User talk:19Trixie43*

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Henry Leonard [3 September 2013]

Henry's page is getting better and better. I'm hoping to add a child and other descendants soon. Is there any reason that you've used citations instead of linking to the source page? I checked just one; the Source:Perley, Sidney. History of Boxford, Essex County, Massachusetts from the Earliest Settlement Known to the Present Time and added a repository where it can be read online. But not knowing why you used citations instead of source links, I didn't change it on Henry's page.--janiejac 16:28, 3 September 2013 (EDT)

Look what I just found: [AmericanIndianResearch@hotmail.com] A history of the Leonards written by Oliver B. Leonard in 1883. I don't believe this is under any copyright but I could be wrong.

I don't know how much more time and effort you are willing to put into getting the Leonard story posted at WeRelate, but if you are willing this would make a wonderful article to post and then link the various person pages to it. It is a large enough project that it would take collaboration of several people to get it accomplished.

Much to my dismay, I find that most of the early Leonard info that I have was done when I was a real newbie and I didn't record sources :( !! So I have info but it is not sourced (or dated) well enough and so my GEDCOM may not be accepted. I do have sources for the later Leonards who are connected to my unsourced folks. I may have to upload just the later folks. --janiejac 19:00, 3 September 2013 (EDT)

Edits to Sampson Leonard/Lennard [9 September 2013]

I know the study of genealogy has a stiff learning curve - and this site in particular (I think in part due to it's capability and power) - makes it even tougher. I also have had the unpleasant experience of dealing with folks who've been working here for a while and in genealogy not being as helpful or sympathetic as they should be. I don't want to be one of those - but I simply must ask what you're thinking with respect to the page for Sampson Lennard.

The history of parliament link already had the URL (hidden but accessible), so it didn't need to be added again. The Find A Grave content can be referenced and quoted - but an entire page lift like that is absolutely a copyright infringement (I'll remove it shortly - but I wanted you to know why). The "source: Wikipedia" link is on track to be automatically expanded with an extract from wikipedia at some point when the update job runs - so why copy/paste stuff that requires manual beneath? Finally, use of "Lennard" as the primary name seems like its more correctly then "Leonard" in keeping with the original spelling (considering what history of parliament and wikipedia show).

I'm kind of thinking that you're a little new to the site and to some of these things - and you're trying to help. That's great - but there are a number of practice issues here that we sort of want to get right. This page is a fine opportunity to discuss some of those things if you're interested and willing - we really do need all the help we can get.

???

--jrm03063 19:25, 6 September 2013 (EDT)

I'm going to go ahead and remove the copyright infringing material now, but we'ld really like to work with you more generally. --jrm03063 08:43, 7 September 2013 (EDT)

Hello, I am very new to this site and I want to get it right. I am not new to researching family history and it is important it be correct.

   I did not know we should just put the source and not say what the source said.  I would rather not have to look up a source.  I would rather have the content there.  (We aren't supposed to do that???)
   The name Lennard or Leonard should be changed to Lennard.  His daughter spelled it Leonard.
   I also didn't know we could not copy the information on Find A Grave.  Once again it seems a waste of time to have to look it up.  Thanks for letting me know. Is there a percentage of the material which can be copied?
   I am not clear on what you said about copying information from wiki.  Please say it for me in another way.

           I want to work with you too.   Trixie--19Trixie43* 23:59, 8 September 2013 (EDT)

Hello There! It's great to hear from you!

Thanks for your willingness to discuss! It'll make things so much more productive and - dare I say it? Fun!

Choices reflected in our presentation may be motivated by any or all of the following:

• Copyright law
• Good genealogical practice (as we understand it)
• WeRelate conventions/practices the community has adopted (sometimes by vote of the entire community, sometimes by agreement among a group of parties working in a particular area of interest)
• Technology of WeRelate and the web generally

I don't claim uniform or comprehensive knowledge in ANY of the above areas. There are things I'm sure I can offer you, but I hope I'm humble enough to be able to learn from your experience as well. I think "Werebear" is of like mind. So, on to the specifics...

• Find A Grave - content there is copyrighted, and a full copy (not mere quoted sections) is going to be a violation. Also, since the content there is a mixed bag as a matter of quality, it's not a reference of first resort. On the other hand, many of us like to have a link to a corresponding Find A Grave page when one exists - just as a matter of being complete. While we're listing Find A Grave in the Sources section - I've always been of the opinion that a WeRelate source is a different kettle of fish than a real genealogical source. A werelate source can be any piece of reference material, of any quality and any degree of indirectness. While we want to build what we know on the better sources (and sure, we'll use find a grave if it's all we've got - or it's at least backed by a picture of the gravestone) - that doesn't mean we'll omit notice of a corresponding Find a Grave page. Finally, since we link the find a grave stuff (usually) with an active hyperlink - it's still very handy - and if we don't copy it - we don't have to worry that our content is out of sync with any updates that might occur to the page at find a grave.

