User talk:Jaques1724/User talk:Jaques1724-2011

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If you need any help, I will be glad to answer your questions. Just click on my signature link below and then click on the “Leave a message” link under my name in the upper left corner of my profile page. Thanks for participating and see you around! Debbie Freeman --DFree 12:36, 11 April 2011 (EDT)

Re: William Holton The Holton records have been spelled in numerous forms. William's Dedham records do have spellings of both Holton & Houghton. William's son John maintained the "Houghton" spelling. Therefore it is pretty certain that William of the Francis/Elizabeth is the same William of Hartford/Northampton. Unfortunately the Great Migration does have missing info. It is a wonderful source but not 100% complete.--SandyS 09:21, 7 January 2013 (EST)

Savage's Genealogical Dictionary [18 April 2011]

For the last 10+ years, as I've worked on early New England Families, I've been "grooming" (for lack of a better word), Judge Savage's original work. This started with the original scanning and editing by Robert Kraft, Benjamin Dunning, Warren Wetmore and Debbie which has been and is available at Savage's Dictionary. Any excerpts that I post will (1) have been un-abbreviated; (2) checked against the Kraft, et.al, version for errors missed in their initial proof-reading of the OCR versions; (3) checked to ensure that latter corrections by Judge Savage have been incorporated; and (4) providing my own corrections when I am aware of subsequent research which renders Judge Savage's statements and/or conclusions inaccurate. I'm posting this because I expect to periodically post some of these "corrected" versions of Savage and so that anyone who has issues or questions concerning this approach has a starting point for discussion.--Jaques1724 15:13, 13 April 2011 (EDT)

I believe this is a misguided approach. The "groomed" citation is now your work, not Savage's. It will not be clear to the reader what is the original and what is your assumption. Anybody that knows Savage will look at your entry and know it is not vanilla Savage and will not trust it. If you are going to expand Savage's abbreviations, I feel the proper way to do it is with brackets, as you will see in my edits to Person:John Craft (14). If there is a correction, whether provided by Savage in a separate publication, or another author, that should be indicated separately, possibly as a note attached to the citation or a separate citation, else the reader will compare your citation to his copy of Savage and lose all trust for your citation. I share your frustration over Savage's crabbed style that sacrifices clarity to save a few pages of paper, but there is a greater need here to only attribute to Savage what he actually said with strictest fidelity. --Jrich 23:17, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

Place names [20 April 2011]

Recently you edited Person:Jacob French (14) (and I believe others), and added an alias "Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts" to the end of the standard place name "Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States" for his birth in 1640. And since the data didn't come from a GEDCOM, you must have intentionally typed it in. I and several other people are actually doing the opposite, removing such aliases and leaving the standard place name, since such aliases add no information. It is part of my mental checklist of things to do every time I edit a page.

I know you are not trying to use a historical place name, because Middlesex County did not exist until 1643, and in the year 1640 this area was Massachusetts Bay Colony, not Massachusetts. Yet your alias did not add any information that wasn't already there, so I can't figure out what your intent was.

Why I remove these kind of aliases, fyi, is primarily because the aliases complicate editing. They tend to make the place name so long that the alias is not in the visible part of the editable field, and sometimes even after an edit, a place will still carry a stale alias as a result. They can hide mistakes (like naming a page in England but hiding it with an alias in US, or similar, which I run across now and then). Finally, they mess up auto-completion since a place with an alias won't autocomplete, which provides useful verification that one got the name correctly. Esthetically, I think they give a non-standard appearance to the page, particularly family pages, where some place names are long, some are short, and it makes the page looks sloppy and uncared for, and the lack of consistency of usage makes it harder for new users to discern how places work. I believe these are mostly intended to deal with non-standard place names that come in via GEDCOMs, and otherwise should generally be avoided, and that attempts to use aliases almost always really belong as part of the source citation or part of the narrative where a full explanation of what is trying to be communicated may be given. --Jrich 19:07, 20 April 2011 (EDT)

Dangling pages [21 April 2011]

Hi. Recently you edited Family:Nicholas Danforth and Elizabeth Symmes (1), largely to change the name of Elizabeth Symmes to Elizabeth Barber. I got notified having accidentally put myself on the watchlist a few months back experimenting with trees. As nothing on Elizabeth Symmes' page indicated any information that pertained to Elizabeth before her marriage - no parents, even the birth date was estimated from birth of first child, a post-marriage event - and I believe it would have been better to change her name, rather than detaching Elizabeth Symmes and creating a new page for Elizabeth Barber. It was very clear that the page was intended to be the wife of Nicholas Danforth. The five people watching the old page were now left watching a page that attached to no other person, when one must presume they wanted to be watching the wife of Nicholas Danforth, whatever her name is or turns out to be. Not having studied the situation, I am not even sure that an Elizabeth Symmes existed, so the dangling page may have represented a fictitious person, but in any event the data on the dangling page only pertained to the wife of Nicholas Danforth. I merged this dangling page into your newly created Elizabeth Barber page so those five people are again watching the wife of Nicholas Danforth. --Jrich 08:56, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

