said to descend from this family, and those records stating this connection apparently came from the Governor's family. I shall search my archives over the Christmas break and let you know where this was published.

The Philiphaugh Murray family is represented in our Murray yDNA project, along with another participant who is descended from the Murrays of Murraythwaite & Cockpool, relations of the Philiphaugh Murrays who are matching @ y67 & those participants also match Governor Edwin Porch Morrow's descendant-therefore it is reasonable to extrapolate the possibilities that there may be some truth to this anecdotal evidence after all.

1. Adam Murray b.1640c family are of Philiphaugh. 2. Governor Jeremiah Morrow is a Murray said to be descended from Adam Murray's line of Philiphaughs. 3. Governor Edwin Porch Morrow's family state they are related to Governor Jeremiah Morrow. 4. Gov. Edwin Porch Morrow's yDNA matches Murrays' also of Philiphaugh & therefore also related to Adam Murray of Londonderry.

Richard should participate in the yDNA research under the Morrow Surname project if he wishes to confirm /deny this possible link. If he matches the Gov. Edwin Porch Morrow descendant then he will certainly move further along the path to finding his ancestors than where he is at now.

The Philiphaugh Murrays were not in any way 'British Gentry' but were rather in the main of the merchant class during the era under discussion- By 1767 they were bankrupt and departed for Colonial America in order to give their children a chance at rebuilding their Merchant class status. I cannot see any reason for our colonial American forefathers to boast a lineage to this particular Philiphaugh family , nor to usurp arms etc, as they were not very well known at all reputation wise, even within Scotland let alone North America. It was the Athol Murrays & Tullibardine Murrays on the other hand who had the prestigious, or infamous- reputation, depending how you look at the evidence; regarding the Murray surname.

Hope that helps a little any way. The connection to Governor Jeremiah may or may not be solid as far as Richard's family is concerned, however if it was a genetic from link 400+ years ago, and not from 18th-19th century at all, then legend in the family may be the only silken thread holding this memory together, and the only way to sort it all out is via yDNA testing.

Cheers

Alexandrina Murray Murray Surname Project Admin. FTDNA--Alexandrina 05:27, 9 December 2011 (EST)


I am adding sources as per above.

LIBRARY IRELAND- Quote:From The Governor of OHIO in 1890 SOURCE: THE SCOTCH-IRISH IN OHIO

By Hon. James E. Campbell, Governor of Ohio.

Taken from "The Scotch-Irish in America: Proceedings and Addresses of the Second Congress at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, May 29 to June 1, 1890."

Governor:

Of his early guidance the people of Ohio are gratefully indebted. Many of his ablest successors in the gubernatorial chair were of the race whose deeds we celebrate to-day. One of the earliest and most noted was Jeremiah Morrow, whose ancestors figured at the seige of Londonderry. He was the first, and for ten years, the sole representative in the Federal Congress from the newly admitted State of Ohio. While serving there he originated the idea of the Cumberland road, whose benefits to the traffic of that early day can not be measured, and was active in all internal improvements. Subsequently he became United States senator, and governor, and lived to the age of eighty-one, venerated and loved by the entire people of the state. Henry Clay said: "No man in the sphere within which he acted ever commanded, or deserved, the implicit confidence of Congress more than Jeremiah Morrow. A few artless, but sensible words, pronounced in his plain Scotch-Irish dialect, were always sufficient to secure the passage of any bill or resolution which he reported."

http://www.libraryireland.com/ScotchIrish/Ohio1.php--Alexandrina 06:48, 9 December 2011 (EST)


Merge [9 December 2011]

I uploaded a gedcom with Thomas Fail. The matching feature did not show Thomas Faile. They are the same 1707-1777. They did not add the "e" for several generations. Can we get them merged?--Gypsy1930 00:14, 9 December 2011 (EST)

The best thing to do is make sure there are pages for both Surname:Fail and Surname:Faile referring to each other as alternate names, which should solve the not-matching problem. --Jrich 09:24, 9 December 2011 (EST)
The surname pages exist, and using a search with just the name brings back both Person pages just like it should. As I add more information to my search criteria, eventually the match becomes poor enough that the existing page is no longer brought back. The straw that broke the camel's back seemed to be the wife's name, Mrs. Thomas Fail, unless I relax matching to exact, close & partial. Ironically, if I use Unknown for the wife's name (the normal convention), it finds the old page, not the new page.
To merge these two pages, use the more->Find Duplicates menu in the left margin. --Jrich 09:48, 9 December 2011 (EST)

Mary and John passenger [30 December 2011]

Hi Amelia,

I just created a page for Nicholas Easton who appears to be the passenger on the Mary and John. This isn't my family and so probably will not be adding the detail that is available from the Great Migration Project. --Susan Irish 22:08, 29 December 2011 (EST)


Newspapers - The New York Times [8 January 2012]

Hi Amelia, I am trying to figure out newspapers. I want to add The Spokesman Review (Spokane, Washington, United States) but in looking at The New York Times pages I have gotten confused. There are 2 for one thing. Source:New York Times (New York, New York) and Source:New York Times (The New York Times) Which one should I follow? Help:Source Page Title Examples does not really cover this. Thanks, Catherine --cthrnvl 11:53, 8 January 2012 (EST)


Formatting [3 February 2012]

Sorry if I'm not formatting right. Are there automated ways to handle this, like Wikipedia's Citation Bot? Or an easier way to enter data with citations? --jdb123 23:16, 3 February 2012 (EST)

It's mostly by hand or straight gedcom upload at this point. I notice you're just pasting in a URL. Please read the help pages on sources - the title of the source goes in the source title box, either pick "Source" and use "Find/add" to pick an existing source (i.e. Find A Grave, Worldconnect) or pick "citation only" and just type the title in if it's something obscure. There are shortcuts for Souce:Wikipedia and Source:Find A Grave discussed on those source pages.--Amelia 23:24, 3 February 2012 (EST)

1906 Kankakee History source. [22 February 2012]

Hi Amelia,

Thank you very much for fixing the source I added. I am very much the newbie here and I want to get this right. More help, please.

In addition to

Source:Kenaga, William F. Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Kankakee County , (let's call this source A)

which is the source with which we both worked on last night, there is

Source:Bateman, Newton. Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois - Kankakee (Source B)

I looked at the Family History Library catalog entries each are linked to.

Source A is referring to the 1973 reprint by Unigraphic, sponsored by the Kankakee Valley Genealogical Society. Only volume 2 was reprinted because volume 1 is on Illinois and is not specific to Kankakee county. KVGS created an index and it is included at the end of the book.

Source B is referring to the original 1906 printing.

The only real difference in the content between source A and source B is source A has the reprint info on the reverse of the title page and source A has the new index.

I created the new source because I was using an original printed in 1906 book with the gold leaf page edges, red ink used on the title page, pages bookmarked by my grandmother, who died 20 years ago, and no index in the back.

Now that I have read more of the source instructions I see I should not have created the new source page. I should have added the info about both volumes being available free digitally at the Family History Archives website to source B and used that as my source.

My Question:

I see that at the very least I need to move the links to the Family History Archives from source A to source B (the free web version is a reproduction of the 1906 printing). In reading the source page directions, it said that if the two items are significantly different to create a new page. When doing research, having the 1973 book with the index is a big advantage, but at the bottom of it all, the actual source is the original book, so should the source A and source B pages be merged with an explanation of the differences between the printings in the text at the bottom? The only pages linking to these sources currently were made by me last night, so it should not be a big problem making everything perfect.--LeeHollenbeck 00:36, 5 February 2012 (EST)

Also, since it looks like I'm the first person here from this county, I'll be doing a lot of tweaking of the sources. I want to thoroughly understand the standards so I can do my part to improve the source pages.

