User talk:Moverton

Topics


Welcome [22 January 2011]

Welcome to WeRelate, your virtual genealogical community. We're glad you have joined us. At WeRelate you can easily create ancestor web pages, connect with cousins and other genealogists, and find new information. To get started:

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 13:54, 11 October 2010 (EDT)


GRO Certificates [4 March 2012]

Thanks for clarifying this point about uploading certificates, I was very unsure about the copyright situation. However, do you know if a similar situation applies for copies of those vital records recorded prior to civil registration and obtained from sites such as ScotlandsPeople. Looking at their website it seems to indicate that we cannot upload these records.--Kenamoore 03:20, 22 January 2011 (EST)

Sorry, but I do not know the answer to that. That would be a good question to ask the users at large. Moverton 03:54, 22 January 2011 (EST)
Has there been further discussion about this anywhere? I've been uploading a few certificates lately, following the advice given on the National Archives website (which states that we "are authorised to reproduce the layout of the form in any format including on the web, in films and in print". I made a template to use on these works, {{Crown Copyright BMD}}. What do you think?
Even if we're not allowed to publish the actual certificates, there is no copyright in the facts written on them, so we're perfectly allowed to transcribe!
Sam Wilson ( TalkContribs ) … 21:05, 2 March 2012 (EST)
Seems ok to me, though I don't pretend to be an expert on copyright. It would be nice if the drop-down on the images included one specific to GRO certificates. I never have been quite sure which option is best. —Moverton 19:03, 4 March 2012 (EST)

WeRelate Featured Page - Week of April 18th [19 April 2011]

Hello, just wanted you to know that your page Leavenworth, Kansas - 1880 Census Population Schedule, has been selected the WeRelate Featured Page for the week of April 18th. Great job and keep up the good work!

Best regards,

Jim Co-Administrator on WeRelate.org--Delijim 18:01, 19 April 2011 (EDT)


Valley View Memorial Cemetery [22 June 2011]

Re: Place:Valley View Memorial Cemetery, Gypsum Creek, McPherson, Kansas, United States, if the oldest headstones predate 1877, why is that the "established" date? Is there a source for this from the town? — Parsa 17:36, 22 June 2011 (EDT)

If you follow the link for the source of the "former name", the dates were given there. It could be that the cemetery's association was established in 1877. And it could be that it was private until that date. I haven't done any further research. Moverton 17:49, 22 June 2011 (EDT)

Transcriptions of GRO docs [4 March 2012]

Hi! I like what you're doing at User:Moverton/sandbox#GRO_transcripts. Do you think there's a need for some templates for doing these sorts of transcriptions? I've been having a go at some myself, and would love to hear what you think. Something like {{Scotland. Statutory Marriage Record}}, for example.

I was thinking that I'd include the transcription firstly on the MySource page (I create one for each certificate), and then perhaps also on the Person or Family page to which it's most pertinent (e.g.). Then, I started wondering how to tie all the transcriptions together, so there was a place in which we could see all our own certificates, and others' too. Then I got confused.... ;-)

Any ideas?!  :-) Thanks! — Sam Wilson ( TalkContribs ) … 21:12, 2 March 2012 (EST)

Templates might make transcriptions easier to do if they are being placed into a table. Some users won't want to have to mess with the table syntax. (Obviously not a problem for me.)
My own preference is to just leave any transcriptions on the image pages if they have been uploaded (example). In some cases I may just excerpt a portion of text or provide my own summary of the information on the person's page, rather than replicating what is readily viewable in the original image. I try not to create any more of the MySources than I have to.
Previously I had been thinking about transcriptions of records or indexing, but not until the recent discussion did I decide to get started on it. After playing around with them a little, it is not obvious to me what the structure of a document containing all the transcriptions for a given district would look like, or whether it would need to be subdivided in a certain fashion. Perhaps it would be easier to create an index based on the GRO with certain enhancements (i.e. including the precise location, person's age, and other names mentioned). Those additional fields could only be filled out once the record was obtained, but it could still be linked to the person that a researcher believes it refers to. The additional names contained in the record could be linked to their pages, and if the certificate was uploaded, it could be linked to the record. —Moverton 18:52, 4 March 2012 (EST)

let source citation speak for itself [25 June 2013]