LDS Info [22 April 2011]

I happenned to see your message to Amelia, and I added a further comment over on that page. While I'm not a member of the LDS church - and I whole heartedly agree that WeRelate is a strictly secular environment - the efforts and circumstances of the LDS on behalf of genealogy seemed to me to warrant less brusque treatment on our part. So before you start cutting LDS info - let's be sure that's what we want to do. Thanks! --Jrm03063 14:06, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

My problem is that the software does not allow me to save the pages with those recent dates up in the date fields. I've got three choices: (1) don't edit those pages at all; (2) eliminate the references to LDS info; or (3) copy and paste in the text field. I certainly mean no disrespect to the Church and I'm sorry if it sounded that way. My intention was obtain guidance on the appropriate way to work around the constraints imposed by the software.

P.S. If anybody else has input, please provide. There's still more than a bit of a mess in the families of Deacon Peter Brackett and I'd like to clean it up A.S.A.P. In the interim, I intend to move the LDS dates down in to the text field and they can be eliminated later if appropriate. If I don't do it that way, it's not going to get done.

My take would be to delete it. I have been when I encounter it. I also commented on Amelia's page so I won't repeat that. Most of these came into through GEDCOM uploads ,and are there probably because the contributor simply loaded everything they had on their home computer, without necessarily realizing or intending to share this data, regardless of how appropriate it is or isn't (isn't in my opinion). --Jrich 15:16, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

Dallan (head of the site) has agreed these should be deleted. You can go ahead.--Amelia 10:48, 22 April 2011 (EDT)

Isaac Stedman

I'm going to revert the changes you just made. Because there is a documented christening date, a birth estimate that is not materially different should not be used because it will then get picked up by search and family pages instead of the christening date. Source information needs to go with the source that it's from, not in the description fields, because otherwise they can get separated during subsequent edits. Also, information as it came from the source should remain in the source citation detail field, even if it seems like right now it's duplicating what's in the event fields, so 1) others can determine if there was any interpretation involved in the events; and 2) the connection between source and what information came from it is preserved if other sources are added. --Amelia 10:48, 22 April 2011 (EDT)

Articles [26 April 2011]

Help:Source page titles says "Please put the author and title information for the actual article you're citing in the "Record Name" field or the "Text/Transcription" field of the Source Citation on the page citing the periodical. The practical reason for this is that most articles have such a narrow focus that they do not really need to have separate source pages devoted to them."

Unless there is a pressing need to add commentary about the article on the source page, Article source pages are actually less useful than using the existing source page for the periodical Source:New England Historical and Genealogical Register and putting the article author and title into the record field (i.e., Bartlett, Ralph Sylvester. "Alexander Shapleigh Of Kittery, Maine, And Some Of His Descendants"). Because the way citations are built, the page range for the whole article gets pulled in and obscures focused page number references. So, for example, the citation Bartlett, Ralph Sylvester. Alexander Shapleigh Of Kittery, Maine, And Some Of His Descendants. New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (Apr 1941-Jan 1742), 95 : 180ff, 264ff, 324ff; 96 :27ff. on Person:Edward Hilton (7), the user is not directed to the page that discusses Edward Hilton but to a rather long series of pages on the extensive Shapleigh family. In fact, if they are trying to order the pertinent stuff through PERSI or some similar service, they don't even know which issue to get, much less which pages to ask to get copied. --Jrich 10:25, 25 April 2011 (EDT)

Point taken and understood. However, it seems to me that with these extensive articles, which may be the only "family genealogy" done on an immigrant ancestor, both the ancestor's identity and the author ought to be captured on a source page. Taking this (Shapleigh) as an example, how should I handle both the source page and the citation on the Edward Hilton page so that someone who is relatively unfamiliar with WeRelate can most easily determine where to go to pursue their research on either Shapleigh or Hilton. There are a lot more of these out there; one which comes quickly to mind is the extensive article, really a series similar to the five generation studies on Mayflower families, on the Spencer brothers which appeared in The American Genealogist in the early 1950's. Thanks for your help. --Jaques1724 13:04, 25 April 2011 (EDT)

So I added the page number "(esp. 95:181)" in the source citation. The displayed citation now gives the full set of installments from the Source page, and appends my little note from the citation at the end. Probably not up to librarian standards, but the combination indicates to me the reality better, that Edward Hilton is talked about on one page of one part of a multi-part article, and it still leaves the Source page intact so those interested in Shapleighs and related families can add commentary. Makes me happier anyway. Does that seem reasonable to you?