Hi, and welcome! I'm so glad you're following up on this, it's so much harder to make these distinctions without having access to anything more than the catalog records (sorry if I messed anything up - the v.2 that you created was a red flag since volumes are supposed to get the same page). In answer to your question, yes, there should be one page that describes the printings and notes that the index is only in one of them. If you have any other questions, let me know!--Amelia 11:56, 5 February 2012 (EST)

Hi Amelia, thank you for the help. I have amended the 1906 History of Kankakee County source pages and links and the links to those pages, and I have submitted the page I created and also the other source page to speedy delete. I think I did this correctly.--LeeHollenbeck 15:21, 5 February 2012 (EST)


Amelia,

I've been reading the help pages and looking at pages which have been used as examples, trying to get a feeling for how and where folks tend to post their genealogy data. Reading the help pages, the most logical place to put a transcript of one of the biographies from this 1906 History of Kankakee County seems to me to be in the Transcript namespace, as I have done here. I also made a transcript page for the source. I transcluded the transcription to George Falter's person page since I don't have another bio written up for him.

I would have thought there would be some considerable number of these types of bios transcribed at this site since although they are very secondary sourcewise, they are usually very colorful and would be an excellent item for wikification. I looked around for other similar books treated so and I could find very few. Since I am such a newby here, this made me uneasy.

Was there a better way to treat this? Reading the help pages, it seemed like this was more correct than reserving it solely for the person page or doing something in the MySource namespace.--LeeHollenbeck 22:16, 21 February 2012 (EST)


Hi Lee,
You've got a good idea, it's just that transcripts are relatively new and haven't been widely adopted yet. Personally I only have these types of things as single entries, so I just paste them on person pages, but you can certainly do it the way you are. Read the next entry below this - it has links to Jrm's efforts on Savage, which are the most developed in this space I think and he might be a better resource than I am. Good luck.--Amelia 01:48, 22 February 2012 (EST)
Thank you Amelia, I very much appreciate you taking the time to help me get started. I have been looking at many pages and will study Jim's as a good example. Because of the nature of this site, it has been sometimes difficult to figure out which pages are examples of best practices and which are not, except for when they are pointed out as examples or authored by members active in administration. That the transcript namespace is new, and has not yet been taken advantage of makes the lack of its use for these type of pages much more understandable. I like the idea of these transcripts. To wikify these already colorful obituaries, histories, and biographies makes them even more lively.

Help with a navigation template [25 February 2012]

I was wondering if I could prevail upon you for some help. I seem to recall you did some very attractive navigation templates at one point. I'm in desperate need of that sort of expertise.

I'm doing a transcript of Savage based on an existing text version from about 1994. I'm planning to have separate wiki pages for each page of Savage, so I want to have a bar at the top that clearly labels the page, as well as providing next and prev page access. I've created only the first six pages as an example. Presently, they're to be found at:

I'm trying to bury all the formatting in templates, so that some flexibility in appearance is preserved. The templates I have so far are:

  • Template:savagetranscriptheader - Navigation/page header for a page associated with only one section (takes as parameters, the name of the section, volume and page of the previous page, volume and page of the current page, and the volume and page of the next page).
  • Template:savagetranscriptheaderrange - Navigation/page header for a page spanning spanning multiple sections. Built up using the template above, adds a second section parameter so a page can indicate from and to section labels.
  • Template:savagetranscriptsection - Indent section start indicator (takes as parameter the section).
  • Template:savagetranscripteoln - End of line (forces line breaks - no parameters)
  • Template:savagetranscriptpage - Create labelled link to a volume and page of the transcript
  • Template:savagepg - Simple template that produces a link to a transcript page labelled vVOL,pPAGE. This doesn't appear anywhere yet - it's intended to be used in source citations.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!--jrm03063 19:41, 13 February 2012 (EST)

Hi there. I'm not opposed to helping, but I'm just crazy busy this week and offline all next weekend, so it might be a bit. I would say right off though that <br> seems far easier than savagetranscripteoln - I can't think of any reason why you need all those extra characters. I also need to wrap my head around what you're doing and why (which I know you've explained before, I just need to read it again) ... I started a similar project putting transcripts on article pages, but didn't get very far before I lost interest ;-) --Amelia 01:53, 14 February 2012 (EST)
Thanks for ringing back - of course I'm at your disposal timing-wise. I know that savagetemplateeoln is a long way of just saying <br>, but I wasn't sure whether we would always want a break there - or whether there might be a better way to accomplish an end of line that perhaps didn't imply a new paragraph. I don't really know wiki formatting all that well, and I have no idea what might be possible if/when we move to newer versions of the underlying mediawiki software. Still, if you think that it's a noisy way to do something that has practically zero chance of ever being anything but a <br>, then it's easy for me to change that (at least at this stage!). --jrm03063 10:21, 14 February 2012 (EST)
This is a reply to below, here for reasons that might become clear. I put the below back to original - since it didn't work for everybody, though it seemed to work for my browser. Here is without nested tables. I think Jennifer asked the right question about nested tables.
  Prev ABBOTT Next  
Volume 3, Page 150

--Jrich 09:45, 25 February 2012 (EST)

How about something like this? Color whatever you'd like.

  Prev ABBOTT Next  
Volume 3, Page 150


That's lovely! I suppose we can experiment w/colors... --jrm03063 00:05, 25 February 2012 (EST)

The nested tables are causing problems with the page layout. JRich tried to remove the second |}, but that didn't help. There is a template here that could be tweaked for this that does not use nested tables. --Jennifer (JBS66) 07:20, 25 February 2012 (EST)
Fixed? (for me it is)--Amelia 13:06, 25 February 2012 (EST)
Yes, it's working correctly for me now. --Jennifer (JBS66) 13:45, 25 February 2012 (EST)

Connecting source to event [24 February 2012]

I appreciate your email but I still don't understand it. I am very confused. You had written me re: marriage record for Frank Pearl Sherbondy and Anna Sophie Gerke. Jeanette Sherbondy--Jeanette Sherbondy 11:27, 24 February 2012 (EST)

Hi Jeanette. It would be easier to help if you could be specific about where you're confused. I left the note because I saw that you had created a source page that appeared to apply to this couple, but that you had not linked the source page to the couple. The message tells you how to do that. It also explains that I renamed the source page because source pages should apply to more than just one page of a marriage book - they apply to the collection of marriage records held at the courthouse. If you have other questions, please let me know.--Amelia 12:18, 24 February 2012 (EST)

Savage Templates [5 March 2012]

Thanks again for your nice work on the Savage transcript templates. I especially like your rework of the section template!

The page header template does exhibit a little bit of a symmetry problem when the surname range takes up more than one line, for example Volume 3, Page 165. The next and prev buttons become vertically offset.

--jrm03063 11:15, 5 March 2012 (EST)


Question about bold face in the Savage transcript [11 March 2012]

I saw that you've taken to setting off sections in Savage, associated with particular people, by putting the given name in bold face. I like it - it's quite striking - but was wondering whether or not it was something that was done in the original publication that couldn't be retained in Dr. Kraft's transcript. Then again - it's probably so useful it doesn't matter.

The original publication did not use boldface; the emphasis on the given name was done through the capitalization only. However, I concur that using bold on the transcript pages being created is most useful in differentiating between the individual sketches.--jaques1724 18:36, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

Anyway - I want to write an accurate justification for doing this into the list of practices for the transcript. I was also thinking of controlling it with a template - since that gives us future flexibility on the formatting and a useful piece of logical information besides.

