User talk:Cos1776

Welcome to my Talk Page [17 October 2022]

If you have a comment or question about a specific WeRelate page (Person, Family, etc.) that I am watching (i.e., my username appears in the left column of that page), please post your message on the Talk page there.

If you have a general comment or question about a page that I am not watching or something else, I am happy to correspond here on this page. To post here, select Add topic from the menu on the left and be sure to "watch" this page, by checking the box after you have added your message. If you post here, I will respond here to keep the thread together.

If you wish to send me a private email, please select more> Email this user from the menu on the left.

Thanks and Best Wishes! --cos1776 15:18, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

My Talk page Archives (2009-2018)

• 2009
• 2010-2011
• 2012-2013
• 2014-2015
• 2016
• 2017
• 2018

thank you for the response--Karlap1978 20:17, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

[8 February 2019]

There are no valid sources for the marriage of John Overall and Maria Froman. The Tennessee Bible - is a product of circular reporting.

I an expert on the Froman, no Overall researcher has been able to validate this claim.

Found proof that William Overall did marry Magdalen Froman daughter of Paul Froman Sr - Source is the Jost Hite vs Lord Fairfax lawsuit.

Also listed in this document is a Mary Froman - who could be Maria and married Abraham Kellar.

documents and sources can be found in the Tracing the History of the Descendants of Paul Forman Sr and Elizabeth Hite - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kV8IT9kjGMbzvE4LyP69adw9LNAZ_Tsk/view

This book list it sources.--Ltccoleman 04:35, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

This is a collaborative genealogy site where researchers are supposed to work together to get to the truth. What you say may very well be correct, but you can't just plunder through erasing information and altering existing citations to suit your narrative (ex. Person:Nathaniel Overall (2)) and then walk away. You have changed actual quotations from the ONLY source(s) posted on the page without giving any explanation on the page and without providing any sources on the page to back up any of your changes. That is vandalism, and it is going to take a while to undo and sort out.

Your comments above and the information from and citations to the sources above belong on each applicable Person or Family page. Discussions about the reliability of sources belongs on the Talk page for the source itself. Corrections to information for a particular person or family found in a source can be posted within the citation to that source on the applicable Person or Family page. --cos1776 10:58, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Christopher Chinn [2 July 2019]

I've just noted that you are a "watcher" for the information about Christopher Chinn. I think, but can't document, he's in my line: son Benjamin Chinn goes to Greenup Co KY. How do I get in touch with Jim Bartlett, if he's still doing Chinn research. It seems most of the postings are his. I now have Christopher's will - bad condition - dated 1786 in Fayette Co. He names his wife, Ann, son Benjamin, and daughter Polly. No Nancy. Also his brother Raleigh.

I also have a deed dated the 24th of August 1798 for property in George Bryant's settlement, again in bad condition, where Christopher's heirs are again named. In it the surname Hall is given (Ann's second husband), and Polly Chinn is referred to as wife of Robert Rogers. No Nancy.

Are we working in a parallel universe? Who then, is the Nancy who had to have guardian concent and witnessed by Benjamin Chinn to her marriage in 1804 in Lexington KY? Or, who is Polly Chinn Rogers?

If anyone is still searching this lineage, I'll be glad to send the citations and PDF documents.

Hope to hear from you. Donna frandsen@pacbell.net--Donna Frandsen 00:31, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi Donna. I am home again and sending you an email. I look forward to working with you on these families. Best Wishes - --cos1776 01:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Change to the "what links here" lists [3 July 2019]

You may be interested to know that Dallan has worked on the list of persons to be found under each placename "what links here" page. For persons these are now alphabetically under surname. I think the families may change to this organization in the near future. The persons are a trial run. He found the problem harder than expected.

Yes, I persuaded him. It will certainly speed things up when editing red place names, and similar problems.

regards, --Goldenoldie 11:39, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Wow!! I think you probably remember how much we campaigned for this many years ago. I am very surprised to see attention being paid to an update like this at this time. Kudos to you for your persuasive skills. :) I checked it out on Place:Frederick, Virginia, United States. Looks good! But, I'm running into a glitch.

For Fredericksburg above, the page is set to return 500 links per page which is good. I am able to navigate to the 2nd set of 500 links (page 2), but then am not able to advance any further, so the last Person page link I see on page 2 is Person:Elizabeth Chapman (33). I have to believe that there should be more Person pages that link to Fredericksburg.

Are you able to advance any further? --cos1776 14:25, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

The more I think about this, the more I seem to remember something about a 1000 link limit for What Links Here. That would certainly limit the usefulness for using What Links Here for browsing surnames. Have to do some digging to see if I am remembering correctly. --cos1776 14:40, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I just tried out the number of links with Place:London, England, which should be a challenge to a 1,000-entry rule. The count there reached 7,500 and stopped at Person:Rebecca Briggs. People (as opposed to templates, sources, places, etc.--note the reverse alphabetical order) only started around the 5,000 mark.

But this is indeed a glitch. However, I don't think we ought to press for solutions to too many problems at a time. Maybe you should put it on the Watercooler and see if it is read by some programmer or other.

An aside: I'm glad you are someone who prefers to carry on a conversation on the same page.

--Goldenoldie 18:02, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I've had a look at your Suggestion. Could you rephrase slightly adding something to the effect of "for large places". "What Links Here" is ok for places that have never had a population of more than a few hundred (unless some user's entire family lived there for centuries and generations!). I shall point out our problem to Dallan, too, but commitments outside of WR prevent me from doing so in the next 24 hours. (My husband died a month ago, and tomorrow I see the lawyer.) --Goldenoldie 15:43, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm glad you saw the update to that Suggestion page. I found that page when I was looking into the history of the 1000 link limit, so I thought I would add an update to the status of that suggestion. The post was not intended to add a new suggestion - just to communicate the progress on the old one. I will see if I can make that clearer.

Pat, I apologize for using this format, but I want to tell you that I am so sorry to hear of the passing of your husband. I feel as though I have gotten to know a little bit about you and your situation from your messages over this last decade, and it has been inspiring to witness the consistent and compassionate care that you have always shown for your husband through his illness. He was so very lucky to have you in his corner. May God rest his soul and bless you and your family as you go through this difficult time. Best Wishes, --cos1776 18:42, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. If there's one thing I miss since my husband went into the care home, it's the conversations we used to have at lunchtime when I was taking a break after yet another place-page discovery-and-composition session for WR. Eric was as much interested in geography and the history behind it as I am. He was a Brit; I am Canadian (only 54 years in the UK), but the facts I was discovering were new to both of us. I cherish those chats.