My philosophical preference would probably be to see a page number in the citation override any page numbers on the Source page when the citation is displayed, as a rule, since it more likely to be focused on the pertinent part, but having the full set of pages numbers on the Source page would be useful when people clicked on the link to read more about the source, and would be used if no page number was specified in the citation. This issue hasn't come up enough times to really have a good idea of the ramifications, much less bother Dallan about it yet. Ironically, Edward Hilton is mentioned again in vol. 95 in an article on Walter Barefoote, p. 219 and 231. --Jrich 14:22, 25 April 2011 (EDT)

I went back to the source page and altered my approach. I think it's cleaner now but would like your input. I decided that if the volume and page are included in the source citation (as you did), including the volume numbers in the volume field of the source page is redundant when they are included in the text field (and clutter up the source citation on the person page).--Jaques1724 21:15, 25 April 2011 (EDT)

Removed fact from Grace Palmer (16) [1 May 2011]

I am curious as to why you would remove a fact (Living Mar 1737/38, in Rehoboth) from the record of Person:Grace Palmer (16). The fact was cited (with a secondary source that identifies the primary source), and provides information about how long she lived, in the absence of a death date. --DataAnalyst 03:30, 29 April 2011 (EDT)

My mistake, no excuse, rolled back. Thanks for catching it.--Jaques1724 10:13, 29 April 2011 (EDT)

IGI records [1 May 2011]

On Person:Anne Fiske (2), you wrote "online IGI records either say South Elmham St. James or do not specify". I looked through the 25 IGI records and every one is user-submitted, basically anonymous and sourceless, and therefore of no credibility. Some IGI records refer to films, and those films do turn out to be parish registers, so those particular IGI records are valuable, but the rest are essentially pollution. --Jrich 09:26, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

On the other hand, if you consult Smith's Genealogical Gazetteer of England, there is no entry for South Elmham, but there is one for each of the seven South Elmham villages named after their respective parish churches. Also, there are place pages on this site for each of those seven but not for South Elmham, Suffolk, England. How would you handle this one?--Jaques1724 12:38, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

My point was only that basing anything on user-submitted IGI records doesn't carry much credibility. I have no real opinion on this issue. I would cite my sources, try to indicate accurately what they say. I don't think Jacobus mentions the church of the baptism if I remember, hence no village, so if I wanted to make it clear, I might add [specific church not named], or something like that, to my abstract of what he does say. Henry Bond's Genealogies of Watertown, Vol. 2, p. 756, says something vague that indicates the family comes from St. James in South Elmham, and Pierce in the Fiske and Fisk Family (available on archive.org), p. 49-50, says the father resided in "St. James, So. Elmham, Eng." --Jrich 13:57, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

That doesn't really answer my question. What do I do with the place field on her page. There a place page for each of the seven villages/parishes but none for the generic South Elmham. You are correct that Jacobus does not mention the parish (at least not in Ackley-Bosworth). I suppose the easiest thing would be to cite Pierce, although I've spent enough time and energy trying to make sense of what he wrote about that family (and Foster, which is one of my lines) that I have a thorough distaste for his work. I had also checked the IGI records hoping to tie one back to the registers, but we both got the same result.--Jaques1724 14:33, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

It is a little surprising of Jacobus not to be a little more descriptive. Well you are allowed to add/change WeRelate place pages, but assuming that those seven villages represent the actual population centers correctly, you have to pick one. So clearly based on the located sources, it is St. James. It sounds like the only other choice would be to go to the County level. I doubt many people would notice if no source specifically says St. James :-), or you can cite Pierce as a stop gap. Presuming that Jacobus based his report on an actual parish record (where did the date come from after all?), someday you'll find it, and can remove Pierce at that point, correcting the place if need be. --Jrich 15:45, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Genealogical Research in England by G. Andrews Moriarty on The Fiske Family. Huge article with three installments of just original records, followed by multi-generational summary of the family. Page 87:45: Transcription by Rev. Lancelot Bird made in 1924, St. James, South Elmham, Baptisms, 1593-1657: 1610 Ane, daughter of John and Anne Fyske, 1 April. Summary section of the article on p. 88:273: Anne, bapt. at St. James, South Elmham, 1 Apr. 1610; d. at Dedham, Mass., 5 Dec 1649; m. Francis Chickering. They went to Massachusetts in 1637 and settled at Dedham, where he was ensign, selectman, and deputy. They had issue. --Jrich 16:11, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

Excellent; thanks. By the way, regarding the citation in Ackley-Bosworth, we can't be too hard on Jacobus, he was only the editor of the material gathered by Parke who was compiler and publisher.--Jaques1724 16:15, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

John How/Howe [12 July 2012]

I though it unnecessary to switch the Alt Name and Preferred Name on this page. Then I noticed that the only two contemporary records actually use "John How" and only secondary sources use "John Howe". Then I discovered a letter in NEHGR 4:64 with a facsimile of his signature which is "John How". It seems to be spelled consistently in his will as How, also, including the signature. So the change that was made is seems either gratuitous and unnecessary, or for those that believe in historical accuracy, wrong.