• I think we're all of the opinion that the name "Lennard" was more apt to be what was used for this person at the time - and it seems common for the references we've got - so we probably want that as the primary name on the page and as the name of the page. There's nothing wrong with adding "Leonard" as an alternate.

• Wikipedia - we don't have a copyright problem here, but we have some automatic software support that helps us to get an extract that is routinely (perhaps a couple times a year) synchronized with what's actually on wikipedia. So when you see a "source: Wikipedia" (with an active blue link off to the wikipedia page) - you're looking at a spot that is going to be filled in with an automatically generated extract of the initial section of the wikipedia page. For example, the page for William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland has body content that is automatically updated from Wikipedia. In a more perfect world, we would also have compelling genealogical sources there to back up his DOB/DOD, but an entry that corresponds to a WP page is far better than no entry at all. If we had some genealogically compelling entries - obituaries or the like - then we would probably handle them more in the fashion you probably expect - with appropriate quote extractions from the source. We also don't want to pretend that we've done the work that Wikipedia did - dragging their references across. We'ld rather just have the basic WP source entry and let the actual WP page stand on its own. Some folks - who think they have something to add that's better or more useful than the WP extract - prefer to use a wikipedia "more info" template such as that seen on William Sprague's page. Even then I like to have the WP entry as a source - because it will better persist across GEDCOM dump/load cycles - but it's an opinion. Lots more on ways to make use of Wikipedia here.

• History of Parliament - I think you can make a good case that your change to add that text made sense from a traditional good practice standpoint. It's certainly one of the better references that gets routine use - but since the actual pages are quick to hand by way of an active link in the source - I wonder if it's really valuable to make a copy of the source-family content? Perhaps only a sentence or two to flag the reader to the section of the referenced page that relates to family history?

A variety of opinions are present here - and everyone doesn't agree with everything that I've just offered. You should work with others to get a wider sense of things. In the older spaces such as that occupied by Sampson - I would strongly encourage you to reach out to Werebear. He (I guess he's a he - I really don't know!) and I don't do exactly the same things, nor do we exactly agree on everything, but we have worked well together and his perspective is at least as valid as mine.

I would also say that while you should try to learn to do things in keeping with what you find others to have done before you - neither should you be afraid to make different decisions. People who disagree have a responsibility to explain why they do in a courteous fashion - who knows? Maybe they'll persuade you - or not. What I wouldn't want is for you to feel crippled into inaction because there's so much to know - you're afraid that you'll "get something wrong".

That's as much as I can offer at this instant - got a few other things to do - like work! --jrm03063 14:31, 9 September 2013 (EDT)

Demoss [14 May 2018]

Hi 19Trixie43*

Are you the speaker in this passage?:

“Though many things on my side of the family are quite uncertain, I being one of the few direct descendants, know more than the average historian on the subject of the Demoss Family. They were promanant French Huguenots, Devout protestants. Fleeing persecution from Catholic France, they fled to the netherlands, they were separate from Calvinist because they believed in the infilling of the holy-spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, my Demoss ancestors many of which had the gifts themselves, Were completely unwavering on their faith. My Great Grandmother used to tell us before she passed away, that Count Louis II Demoss, through his bloodline would produce,( many) prophets of God, One prophecy stating, that years later, in one of the colonies , there would be born a man, named after a prophet of old, and he was to be born on the seventh day of the month. He would bring about a great revival in the nation, of the colonies known now as the United States, The prophecy was that the nation would be backslidden, and that in time men and women both would be given up to the sins of their flesh, living in complete debotchery, and the influence of lucifer and sin would be great in the nation, and that this young man from his line of the demoss would bring about a revival and restoration of holiness to the colonies, and to what would later be known as the united states of america, that he would be filled with the Holy Spirit, and work wondrously in the gifts God gave him. my great-grandmother passed away about 10 years ago, and ever sense I haven't been able to locate the document stating this prophesy, But I do have many of them in my possession, dating back to the seventeenth century, He prophesied about the American revolution which made him somewhat reluctant to come to the colonies, The Demoss Counts were men of great influence in their circle, most everyone gave an ear when they spoke, and took them quite seriosly due to the accuracy of their prophesies. Louis II when speaking in the prophetic, he was completely accurate on both dates and occurrences. Another prophesy about this same revival, says it is going to happen in the twentyfirst century, so I know one of my relative...”