I now have a very heavy file to take with me tomorrow. I can go back to work on Essex with the only interruption being Wimbledon.

Regards, Pat --Goldenoldie 19:35, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

New work with the "what links here" page [12 August 2019]

Hi

Hope you don't mind me sharing what I am currently up to with WeRelate.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and try to sort out [[Place:London (City of), London, England]]. This is one place outside of North America where four-phrase place names are used. This is done because of the myriad of parishes within the old city (106 was the count), all of which have bmd registers available for inspection. About half the churches of these parishes were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and the parishes merged with other parishes a few years later. With the steady decrease in population and other disasters (two World Wars and more localized events), the number of parishes has reduced even more over the last 200 years. My aim is to follow the mergers through, pinpoint their location, and briefly describe the churches with the help of Wikipedia. A week's work and there are still an awful lot of unknown places within London.

In every parish I always inspect the people linked to it and try to tidy up their events into WR style. The City of London was part of the county of Middlesex until 1889 when the County of London was "invented", absorbing a very large part of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent. It appears to have been decreed that WR's name for the City of London is "London (City of)", though the term London City seems to have replaced it in the suggested names that come up in yellow below. Coming out into the real (non-WR) world, no one (past or present) uses London City; it is always the "City of London". I have just built in a new redirect so that "City of London, London, England" or "City of London, Middlesex, England" can appear on a Person Page. These always revert back to Place:London (City of), London, England for our database.

BUT in working through the people I began to notice that the description "London, London, England" was redirecting to "Tower of London, London, England"! Not that many people lived in the Tower, though a good number died there. More important, the Tower is not in the City of London and never was. Geographically, it was on the eastern side of the city wall in the parish of Stepney (or sometimes it was extra parochial and separate from both London and Stepney). So, last night I looked at the "What links where" list for the Tower of London. Sure enough, there were between 600 and 750 people and families in the list. I am now pruning the list, sending those with no obvious link to the Tower back to the City. At this point I have finished the C's and the number living in the Tower is going down.

Goldenoldie now feels the stress is on the oldie. I've had a decade-type birthday this month and the red hair has pretty well faded away.

/cheers, --Goldenoldie 08:19, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello and Happy Birthday to you!!

I spent some time on and off yesterday to see if I could get to the bottom of some of this, and I think I have some answers for you.

1. Re: "It appears to have been decreed that WR's name for the City of London is "London (City of) ..."

The History of the page shows that you renamed the page from "London, London, England" to "London (City of), London, England" in March 2015. As you may recall, renaming a Place page is essentially the same as redirecting it, so it is important to take the time to investigate the history of that page and think through the impact that redirecting will have on the associated Place hierarchy before making the change. (more on this in a bit)

2. Re: " ... the term London City seems to have replaced it in the suggested names that come up in yellow below."

I haven't figured this one out yet, but I'll keep working on it.

3. Re: "I have just built in a new redirect so that "City of London, London, England" or "City of London, Middlesex, England" can appear on a Person Page."

There was no need to create redirect pages in this case. "City of London" is already entered as an Alternate Name for "London (City of)" and "Middlesex, England" is already entered as an Also Located in Place for that page. Users who start entering "City of London" are already given the option in the drop-down to choose either

• "London (City of), London, England|City of London, London, England" , or
• "London (City of), London, England|City of London, Middlesex, England"

I urge you again, since we have discussed this several times over the years, to exercise caution when implementing redirects and renaming Place pages. Redirects, when not handled properly, and especially multiple ones for the same Place, can really cause problems with how our wiki operates. (more on this in a bit)

4. Re: " ... "London, London, England" was redirecting to "Tower of London, London, England"

There are several things at play here that are combining to cause this problem. (here comes the more bit)

First, we have the WR place-matching program. Since ca. 2009, this program has run automatically whenever pages are created (manually or via gedcom upload) or whenever existing pages are edited. In a nutshell, the program takes whatever text has been entered in the Place field and tries to find a best match in our existing Place database. Then, it adds a pipe to the matching Place page to turn the user's original text into a direct link to a valid WR Place page. So, that is why the pipe is being added to the Place fields for these pages.

Second, we have the matching error itself. It is important to realize that the place-matching program was designed to work with our Place naming hierarchy as it existed ca. 2009 after the dust finally began to settle on the structure here. In 2009, the page title Place:London, London, England existed as named, so all of the existing place entries "London, London, England" were valid at that time. Likewise, pages where variations of this were entered were corrected upon editing - so, for example, Person:Unknown (22835) started off with "London,London,,England" in the Place field which used to be a red link (i.e. no existing page by that title), but a 2009 edit called the place-matching program into action, so the text was replaced with "Place:London, London, England|London,London,,England", which piped to the correct page (at the time).

Then, in 2015, Place:London, London, England was renamed (see #1 above). This means that it will no longer be returned as a valid Place page when the place-matching program searches for it. Instead, the best match returned is the first page title in the results where "London, London, England" is found, i.e. Place:Tower of London, London, England.

So, this means that after 31 Mar 2015, any pages like these, where place-matching was performed, were piped incorrectly to "Tower of London", unless the editor caught and corrected the mistake. You can see how this could go unnoticed, especially when older pages were opened and edited for some other reason, and the original Place entry was left alone. The original text does not change on the page, so the editor can easily assume that the link was not changed.

Third, there are similar issues going on with "London, Middlesex, England", but there is another layer to the story. Place:London, Middlesex, England is what is known as a double redirect.

1. in 2009 - Place:London, Middlesex, England becomes a redirect page to Place:London, London, England, probably as part of the implementation of the 1900 rule
2. in 2015 - (see #1 above) Place:London, London, England becomes a redirect page to Place:London (City of), London, England

So, depending on when the page was created and whether or not it has been edited, a combination of redirects and place-matching will affect where the text "London, Middlesex, England" will take the reader

If page was created prior to 2009 and is unedited -> page-matching has never been called ; link goes to Place:London, Middlesex, England and then follows the 1st redirect only to Place:London, London, England (no longer a valid Place page)

If page was created prior to 2009 and edited before 2015 -> page-matching has been called ; link path was changed into a direct link to Place:London, London, England (valid at the time) via a pipe ; link goes to Place:London, London, England and then follows the 1st redirect only to Place:London (City of), London, England

If page was created or edited for the first time after 2015 -> page-matching has been called ; link path was changed into a direct link to Place:Tower of London, London, England via a pipe, as per previous explanation

Fixing all of this will take a combination of cleaning up the "Tower of London" links where the place-match is wrong (like you are doing) and unwinding the problematic redirects, so that place-match can work correctly in the future. I hate to say it, but all of this could have been avoided if Place:London, London, England had not been renamed in 2015. I wish that we could have identified this issue before all of the subordinate places were renamed as well.