Re: Family:Samuel Peacock and Mary Kittredge (1). Curious why you added the description to the marriage for the following reasons: (1) it is redundant, the presence of the fact implies Samuel married Mary, why have the description field repeat that? (2) why emphasize Kittredg by quoting it. According to published VR, the compiler indicates this spelling came from the duplicate record, meaning it was a fluke of spelling based on who made the second record, and not a universal spelling used during their lifetime? (3) the only interesting information added is the name of the minister, but not sure that is necessary. The only reason for making the third point is that there are two sets of people looking at the page. One set is trying to quickly identify if this page is the person they want, and they probably only need the basics, unless they find themselves to be more interested. Most won't. The relatively small set that is interested in this person will read everything posted on a page, so if there is information in one of the source citations, they will find it without needing to promote relatively trivial information like the minister's name to prominence, cluttering up what seems like a summary?--Jrich 10:52, 25 June 2013 (EDT)

I'll grant you the second point. If the original has the normal form (or if it isn't known for sure) then the normal form of the name without quotes should be used. If only the name, date, and location is known, I wouldn't see a need for the additional text unless I was trying to give the form of the name used (nickname, alternate spelling, middle name not present elsewhere, etc.). I usually include the text when there is additional information that can be presented, such as the name of the officiating person, who each of their parents were, or where they were living at the time. One of the reasons why I do that is so it carries over to the person pages where readers can see it. I have my doubts that many casual readers would spend much time on the family pages since most of them don't have much additional information to offer. (This site is a bit unusual in that it has separate family pages with article text, the Family History, which is not included in the person pages.)
I decided a while back that I didn't feel like taking the time to duplicate all the facts from the list above into the main text below (Personal History or Family History) in typical genealogical form when I could just use the description field in the list to write about each item. I typically treat the source references here the same as I would anywhere else: the reader shouldn't be forced to read the references to find the information being presented. If the references were sorted by date or some other logical fashion, maybe it would make more sense to try that. The text field under each source can be used for quoting or discussing the merits of the source, but that is all I use it for. One example of what I'm driving toward is Person:Alford Overton (1). If someone else came along later to rewrite the page into a more normal genealogical biography, I'd be okay with that. But this is just my method of compiling information. -Moverton 19:41, 25 June 2013 (EDT)

Census transcripts [9 November 2014]

Hi there. I saw the very impressive work that you have done on the Lincoln 1841 census transcripts and just wanted to mention to you about "freecen" if you haven't come across them before. They are working to transcribe all the UK census records and so far have managed to complete an impressive proportion. Link is here: http://www.mborrill.org.uk/Lincoln/index.html - I'm sure they would be very grateful for any help you could give! AndrewRT 19:42, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I doubt that I will participate in that project. But anyone who wants to use the transcripts here for their project is welcome to do so. Moverton 19:42, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Michael. I was reviewing recent edits and noticed you've done some census transcript pages. I thought I'd draw your attention to the ones I've done; I don't have a strong preference on format and I'm still toying with it, but thought we might build on each other. I did mine with nested templates, and one (WeRelate) page per (census) page, although I think I like the look of yours a little better. Example: Transcript:Overton, Tennessee, United States. 1850 U.S. Census Population Schedule/p116B. Best, --Amelia 06:03, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be good to have a consistent approach and harmonizing of formats. I'll just put out a few initial thoughts on my approach so far:

  • I'm open to using templates, but since I am adept at using the raw code, I haven't bothered to try to create any. I realize that it would be friendlier for some people who might not want to bother figuring out the code, or whose eyes may glaze over when they try to edit a page and see all the code that goes into a table.
  • My only real criteria on the format was to choose one which was faithful to the original organization of data (doesn't have to be exact), was easy to read, and was simple enough for anyone to understand. Things like font size, color and spacing could easily be changed if people found what was being used to be less than ideal. (Although I like the smaller font, others may disagree.)
  • I also added a lead text box for all of the defining source info and other descriptions which may be either critical to the transcription or just informative. This could probably be easily converted into some type of flexible template.
  • I have found that creating a transcription can be easier when multiple schedules are placed on a single Transcript page. In some cases the original page numbering is awkward or just plain wrong. And often there is more than one numbering scheme, which would mean different transcribers may use different page numbering. In the case of 1820 Morgan Co. (transcript) the pages appear to have originally been bound together like a book, and the bottom of the page doesn't necessarily follow the top half. This was why I decided to do the complete county transcript after some confusion when trying to view the images on Ancestry.com (which often has its own organizing scheme). I had to create a new series of page numbers after reorganized all of the pages to get the proper original order of the information.
  • Viewing the pages may be easier if all of the district (or civil division) schedules are located on the same Transcript page. Families can sometimes be split between two schedules, and using Ctrl-F to find text becomes an option. I have tried to group the pages by the smallest logical unit (typically the enumerator's district, or the township) which makes sense and preserves the context of the information. I realize some districts may be much larger than others and maybe we would eventually find one that is just too big for a single Transcript page, but I haven't seen it yet.