Thoughts? --jrm03063 18:19, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

I just did it because I thought it was easier to read. I've never seen, to my knowledge, a version of Savage that was "original" to his formatting, so I have no idea. I already had those sections done with bold, so it was far easier to leave it (reinserting the page breaks was annoying enough ;-)) I think a template will make the names harder to read when editing, which is at least as important, and will be harder to deal with, as people will have to remember the template name every time they edit, which isn't otherwise required now.--Amelia 18:58, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

I was thinking it might be useful if we had software-recognizable tags in the text - along with the ability to reconsider what the formatting operation might be. Right now, I think the thing most helping the source text to be recognizable is the original - fairly small - Savage page size, along with lines in the source that are consistent with lines in the displayed form. If the template seems an odious burden, I guess I can take on the responsibility of going through and doing that. Heck - it's less than 3000 pages! --jrm03063 20:28, 11 March 2012 (EDT)
Mm, well, all of that is pretty much beyond the scope of my work with the project, so if 3000 pages sounds doable to you, by all means... ;-) --Amelia 00:16, 12 March 2012 (EDT)

No merge template for Serena Gump [23 July 2012]

Hi Amelia, I would like to merge Person:Serena Gump (1) and Person:Serena Gump (2). Serena Ellen Gump died in 1945. I will add the documentation for death for Serena Ellen Gump and William Butler Lowe after merging the 2 pages. --Beth 08:28, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

Sorry for the delay in responding; in the future feel free to take lack of response as consent! I have no earthly idea why I put a no merge template on that page, and don't have any feelings in the slightest regarding what is done on the pages - presumably it was an artifact of long-ago merging issues. Merge away.--Amelia 22:12, 23 July 2012 (EDT)

Thanks Amelia; this has happened to me also. I have no idea why I entered the no merge template when questioned but it was a gigantic project. Thanks.--Beth 23:03, 23 July 2012 (EDT);



Useful Sources? [4 August 2012]

These sources don't appear to have much genealogy or history: Source:McNish (clanmcnish.com) and Source:Longmore blogmore. The former leads to an expired web page and the latter to a page of personal promotion.--HLJ411 16:06, 4 August 2012 (EDT)


Just took a look; no pages link to either of those source pages, so if you're cleaning up Source pages, I'd say they're both candidates for deletion. Jillaine 16:24, 4 August 2012 (EDT)
Agree with Jillaine.--Amelia 19:44, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Hello Jillaine, Thought I would keep you in the loop. I also took a look at the second one, and deleted the webpage link listed as the repository (seemed to be a possible spam), added a note on my edit, and then sent a message to the only user who was watching that source. This WeRelate User/Watcher seegenealogygoriented orionted, but I could not tell about the webpage source he/she created. Please feel free to correct me, roll back, etc. Debbie Freeman --DFree 16:44, 4 August 2012 (EDT)


Minor, by default [16 August 2012]

I'm ashamed to say that I've only just discovered that there's a setting to establish whether edits should be minor by default. I've tried of late to be more careful about labeling them minor (which they almost always are), but that's still an extra click to remember. Got to thinking that it would be nice if the default could be changed - wandered around and found exactly that. I expect that entire disk drive manufacturing plants will now go off line, without all the change-spam that I've been emitting over the years... --jrm03063 10:50, 16 August 2012 (EDT)

I didn't know that either! Sorry to get grumpy, but as you probably well know, when somebody launches a systematic project and you're watching 10,000 pages, things get annoying pretty quickly :-) --Amelia 12:59, 16 August 2012 (EDT)
Next time there's a candidate for change-spam king - they can be told to examine "settings"->"editing"->"Mark all edits minor by default". --jrm03063 13:05, 16 August 2012 (EDT)

Butter source fix [26 August 2012]

Mrs Gerlicher,

Thanks for fixing that Butter source..Ive had a problem sometimes with the autoselection (when you start to type a source name) lately where it wont find what I type properly. I promise it isnt laziness on my part.--Daniel Maxwell 01:47, 26 August 2012 (EDT)


A general practice of yours... [5 September 2012]

I've noticed, on a number of pages where a WP copyright notice appears, instead of:

{{wikipedia-notice|William Carey (courtier)}}

You seem to prefer:

<show_sources_images_notes/>
{{wikipedia-notice|William Carey (courtier)}}

Am I correct in this? If so, there's nothing keeping us from making this standard behavior for the script that replaces the {{source-wikipedia|whatever}} template. Do you think this would work correctly on non-Person/Family pages? Do you think it would work correctly if there weren't any sources|images|notes to show?

I don't have a preference for one form versus the other - but I think one should be preferred. If you think we're better served by the second form - let's adopt it! We can ask Dallan to change his script to do that by default. I assume it would be trivial for him to do the in-place replacement of the source template with the specific wp page template, and then separately add the copyright notice at the end of the page. I'll try to remember to make that change when the opportunity presents. Maybe converting old forms could be an early task for those of us who will be beginning bot writers? --jrm03063 11:32, 4 September 2012 (EDT)

I like the latter because I think that "footer" shouldn't go in the middle of the page. Even if there is other content that's not WP, the style of the notice is inappropriate as a divider, at least to my eyes. Hence I add the show line wherever I'm otherwise editing. I assumed that it would break something to have it be automatically added, but that would be lovely.

Would like to confer on a source related issue... [5 September 2012]

I'm sure you've noticed that my approach to attaching sources is....different. It might seem haphazard and even a little unhelpful, but there really is a method.

Part of what I'm thinking WRT sources is to explicitly establish correspondence with foreign pages and reference material. We have ways to do this for Wikipedia, but they aren't obvious and can be inadvertently thwarted. One approach is to create explicit templates that designate a unique relationship between pages. Another might be to designate a source as having unique associations for one or more types of WeRelate pages - so that a bot can detect sources for which the record name - or record name combined with the volume page field - uniquely identifies a corresponding remote page. Creating "duplicate references" for such a source, would be considered an error that would be detected by running a Bot that would flag the situation.

Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts. If nothing else, maybe this will help you understand why I add sources that (in many cases) don't really add anything new to a page.

--jrm03063 12:10, 4 September 2012 (EDT)

I think I am intrigued, but I also think I don't understand... yet...  ;-) --Amelia 02:13, 6 September 2012 (EDT)



Clarification: Removed sources without unique information [3 October 2012]

I see that you removed a couple of sources from a page that I was in the process of reviewing. I have not seen this action before so want to make sure I am not busy creating work for others. What is the "policy" that lead to this action?

I have included most of my sources, including GED file imports so that future researchers know where I got the data, and also know where to look for possible new data they have not reviewed.

FYI - after I do an upload, I review every page created in order to clean-up source names, move fields since my GED export mapping does not align with WeRelate fields, etc. If I should be removing sources based upon certain criteria, let me know so that I can reduce the admin workload.