I hope this provides you with an explanation of why this is happening and hopefully how to avoid something similar happening in the future. Due to the large number of pages likely to be affected, moving Place pages around carries with it a greater responsibility than just editing Person and Family pages.

Best Wishes, --cos1776 16:30, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

On first reading

(1) Having finally sorted out "how to fill out a probate form" this afternoon--something just as mixed up as naming places in WR, I don't feel I can put any thoughts on "paper" on this topic tonight. I'll have to sleep on this one.

(2) I joined WR in 2012, but didn't leave the safety of my own family [tree] till sometime in 2014. I often wish I had got in earlier and been able to add my two cents worth to earlier discussions.

(3) I have been working through all the people with a "Tower of London" link and have just reached the P's. Many are there because the Wikipedia link added by user:Jrm03063 mentions the Tower of London. For some it was a significant event, but in many cases the person was the accuser, not the accused, or it was someone else in the family that got the chop. Whatever, I'm not touching those.

(4) More tomorrow. I am missing the British Who Do You Think You Are--some well known Swedish actress whose name I can't remember.

/cheers, --Goldenoldie 20:50, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion moved to User talk:Dallan --cos1776 20:46, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Gray's Inn and the rest of Holborn [13 August 2019]

This is an area I haven't considered yet. I have just read your Gray's Inn page description. Your explanation looks good. I was leaving Holborn until I finished the City itself.

I have spent the day removing appropriate Tower of London fiasco's and am down to the R's under People. Once that's done I want to go back to the City of London.

I am using [[Place:London, England]] when users don't supply any clues at all as to where their person lived. Could be in the City, Middlesex, Surrey, or Kent. Sometimes I end up using {{Sources needed}}, but I know the contributor will probably never see it.

I just noticed that "Middle Temple" is still in [[Place:London, England]]. I was able to tie it into The Temple with "Inner Temple" just the other day, but the reference to it in [[Place:London, England]] got missed.

I came across the Papineau family in going through Tower residents this morning. I was very disappointed that the contributor gave no history whatsoever. Louis-Joseph Papineau was campaigning for self-government for Quebec in the 1820s and 1830s, along with a (sideline) ancestor of mine, John Neilson (His sister was my 3x great-grandmother.) The two of them went to London together to discuss the situation of the Quebecois with the British government. John Neilson went as translator and peacemaker, I think. Papineau was known as a bit of a firebrand. Once Quebec got its own legislature after 1840, Neilson was its first Speaker. Unfortunately I have never found any report of the happenings from the British point of view.

Are you in EDT or further west? It might help if I knew so that I could schedule messages more efficiently. I am EDT + 5 hours.

I have now noted all the automatic messages re Gray's Inn.

/cheers, Pat --Goldenoldie 20:34, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

What fun to find some family connections! I am glad that you agree with the handling of Gray's Inn. I am in EDT, so my breakfast time = your lunch time :) --cos1776 20:46, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Tower of London [14 August 2019]

The work on people connected to the Tower of London has now been completed to the best of my ability. There were a number of complete family tidy-ups along the way. Any Jrm03063 contributions were left untouched unless I checked the unquoted parts of Wikipedia articles and found something he hadn't noticed. The list is now down to less than 500 including Sources, etc.

I shall get back to the parishes of the City of London tomorrow.

/cheers, --Goldenoldie 19:43, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Actually, could you pause working on London places until we get some things straightened out. I have some general questions about the structuring strategy, but let's move this discussion over to Place talk:England, so it stays with that page. I'll start a thread over there in a bit after I do a little more researching into the decisions that were made in the past.

Some of the Tower of London edits are confusing to me.

• If the user originally entered "London, Middlesex, England" or "London, England" and the dates were pre-1889, why did you sometimes change it to the county "London, England" which did not exist then? Considering the date, it seems pretty certain that the user meant the city of London at the time, so the entry should have been changed to "London (City of), London, England|London, Middlesex, England"
• Many pages were changed to render "..., London City, ..., England". You said above and on Dallan's page that no one ever uses or used "London City", and I agree with you, so I wasn't sure why you left some entries to read that way? A quick Search shows 275+ pages where "London City" is rendering. These are not all from the Tower of London edits. Some are from other place-matcher mistakes. We could either manually clean them up or let them be for now, pending the final decisions on fixing London.

Thank you, --cos1776 20:46, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Source: Free BMD [14 August 2019]

I have looked through your presentation of Free BMD. I am going to put forward a few small suggestions here for your consideration, rather than edit the page:

Cos1776: It is a part of the FreeUKGEN family, which also includes FreeCEN (Census data) and FreeREG (Parish Registers).
Me: It is the largest part of the FreeUKGEN project, which also includes FreeCEN (Census data) and FreeREG (Parish Registers).

Cos1776: As of 4 October 2013, the FreeBMD Database contains index information…
Me: I would like to put that database into Excel and find where the holes in the coverage are, but not now.

Cos1776: NOTE: The index only gives the Registration District in which the event (birth, marriage or death) occurred and the quarter of the year in which it was registered. Do not give the index as a source if you have more precise details. Registration Districts have been added to WeRelate's Place Database.
Me: NOTE: The index only gives the Registration District in which the event (birth, marriage or death) occurred and the quarter of the year in which it was registered. DO NOT give the index as a source if you have more precise details. For your convenience Registration Districts for each county have been added to WeRelate's Place Database.