Moverton 18:34, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi,

Just as a starting point, what's your goal? My idea in starting these was to have a page linked to the source citation on a person page that shows the neighbors, who are in turn (eventually) linked back to person pages for those pages. I started doing them on people I wanted to understand context for, basically. My theory is that there are other transcripts many places; the value here is the cross-linking and annotations. I work on them only every so often when I have large chunks of time, so they have to be easy to create and remember.

On your points above,

  • If anyone else is going to make things look like consistently with what you/me/we do, it's going to have to be templates. While I can do the code too, it's tremendously harder with tables this large, and it gets messed up very easily. Expecting anyone without a lot of time on their hands to both hand code in the first place, and then figure out which copy/paste operation messed up by one character to screw up the entire table is just not scalable. We lose not just others creating, but editing as well (which is the only way we crowd-source the links and the notes).
  • Defining the source seems like something that should really go on the source page, or at least the transcript parent. It's information common to the entire XXXX population schedule, not just this transcript.
  • Your effort here is way outside the scope of anything I have thought of doing. I'm happy to leave this project to the many large funded entities that transcribe these things in bulk :-) I'm not terribly concerned about page numbers as long as the scheme picked is semi-logical - it's a citation mechanism, and the original is messed up, so be it. On the level I'm working, it doesn't matter how many schedules are on one page except that 1) it's easier to link a single page to a source citation; and 2) it's much easier to edit. While the contextual benefit increases as the page gets bigger, the usability correspondingly decreases.
  • To that point, I think trying to put all the schedules in a district on one WeRelate Page is asking for trouble. It's a mess of editing, and then the person coming there from a Person page faces a ton of data and has to ctrl-F, which is both annoying and may not work with bad spellings. To me, that defeats the point. I'm not really interested in transcribing large swaths of data, either, which means I'd either leave pages incomplete or just not start them because the bar is too hight.

One other related point: is there some reason your pages are sub-pages of the national census page instead of the county page? That would seem to make a lot more sense.

Anyway, all just discussion points. As I said, I don't have much time to work on these, but was interested to see someone else doing it! Best,--Amelia 15:46, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

My primary goal is just having a transcription to link to and from. So whether a person wants to see the greater context, do a little research on related families living nearby, or just see the additional information that I'm not putting in Person or Family pages (I don't do any census transcriptions on those pages), the reader will have the transcription available if they want it. Big databases like the one at Ancestry.com can be more useful for the average user, and I doubt anyone will come here to do their primary census searching. I don't have the time to do a full census transcript and will only work on those areas where many of the families I research are from. Maybe over time the amount of the transcribed census hosted here will increase if more people find value in having it or just have interest in creating a linkable transcription. But I'm not concerned about that. Some of the census transcriptions I have done are just partials.

Because it was a national census, I use the national Source page. Each individual enumerator taking the census may have operated over the entire county (or a larger territory) or over just a small local division like a township. That individual census return could be thought of as a source unto itself, but it is customary to cite it within the context of the larger census. Also, each of those individual returns were compiled by county into state volumes, and each of those state volumes may occupy multiple rolls of film. So the source could just as easily be defined at the state level. I never use other local (county) source pages when citing my sources because I don't believe that most of them provide any added value.