It was wonderful reading, and gave me some hope of finding the connection I’m seeking as a descendant of Louis Dumas. If that is your post, or if you have copies of docs/can put me in touch, I would very much appreciate your help.--Professor 02:04, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Derivative narratives [6 February 2024]

Hi

The narratives you have been adding to WeRelate pages are not considered to be good practice. They don't provide extra information above what is in the facts (other than age at time of events), and it is very easy to have them get out of sync when the facts are corrected. No one wants to have to find and fix all these narratives when they are proved to be inaccurate. On a casual glance, they may appear to be source citations and mislead future readers. You may place them as source citations, with a reference to the source (e.g., Wikitree, MyHeritage, etc.), however, I ask that you stop adding these to the narrative section. Thanks

--DataAnalyst 18:50, 6 February 2024 (UTC) (volunteer administrator)

Pearce genealogy [13 February 2024]

Hi

I guess I failed to convey how the information on Person:Richard Pearce (6) all came from a single source, which has since been discredited. If you found the same information in several books published in the early 20th century, or on Find A Grave, or in amateur trees, it is because it all originated in Frederick Clifton Pierce's 1888 book. There are at least two books (the one you cited, Bicknell, Thomas Williams. History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and the one I cited, Colby, Barnard Ledward. Thirty-One Generations) that simply copied (pretty much verbatim) from F. C. Pierce. That was common practice in the days when it was difficult for Americans to do genealogical research in England.

Several genealogical books published in the 19th century show that an American family was descended from aristocracy in England, in lineages that have since been disproven. Whether it was the authors deluding themselves with wishful thinking or making honest mistakes in reading their own notes, or unscrupulous "researchers" in England who fabricated details in order to continue getting paid, this seems to have happened with unfortunate frequency. The ancestry of Richard Pearce happens to be one of these delusions that got copied without question for too long and shows up in too many places now. However, this is what the book The Great Migration Begins by Robert Charles Anderson has to say about F. C. Pierce's book:

"In 1888 Frederick Clifton Pierce published one of his usual confused productions, a Pearce Genealogy, Being the Record of the Posterity of Richard Pearce, An Early Inhabitant of Portsmouth, in Rhode Island ... (Rockford, Illinois, 1888). He made John Pierce of Dorchester and Boston a son of this elder Richard Pierce, and the latter was supposedly brother of WILLIAM PIERCE, mariner, of Boston, and father of a younger Richard Pierce of Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The elder Richard does not seem to have existed, nor is there evidence that any of these other three men are related to one another."

The Great Migration Begins:Immigrants to New England 1620-1633 (published in 1995 in 3 volumes) and its follow up The Great Migration:Immigrants to New England 1634-1635, along with the ongoing newsletter, are the result of extensive research into New England's earliest immigrants, and are considered the "go to" source for this information. Therefore, if you want accuracy (which we obviously do at WeRelate), it is best to take this source over F. C. Pierce's 1888 book or anything copied from it.

Therefore, I am going to update the page for Richard Pearce again and attempt to convey more convincingly that the information copied in so many places from a single incorrect source is not to be trusted. I'll also be updating other pages to reflect the conclusions of Robert Charles Anderson.--DataAnalyst 15:30, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Blocked [4 March 2024]

Your one-week block on contributing to WeRelate will be lifted tomorrow.

The reasons you were blocked were a lack of commitment to the quality of the data, and a failure to engage on Talk pages.

We take quality of data seriously at WeRelate – see our mission statement Pando for genealogy, which states (emphasis added) “we seek pages that are well documented with strong sources”. We are aware of the considerable amount of “bad genealogy” that exists for a variety of reasons – poorly done research, deliberate fabrication of vital records, bad assumptions, and plain old mistakes that arise from incomplete data. On top of that, inappropriate merging of individuals or families (sometimes automated) has increased the mess. The older a database is (such as FamilySearch Family Tree, which originated in the Ancestral File) the more likely it is to be burdened by the results of incomplete research and inappropriate merging.

For this reason, WeRelate doesn’t aim to be a copy of FamilySearch Family Tree (FSFT) data. Where the data in FSFT looks good and is well-sourced, we might use it to glean primary sources and/or find reputable books and articles that explain any assumptions made. Where the data in FSFT is bad, we very much want to NOT copy it. The same is true for all the other genealogy sites such as Wikitree, Geni, MyHeritage, and Ancestry Public Trees. None of these sites qualifies as “strong sources”, even though they can be useful as finding aids. (BTW: The same is also true for WeRelate – while we strive to have better quality data, we don’t always, and anyone using WeRelate should judge the data by the quality of the sources and arguments.)