Cos1776: Type: Government / Church records
Me: Type: Government records (this may not be possible)

/cheers, --Goldenoldie 19:50, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what this is about. I have worked on several things today, but have not presented anything on the Free BMD. It may have something to do with fixing all of the "England and Wales, United Kingdom" place links that were on some Source and Person pages. Can you give me a link to one of the pages? Thank you, --cos1776 20:46, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Sorry about that. It appeared sometime after our conversation with Dallan. I made the notes as above in "Word" and held onto them until after I finished with Tower of London. I'll have another look through things tomorrow and see if I can find it. --Goldenoldie 21:02, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Tower of London (cont'd) [16 December 2019]

Hi

Still finding the occasional Tower of London reference. Today it was Margaret Thatcher!

Some people would think that appropriate, but I'm not one of them.

Merry Christmas

Pat --Goldenoldie 16:36, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello - I don't think the discussion ever came to enough of a conclusion for resolving the Tower of London pages to give Dallan a direction for a broad remedy across the Place namespace. We could try to go down that path again, but my schedule is pretty full until after the new year, so I would not be able to help until mid-January or later.

Merry Christmas to you as well. Hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

--cos1776 17:48, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

p.s. - I like your sense of humor! :)

Re: Person:Isabel Unknown (99) [5 August 2020]

I moved the template for Isabel to the page for her spouse and family. I have just found the parish of Thornley with Wheatly in Lancashire, complete with Bradley Hall as a manor in the 16th and 17th century. I have added a quote from the Victoria History of Lancashire, provided by British History Online on the "head of family" page. --Goldenoldie 08:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Ancestry.com [14 July 2021]

Hello ! Please see my message to Janet : https://www.werelate.org/wiki/User_talk:DataAnalyst#Source:Ancestry.com_-_OneWorldTree - --Markus3 14:20, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I have responded in that thread. Thanks, --cos1776 15:12, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

living persons [5 August 2021]

Hi

You might have missed that I tagged 2 pages for delete (living) on 5 Jul 2021 (or maybe you're still researching them):

Person:Kjell Uppling (1)

Person:Unknown Uppling (1)

--DataAnalyst 16:55, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Appreciate the heads up. I did miss those 2 Upplings. Not sure why, but my vacations seem to always coincide with free access days to the Swedish records, so I do what I can while traveling with the intention to return and complete the info when I am home again. Your deletion templates are pushing me to get to it (which is good!). Thanks, --cos1776 17:17, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi. You may have also missed the following that were tagged for delete on Jul 13. I'll hold off on deleting these as I assume you will update or delete them this month.--DataAnalyst 19:22, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Person:Patricia Isbell (1) deleted --cos1776 18:24, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Person:Lottie Bridges (1) updated --cos1776 18:24, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Person:Marijke Stok (1) not mine
Person:Gertrude Stok (1) not mine
Person:Susan Witt (1) updated --cos1776 19:04, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Person:Birgit Uppling (1) b 106 yrs ago and adopted ; still researching ; added explanation --cos1776 19:04, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Person:William Bogle (7) added source and Famous Person exemption rationale --cos1776 19:04, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Ok. I will keep pecking away at these, along with the others. August is going to be a busy month for me, but I will work on them when I can. --cos1776 17:51, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

see updates to list above --cos1776 19:04, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Trees without dates [10 September 2021]

Hi

In an attempt to ensure that I can identify and address all pages for potentially living people, I wrote a program that determines birth year range based on relatives. This report identifies over 13,000 people for whom my program can't calculate a date range, and they all need to be examined to either add dates or delete them (many are isolated pages with no info other than name).

For about 160 of these pages, you were the last contributor. Could you please go through these pages and add a date somewhere in each tree - it doesn't have to be for every person, just enough to place the tree in time. This will also make the trees more useful for future collaborators.

Let me know if you are willing to do this and I'll skip over them in my list. If not, I'll handle them myself sometime in the next few months. Thanks.

Note: For an example, here are a couple of dates I added this morning that are sufficient for the small trees they are in:

Family:John Logan and Mary Lynn (1)

Family:Louis Tasistro and Adelaide Lynch (1)

Here is the list. My program calculates a date range based on others up to 5 links away - so you can decide how many dates to add. Feel free to skip over the trees you didn't create - I know that quite a few of these were created by others.

[list moved to a project page, --cos1776 17:50, 15 July 2021 (UTC)]

--DataAnalyst 16:00, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what these are yet, but I'll take a look and see if I can help you with your goal. I usually work from sources while focusing on surnames or locations as opposed to working with "trees", so that may explain why some of the people or families are still isolated. --cos1776 16:41, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Update (Sep 2021) - 2 months later and I've made it to the Gs! lol, still pecking away at the list. --cos1776 18:16, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Just wanted to point out my comment on the watercooler [4 August 2021]

Hi Cos1776, I wanted to make you aware of my recent comment on the WeRelate_talk:watercooler.--Dallan 21:57, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Gathering DNA evidence of English Origins for William Hall [18 August 2021]

Dear Dos1776,

    I will gather the data and or details when I return from vacation in the second week of September 2021. We first found links to a biological relative currently living in the UK through my father's FamilyTreeDNA results. We have since that time had at least one more DNA links to that area. You may put this much information on William Hall's Talk page for the time being if you believe it might help.--Clw0505 18:15, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

dates before birth [28 December 2021]

Hi, Cos

I see you didn't like my change to move a non-mention in a will from a fact to the narrative. The reason I did it is that I have a new report (that I hope to eventually productionalize) that identifies events before birth as anomalies. Events before birth prevent the report from accurately identifying when the person lived, which is important for determining situations where a person is in the wrong family. If you can live with having this in the narrative (or a note) I would really appreciate it. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to implement the data quality reporting I would like to. Thanks

BTW, I changed the page again before I looked at the history and realized you had reverted my edit. I wasn't intentionally trying to override you before communicating with you - I just didn't think to look first. But I hope you can live with the change.

Janet--DataAnalyst 00:00, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi Janet - Hope you are enjoying the holidays. Sorry for the delayed response. We were traveling again, so I am now trying to catch up. I appreciate the explanation and can live with the change. --cos1776 20:08, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks [16 January 2022]

for finishing up the merge I started today. I've been very slow with the cleanup and appreciate that I didn't have to do it all.--DataAnalyst 23:15, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I am glad that I didn't step on your toes (at least I hope I didn't). I saw the dup parents when I reviewed the initial changes to the son's page, so I waited a bit to remedy it, in case you were still actively merging. After a while, I took the chance and jumped in. What do you think is the story behind the pages for that family? It looks like they might have been used to test importing gedcoms from Findmypast. --cos1776 14:04, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

No, you didn't step on my toes at all. It looks to me like the text was an automated search into Findmypast records, by passing in name and knowns dates. It took me a while to figure that out - at first I thought it was the results of searching, but I think it was only the search strings, and therefore of no value. I ended up deleting it on all the pages I merged, but didn't want to take the time to clean it up everywhere. And I think you're right - it was from testing.--DataAnalyst 15:59, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Pages for living people [16 January 2022]

Hi

In working through pages for living people, I've come to realize how often online trees put the last known residence of someone into the death place field, making it appear that someone is deceased when they are, in fact, living. Therefore, with Dallan's blessing, WeRelate no longer accepts a death place as evidence of death.