I am not really trying to define the source per se, other than to provide an understanding of where this transcription fits into the whole and to provide relevant information that may not be covered on the Source page. For example on this transcript, I attempted first to define where this portion of the census can be found and provide a little bit of historical context for the locality (which of course is just whatever I happen to know about it and is not required). I believe that notes about how the transcription was done or other oddities should be included on each relevant page because people aren't always likely to navigate from the main page down through the tree to get there, and they may not otherwise realize there is a note somewhere else that explains what they are seeing.

The way I solved the multi-page problem was to use a hidden <h3> element containing a page number. This has the double benefit of providing an anchor for linking to the page from other WeRelate pages and to provide an edit link before each page of the transcription. It may not be obvious, but if you click on the edit link to the upper right of the page of the schedule you want to edit, you will only be presented with the code for that individual page. If I were using this in combination with templates it would probably be simple enough for most people to edit.

Moverton 22:57, 9 November 2014 (UTC)


"British America" [21 September 2014]

There have been in the past edit wars over the then political reality of a certain event (such as the William Trask marriage you changed) and the current place name. Changing every one in your tree is just asking for an edit war, so I would leave it alone until there is a proper WR rule on it. Eventually it is my hope to make the name of countries, etc a display preference.--Daniel Maxwell 04:28, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


Mayfair and St. George Hanover Square [15 May 2015]

Hi

I had notice overnight that you have been adding to the place pages above. I am in the midst of a major renovation of place pages for London, so I have added some details to both Mayfair and St. Geo-H-S.

Currently, some London pages are solely under Greater London, others are only in the county in which they originated (Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex), and some have two independent entries. Also, many places have been described as "districts". Outside London, "district" is now the label for the lowest level of local administration, so calling a neighbourhood like Mayfair a district confuses the natives. I am changing most districts to "areas", provided they were not actually civil parishes or boroughs before 1965. There are a lot of places that could be redirected (i.e. deleted), particularly those which were never parishes.

While I am working on this, I am removing all mention of Greater London from the "Also located in" box of all places except the new London Boroughs and a few areas that have either evolved since 1965 (e.g. Canary Wharf) or which cover more than one London Borough (e.g. the East End of London). I reserve the "Also located in" box solely for counties. Links to other places go in "See also". Greater London can be added back in once I know the task is complete.

The template {{London Research Tips}} is being expanded as new discoveries are made (such as the London Encyclopaedia hiding in google books found just this morning through the Wikipedia page on Mayfair).

The renovation is a slow process. Each place has a lot of boxes to be ticked before it can be considered complete or even half complete. Wikipedia writers can often forget that a place had a past as well as a present which means searching for evidence elsewhere. A Vision of Britain through Time does not always give a complete timeline. What with non-WR tasks thrown in, Chelsea was the only place done yesterday. Sometimes I work through a whole borough; sometimes alphabetically through the list of districts in Greater London; sometimes working alphabetically leads to supplementing the information on neighbouring places at the same time.

Trusting you understand why I have made the adjustments to Mayfair and St. Geo-H-S.

Regards, Pat, aka --Goldenoldie 10:35, 15 May 2015 (UTC)


Re: Westminster prefix [11 June 2015]

Hi

You are trying to stick a pin in my lightbulb--to mess about with metaphors.

A few weeks ago when working on Bristol and Gloucester at the same time (because they are both in Gloucestershire), I began to realize that there are too many parishes named St. Mary, St. John, St. James, etc and if one put the name of the town in front they would be much more distinguishable one from the other. Into the bargain it solves the problem of only three tiers in European placenames.

Today I have been working with Westminster borough which had/has several churches within it. Someone else had named all these churches in the fashion St. Mary, Westminster, Middlesex, England. This meant that these churches (including St. George Hanover Square) were not in the Middlesex index (or if they were it was because Middlesex was listed in the Also Located In box). By renaming the parishes to start with Westminster they automatically show up in a group in the Middlesex index.

I know Westminster St. George Hanover Square looks wierd, but it was a Westminster parish that was split off from the original Westminster St. Mary when the population began to explode. I have retained it in its normal fashion for the Registration District (the registration district covered more that the one parish and it comes up more when users quote sources).

Stepney and Southwark parishes have already been prefixed with the name of the borough.

I also have a thing about the Also Located In box: A place-type can change over time and it looks funny to find an ancient parish in Greater London (created 1965).