Secondly, I don't think the way you handled the birth date was all that helpful to future readers. You wiped out a date and an alt. date that do appear in many places, inserted an estimate, and then cited a source that gave yet a third date creating a confusing message and not providing any explanation of what was wrong with the old date. If nothing can be proved, putting one unproven choice over another unproven choice seems like no improvement. I think it would have been better to have included a note with a survey of the alternatives and the conclusion that his origins are unknown leaving only a rough estimate, so the next person that comes along won't assume you weren't aware of the alternatives.

John How has had a lot of various information printed about him by many sources. One gets a different picture, it seems, in each one. You seem to be relying mostly on one source. Unfortunately it is still in copyright and not readily available so I haven't seen it. However, "perhaps" doesn't exactly inspire me to grant it lots of credibility. What makes Devonshire any more likely than Warwickshire? An abstract would help. --Jrich 21:34, 18 May 2011 (EDT)

I'm new, so I still need to be educated. Below are the full quotations from the sources I have available; given that data, how would you construct the page for John Howe the first?

Howe Genealogies, I:1-2.

"Of the ancestry of John Howe of Sudbury and Marlborough, nothing seems to be known, except that he was an Englishman. From the painting which used to hang upon the walls of the old Red Horse or Howe Tavern in Sudbury, and from vague family traditions, it has been conjectured that the father of John was John How, Esq.; that the latter was of Warwickshire, England, and was a son of John How in Hodinhull, and was related to the family of Lord Charles How, Earl of Lancaster in the reign of Charles I.

"Of this tradition," says Mr. Barry (History of Framingham, p, 293) "the author of this history has yet failed of discovering confirmation in the records of Watertown." Mr. Savage (Savage: Gen. Dic. Vol. 2, p. 475) also seems to be skeptical about the truth of the tradition. As there is no way of verifying it, the tradition will probably continue to rest upon mere speculation and conjecture.

Every reasonable effort has been made by me and by various others of the descendants of John How, to ascertain something definite about his English ancestry, and these efforet have been aided by genealogist in England and others there. So far very little progress has been made.

In 1900, at the solicitation of Mr. George R. Howe of Newark, N. J., Mr. Richard Savage of Stratford, Secretary of the Shakespeare Birthplace Association, made an investigation of the records of the parishes of Warwickshire, which showed that there were several Hows there at an early date. Among those there in 1580-1588 who were rated for the support of the poor, wer John How, Thomas How, and Lyman Now of St. Nicholas Parish. In 1608-9 John How of the same parish was tenant of one of the houses owned by the parish, and paid more rent than any other person, except one, in the parish. The names of John, Thomas and Lyman are all very common among the descendants of John How of Sudbury and Marlborough.

Mr. Savage also found that Hodinhull in Warwickshire, had been merged in Hodnet. In Dugdale's England and Wales (edition of 1835, vol. 2, p. 967) Hodnet is mentioned as being in Warwickshire, three miles from Southam, nine from Warwick, seven from Kineton and eighty-one from London, and as having a population in 1835 of only nine. It lay between Ladbroke and Itchington and is now depopulated, and it would require much time and expense to ascertain the whereabouts of the ancient records and to make an investigation thereof."

The Ancestry of Eva Belle Kempton, III:257

"John and Abraham Howe were not the only immigrants of that surname in early New England, but they were the only two to end their lives in Marlborough, Mass. Beyond this and the fact that Abraham witnessed John's will, only their children's intermarriage, and a year's service in 1673 when they were both selectmen in the same town, connects them on this side of the Atlantic.

The Howe family in Woodbury, Devonshire, includes first cousins once removed of the appropriate ages to be our immigrants John and Abraham Howe. Unfortunately, a great dearth of information outside of the parish registers, hampers efforts to demonstrate any more than the most basic facts about these families. Like so many parish registers in this era, Woodbury's loses track of the Howes just about the time John and Abraham might have come to New England. Several distinctive given names were used in Woodbury: Anthony, Ursula, Susanna, Abraham and Isaac, names that, with the exception of Abraham and Isaac, were not used in New England. We are left with no conflicting evidence, but precious little confirmation that these were our men.

For this reason, a simple outline of the Woodbury families is included in this chapter, but no claims that John and Abraham there are the same as John(1) and Abraham(1) here (Extensive surveys of Woodbury and nearby parish registers, as well as probate searches, were conducted by Clifford Stott, F.A.S.G. His reports are in the Howe folders of the Smith-Sanborn manuscript collection at NEHGS."

p. 261

"John(1) Howe (perhaps John(A), Anthony(B)), perhaps the child baptized at Woodbury, Devon, England, 22 June 1617, …"

Bruce Ancestry, 15

"John How of Sudbury was the son of John How, Esquire, of Warwickshire, who descended from John, the son of John of Hodinhill, who was of the family of Sir Charles How of Lancaster in the reign of Charles I." [no attribution for the quote, sounds like it's quoting Howe Genealogies]

Bigelow-Howe, 17

"It has been printed that he was the son of John Howe of Warwickshire, Eng., who descended from the family of Sir Charles the First but Savage, the best authority known on New England families, denies the claim."