This is a heads up that the following page will be deleted soon unless you can hunt down a death date.

Person:Signe Senander (1)

--DataAnalyst 15:54, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

It took some sleuthing, since I am not currently paying for access to the more contemporary Swedish records, but I finally found a grave record for her, so her page meets your new requirements and can remain on site. --cos1776 18:55, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Edits marked minor by default [16 January 2022]

Hi

I'm not sure you are aware, but all your WeRelate edits are being marked as "minor", which means in many cases, no one gets notified of the change. Users have to ask to be notified of minor changes, and most probably won't do that. (I used to get notified of minor changes and turned it off because there were too many notifications.)

I believe you will find that there is a setting in your profile that is automatically setting all changes to "minor". I would suggest you uncheck this option to enhance your communication with other users. The setting can be changed by selecting Settings (upper right menu) and then the Editing tab. The option is 5th from the bottom. Thanks.--DataAnalyst 16:11, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware of this setting, and I uncheck the box on a case-by-case basis, if I want to make sure the watchers are getting pinged. --cos1776 18:55, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Often times minor edits means one of the associated family pages get changed, with something propagating to this page. I find this is sometimes a significant change, as when the maiden name of the mother is changed, so I personally care about all changes. I turn off notifications so I can reviews changes at my leisure, but I do manage the unvisited-since-last-changed feature of my watchlist very carefully. Be that as it may, it is my experience that few people bother to make any distinction (and after years of doing so, I have given up). The edit summary can actually be far more instructive than major or minor, but it is too easy to hit an inadvertent return and have the page save unintentionally. Not that I want saving to involve a popup asking for a summary and major/minor selection as an added step, but it might be easier than scrolling to the bottom of a page to properly do a fully annotated save. Of course, one person's minor may well be significant (i.e., major) to someone else, so I think a more formal set of criteria may be needed. For example, I feel is there is a sourced death date and it is not changed, adding burial information is minor. Others may disagree. Etc. --Jrich 20:08, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks [5 July 2022]

I appreciate your input re Maggie Flowers. Do you live in Pensacola, Florida? Or do you access the University of West Florida often? My primary interest is in the Settles family and those who connected with the Settles. Love the Archives at that facility but don't often get over that way.

Margaret M. Harris--Maggie 17:02, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Sure thing. There are still many pages here that are essentially "empty" (i.e. no names or dates or places). Sometimes I take a break from other things and work on cleaning them up or adding sources or deleting when warranted. I do not live in Pensacola, but thank you for the tip about the archives. Sounds like a fun place to visit! Best Wishes and Good Luck with your Settles, --cos1776 18:28, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Fidelity to sources [9 July 2022]

I am not sure why why you erased the names of the parents from what the source says, since the page number where it names his parents was cited, and is indeed useful genealogical information contained in the source. If you choose to quote a source instead of the abstract that was there, it is not appropriate to quote less information than covered by the abstract. --Jrich 02:16, 10 July 2022 (UTC) P.S. Misread the history diff about death date, but still the abstract was more complete than what it was replaced with. --Jrich 02:20, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Are you available for mentoring? [28 July 2022]

Hello, Cos. I am a new WR member trying to find my way around the website. Part of my goal is to write some reviews of the site, so I am trying to learn as much as I can about how the site works. Would you be willing to answer some general questions, as well as helping me create my ancestor profiles? If so, where is the best place to do that--here, or by e-mail or some other means? Thank you. - Julie Kelts--Julie Kelts 22:32, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi Julie. Welcome to WeRelate. I'm happy to help you learn how to work here and to answer general questions. To keep the general stuff in one place, I'll go ahead and open a discussion thread for us on your Talk page, and then we can use the Talk pages of the person or family pages to discuss things that pertain specifically to their pages. If you wish, you can also post general questions to our community at large on the Support or Watercooler pages, both of which can be found via the Help dropdown link at the top of any page. --cos1776 13:30, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you.--Julie Kelts 13:33, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Sorry. I left you a comment yesterday about an error I'd tried to correct. When I looked at the person and my explanation here again today I decided my explanation didn't completely make sense so I've deleted it. The whole family is undocumented and to be honest I'd rather spend my time creating my own family profiles. The error I'd started out to fix is fixed. The guy's wife had accidentally been attached as his mother. I'm going to stay away from error corrections that involve family pages for a while until I get more familiar with them.

No worries. I have been finishing up some other work this week and have come to a stopping point, so I should have some time tomorrow to look over the pages here and your review as well. Regards, --cos1776 21:34, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I guess you're still kind of busy? A quick question--I've been trying to do a little cleanup...On the page of Joseph Ketterman (1), which looks like a gedcom upload by a person whose WR activity ceased years ago, is it OK to delete all the junky stuff like all those duplicative alternate names and the redundant and unsourced 1930 and 1940 residence listings, etc.? Thanks.--Julie Kelts 17:57, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I do some free-lance work and thought I was finished with a last minute job, but the client asked for some additional work over the weekend. I have also been doing some of the back-end research for one of the families you asked about, so that some sources would be in place, before I commented on or updated the WR pages.

Re: Person:Joseph Ketterman (1) - This page is a good example of the problems that can come in with gedcom uploads. It is absolutely ok to help by cleaning up these types of pages. We have a small cadre of volunteers who spend much of their time here doing just that. Over the years, there have been some background routines put in place that should help. In this case, you can see that Sources did come in, but there is a lot of duplication. If you open (Edit) and click "Show preview" at the bottom of the page, you should see much of the duplication is removed automatically, and you can work on what remains. Eventually, you'll get a feel for which types of duplications have to be fixed manually and which ones will get fixed thru a first Edit.