/cheers, Pat --Goldenoldie 21:11, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

It sounds like you may be putting a square peg in a round hole. (I know a few metaphors too.)
The round hole is the 3-tier rule which really isn't a rule. We can use as many levels as needed. But I don't see a need to disambiguate where it isn't really necessary. I see where you are going with it, and I'm not going to complain about it since I can still find what I need (just have to make sure I change the way the name actually displays on the Person or Family page when linking). But it might be prudent to add a line in the Alternate Names box like "Westminster St. George Hanover Square|WeRelate borough-parish naming convention" so that people know that isn't the actual name.
Having an ancient parish in modern London (when it no longer exists) is obviously a mistake that should be corrected. But that is a separate fish that I don't feel like frying at this moment. -Moverton 22:51, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Particularly when it seems no one else wants to join a fish fry-up.

--Goldenoldie 10:45, 11 June 2015 (UTC)


By some fluke, the next place I tackled was Westminster Palace which, when I opened it, was a blank page save for the title and the type "former community". Seeing as I view the inside of the Palace of Westminster daily in news broadcasts, I hardly felt that that description fitted. Fortunately the word "seat" was in our list (along with "historic inhabited place" and "principal area"). Why bother? The list of people found under "What links here" contributed by our mediavel history associates is hardly brief and I don't mess around with their contributions unless they've had a bad spelling day.

Another topic. I was reading your discussion with Amelia about censuses and templates. I am a complete amateur when it comes to knowledge of what I call "wiki-speak" but yesterday I put together a map of the Westminster parishes Template:Westminster Civil Parish Map 1870 which is usually hiding at the bottom of the relevant pages. I am unhappy with the fit of the map, the discussion and credits to the right, and the space before the long quote at the bottom. Is there a way to fit the map into a hole left by the other two elements so that the look of the final template is not dependent on how wide a person likes a window on his/her monitor? --Goldenoldie 14:19, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

You might want to float the image to the right side, and slim down some of the comments. I find that bullets don't work very well when they are being wrapped around the right side of images. If a person wants to know who created it, they can always go to the Image page. Also there is CSS which limits the size of the column (if you want to keep it from getting too large). You could, for example, enclose the content in a div tag with the max-width property: <div style="max-width: 600px"></div>. This property is recognized by modern browsers. You could even float the div to the right side and create a separate column. It is quite flexible. Wikipedia has some pretty good help for using tables and images with multiple examples. -Moverton 16:41, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Bake in Cornwall [29 June 2015]

Hi

I've had a look at your entry for Bake and for the person you tied it too. Bake is on the 1900 OS Map for the area (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/maps/sheet/os_maps_1900/Cornwall_1900), but I'm wondering if it is much more than an estate or "big house" owned by the maker of the will. Although the family would probably go to the local church for a baptism or a burial, the reading of a will could often occur at the home of the deceased.

Bake is not on a 3.5 mi to the inch map of 2014 or on Google Earth. I redirected a number of small places in St. Germans parish that are still on the modern map.

/cheers

--Goldenoldie 20:18, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps that is correct. I didn't do enough research on it since I saw it in Wikipedia. When I do some searching I see a reference to it as a hamlet in Magna Britannia, vol. 3 (1814), however it may only be a hamlet in the sense of being a subdivision of the parish. So I have redirected it. -Moverton 21:29, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

St Mary Abbots Churchyard [16 July 2015]

That area is so full I didn't think there would still be a churchyard, but I just had a look at Google and there is still evidence of a couple of graves. I lived on Cromwell Road not far from Marloes Road during my first year over here, and Church Street, Kensington was an easy stroll.

These days St Mary Abbots is synonomous with the hospital. The church has been forgotten.

/cheers, --Goldenoldie 20:48, 16 July 2015 (UTC)


Salden, Bucks [24 July 2015]

There are two persons linked to Salden. Thomas Temple was knighted there and the description is given as Salden House, Mursley Parish, Buckinghamshire. Shouldn't the place be Mursley, Buckinghamshire with Salden House in the description box? I live in Bucks and have never heard of Salden House. I see it's a listed building though. --Goldenoldie 20:05, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

They must have done some automated place creations many years before using Domesday. I decided not to bother making any judgments about it...it was there so I linked to it instead of linking to Mursley. However the piped name that is displayed is accurate. -Moverton 20:19, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi

Since our short discussion on Salden the other evening, I have come across numerous mentions of the Fortescues and Fortesques in Devon. I don't know if you are making a study of them, but there are numerous references, both in WeRelate and in Wikipedia.