Savage, 2:475

"HOWE, JOHN, Sudbury, s. of John, Warwicksh. (as a very respect. writer in Worcester Magaz. II. 130, gathers the tradit. speaking of his relation to Howe, Earl of Lancaster, when such a title in the peerage had not existed for near two hundred yrs.), had been a long time at Watertown, freem. 13 May 1640, by w. Mary had John, b. 24 Aug. 1640; Samuel, 20 Oct. 1642; Sarah, 25 Sept. 1644; Mary, 18 Jan. 1646, d. young; Isaac, 8 Aug. 1648; Josiah; Mary, again, 18 Jan. 1654; Thomas; Daniel, 3 Jan. 1658, d. young; Alexander, 1661, d. soon; Daniel, perhaps tw. with the last in b. and d.; and Eliezer, 1662. He had pet. 1656, for the grant of Marlborough, and rem. thither with his fam. and d. 10 July 1678. His wid. liv. twenty yrs. later. Sarah m. a Ward; and Mary, m. 1672, John Wetherby."

Jaques1724 23:36, 18 May 2011 (EDT)

It is beyond my expertise to judge English claims. As I had read things, I think Bigelow-Howe had mistated the findings of the Howe Genealogy, in which (Richard) Savage didn't so much deny claims as it was simply unable to prove them? Clifford Stott is usually pretty good, and I would want to read his whole document, but why did he go to Devon? Just because he found both an Abraham and John there? The bottom line appears to my reading to be that there have been at least two extensive surveys of parish registers, both finding some How/Howe families and some naming patterns that match, in two different locations, but nothing has been found that can conclusively, or even probably in my opinion, identify the origins of John How. But as I indicated, I rely on others to figure out the stuff overseas.

My concerns center more on communicating with the future reader of this page. The whole thing is a long story, and the question is how to best communicate it to the reader, starting with the multiple death dates in print, the age at death for which no basis appears known but probably has influenced some of the information in print, and continuing with inconclusive searches for his origins. You know people are going to come along that have only seen one source, either this one or that one, and whatever their source says, they are going to want to see that on the page. So if it isn't acknowledged somehow, the data on the page could get erased in the process of them putting there. So, simply removing the Hodinhull information, doesn't strike me as the right thing to do.

If I missed something, and Hodinhull is actually considered disproven, that case needs to be presented, because I can vouch that it is a far easier set of facts to find on the Internet than is the Devon case. And if it is not disproven, then it should probably be left as an alternative. --Jrich 09:44, 19 May 2011 (EDT)

I'd handle this situation by including the bulk of what you quoted above in a section of his page called "Origins". But I'd probably summarize it a bit more so than you did here. Jillaine 10:53, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

Sorry about the spam [1 June 2011]

I deleted the message here that contained link spam and blocked the user that posted it. I don't know what tools WeRelate has in place to prevent spam from being posted - that would be a good question for Dallan. When spam does sneak through, admins delete it manually and block the user. --Jennifer (JBS66) 05:00, 1 June 2011 (EDT)

Double dating [10 July 2011]

Your recent changes caused me to look at Person:Mercy Warren (1) and I just wanted to rely my thoughts about the double dating. You may want to check with Dallan.

I believe the facts represent conclusions. They are supported by one or more source citations. The source citations should be shown to say just what they say, so that if you want to add double dating to a source citation, brackets are definitely appropriate to show that it is an added comment by you as "editor".

However, the facts represent conclusions, not any single source. They are the distillation of all the sources, some of which often say different things. For example, I have frequently seen the vital records give the old style year, and Cutter or some other genealogist to give the new style year. Therefore I don't believe brackets belong in the fact, any more than you would have to misspell the month in the fact because your source left the r out of February, etc.

I am not sure exactly how well the software deals with dates having brackets, but as this is not in the GEDCOM specification, I expect it would be a matter of luck if it happens to throw away what appears to be extraneous punctuation and handles it correctly.

Anyway, very thrilled to see all your sources, it is very encouraging to see others that care about documenting how it is that things are known. --Jrich 11:20, 10 July 2011 (EDT)

Just to clarify - it had to be 1657/58 (even though the source said 1657) since the next older child was born 2 August 1656. If not for that information, I would have left her birth date as 20 Feb 1657.