Hope that helps, --cos1776 13:22, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I didn't have much luck getting anything removed automatically so I did it manually. I didn't do everything possible to fix the profile but it looks better and the original problem is fixed (there was a 1920 census listed though he wasn't born until 1921). Unfortunately it looks like this person is typical of the entire gedcom, and the original Ancestry tree is equally a mess. I'm afraid I don't have the patience to deal with a lot of things like this. The gedcom upload was 2016. I hope there are more controls now.--Julie Kelts 14:43, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Good start! I left a note on the associated Talk page. --cos1776 15:16, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that. I didn't know it was OK to remove someone's sources, even Ancestry trees.--Julie Kelts 16:08, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree you shouldn't remove primary sources, but for others, you can use discretion while following wiki etiquette and aiming to do no harm. We also have a good revision history log for each page and a rollback function, so old text can be restored if needed. As you know, no one person or group "owns" the pages here, so they should be constructed with general readers in mind, not only those intimately associated with the family or state of the research. In general, citations to primary sources are preferred, but sometimes only secondary are provided, so we usually leave those alone until they can be replaced by stronger sources. Citations to individual user trees (or files or sites), especially behind paywalls, are usually not helpful in proving facts or relationships, unless the citation created here also contains the actual text about data not easily found elsewhere. But, even in that case, it would be better to hunt down and provide the primary sources (and text) for whatever you post. --cos1776 21:20, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

A couple more quick questions: I notice that you changed the name on Joseph Ketterman, leaving the middle name in place in the main name, but moving "Joe" to an alternate name. When I created my first person (my father) I had not realized that the instructions said to use only the first and last names at creation, so I entered him as William David Kelts, yet he still got indexed simply as William Kelts. I asked Janet about that and she said the instructions to leave off the middle name during creation of the person page were outdated. If the format you used on Ketterman is now the preferred format, and if the middle name doesn't cause an indexing problem, then I think it would be useful to update the instructions in a few places, including the Person Portal and the related Help page. I'd be happy to do that it it's OK with you. Janet told me that you and she had developed a plan to update the Help pages, but had not had time to do it. I'm not envisioning making any major changes on my own, but I think clarifying a few things that confused me as a newcomer would be useful to do now. If I can be of help with your larger project when you get to it, please let me know.

Second, is there any way to upload a text PDF? On WikiTree, the same process was used as uploading an image, but I have seen that done here. I'm thinking of things like document transcriptions. And if there is a way, is there a size limit? For instance, I have transcribed a memoir written by a second great aunt of mine. (Here it is on WT: https://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/7/7a/Jackson-29164.pdf.)

Thanks!--Julie Kelts 19:41, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

The page title that you see at the top of each page, is a unique identifier that gets generated when you create a Person page. It is similar to Wikitree's unique page ids that look something like Kelts-1234, but here we use the format "Firstname Lastname (index number)" for Person pages. So, the page title for your father's page is "William Kelts (1)" and no other William Kelts (with or without a middle name) will have that same page title.

The page title and the names entered in the Name fields serve different purposes, so you do not have to worry about the page title interfering with the Search function for finding pages based on Name fields later on. Was that your concern about indexing problems? Can you point me to the text on the Help page(s) to which you refer, so that I can better understand where and how the instructions are confusing?

Re: pdf uploads - pdfs can be uploaded here, but, I am wondering if it is the best way to handle your 43 pg memoir. I think it depends on how you want to use it here and whether or not it already exists as a published source elsewhere (FamilySearch, Google, etc.). What are your thoughts on incorporating it here? I'll see if I can dig up a couple of examples of how others have used transcriptions here.

Regards, --cos1776 21:20, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Re page titles and names, the Person Portal says, in the Titling Conventions section, "When you are adding a new person, you do not need to enter a ##; the system will do that for you. Do not use middle names or titles (either before or after the name). You can enter this information in the ALTERNATE name field after the page's creation." The Help:Person pages page, in the General information section, says much the same thing. I think the "Why the Rules?" section is out of date, and contradicted by the listing of James Clayton Mason in the Examples section.

When I added my father, I referred to the Tutorial (not having found the Person Portal yet). It says the same thing.

I don't know how titles are currently handled. I did notice that George Washington (the President) has one but I haven't seen many others.

By the way, this page needs to be updated, but I can't figure out how to do it because when I click on Edit, the text doesn't appear: Category:U.S. Presidents. Likewise for Category:U.S. Vice Presidents. I did update the Presidents and Vice Presidents templates. (For the VPs, it appears that neither Mike Pence nor Kamala Harris have Person pages yet. I did not put in a link for Harris.)

Re the memoir...well, at the moment that was just an example. I would not upload it before creating the relevant person profiles. But to answer your question, I have posted it to Ancestry and WikiTree but nowhere else. Maybe a more relevant example would be the "history of the Van Wye people" that I mentioned in the biographical information I posted to Abram Van Wye (1). Right now it is online at http://www.vanwye.net/Wordpress/2014/12/07/enochs-1901-history-of-the-vanwyes/ but I have no control over whether Ken VanWye keeps that site online. So I'd like to see it posted somewhere else as well. But now that I think of it, I'm not ready to consider that. I think I have a photocopy of the handwritten original and would like to re-transcribe it. Maybe someday. Meanwhile, there are lots of smaller PDFs, such as will transcriptions, that I will probably want to post as I create my ancestor pages on WR.--Julie Kelts 17:16, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Re: Portal:Person, Tutorial, and other pages mentioned - (sigh...), the text to which you refer was written 10+ years ago when the steps to create a Person page were slightly different, so you are correct in that they are no longer completely accurate. I will put it on my ToDo list.

Re: titles - enter in the Name Prefix field on any name row. If entered in Row 1, it will render on the page as part of the Preferred Name.

Re: Category:U.S. Presidents and Category:U.S. Vice Presidents - pages in the Category namespace function differently from other pages. How do you think these need to be updated? I think another user is monitoring the the associated Template pages, so they will probably help finish the updates there as soon as they see your changes. I'll keep an eye on it, and follow thru if a few days go by with no further response.

Re: memoir - I responded further on your Talk page.

--cos1776 18:56, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Hey, I wasn't suggesting that you fix those pages. I'd be happy to do it, at least the parts I'm certain of. I just wanted some confirmation. How about if I do it and you review my changes?

I hadn't noticed those perfectly obvious "Name prefix" and "Name suffix" boxes! A question still remains--are there standards for their use? I looked and didn't find anything.