/cheers --Goldenoldie 08:49, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

No, just a passing reference. -Moverton 15:35, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I like your "no living descendants" template [16 February 2016]

I like the template. It fills a gap in the assertions by departing from the various NoKnownParents, NoKnownChildren, etc., templates. The NoKnown forms don't assert that there are not any children, etc., but rather, that there isn't any accepted sense of the matter. Yours offers a positive assertion that the person (or perhaps family) is not believed to have children.

I saw that the template takes a parameter - wondered if that's really needed. I assume that there are two kinds of situations where you might want to mark things - either never married or a family that never had children.

One other thought - my preference for this kind of thing is to add it to the fact list. I think there's precedent for that - I've seen a number of GEDCOMs that contain "status" facts that indicate things like this. I also like the idea that a fact can easily be attached to the source that supports the claim.

???

--jrm03063 12:13, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. I should go back and document it. There are actually two parameters. One allows for describing the type of descendants, and the other provides the explanation of it. (Compare Lord Paisley and Sir Temple.) They are both optional.
As for the placement, I looked at it both ways and just thought it looked better at the end of the list (especially since I added the leaf). In the fact list it could end up about anywhere and kind of disrupts the normal flow. But that is just my aesthetic and would not be opposed to doing it another way. (Incidentally, one thing I don't like about the assertions templates is that the highlighted text sticks out like a sore thumb.) I think most of the explanations will either be self evident or documented elsewhere (maybe). But it would be simple enough to tag it with a source if needed. -Moverton 17:24, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
It seems to be true at present - that non-chronological facts appear in arbitrary locations on the list. I just figured if we ever acquired enough such facts - we could arrange to improve the fact item sort a little (there's already a chronological sort - refining how that's done shouldn't be that hard). Fact types for AFN, DNA, Namesake, Nationality, Reference Number and SSN don't seem like they have any useful chronology. If any of them appear (and without a date) then they should probably sort to the end of the list (maybe, they shouldn't even be allowed to have a date). Since there's no telling what a fact labelled "other" may be doing - the presence or absence of a date seems like a fine way to determine whether the fact should appear embedded in the list or moved to the end.
I like the brown leaf very much as an informative icon - I really think it would look fine if it appeared on the fact list - perhaps with the stipulation that we aren't really done until we have better sort behavior.
With respect to the assertion templates as they are - I care about making them simple to recall and enter in the description fields. I also want to avoid anything that would leave a cryptic result in an exported GEDCOM. As to display - anyone who thinks they have better ideas on how they might display on Person and Family pages - should definitely see what they can come up with. The current behavior was only a starting point. I didn't worry much about it, because you can obviously change Template display behavior centrally and at any time.
Do you really think that your NoDescendants template needs to support an arbitrary string parameter (or even any)? I would have thought that there are really only two kinds of representations - No Marriages/No Families (for someone known to havenever married or never had a relationship resulting in children with anyone) and No Children (for a relationship or marriage known to have been barren).
Whatever you decide, I would encourage you to document your template on the same help pages that were created for the other templates (unless you think there's a good reason for doing it separately). --jrm03063 22:58, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't know which help pages you mean, but I did add a description to the template's page.
When I created this I had something larger in mind. It wasn't just for the purpose of indicating if someone didn't marry or have children, but it could also be used to indicate that the entire family branch had died off in later generations. That is why I added the additional text parameters. It provides maximum flexibility for whatever the situation might be. -Moverton 23:34, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
The collected set of assertion templates is documented here.
I really wonder about the value of an assertion - on a particular Person or Family page - that there are no descendants at some non-immediate future generation or time. Of course I've seen such claims - and perhaps its useful if you're trying to find where a line you're tracing connects back to antiquity. But for the WR tree - it seems like that's almost too weak a claim to bother even placing on a page. Hard as it is - maybe those claims should only be made at the points where a line is known to die out. Some day we add a function that chases descendants of a particular person - to see if the lines all die out.  ??? --jrm03063 00:22, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Chenies [25 February 2016]

I see you've added St. Michael's Churchyard to Chenies. No problem there.