Thanks Rick--RGMoffat 08:16, 3 October 2012 (EDT)

Hi Rick,
Thanks so much for asking. In general, gedcom sources are frowned upon and removed in almost all cases because they are no more useful to viewers than no source at all. There's no way for the viewer to access the source or to have any way to weigh its authority. While it's true that these collections may be your source, that's just not useful to the community where we're looking for a good, verifiable, reliable source. In addition, tertiary (and worse) sources that merely restate facts found in better and more primary sources that are already listed on the page are unnecessary and can be removed. In your case, I know you've been careful with your sourcing and have generally left the pages you've created alone, but I made this edit when I was otherwise tweaking the page in part to draw your attention to these best practices. This was a pretty clear case where your gedcom sources were adding nothing (here they were sourcing the name and a birthdate that was sourced better in four other places), so they should just be removed.
So going forward, since you mention you're constantly cleaning up, I'd remove gedcom sources unless there's some reason they are more reliable than other sources -- i.e., this was the granddaughter's gedcom. And in that case, there should be enough notes on the MySource page or the source detail to explain that. Anything else that is similarly inaccessible and in your possession -- like Grandma's family tree notes -- gets the same treatment. Personal family tree websites that are still up can be left as sources, but again, if they are only restating what's otherwise sourced better, they can just be removed as well.
Thanks so much for your efforts -- always better to over-source than under :-) If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. --Amelia 11:41, 3 October 2012 (EDT)

Question on categories [9 October 2012]

I seem to recall you did some work with categories for the different ships associated with the great migration. I also recall we added quite a number of people to the category for the witch trials. In working through the Savage transcript, I observe that his narrative often names arriving ships and he likewise often mentions the trials. I can make such references into an active link using the normal form with a leading ":" - but (when I look at the actual category page) - I'm a little disappointed to see that I don't find the originating page on the "what links here" list. It seems like it would be slick to put links into the Savage transcript for those sorts of things, but it's kind of a bummer to not be able to start at the category and work backwards to know things like "here are the pages of savage that have a witch trials reference" or "here are the pages of savage that reference such and such an arriving ship". I'm sure I can cobble together something that - as a secondary process - creates such reports - but I really want to make sure that I use everything that media-wiki has to offer in exposing this sort of information. Any thoughts? Thanks... --jrm03063 11:20, 9 October 2012 (EDT)



Delete source page [4 November 2012]

Hi Amelia,

I removed references to the source http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Source:Harriette_Jensen._Hoisington/Horsington_Family_Website

However I did not find a link under "more" to delete the source. Perhaps you can help with this?

Thanks,

George--ggp 10:55, 4 November 2012 (EST)

Hi George. Thanks for letting me know. I didn't realize that people can't delete their own Source Pages -- I'll take care of it. If you need to do so in the future, you can use {{Speedy Delete}} to flag the page for admins to delete.--Amelia 23:15, 4 November 2012 (EST)

Springfield, Hampden, Mass. - Duplicates [5 November 2012]

Hi Amelia, You are correct that we probably have a duplicate page. I understand what is happening. When I go to search I entered "Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records" and then put the location into the location box. If you search, it does not come up. However, if you title the search, "Vital Records of Springfield, Mass" and search for that there are six entries..not two. So I think their needs to be some admin to take a look at it.

I always thought you put the name in "Title" box and the "location" in the location box and it appears they are using location as part of the title, thus you don't find it when searching. What I have is an "Ancestry" database. It also appears that there is another title besides Ancestry for some other databases.

Please let me know what I need to do. Thanks so much and sorry for the trouble... --Txbluebell6 18:27, 5 November 2012 (EST)

Hi there. You're right that source searching is less than ideal. There have been multiple efforts to optimize it, and it still needs significant improvement. As a general rule, the more specific you get the fewer results you'll get. Place in particular is a very strict modifier.
But to get back to your source, please provide more details regarding which Ancestry database you're talking about. Is it this one? If so, you can cite whichever book you found the record in - that database is just a pointer to scanned published records.--Amelia 23:08, 5 November 2012 (EST)

Bernard call and family [15 February 2015]

You can't put live people on the family tree without their permission. Tell my cousin Bill Call Hi.

                                Your cousin 
                                      Carl Kirchner
   ps.carlk668@msn.com--Carlk668 22:06, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
Carl - I tried email, but it bounced, so I'll try this. I'm assuming you left the note as a result of the speedy delete markers I put on pages you uploaded. (I'm not related, just doing admin patrols.) If Bernard Call's family is alive feel free (please do) delete the pages, as you uploaded them in the first place.--Amelia 23:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Not sure about this GM immigrant [13 March 2015]

Amelia, since youve done more of these GM sketches than I have, and since you also seem to have the full membership at American Ancestors, I was wondering what you think of the immigrant John Perry - Person:John Perry (31). I started to clean him up, but Anderson refers to a source in the Register, fairly recent, which he says 'may' correspond to the family of the immigrant. I hesitate to do anything further with that until I see how certain the source (in the Register) is with that information. He already shows that the Ann Newman marriage is quite likely not the immigrant's, but once again I hesitate to change it further before seeing it.--Daniel Maxwell 21:29, 6 January 2013 (EST)

You're wondering what to do about the wife? The underlying source is pretty much what GM reflects - such a marriage exists, it fits, there's not evidence one way or the other. I don't know that we have a standard for this; it's similar to the parents question recently debated, but in this case there is actually a marriage record. I lean toward leaving the family there (to help with future merges), and I added a note to Ann's name to flag that it was only probable then leaving the note that Jaques added on the family page. We could replace her with Elizabeth, but I think it's six in one/half a dozen the other - that name is based only on the existence of a later Elizabeth Perry remarrying.--Amelia 23:38, 6 January 2013 (EST)
Well not just the wife, but the 'baptism' as well, which Ive left in place until I could be sure. I couldnt see the Register article so I didnt want to go on a deletion/renaming splurge just yet. Id probably add the Ann name as an alternate name and make it Elizabeth ______, since that was the only provable spouse he had in the colonies. This isnt my family, I am working on him solely for the GM page project. Daniel Maxwell
Same here, but there's no evidence of Elizabeth either -- Anderson just guesses that based on the fact that an Elizabeth Perry married later in the colonies and there's a daughter Elizabeth. But that's such a common name I'm not particularly moved by that evidence. The baptism is the same status as the marriage - it fits, but can't be sure. I'm generally of the bent that I leave what's there so that it catches new uploads better, but I don't feel strongly about it.--Amelia 23:53, 6 January 2013 (EST)
Ok, for now I'll leave it. Generally when something isnt proven I prefer to leave it out completely, but I am no expert on that family. Thank you btw for helping with the GM sketches page; its quite a chore!Daniel Maxwell

Dear Amelia, Thankyou for acknowledging my contribution but I am interested to know by which 2 people are we related. I still live in the area to all the distant relatives. Yours Peter Saunders pds31@hotmail.co.uk--Saunders family tree 17:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


werelate contest [9 January 2013]

Hi Amelia, 1. I have written a note about how I chose the contest subjects on my profile page. 2. I hope that any mistakes contestants make can be a learning opportunity for everyone here although I am basically avoiding recently deceased people for the reasons you mentioned. If I use a recently deceased person I am trying to keep it to people with very long lives (90+) so the living siblings wouldn't be such a problem. 3. I have figured out a way that established WeRelate users can contribute contest subjects that works for me. I will write that up today. Thanks for your patience and your interest. Catherine --cthrnvl 13:16, 9 January 2013 (EST)


Thanks for assistance [8 February 2013]

Amelia, thanks for your assistance. At first I was a little confused as to how to add sources in the various categories, but I think I'm finally wrapping my head around it. I have lots of information on several family lines that I want to gradually add. That's why I chose just two persons at first, thinking that I can learn to add sources and citations correctly on those two.

I'm not far from the Allen County Public Library and in the near future will be visiting it's genealogy department a lot more.

Thanks for all your work at WeRelate. Hopefully I won't be making tons of mistakes in the future.--David Cornwell 18:07, 8 February 2013 (EST)


Clean up of Great Migration list [7 March 2013]

Mrs Gerlicher,

Do you think you can help me out with the remaining clean up of the Great Migration clean up list that Robert Shaw made on the talk page of that article? Since I only have access to Ancestry.com's version of GM, I cant check all of the entries except against the PDF on GM's website.