For early New England genealogy, it is especially important to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources. There is a tendency to believe that if it is in a book, it must be true. This is not always the case, and having the same incorrect genealogy copied into a number of other books doesn’t make it correct. Having it copied to innumerable web sites doesn’t make it correct, either. This is why it is always desirable to look for primary sources cited by the book or website. Looking for the most recent work done on a family by a reputable genealogist is also highly recommended, as it may point out a fallacy in earlier assumptions.

The changes you made to the Pearce family that I reverted were all examples of genealogy with no primary sources (portions of F. C. Pierce’s book). A highly respected current genealogist (Robert Charles Anderson) called F. C. Pierce’s book “a confused production”. This should have been a red flag about the quality of Pierce’s book, but you chose to believe it simply because his “confused production” had been copied so many times. This shows a lack of experience in dealing with the common problem of bogus lineages originating in 19th century books.

Your unwillingness to either accept or ask questions about what I wrote on your Talk page on Feb 13 (how all the books you read copied from F. C. Pierce’s book and therefore his book is the only source for the information), and your subsequent insistence that there is “much evidence” that Richard Pierce (b. 1590) exists, suggests that you are more interested in defending your point of view than in discovering the truth. This lack of commitment to seeking the truth exposes WeRelate to ongoing degradation of data quality. When you are reinstated to WeRelate, your contributions will be closely monitored to ensure that this doesn’t continue.

If you wish to continue to contribute to WeRelate pages for people born before, say 1750, I suggest you learn about how common it is to find incorrect lineages published in books and propagated throughout the internet and how to find better sources. Reach out to others who can help you learn. However, if you don’t have access to peer-reviewed journals and reputable publications such as New England Historical and Genealogical Register, The American Genealogist, and The Great Migration Project (which cost money if you want online access), it might be best that you refrain from touching those pages at all. Leave the early New England space to those who can find the latest research and opinions. WeRelate has some dedicated volunteers working on the quality of data and sources in that space.

from a Volunteer Administrator--DataAnalyst 02:20, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Your block has been lifted.--DataAnalyst 16:25, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

You are once again lowering the value of WeRelate pages by reinstating disproven information (e.g., Henry Leonard was NOT born in Wales, regardless of what FamilySearch Family Tree says - the Leonards may have been in Wales for a few years, but according to Bill Barton, there is no source to place them there). Also, please don't clutter up the References section by adding sources for a person's children, unless they are the ONLY source that mentions the parent, or show conflicting information that you wish to comment on. And please stop adding FamilySearch Family Tree narratives to the list of sources when there are other more reliable sources - they are just clutter that isn't always accurate and are difficult to maintain as FSFT gets improved. If your actions continue to demonstrate that you are determined that WeRelate must match FSFT, even when WeRelate sources provide evidence that FSFT is incorrect, I won't hesitate to block you again.--DataAnalyst 18:14, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Source formating and other changes [4 March 2024]

Hi,

You will notice that I made several minor changes to the page of Person:Job Throckmorton (4) and I wanted to explain why.

First, I removed the source book Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-Century Colonists, since it doesn't provide additional value, being clearly just a brief summary of what was published earlier (with at least one error, as it has identified the split year of Job's marriage incorrectly).

I moved another summary source (Throckmortons of Southern Ohio) to the Family page, as its only significant contribution is the (correct) identification of the marriage split year.

I removed the FamilySearch Family Tree narrative as source, as it is of low value compared to the book sources included.

I moved the marriage source to the Family page where it belongs.

I combined two sources which were from the same book.

I attempted to put quotes around direct quotes from books and make sure they were accurate - although I gave up on part of that.

I moved a link to a book (rather than to an exact page) to the Source page where it belongs.

I enclosed source links in templates (e.g., fgravemem for Find A Grave) or square brackets to prevent the full display of URLs, as is our WeRelate preference. Display of full URLs, especially when they are long, causes issues when showing changes between versions and when attempting to merge pages, and thus is discouraged. Full URLs also present a distracting clutter for many of our users.

I linked facts to the sources to make it easier for future researchers to spot the source. I linked only to the most relevant sources (e.g., primary sources or books that appeared to have original research). (Even Find A Grave might not be a primary source, as I suspect the barely-weathered gravestone might be a reconstruction.)

I added the Estate Inventory fact because I found it in Ancestry.com mis-indexed as a will date, so I thought it worth putting in as what it really was.

There were another couple of minor changes. All these changes were to bring the page closer to WeRelate standards - relevant sources (without excessive repetition), proper acknowledgement of text copied from sources (using quotes), linking events to sources, proper handling of URLs.--DataAnalyst 15:38, 4 March 2024 (UTC)