Please look at this page: Template:Wp-President_of_the_United_States. (It is both out of date and has some incomplete information pasted in with a different font.) I figured out that this is the page that feeds into the Presidents category page. It seems like a simple copy and paste from WP, but when I look at the history, every single update has been done by "WeRelate agent" which suggests to me that some special permission is needed (or desired for record-keeping).

Re the memoirs, I responded on my own page. Turns out both were already Waybacked. I hadn't thought of using those links before.--Julie Kelts 20:05, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

P.S. I can't even get back to that template now that I try. The information is duplicated on the Category:U.S. Presidents page, and looking at that in edit mode is how I noticed the template.--Julie Kelts 20:13, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Templates that start with Wp- are built by the WeRelate software by copying the summary from wikipedia. You should not edit them as they will be overwritten next time the update is run (you can but it will be temporary). If the information in that portion is wrong, it is because wikipedia is wrong, which it sometimes is. You have to be careful with prefixes and suffixes because often they only represent one viewpoint, e.g., people often number from immigration but when connecting to the overseas family, the convention may not fit. Most "Jr." are also "Sr." at some point in their life, so burdening them with the suffix Jr. may indicate the poster's focus, but not necessarily a universal one. Sometimes, though, it is hard to distinguish without those suffixes. The same with prefixes, e.g., Capt. Dr. etc. --Jrich 02:31, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Hello, Jrich. Thank you for the explanation. It makes sense that all the WP updates are done in an automated process. How often is it done? The page I mentioned has an obvious error. A section of text begins mid-sentence. Also, the current U.S. President information is out of date. I hope no one will mind if I update that. And I won't mind when what I do is overwritten in the next update.

Regarding prefixes and suffixes, I occasionally use them but only when they appear in the records and it is obvious that the person used them in his own lifetime.--Julie Kelts 18:59, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Data Quality Issues report [11 October 2022]

Hi

I'm going through the Data Quality Issues report and have hit a few issues where you were the original contributor, such as Person:Charles Breeding (1) (his father has the same birth year as he does; also, his death date matches his marriage date, which isn't reported in the list but I suspect is an error). Since you are active on the site, I'm wondering if you would go through the list and correct issues for your own trees, at least. Select My Relate > My Trees, then select check beside a tree.

Thanks--DataAnalyst 15:44, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Not sure why, but I sure did get mixed up there. Thanks for catching the errors. I think it is fixed now. --cos1776 21:16, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Beall pages [18 October 2022]

[comment moved to this subheading] Now tht you have changed William to Andrew, do you know WHICH Eliza Beal he married?--LynetteJester 23:15, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Not yet, but I'm still actively working on the Beall pages surrounding these lines. They were uploaded via gedcom with zero sources in 2009, so I have been trying to add at least one source. I'm running into some errors, omissions, and duplications, so if you are watching these families, you may see some confusion before the dust settles as the family units get straightened out. I see you have jumped in and added some primary records, which is great (and preferred), so please let me know if you would like to take over the sourcing of any of these families, and I'll gladly step out of your way, so that we aren't stepping on each others toes. --cos1776 13:57, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

A man after my own heart! Sourcing! My interest is the Jesters and correcting them. And others have had an Eliza Beal/l married to 3 different Andrew Jesters. I have her at Wikitree Beal-3422 That land deed, when you read it, and how long and far its been traded, ALL for the same $800. This William/Andrew was on my list, but got shoved to the back burner. It was finding the original David E. Jester deed, the one I posted stating Andrew was heir-in-law, and Andrew naming a son David E.

I think you might be right with Ninian. I just like watching and making sure no one screws up the Jesters.

THANK YOU for fixing Andrew.

Lynette--LynetteJester 15:15, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Monthly Meeting is not a place [31 October 2022]

It was a meeting where church records were conglomerated from the various member societies. A marriage may have occurred in Cane Creek, which is a place. The marriage record say Susanna's father was in Orange Co., and that is probably the most precise location one can have much confidence in. --Jrich 22:31, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

I hear you, and I struggled with just that as it affects several hundred pages which have been linking to Place:Cane Creek, Chatham, North Carolina, United States since 2009. Before I got into this mess, I tried to find "Cane Creek" defined as a place as we usually think of one, but with the exception of the meeting, could only find it as a river or mountain area in the vicinity of the meeting. Since "Place of worship" is an option for the Place pages (I did not know that) and it was clear to me that the original intent of most of the entries was to refer to the meeting (or what was recorded there, as you pointed out), I made the decision to keep the meeting Place page, but to title it correctly (1900 rule) and do my best to fix the associated Place field entries to reflect the meeting when it seemed appropriate and the more conventional place link (county, town, etc) when the meeting was not appropriate. I'm in the middle of this now, so it will take me another day or two to get it all resolved. If you would rather link pages you're watching to a county or town, I understand and have no objection. --cos1776 23:20, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't know about this wedding but most marriages I have seen the certificates for did not occur during the monthly meeting so putting it as the place is also wrong in that regard. The ones I have seen, you need the certificate usually to tell where the marriage occurred, at somebody's house, etc. As far as places, "Cane Creek Meeting House" would possibly be the place, but monthly meeting is a meeting, just as the quarterly meeting was. Wikipedia says the meeting house is located in Snow Camp, Place:Snow Camp, Alamance, North Carolina, United States, where you put the cemetery, Place:Cane Creek Monthly Meeting Cemetery, Snow Camp, Alamance, North Carolina, United States. --Jrich 23:34, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

'Place of worship' may be on the list of place types (it's used for a handful of churches and abbeys were people were buried), but the Place conventions in Help specifically say "do not create place pages for Churches". I am following up to see if we should remove 'Place of worship' from the list of place types and delete the existing handful of Place pages for churches.

As you have both noted, neither the place nor the date of the marriage should be taken from the place or date that a monthly meeting was held. My memory of reading MM records is that they received marriage intentions, then (usually?) appointed a committee to counsel/assist the couple, and then the committee reported back that the wedding had taken place (in between monthly meetings and not necessarily at the meeting house). This is supported by the Wikipedia article on Quaker weddings.