If you can help me, make a '<---- added ' or some other notation showing that each entry was checked and so we dont duplicate work. I'll go through it a bit of a time myself but I could use some help.--Daniel Maxwell 18:34, 17 February 2013 (EST)

Sure. But I don't understand what only having access to Ancestry's version affects this one way or the other?--Amelia 23:25, 17 February 2013 (EST)
Because it has the sketches from Volume 1 (GMB) and only some from GM 2. It seems to be missing a handful for Volume 1, as well. Otherwise I would have done more of them. User:DMaxwell

Mrs. Gerlicher, I am working on the year discrepancies on the GM page and all of them (so far) correspond to instances of dual dates. For example, the first record immigration William Baker appears on is dated 16 Feb 1632/33. He is in the PDF as 1632 but the list as 1633. Should our list correspond to the PDF, the actual (Gregorian) year, or should we make them dual dates in the list itself? Unsure what WR policy is on this.--Daniel Maxwell 01:15, 19 February 2013 (EST)

It should be 1632 -- if an immigrant was here by winter of 1632/3, he came in 1632.--Amelia 10:30, 19 February 2013 (EST)

I disagree, to eliminate confusion, dates from 1 Jan to 24 Mar in years before 1752 should be double dated. Look at [6] under dates.--Scot 18:38, 19 February 2013 (EST)

Scot, the date listed is not the date of first record, it's the date of immigration. There were no winter sailings, and therefore, a first record before March of one year indicates a sailing no later than late fall of the year before. William Baker is a partial sketch, but I've seen this logic explains a number of times elsewhere.--Amelia 22:57, 19 February 2013 (EST)

My comment refers to dates in general, not specific cases, looking at a single date there is no way to tell if the writer interpreted it correctly Savage for example. the alternative is to append O.S. or N.S.--Scot 10:51, 20 February 2013 (EST)

Well, as far as it relates to this case that was the entire point of my question. Do we conform to the GM list, a dual date or the (actual) year? My mind isnt set either way. user:DMaxwell

Quoting from the style guide referenced above "Double dating should be used in pre-Gregorian dates for dates between 1 Jan and 24 Mar, if known. For example, 11 Feb 1731/32 is the birthdate of George Washington."--Scot 12:28, 20 February 2013 (EST)

Scot, I agree with you on the style guide, but my point was that the style guide simply does not apply. The year being listed is the year of arrival. There were no arrivals in the 1630s during months that would be double dated. Using a double date would only be confusing here because, in the absence of a month, it could just as easily mean a range. -Amelia 12:46, 20 February 2013 (EST)

Can I help with this? I have access to americanancestors.org (NEHGS) which has all the GM work published so far.

Jillaine 17:21, 19 February 2013 (EST)

Just make sure to leave a mark when/where you've gone through it. (we've been adding '<-----'etc to know where we are on the list). user:DMaxwell
Go for it!--Amelia 22:57, 19 February 2013 (EST)
Happy to. Where's the list? Jillaine 09:51, 4 March 2013 (EST)
Talk:Great Migration Study Project Sketches


GMSP Checklist [10 March 2013]

Okay, I want to make sure I'm doing this right. I don't find a check list for what we're supposed to be doing, but looking at examples, I think the checklist might be:

  1. Look at Great_Migration_Study_Project_Sketches for a line with a blank last column.
  2. Search for that person on WeRelate
  3. make sure said person has Category:Great Migration Study Project included
  4. make dates referenced in the GM text (say, from AmericanAncestors.org) have an associated citation using the format in existing examples, and pasting the first section of text into the text field of the citation.
  5. Edit Talk:Great_Migration_Study_Project_Sketches adding the appropriate notation in the final column such as "<--- added".

Am I missing anything? I experimented on YOUNGLOVE, Samuel (last in the list), following the above steps EXCEPT the last one because he's not on any of the lists on the Talk page. What do I do under those circumstances?

Wanting to be helpful, not making things worse.

Jillaine 13:50, 7 March 2013 (EST)

Hi Jillaine,
There's actually two different projects, and you can do either or both:
  • Fixing the lists. This is the project DMaxwell was asking me for help with. It was discovered that the list that I originally linked to was out of date. Comparisons between the article (which used the old pdf) and the "new" pdf were posted on Talk:Great_Migration_Study_Project_Sketches. To help with this part, you go to one of the lists on the talk page, look up the actual entry referenced in the GM databases online, and, if necessary, change the corresponding entry in the Great_Migration_Study_Project_Sketches chart to match. (Or add the name, or delete it, although I think those sections are done.)
  • Adding GM sketches. You do this using steps 1-4 in your question above - basically seeing if the person is on WR, fixing them up if necessary, and adding the link to the chart. Adding people from scratch if you need/want to.
And if you so desire, you can do the second while doing the first, which I do sometimes. I'll also make notes like "No record in New England" on the chart as I'm paging through. Every part helps.
Does that make sense? Thanks for your help! --Amelia 00:01, 8 March 2013 (EST)
P.S. Younglove looks good!

Ah... okay. I see now. Explains much. Can't take credit for Younglove-- someone had already added the GM sketch text. But I will take credit for adding a link to his profile from the GM Sketches project page. ;-b

I'm more interested in the first project than the second, in part what's going on on the Talk page confuses the heck out of me. But I'm wondering if most of the sketches have already been done?

Jillaine 09:08, 10 March 2013 (EDT)

I would say most are probably on the site in some form, but some have been improved from bare gedcom uploads and most haven't. The talk page lists are down to really minor differences in spelling and dates that don't impact the substance of the list, so far as I can tell, so it's fair to ignore :-)
--Amelia 09:50, 10 March 2013 (EDT)
Well, we should probably try to finish it up eventually. The idea was to make it match GM's own list (which as we saw was filled with its own errors). Jill, the problem originally was that in the course of uploading the list some time ago, a number of people were completely deleted. It was especially pronounced in the As and Bs. One user came by and changed the heading of the GM sketch page to "here are some of the immigrants listed in GM" and Amelia questioned the 'some'. I added the missing ones, Amelia checked the list for duplicates and ghost entries. Whats left are differences between the dates listed on the GM list and what we have in the article. In some cases, we had wrong dates listed. I havent started to go through the misspelled list yet, but those are even more minor. Its an article that requires alot of micromanagement. Daniel Maxwell

Medieval Stuff and Draft Conventions [19 February 2013]

I would appreciate it if you could review this document and the related discussion. I would appreciate your views. --jrm03063 09:19, 19 February 2013 (EST)


Question for using a website database as a source [1 May 2013]

Hi Mrs Gerlicher,

There is a website that lists baptisms/burials/marriages for several parishes in England that is available no where else I am going to have to use to cite for a certain family I am working on. Might there be an example of another source on WR that was done similarly I can use as a guide for how to enter the Parish extracts? Typically, I enter books or articles as sources, I hadn't done just as a website list.

thanks!--Daniel Maxwell 11:05, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

Where did they get them if they aren't available anywhere else? Can you point me to it?--Amelia 11:29, 1 May 2013 (EDT)
They are extracts from films that aren't available in a book, it seems that they probably rented the films to get the extracts. They are available here: http://www.fullerfamilyhistory.org.uk/FFH_DB_Intro.htm though the ones I am looking at are the ones for Rattlesden parish. Daniel Maxwell

Joseph Maxwell Morrow [22 June 2013]

Amelia,

I know for sure 100% that I am a granddaughter of Joseph Maxwell Morrow. My question is, who were his parents and where did they come from? His son Silas Lee Green Morrow is the line I come from? Does anyone know who his parents were and where they came from? Are they Irish? German? Do we even know?