Like you, just to clarify: I wasn't questioning the date itself, just the use of brackets in the structured date field of the fact. Brackets belong in the source citation, certainly, just not that fact, in my opinion. Agree with the 1657/58. Even without the suggestion provided by the sibling birth date, 20 Feb 1657/58 would be the de facto interpretation. I think this presumptive use of old style by the town clerk (at least for Jan. and Feb., March is very ambiguous) is even strong enough to override less accurate sources, such as age at death. --Jrich 12:27, 10 July 2011 (EDT)

Inconsequential changes? [19 September 2013]

When you changed the spelling of Ann Wheeler to Anne Wheeler (and nothing else), it propagated to all her children, all her marriages, and generated a lot of change notices on some people's watchlists. If those people take their watching seriously, then they must diff each one to see what changed, then visit the page to clear the change, etc. In a community effort like WeRelate, there are likely to be multiple preferences about the best spelling of her name, as colonial names were rarely spelled consistently, there being no real idea of "correct" spelling until Webster's Dictionary came out. So it often just reflects whatever source you looked at last. Even official records often reflected the whims of the recording clerk, changing when a new town clerk was installed. Deciding what is the single correct spelling seems to me to be a questionable proposition for people living before, say, 1800. Within source citations you should reflect the spelling used within the source, but I don't think there is necessarily a "correct" value for the name fields, unless the spelling is so bad it is going to prevent search from finding the person. That is not the case with Givenname:Ann and Givenname:Anne which are equivalenced to each other. --Jrich 21:41, 18 July 2011 (EDT)

I've found that when editing people from families that are a mess (usually due to multiple gedcom uploads which nobody has tried to clean up - not a criticism, because each individual can only do so much), I've been bitten by having someone else's changes to the page while I'm still editing; e.g., Hannah Webster Emerson yesterday where I lost and had to recreate some changes because I hadn't done an interim save. In this particular case, I did six saves over a period of three and a half hours in order not to lose my work. Davis (Annis Spear) calls her "Anne" - I don't have access to the baptismal record from St. Edmund's Salisbury, but I'll give him some credit. There's no VR for her marriage to Aquila Chase, but there is, in the Newbury VR, for her second marriage, which also calls her "Anne." Since there are all of fourteen people (besides me) watching her person page, most of whom appear to be inactive, and pretty much the same group watching the family page (with Aquila Chase), the two or three or four active participants are probably interested in what changes have been made. I expect to soon tackle the rest of the John Wheeler - Agnes/Ann/Annis Yeomans family page, which is pretty messed up with sixteen children where Davis only names 12. These are not quick edits, if I want to do a thorough job, so please give me a little time to complete each page.--jaques1724 22:39, 18 July 2011 (EDT)

I will try to stay away from this so I don't interrupt your edits again. If the parish register is found and it says "Ann" are you going to rename her back? (hopefully not) Unfortunately the baptism is not in IGI, though someone posted that it is on film 1729311, so I suppose it could be looked up. If there were 14 people watching this page that suggests there were 14 people that looked at this page and thought "Ann" was adequate. I am not arguing for Ann or Anne. I appreciate all your work, and especially attention to detail, but I do feel that it is immaterial whether it is Ann or Anne, and probably hard, if not impossible, to say what's correct. Her death record says "An", so average "Anne" and "An" and get "Ann" (attempt at humor). --Jrich 00:11, 19 July 2011 (EDT)

According to a transcription on familysearch pilot in the England Births and Christenings collection, the name is "Ann Wheler". It says the source is film 1279311 (the poster must have transposed the digits). Follow this link, select Continue to Pilot, and it should take you to the record if I did everything right. --Jrich 00:26, 19 July 2011 (EDT)

I'm done. Do whatever you think is right with this page.--jaques1724 01:16, 19 July 2011 (EDT)

Person:John Aldus (1) used to be John Aldis before you renamed it. You cited two sources, one that says his baptism is spelled Aldows, another, Savage, spells it Aldis. Both of the cited sources are secondary, though the baptism would be primary. Also primary is the death record for Deacon John "Alldis" in the Early Records of Dedham, which incidentally include 24 results for Aldis, 2 for Alldis, ZERO for Aldus. The marriage record in Dedham is Sarah "Elliott" and John "Aldis". Yet you have changed Sarah Elliott to Sarah Eliot, John Aldis to John Aldus. This is arbitrary Jacques genealogy, but not apparently based on any rational approach or actual evidence. --Jrich 22:45, 18 September 2013 (EDT)

I'm following the surname spelling as given in the latest research (the 1996 Myrtle Stevens Hyde article - she being (1) FASG and (2) an Aldous/Aldus/Aldis descendant who has published a genealogy of the family). You will note that I have added significant content to his page which was not there before. I also agree that his children were styled "Aldis" and have no intention of changing the surname spelling for them. She has John and his father, Nathan, as "Aldus"; prior generations as "Aldous"