But I was surprised I had not brought in any reference to the Russells in the description of the village and its church. I wonder if you would add a few lines. Without checking, I have a feeling that Wikipedia went on and on, and I probably hit Chenies on a day as busy as today. I quite often add a sentence to {{moreinfo wikipedia|---}} just to give readers a hint.

I've been to Chenies a couple of times, many years ago now. It's small and very Tudor in feeling.

--Goldenoldie 07:11, 25 February 2016 (UTC)


English Counties [6 March 2016]

It's really for my own benefit, and I may remove it shortly. But I am quite often moving around from one county to another, seeing how things were phrased in a different part of the country. They are simply links. It saves a step in going up to [[Place:England|England]] and back again. Also, it is one list, not one separated into administrative counties, ceremonial counties, etc.

Hundreds in county x are there for the same reasons.

/cheers, --Goldenoldie 06:45, 6 March 2016 (UTC)


Marriage place: an oopsie? [7 March 2016]

Take a look at Family:John Kirton and Alice Burton (1). The marriage place does not exist in the A Vision of Britain through Time database. I have a feeling the contributor misread his/her sources.

/cheers, Pat (--Goldenoldie 09:36, 7 March 2016 (UTC))


I am afraid the smile has gone. The marriage place was originally "Philimore, England". I also shared this with User:rmg who is in a closer time zone and she sorted it out while I worked on another place in Berkshire.

--Goldenoldie 11:44, 7 March 2016 (UTC)


Oare, Berkshire [18 March 2016]

In Britain villages are not administrative places. The smallest administrative place is a civil parish. Prior to 1866 when civil parishes were defined, the local documents that we might be most interested in (baptisms, marriages and burials) were held by the ecclesiastical parishes (which were then defined as ancient parishes). If a village became a civil parish it will not be redirected. But, in a effort to reduce the database to a manageable size, all small villages that have never been parishes are being tied to the somewhat larger geographical area of which they are a part.

Settlements that became civil parishes did not appear to have a minimum size. Some parishes have never had more that a few hundred people and those with less than 100 are not unknown. In more densely populated areas, more places are included. In London I have included but redefined many well-known places as "areas" because the larger parishes in which they were located were never broken up. In its article on civil parishes, Wikipedia states that 14,000 villages were made civil parishes when they were defined in 1866. Even when broken down into separate counties, that's a lot of places.

Wikipedia describes Oare as a hamlet in the Chieveley article, and A Vision of Britain through Time gives the chapelries of Chieveley as Beedon, Leckhampstead and Winterbourne. I must admit I had never heard of Oare until this evening.

--Goldenoldie 22:11, 18 March 2016 (UTC)


CSS usage [26 April 2016]

Hi

I saw your discussion with Dallan about changes to CSS. I like the simple tables you have set up on the Dublin transcription page you used as an example. Now, can you give me some advice?

I often have to start a place page with a warning that there are duplicates (many times in the same county) for the placename under discussion. For a long time I simply started a paragraph with "NOTE:", but felt it didn't add much weight to the warning. I am now applying a table with one cell (i.e. a box), but don't like "border=1" as the margin. A single line of medium weight would be better than the shading that comes with "border=1". How do I express that?

--Goldenoldie 09:54, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

If you add style="border:medium solid; border-collapse:collapse;" to the table, it reduces the border to a single line of medium width (see below). -Moverton 16:02, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
text

Gray's Inn [25 July 2018]

Hi

I try to use placenames as at 1900 at all times and pipe back to the earlier location. The County of London was first formed in 1899 and included the City of London and a number of other parishes made into "boroughs" in Middlesex, Kent and Surrey.

Currently I am working not on London but on Warwickshire and this morning I came across a family of several generations with red placenames scattered all over including half a dozen offspring of one couple all born in "Greys Inn, Middlesex, England" [sic]. After a few unsuccessful guesses, I had to go back to London placenames at least to get the spelling right. I decided to put equate Gray's Inn to a cemetery and use four names instead of the usual three. (It is built like a manor with a wall around it.) I'll have another go sometime when I am working on all the inns of court at one time.