Thanks, Abby--Abwar12 17:32, 22 June 2013 (EDT)

Hi Abby,
Check out the DNA notes on Joseph's page - that's what testing told us. I'm the project admin, so it's not my line. I suggest, though, watching that page and leaving a note on the talk page there with your questions. I think the others watching the page are more closely related. Also check out the list of close matches -- Irish is more likely than German. Good luck. --Amelia 19:58, 22 June 2013 (EDT)



Hannah, daughter of Andrew and Rebecca (Woody) Morrow [17 July 2013]

Hi Amelia, just thought I'd let you know that I stumbled across one of your Morrow's. Hannah Morrow, daughter of Andrew and Rebecca (Woody) Morrow, married into the Tosh family that I was working from Botetourt County, Virginia. I also added her two sisters, completing Andrew and Rebecca's family.

Best regards,

Jim:)--Delijim 17:22, 16 July 2013 (EDT)


Source Pages [20 July 2013]

Thanks for the input, Amelia. I have made corrections, but am having trouble merging the two source pages -- title should be: Source:New Orleans, Algiers, Mt. Olivet Birth Records, 1857- 1937. I'm still pretty new at this system and can't seem to find the handle on how to change sources. Working on it... help appreciated!--Frank 16:14, 20 July 2013 (EDT)--Frank 16:17, 20 July 2013 (EDT)

I redirected the both to Source:Algiers, Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Mt. Olivet Episcopal Church Records, 1857-1988. The "Genealogy Trails" link you offered gave the original source as the film number that corresponds to the church records source. We don't create source pages for online transcriptions; use the page for the original Source. To redirect (merge) with an existing source, put #redirect [[Name of new page]] in the body of the source you're redirecting. The title you used isn't right because we have standardized formats to make the titles predictable and findable. Let me know if you have any other questions.--Amelia 17:21, 20 July 2013 (EDT)

deletes [24 July 2013]

thanks for pointing that out to me: so sorry, I simply didnt realise, got carried away ... will they automatically delete as I can't figure out how to do it?--Juliadb 02:23, 24 July 2013 (EDT)


Hi Amelia, again - sorry about this, am not very up on how to do the deleting - you sent me about 9 emails so hopefully they're all going to be deleted? or do I need to go through them all ? I did it all by hand (is there another way?). I'll be more careful in future (I think this is the only time I've put living people on though... ) regards, Julia DB--Juliadb 02:31, 24 July 2013 (EDT)


Infotable [4 August 2013]

Amelia, I'm new to WeRelate, and am having a problem editing the info table on this guy; when I click on Edit for the section (not for the other sections), I get an essentially blank page; and of course I don't want to wipe anything out that's already on there, etc. What I wanted to point out was that John Sevier's grave/monument, built by the State of Tennessee in an honored place, is carefully carved with a different birthdate: Sept. 23, 1744 (not 1745). Since such prominent, honored, official monument must have been carved with great care, thus the presumption is that 1744 is the correct birthdate — or at least, this alternate should be mentioned on the WeRelate page. For a photograph of this tombstone, see the page at Find-a‑Grave. BillThayer 11:03, 4 August 2013 (EDT)


Cemetery photo source pages [20 July 2013]

Thanks for your input, Amelia. I didn't know how to source pictures my husband took of the tombstone at the cemetery. Maybe it would be simpler to just delete the source? Thanks again I've got a lot to learn yet. --Mary Jean Jaynes--Jaynes931 10:18, 22 November 2012 (EST)

Hi Mary Jean. If you want to upload the pictures, you should can put all of the information on the page with the image - that would probably be easiest. Then for sourcing your information, you can either link to the image directly, or put in a source as "citation only" and write "Picture taken by ____" or some such, linking to the image from the source (the latter just gives a more visible explanation of what the picture is, since the pic only shows up as a thumbnail and is usually hard to see). Then delete the source page if you can - I'm never sure if non-admins an. If not, put {{Speedy Delete|Created in error}} on the page and an admin can delete it.

Thanks/Person John Sevier (1) [4 August 2013]

Thanks for your helpfulness to a newbie! Yes, you guessed right: you wuz the first on that list of Watchers. I'd seen the Talk page but the last comment there was in 2010 was it? and my experience with Wickedpedia is that thinly-followed pages, the Talk pages are even more so…

Asfer Sevier's birthdate, as a historian I usually trust tombstones more than books (or at least books in which the statements are unsourced). The tomb was ordered by the government of the State of which he was essentially the founder, and the great hero, after they'd gone to the trouble of rescuing his remains from Alabama. In its very opening page for example, the Turner biography (1910) of Sevier makes completely at least one categorical mistake (Xavier is not now, and never was, in France) and one completely unsubstantiated statement (that Sevier has anything to do with the Xavier family). So the alternate date seems plausible to me, short of a source document stating 1745 of course…

Anyway, most kind of you to respond at length and so helpfully! Best, BillThayer 18:27, 4 August 2013 (EDT)



Rosanna_Hill_(1) [7 September 2013]

Ms. Gerlicher Please take a look at the comments I have added to the following page and let me know if your view on how the issue should be resolved: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Rosanna_Hill_(1) Thanks, Tbrady--Tbrady 16:22, 7 September 2013 (EDT)

Hi,

It sounds like the sources are fairly unanimously on your side. As added background, the original uploader is someone who uploaded a sizeable gedcom here several years ago that is generally considered to be of medium unsourced quality-- and they he/she disappeared. So I think you should make the changes necessary to conform the pages to the best available theory. It sounds like that means deleting Rosanna Hill from the family page (leaving her intact), and then merging that page with the correct page with Juliana. Put the discussion of who the wife is on the family page, as well as maybe a someone modified version on the Rosanna Hill page (from the perspective of why she's not Stukely's wife). If you need help with any of this, let me know. Thanks for bringing good sources and analysis to the site!--Amelia 19:35, 7 September 2013 (EDT)



The Stiles Family in America [9 September 2013]

My source book is by Mary Stiles Guild & Paul Stiles, Henry Reed Stiles. & you are correct it is just called "The Stiles Family in America". I will get the hang of this.--JulesLonghurstStiles 23:32, 8 September 2013 (EDT) http://www.archive.org/details/stilesfamilyinam00guil This is the link for the book.


Help with a new template [16 September 2013]

Amelia, I realize this alot to ask, but I could use some help with a new template. Since we have a US Vice President template, I am interested in creating a Second Lady template. You seem to have created many of the templates on the site (Mayflower, Presidents, etc). If there is a guide for this, I might just do it myself but I could use some pointers since I have never done one before.--Daniel Maxwell 14:33, 15 September 2013 (EDT)

NM. Using your First Ladies template, I copied the formatting, replaced the seal with the VP version, and have now added all of the Second Ladies's names (not all have WR pages). See: Template:USSecondLadies
I hoped to get to this on my Sunday afternoon, but it didn't happen, but that's pretty much what I would have suggested. I added some content to the category and linked a couple more. I usually put the template after the source list, but I don't think we've settled on a rule one way or the other.--Amelia 11:59, 16 September 2013 (EDT)
Great, and thanks for the additions. I decided to do this when I was going through some of the notable livings like Al Gore and Tipper, then noticed Tipper wasn't part of a big list like this. Daniel Maxwell 13:19, 16 September 2013 (EDT)



Adding places and dates [3 December 2013]

Hello Amelia ! Please, be patient ! I am doing a very big work ... the census of Place:Rumigny, Somme, France for the year 1851. I have 644 persons to type ! Two methods ... typing all informations for each person, before working for the next record ... or (it's that I am doing, because I prefer ... it's working simply faster for me !) beginning with the names and family links to type the rest of the informations later ! I tried to explain (very bad) this to Jennifer, yesterday ! I want to go so fast as possible, because I have a very big conflict with fr-Rodovid-contributors who are playing dictators since 3 years and see very badly that I left Rodovid and I now participate in WeRelate. Excuse my poor english ! Amicalement - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 16:53, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Since the message of Jennifer yesterday, I give at least the occupation and the year for one person per family ! Please see for example my recent record : Person:Auguste Demoreuil (1) ! - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 17:09, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
See also my first complete record : Person:Bénoni Quignon (1) ! Patience ... patience ! Amicalement - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 17:17, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

All of my people under list are gone. [17 December 2013]

All of my people under list are gone. I don't know what I did or didn't do to have my list disappear.