As far as the 1900 rule goes, if I read Wikipedia correctly, the place (the unincorporated area) was known as Snow Camp long before 1900. It was the place where the Cane Creek Friends Meeting community (a group of people) settled in 1751 - so I guess we might consider the 1751 name for Snow Camp to be Cane Creek Friends Meeting (a bit confusing for those of us who think of meetings as events, but according to Wikipedia, Monthly Meetings are governing bodies or congregations - or, by extension, communities). Nowadays, if you look at Google, it attaches the name Cane Creek Friends Meeting to a specific building - presumably the Meeting House - within Snow Camp. A bit confusing, but still supporting the argument that there shouldn't be a separate Place page for Cane Creek MM. Cane Creek Friends Meeting (more accurate than Cane Creek Monthly Meeting) is either a pre-1900 name for Snow Camp or the name of a modern-day congregation (or both).

I see we have 3 other Place pages for Monthly Meetings, with a few marriages at each. These will have to have links cleaned up and the Place pages deleted as well.--DataAnalyst 17:23, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Ok - I am digesting all of this and think we have separate but related topics, if you include DA's comment left on Place Patrol Talk, so here are my thoughts:

Re: Place page for Cane Creek MM - in light of recent discussions, I see that I have run afoul of some of the old guidelines when deciding how to resolve the problems with the Cane Creek Place page. As I said before, it was clear that the originators were referring to the meeting, I liked the idea of being able to create a list of all of the pages that linked to the meeting without the hassle of maintaining a Category page, and the "Place of worship" option made it seem reasonable. I will take the responsibility for fixing the links (again) and removing that Place page.

Re: Place page for Snow Camp in Alamance County, NC - I think we all agree that this is a place. I believe it is titled correctly as is. I am inclined to disagree about entering "Cane Creek" as an Alt name, but am open to considering it. I do think a note on the page about the history of the community and the Quakers role in it would be helpful to explain the situation.

Re: Marriage dates for Quakers - Are you saying that the marriage dates in sources such as Hinshaw are actually meeting dates? That doesn't seem right and would affect most of the existing Quaker genealogy, but I suppose we should verify that.

Re: what to do with the other existing church Place pages - If they are being used as places of burial, I think they should stay with Type = Cemetery and a prominent note on each page explaining their purpose.

Re: removing Type = Place of worship on Place pages - I agree to avoid future confusion.

--cos1776 18:45, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Question about your edit to my aunts page. [28 December 2022]

Hello,

You edited my Aunt Linda’s page and wrote that the information in her Biography was duplicated. Do you not use the bottom section for their biography? If the information shouldn’t be duplicated do we have to source the information in the top section? I’m trying to be active on this site so I’m asking questions as I go.

Thanks in advance,

Pam--Pam41014 18:03, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Pam - Welcome to WeRelate! Yes, some choose to use the "Personal History" field to write up some additional information about the person's life or notes about the state of the research on that person, etc. I think some other wikis prefer and encourage bios in paragraph form, and both FamilySearch and Ancestry auto-generate them from the data fields. I added the comment to the edit to let you know that you don't have to do that here, especially if it is just to repeat the info from the "Event and Facts" fields and the family links and obituary, since those things are already there on the page. And yes, in general, we are trying to follow good genealogical practices which say you should provide a source for any fact or event you are posting. You have already done a good job of that for the data that is there now, so you do not have to repeat the citations.

I hope you will enjoy working on this site. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have, either here on my page or on the general Support page. The regular contributors here are a friendly bunch. Best Wishes, --cos1776 19:55, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Find A Grave [31 December 2022]

Your recent spate of Find A Grave inspired postings, some of which pinged on my watchlist, contained several errors. The source page for Find A Grave contains several useful warnings about using that site. Unless sources are cited on the memorial page, which is unusual for Find A Grave postings, the only piece of authoritative information are the actual contents of the gravestone. Information added by the memorial page is usually little better than an unsourced Internet tree. Using Find A Grave without checking other sources is probably not "good genealogical practices". For example, see Person:Sarah Gibson (53) where the memorial page gives a birth date different than what is actually on the gravestone. Without finding the source that justifies what the memorial page says, the gravestone date should have been what was posted. --Jrich 16:19, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Potentially living people [6 January 2023]

Hi, Cos

I note that you recently added a person who might have been born in the last 110 years: Person:Lawrence Aversano (1). Please note that all such people now require a death date in order to remain on WeRelate. I am busy investigating all the remaining pages where there is no death date and the person might have been born in the last 110 years based on the assumptions used in finding errors in family relationships. Please find dates for him or his page will have to be deleted. Thanks.--DataAnalyst 12:31, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Added while trying to help you clear your DQ list. Meant to circle back. Page deleted. --cos1776 13:52, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Duplicate profile [7 February 2023]

Hello, Cos. I see that you're watching Thomas Paxton (17). I am working on Paxton research and notice that there is a duplicate profile, Thomas Paxton (8). (There may also be some issues with his father's profile(s).) I don't have any experience doing merges on WeRelate so am hoping you might take a look at this. Thanks!--Julie Kelts 21:24, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi Julie - I agree with you that there appears to be one or more duplicates in the families associated with those pages, probably as a result of previous merges of person or family pages and general errors. At first glance it looks like a tangled web that would have to be carefully untangled with good sourcing to back up everything. I am presently dealing with some family issues and am not able to devote the time needed for this task right now. If you would like to do the research to straighten out the families, I can help with the actual merging when you get ready. Or, I might refer you to User:Delijim who uploaded the original gedcom(s) and is active on the site and helpful. I'm sorry that I can not do more to help at this time. Best wishes, --cos1776 00:45, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for responding. I began working on the Paxtons because I have many DNA matches with Paxtons in their ancestry, and although that doesn't mean that I have a Paxton ancestor, it does suggest that if I figure out how they're all related to each other, that will be a step towards figuring out where my own connection fits in. I'm using a 1903 book called "The Paxtons" as the basis for setting up a Paxton line on my Ancestry tree (of course, gathering all the documentation I can for each person). The book seems generally reliable for later generations, but not so much for the earlier ones, yet it does seem that these people are all related somehow. I've got a lot more work to do before I will be comfortable with my conclusions. At some point I may be in a position to post some corrections to the WeRelate profiles, but I don't want to do it alone. I'd love to find someone who is also interested in the Paxtons to compare ideas with. Delijim watches your Talk page, so presumably will see this comment and maybe contact me.

I see that "The Paxtons" has a WR source page, so I will post some comments there about its likely errors (when I have summarized them).--Julie Kelts 19:17, 7 February 2023 (UTC)