I felt it was important to blacken the red in this family. They were the children of Lawrence Washington and Amy Pargiter of Gray's Inn, Warwickshire, and Sulgrave, Northamptonshire!

/cheers, --Goldenoldie 20:33, 25 July 2018 (UTC)


Changes to Manchester [6 September 2018]

Hi

I have reordered the types of place to what has come to be my routine (chronological) order. It's a long time since I touched Lancashire. Droylsden and Gorton had been duplicated under Manchester and have been redirected to their main spots under Lancashire.

I wish that, from the very beginning, "parish" had come first in all descriptions. When I went to revise "civil parish", I couldn't find the sub-file, so it stayed. I know where the file is now.

A couple of weeks ago I came across the parish in Shropshire where you had added the parish register from GENUKI. On referring to GENUKI Shropshire again this week I discovered the whole list of these registers (quite a wonderful free contribution to be online) and am adding a reference to each of the parishes involved.

The ancient Corbet family has been picked up by WR users who could have done a much better job of presentation. Two branches exist on WR (one in Moreton Corbet, one in Westbury), but they have not been joined together. Mediavel history is not really my interest, but there were so many red-lined places I had to try tidying things up.

/cheers --Goldenoldie 06:33, 6 September 2018 (UTC)


Lancashire research tips now exist [13 September 2018]

Hi

Just finished setting up a template {{Lancashire research tips}} which can be added to any parish in the old county. I'll get it started by putting it on the hundreds pages and on the new administrative counties. The individual references to the Victoria County History have to be built up (a spreadsheet job)....and then there's the rest of Shropshire!

/cheers, --Goldenoldie 14:55, 13 September 2018 (UTC)


English civil registration quarters and districts [22 July 2019]

Please see my reply to RichardK. (Sorry not to add a link, it's getting late and eyes need toothpicks to stay open to write this). Regards, --Goldenoldie 21:34, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Written 17 Jul

You said: "It has been my experience that the registration index uses the marriage date to index the record. And in the few cases that I have seen both the parish register and the record obtained from the GRO, they are the same with one being a copy of the other."

I had the experience of registering a UK death six weeks ago. Needless to say, I did so with my genealogist hat tipped on the side of my head. Registration districts now cover the same area as the counties or unitary authorities they represent, but the district can include several registration offices. Civil registration covers all inhabitants; parish registers only list C of E parishioners requesting a baptism, marriage or burial. (This has been the case since 1837, but the C of E no longer has a monopoly.) Therefore, with the advent of civil registration less people elected to have C of E parish ceremonies on the grounds of either belief or cost or both.

Thinking back to my marriage (which took place in England more than 50 years ago), we registered our intent to marry in the local register office about three weeks ahead of the ceremony which took place in a non C of E church in the same town. The information was posted at the register office for public view. At the wedding we signed a register for the church and a form based on the application we had made at the registry office. This confirms that for marriages the information would be the same. Christian clergymen are licensed to do this clerical work for the GRO. (This used to be limited to Protestant clergy, but may have changed.)

There has been one big change in 2019: the names of mothers of the bride and groom now appear on the marriage certificate. I think that this has now received Royal Assent, but I don't known if the actual forms have been redrawn and are in circulation.

On the other WR problem of citing information from the Civil Registration index, please have a look at the death entry for Person:John Rickett (4) which I added this morning. How would you prefer to put the same limited information? The marriage information was obtained by someone else. I looked for it on Ancestry, but did not find it.

Regards, --Goldenoldie 10:19, 17 July 2019 (UTC)


Thanks for providing examples of how you set up bmd registrations. Do you add a Source to WR every time you add a civil registration? If I were only doing my own family, I guess I would do the same, but RichardK picked up an entry that I was editing, which I found it in a Place "What links here" list. I tend to keep these edits as brief as possible, considering the quantity that can be in front of me in some parishes that seem to have bred a great many ancestors of WR contributors. Unfortunately an entry that I should have left alone came up in the midst of a great many with the bmd index code in the place box.

I noticed that in your census entries for William Overton, the list of people is continuous. Did you know that box allows carriage returns? It does, unlike the "Personal Information" box.

Regards, --Goldenoldie 07:01, 22 July 2019 (UTC)