  I hope you can help me.

Teacher Roxie--TeacherRoxie 18:57, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. If you're talking about under the List menu, that sounds like a technical issue. That page can take a while to load, but otherwise I don't know what would cause people to disappear.--Amelia 19:03, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I have trouble getting People from the List menu to load - especially in the middle of a session when I'm moving in and out of the list. If that is the issue, suggest refreshing the page or re-loading the page until it works - up to 3-5 times in my case does the trick. Jennifer JBS66 suggested this approach to me and it worked! Good luck.--Frank 19:49, 17 December 2013 (UTC)


Amelia, I went back to We Relate, pushed list, then people and all of my names came up. I don't know what the problem was before, but thanks. Maybe I just wasn't waiting long enough for the program to bring up the name. Thanks for your help, TeacherRoxie--TeacherRoxie 21:17, 17 December 2013 (UTC)


Category Sort [8 January 2014]

Could you take a look at the category for the Salem Witch Trials? I've used the '^' character to push transcript and source pages past the end of the primary alphabetical sort. Is this the sort of thing you were thinking? Or do you have another idea?

Thanks! --jrm03063 15:52, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


Cleaning up guide [10 March 2014]

Amelia, it seems that there is some disappointment that there are no agreed on standards for Cleaning pages. I wonder if maybe you'd like to collaborate on updating this page? You're an old hat around here, and I don't really want to be doing it myself since it would be just my idea of what is 'cleaned' up.--Daniel Maxwell 15:04, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Sure. Is there a page started?--Amelia 00:22, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
I thought there was, but I guess it hasn't gotten that far. There is a discussion on my talk page about some of the points Beth is going over. Might want to move it all to a new page. Daniel Maxwell 00:23, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Future Gedcom [24 March 2014]

Hi Amelia,

Thought I'd pre-inform you that sometime in the next 60-90 days I'll be uploading a Gedcom for the BLOOM family of Hunterdon Co, NJ and Clearfield Co., PA in collaboration w/several other Bloom descendants. As it stands, there are more than 10,000 individuals (none living) and likely to be closer to 30,000 soon, with duplicates that I've already contributed to WR. Will read the Guidelines for Gedcom, since everything I've entered has been one-by-one. If you have any helpful hints, please advise. Gedcom may have to be split. Thanks...--Neal Gardner 22:51, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


Hi Neal,
Oh wow. I don't know if 10,000 people is allowed in one gedcom, but if it is, I'd recommend against attempting it. Unless you have everything exceptionally clean, you'll need to go through and edit most of the pages when you do it. Just as an example, when I last uploaded a couple hundred people, I had to touch nearly every one of them to fix all the census sources since I do them differently than WR; fix assorted other sources that are either too personal to upload or could/should be replaced with something better; fix a number of places so they displayed correctly (the place linking just changes what underlies the pipe -- your misspellings, etc., remain); remove and/or research assorted wives so I didn't upload empty pages; fix my --?-- surname convention to "unknown"; and add categories for the civil war vets. It took me a couple months in between various other things. Some of this can be addressed ahead of time if you're willing to modify your own database accordingly, although that in itself is of course a lot of work. Good luck!--Amelia 05:22, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Amelia. I'll definitely preclean before I upload. I'll suggest to my major Bloom cousin to create single Gedcoms for each of the 11 children of the immigrant, Wilhelm BLUM/BLOOM, then present one by one. I'll prewarn you each time. With all the talk about "needing to grow", this is probably my best contribution, besides linking all my FindAGrave pages to WR. As a "worker bee", not a techy, I hope this helps. Thanks again. --Neal Gardner 06:12, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


Recent changes for William Renwick Riddell [3 May 2014]

Good morning. I have been going through my large number of "MySource" records and have been converting many of them into "Citation Only." I see that you have reviewed some of the person pages I have modified, and want to make sure I understand what you have done, and why. I hate to make extra work for others if I can do it right the first time.

I must admit that after 30 years in the information technology field, the overused term "best practise" is a red flag to me. It often is used as a marketing tool to justify the way a particular organization likes to do things, without documentation or justification for the claim. I willingly follow the WeRelate practices as best I can, so please help me along here.

There is also a difference between syle and best practise. Styles can differ.

For William Renwick Riddell I see the following changes: 1) leading "0" on a day in a date was removed. In other records that you changed I see months were changed to mixed case rather than all upper case. Pretty clear.

2) In a number of cases for this person, "Notes" were moved into the "Text/Transcription location" field. Is this one of the best practices you mention? Where is it documented so that I can review it?

Personally I prefer using the Notes field so that there is a blank line between comments and data, but maybe I have been using them in reverse to the best practice.

For example, on a census record, I put my comments in the "Text..." field and then the census information in the "Notes." field.

I guess I can still get the same effect by adding a line break after my comments.

3) In Personal History did you insert the "show_sources_Images_Notes" instruction or did it come in with the Wikipedia instruction and I have just never noticed it before?

Did I miss any other changes? For example, did you change any "sources" to "Citations only?" I can't tell if I did that, or if someone else did.

Finally, let me say that I appreciate the effort you put into helping users on this Wiki. As it grows in popularity your job must be getting more and more time consuming.

Thanks Rick--RGMoffat 17:45, 3 May 2014 (UTC)


Hi Rick,
Thanks for your questions. Answers...
2) (note field v. text field) The reason I did this is that having the information from/about the source in an associated note is 1) much more susceptible to error by having the elements disassociated; and 2) much harder to understand/edit in editing mode, particularly for people other than the author. Aside from the blank line issue, I've never heard a corresponding reason in favor, and so I generally change it if I am otherwise editing a page. I have no idea if this best practice is documented somewhere, although I know I've discussed it at least a couple times; there have been multiple efforts at documenting best practices but ultimately only a couple people care enough to work on drafting, and that's not enough to be a "consensus" document.
3) (show images) I insert this because I dislike having the Wikipedia footer in the middle of the page. I don't know that it rises to the level of best practice, but I know a couple other admins do it as well.
I got to the page while reviewing recent source edits, and your source 5 (gravestone transcript) didn't meet the criteria for a Source Page, so since it only had one link, I did the edits on Riddell to change it to citation only and deleted the source.
Thanks for the complements, and appreciation back to you for being so conscientious. Let me know if you have any questions on the above.
--Amelia 01:22, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Merge person [15 May 2014]

I was going to contact Tclough to suggest merging Elizabeth Plummer (11) with my Person:Elizabeth Plumer (1) but noted Tclough has not been active since a message in March 2010. Can you do the merge or shall I attempt it. I will defer to the spelling as Plummer.--HLJ411 18:15, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Go for it.--Amelia 05:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Morrow, Rattlesnake Creek [18 June 2014]

Hi Amelia, if I have a question concerning the Rattlesnake Creek Morrows is this the way and method to communicate?--Huberlg 02:45, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Here, or use the More > Email this User link to the left.--Amelia 04:10, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello Amelia, My name is Linda G Huber and I am the daughter of Frances Jean Morrow of Birmingham AL. My grand father was David Jackson Morrow, great grandfather Joseph Cameron Morrow and my gg grandfather was David Jackson Morrow. David was the son of Jesse Washington Morrow and his father was Robert Morrow of Caswell NC. My question to you is, does anyone have parental information about Robert Morrow the Rev. War soldier and ancestor to this line. I have a DNA test with Ancestry.com. However there are no remaining male Morrows in my direct line. If we had known about the Morrow DNA project 5 years ago we would have had my Uncle Jack, who was my mother's twin, take the test. He had no sons and is now deceased, as is my mother.