As far as Sarah Eliot is concerned, she was daughter of Philip Eliot of Nazeing, Essex and Roxbury, Mass., and niece of the Rev. John Eliot also of Nazeing and Roxbury who, in the literature, are almost universally called "Eliot". The spelling in the Dedham Town records, or, as I'm sure you're aware, anywhere in early New England, was at the mercy of the individual doing the recording, generally the Town Clerk. Some surnames have multiple spellings in the same family; e.g. Haseltine and Bachiler, and one has to make a judgment call on how to handle them. I prefer following competent contemporary genealogists like Ms. Stevens and Robert Charles Anderson rather than trying to keep track of the spelling variations introduced by seventeenth century clerks with varying degrees of education and spelling skills. I do think it incumbent on us as transcribers to quote the record as we find it, regardless of the spellings we use on the person and family pages. The page for John and Sarah is a good example where you quoted both the Dedham record and the Stevens article, both surnames being spelled differently in each record.--jaques1724 09:47, 19 September 2013 (EDT)

The problem is you are relying on the usage in one article and arbitrarily changing spellings of other sources and resources for arbitrary reasons that probably a minority of people would choose. This is a collaborative environment and I think this is bad behavior, and it turns out, in both these cases I think you have chosen to change things unnecessarily, and in one or both case, in contradiction to actual evidence, and common usage. The NEHGR article only covers the family in England and who knows how she arrived at her spelling. It is not authentic as she mentions Aldous and Alldys and Aldows as the spellings in documents, so just some arbitrary summary-surname she chose to cover the whole family, reflecting perhaps an English bias on what looks like the right spelling. Nearly every Dedham source spells his name Aldis or Alldis: Aldus never seems to appear. Further, a TAG article two year later, chose to spell it Aldous. Oops! Need to rename the page again to keep up with the latest literature. Further the NEHGR article spells Sarah's name "Eliott" with two T's. Oops! Better rename her page again, I guess. Colonial's did not even have an idea of one correct spelling, and it is a question that can't be proven except by a signature. Otherwise you are just making a false fact by insisting on your choice of spellings. For this one couple, you have advanced two different justifications (one how it was in a recent article, another how it was used back then) for picking the spelling you wanted over what some other researcher wanted. If it was so clear, you ought to be able to advance a consistent criteria, but you can't, because there was no authoritatively correct spelling in most cases. Add it as an alternate name if you must, but realize dealing with variations in spelling are something every researcher has to deal with, and Dallan's software lets WeRelate deal it with pretty workably, and stop thinking the one source you happen to be consulting right now is the only correct answer, because unless there is a signature, it's not, it's the arbitrary choice of the author, and it will change the next time an article is published. --Jrich 10:34, 19 September 2013 (EDT)

Your way or the highway. Looks like we will continue to butt heads as long as we are both contributing to WR. Have a nice day!--jaques1724 10:50, 19 September 2013 (EDT)

Well, actually, since you are the one changing things to fit what you think, this appears to be your motto. I am happy to use other people's spellings unless they are misleading (i.e., Willis and Willetts on Long Island need to be differentiated as two different families). Certainly it is not me that is changing spellings from Sara to Sarah, Ann to Anne, Elliott to Eliot, etc. I just don't like double standards. You want it your way, you don't want to respect that other people want it their way. The original spelling has as much or more justification as yours, and instead of being flexible, you change it, just inviting some equally inflexible person to start an edit war. Not good for WeRelate. Not good collaboration. Not even accurate genealogy. Merely your preference. --Jrich 11:56, 19 September 2013 (EDT)

JRICH: you are in no position whatsoever to lecture others on editing wars, arbitrary changes, and the like. Please move on. --jrm03063 12:54, 19 September 2013 (EDT)

JRM: If you have a point to make on topic, add it. If you don't like it, don't read it. I'm in a fine position, and if you don't think so, maybe I do need to add some more. It is only necessary to browse through Jaques1724's last couple hundred contributions to pull out half a dozen renames like Ann->Anne, Polly->Polley, Garey->Gary, Tompson->Thompson, etc., which are, of course, all common colonial variants of each other. So if you want me to "move on", let me know and I will get to work on these examples, too, to show you just what an arbitrary change is... If you respond, please use my page, I doubt Jaques wants our squabbling here. --Jrich 16:59, 19 September 2013 (EDT)

Margaret Hubbard [26 July 2011]

You just wiped out a half hour of work removing caps.--jaques1724 00:05, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

Why are you using all caps for names which is discouraged on WeRelate?--Susan Irish 00:09, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

I don't like caps and I don't use them in the name field and do change them when I find them. When I'm quoting from a source, I input it the way they wrote it. If that's incorrect behavior, I'll not do it again.--jaques1724 01:11, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