I was one of the persons who believed my Morrow family line went back to Norfolk, Va but according to your DNA project the Rattle Snake Creek Morrows, of which Robert was a member, are not related to the Norfolk Morrows. Any idea where this line goes back to in this country or Europe?

Thank you for your time and consideration of my questions. Linda G Huber--Huberlg 14:33, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


Volunteering [7 July 2014]

Hey Amelia - Dallan emailed and asked me to leave you a message here re: volunteering. I am on a break during July but am available to help again starting in August. Please just let me know what is needed and feel free to email me directly. Regards,--Cos1776 17:41, 7 July 2014 (UTC)



elizabeth Hodge [5 November 2014]

i do not think that yours and my elizabeth Hodge are the same person. My family were farmers in the Devon area. Or do you have accounts to prove otherwise--Ksmm 22:52, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. I don't have an Elizabeth Hodge. If you're referring to the note I left on the Thomas Lee/Elizabeth Hodge page, I did that because I am an admin who reviews new family pages, and there are children on that page with two different last names. That typically means they have different parents, which means they should be on different family pages. If they do have the same parents, best practice would be to explain that on the family page. Thanks, --Amelia 01:02, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

"Presumed deceased" [28 December 2014]

Amelia, I was going through the speedy delete pages and I noticed a note left on the talk page for Person:Daniel Holland (12); that the man hasn't been seen since 1991, and a PI couldn't locate him and he presumed to be dead. I don't know how WR should handle these.--Daniel Maxwell 14:01, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Since it's the sister's entry, I figure we don't second guess her reasons for wanting him up there, and missing for 24 years seems like a decent presumption.--Amelia 16:19, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
I was going to suggest perhaps 'after 1991' in the death area. I too am in favor of keeping it. Daniel Maxwell 17:17, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Please, patience and better analysis of the contributions [1 January 2015]

Hello, Amelia ! Please, can you read again what I wrote here ?

http://www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=Family:Alexandre_Carpentier_and_Unknown_%281%29&diff=next&oldid=20027185 and http://www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=Family%3ALouis%C2%A0Andr%C3%A9_Lebau_and_Unknown_%281%29&diff=21476294&oldid=20027217

The records were changed, with a minimum of informations about place and date (census 1851), and all these records are not "orphan" ---> I put the links between the different persons. I know, this "work" is not finished, I am sorry. I have to complete with 1) all the details that we can read in the census, 2) the information of the census 1836, 3) and also the birth records. Have you seen, I am working and contributing for months to clean up a lot of records (from other contributors) since I read this page WeRelate:Old GEDCOMs ... for me, it's more important to clean up so quickly as possible all the old records (date format + caps surname + deleting "uid" and "refn", etc). And I don't forget that I have to help for a translation in french ... but all these programs and activies take ... TIME.

Happy new year ! Amicalement - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 07:34, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Marc,
I understand works in progress, but these pages were marked with cleanup requests over a year ago and haven't been touched since. They are 2-3 unconnected individuals with no information. If you are not going to add further information within a few days (and it doesn't need to be everything, just something), please don't add such people in the first place. Getting reasonable amounts of information on your own pages is much higher priority than doing minor administrative fixes on old records. But the point of speedy delete is to give you a chance to fix the records if you want to. If you can't, then there's no reason they shouldn't be deleted. They cannot add value in their current state, and only add confusion to the database.-Amelia 18:09, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Amelia ! Your interpretation is for me too "wild" ! "... cannot add value" ? + "only add confusion" ! + my "minor administrative fixes on old records" ! Very funny ! Did you really seen, how "heavy" and dissuasive all the records with "UID_" are for the genealogists and visitors of the site ? But I will add "something" in the next days on my records which "revolt" you ! Please ! Be not so "authoritarian" ! Be more comprehensive with contributors who are working for the "community" and not egoistically for their own "ancestors" ! Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 19:11, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
And who are these 2-3 unconnected individuals with no information ? Please say it "clearly" ! It "works" better and quickly when a message is given on the "talk page" of each contributor ! We cannot every day verify by "watch list" all the records where we put a little modification - Thanks - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 19:17, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
And see (for example) what I added on December 5th 2013 : http://www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=Person:Louis%C2%A0Andr%C3%A9_Lebau_%281%29&diff=prev&oldid=20036420 and http://www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=Person%3AAlexandre_Carpentier_%281%29&diff=20036508&oldid=20027160 (and the same short information for the children of these 2 men). - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 20:24, 1 January 2015 (UTC)


Marc.

This is not a personal vendetta or some wild accusation. Dozens if not hundreds of pages like this are marked for deletion every week. Your pages marked for speedy delete were marked for more information over a year ago -- a courtesy not given most users. There was no response, except one notation that one of the children was in the census at some point in his life. They are still unconnected people with no information from which another user could identify them, which means they violate the most basic tenets of work on this site and either need to be fixed or deleted. The reason the Speedy Delete process is a marking process and not just instant deletion is so that the page can be fixed if you are so inclined. You have fixed the problem. This should be the end of the story.

But it's also important to note that while we all find UID's annoying, and cleaning them up and other community work is appreciated, you can't upload empty data with no dates, places, or sources, and leave it there because you are busy working on other things, and expect everyone to just leave it alone because we know you are doing other things. I would only hope my own forgotten orphans would be similarly found and flagged. You have to attend to your own data first. If you would rather work on community projects, then don't upload empty pages in the first place. And while I agree that a personal note regarding all defective pages would be the ideal, that's not a scalable approach for admin review. The reason for the watch list, the summary field, and the attendant emails is to alert you to the changes on your pages.



editing changes [7 March 2015]

You made some changes to some of the pages I edited. I'm all for best policies and practices. I will do my best to emulate. Thanks for all the great work WeRelate does. I haven't seen an easy way to make a cash donation. Probably something else I missed...

Bill Loughner bill@loughner.com--Loughner 16:00, 7 March 2015 (UTC)


Thank you [13 April 2015]

Hi Amelia,

Thank you for formatting my list: looks nice.--Helen-HWMT 10:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)


coming back [5 September 2015]

Amelia,

I'm coming back. What do I need to know? Do you have my email address? jillainedc at yahoo

````--Jillaine 12:18, 8 May 2015 (UTC)


Thanks for your help with the source on Elijah Land and Elizabeth, Amelia --MJ--Jaynes931 17:51, 5 September 2015 (UTC)



Thanks for the Edits [9 November 2015]

Thank you for cleaning up the census references for A Humiston and Etta Thomas and eleven other family pages. I appreciate your help.--dbarton19 14:00, 9 November 2015 (UTC)