Every time a page gets changed, watchers get notified, and if they are active watchers, they are going to inspect the changes, possibly building upon the changes. There is nothing to tell them that somebody is still doing further changes on the page. Thus, multiple saves are exactly likely to cause this conflict. The save need not be to the page directly. If one of the marriages or parents are changed, information gets exported to various pages, generating a change notice. So working through a family (which I usually do, also) is quite likely to put you in a situation where edit conflicts will happen. WeRelate is still under-utilized, and this could be much worse if user activity increases. So learning to use the edit conflict screen might be worth the time investment. That said, I haven't :-). But I have inspected it enough to know that it displays your changes, so if you bring up a new edit in a new tab, you should be able to rescue most of the edits using cut and paste (or you can work directly in the edit conflict screen, but I haven't ever had enough work at risk to yet motivate me to undertake learning how to do that.) --Jrich 09:30, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

ordering of sources [19 August 2011]

I notice on a lot of pages you change that you place your source at the top of the list. I am not aware of an easy way to do this (is there one other that cutting and pasting each field of the source citation into a new spot?) which would appear to say it is a conscious effort to put yours first. Is there a significance to this? Does it have to do with comprehensiveness of the source? --Jrich 19:49, 19 August 2011 (EDT)

You kind of captured it. What I've always tried to do first, is to connect the individual to the parent(s), and the most likely source for that to happen (and to connect with the siblings) is in something like TGM, or Dawes-Gates or Davis's three volumes. The by-product of that is that those sources tend to be much more comprehensive. Another way of putting it is that (IMO) the first source a person sees should lead directly to the most (and hopefully most accurate available) information about an individual and his/her family. A citation to a family genealogy (the Raymonds of MT/CT happens to be one I'm playing with now) gives you a lot more to pursue than citing a vital records entry for a person's birth. If this is causing heartburn, I'll stop, but my secret accountant's soul is happier when things are "orderly".--jaques1724 20:27, 19 August 2011 (EDT)

I'll add that if the choice (for a date of birth, for example) is a family genealogy or a published vital record, I'd prefer to have the VR listed higher since it's probably closer to a primary record than the other.--jaques1724 21:35, 19 August 2011 (EDT)

Thanks. No heartburn, I am just happy to see quality sources being cited. I approach things differently, but it's mostly style. I tend to put VRs first because they tend to be what family genealogies are based on, and tends to be the most unadulterated statement of what we know. Family genealogies are useful because the authors presumably have studied the whole family, and are in a good position to confirm that the VRs are being applied to the right individual, out of the universe of all people having the same name. But, to understand why something is believed, or to refute it, the primary records, such as VRs, are really the issue that needs to be addressed, and the secondary sources will collapse once that primary foundation is removed. Also, some family genealogies (Source:Wheeler, Albert Gallatin. Genealogical and Encyclopedic History of the Wheeler Family in America stands out in this regard, though I could name several) are so full of errors, I wouldn't believe them except in those cases where they, or somebody else, explicitly identifies the primary sources that support what they say. Citing primary records can be a little disjointed, but I always assumed at some point, somebody would eventually write a narrative that gives the comprehensive picture, and so I rationalized away that problem. --Jrich 23:50, 19 August 2011 (EDT)

GEDCOM Export Ready [11 September 2011]

The GEDCOM for tree Trumble/Trumbull is ready to download. Click here.

Wikipedia templates [29 October 2011]

Hello, I noticed that you have been putting the Wp and wikipedia-notice templates on new place pages. Instead of putting these two templates on the pages, you will need to use the following code: {{source-wikipedia|wikipedia page name}}. A weekly automated process will replace this template with the information from Wikipedia. There are more details about this process here. Thanks, --Jennifer (JBS66) 18:04, 29 October 2011 (EDT)

Deletion of Benjamin Bunnell & Rebecca Mallory marriage date [29 November 2011]

It would be polite of you to at least let the previous marriage date for Benjamin Bunnell & Rebecca Mallory remain as an alternate marriage date and ask where the date came from. Not just assume that Rebecca could not possibly have married at age 15 (not 14), therefore the date must be wrong. Most every date I had, had some type of citation before I had all of my research destroyed, and had to piece things together from a card file I had given my neice. I will do a search for the date I previously provided. In the meantime, please leave the alternate date as is.--Neal Gardner 17:19, 29 November 2011 (EST)

Two other factors I considered were (1) neither Jacobus nor Torrey (through Supplement 3) ever identified a firm date for this marriage; and (2) the interval of more than three years before the first child was born, which is odd for a couple that then has ten children over a period of 22 years. The 27 Nov 1664 date can be found at familysearch.org and at the rootsweb world connect project, but those are both notoriously unreliable. I apologize for being too aggressive in the editing, but I would be more than surprised if a source for the 1664 date, other than the two websites I mentioned, turns up.--jaques1724 18:54, 29 November 2011 (EST)

I'll point out that Torrey lists 13 sources and still didn't have a date. I believe the de facto presumption must be that the 1664 date is invalid based on the circumstantial reasons mentioned (age, length of time till first child), and should be deleted unless a source is added soon. This isn't a place for keeping personal notes, it is a place for presenting known facts for other people to review and improve upon. --Jrich 22:31, 29 November 2011 (EST)