The FIFO/LIFO of Surnames in Genealogy

In accounting, items are depreciated under First In First Out (FIFO) and Last In First Out (LIFO) rules -- your choice, but you have to stick to the method you've chosen or the IRS gets annoyed. Seems to me there is an equivalent rule in genealogy when it comes to the kids' surnames in multiple marriage and/or non-marriage situations.

A woman named Cindi wrote recently. She was born to a single mother and carried her mother's surname at birth. When her mother married the following year, Cindi's step-father adopted her, giving her his surname. When Cindi married, had a child, divorced and remarried, her second husband adopted the daughter from the first and gave the daughter his surname.

So the choice is FIFO or LIFO. Do Cindi and her daughter appear in my Family Treemaker (FTM) database under their birth name with a reference to their adoptive surnames, or do their adoptive names take precedence? I've chosen to display the adoptive names as the names of record, with the birth names as alternates. I'd be curious what others do.

Watershed Moments

I became interested in watersheds while at school in Erie. One of my classmates was involved in environmental issues and asked how her group might use Wikipedia to promote the welfare of the watershed. I suggested that forming a baseline presence at Wikipedia would allow environmentalists to collaborate on articles and begin to document what they know. I established the framework for articles on the Lake Erie Watershed, the Lake Erie Basin, and the Great Lakes Basin. The environmentalists didn't exactly rush to collaborate, though, so the articles remain roughly as I framed them. The value of the articles is that they provide a place to provide encyclopedic information about pollution derived from runoff, something you just don't find in much detail in articles about rivers and lakes. For example, the articles about Lake Erie and Erie International Airport say nothing about how de-icing of planes could cause chemical runoff that would pollute the lake if the airport didn't mitigate against it, but the watershed article contains the details. Likewise, the article about Presque Isle Downs makes no mention of how the the racino's horse barns must mitigate against eColi runoff into a local creek that feeds into Lake Erie, but the watershed article covers it. The issue of eColi runoff shutting down Presque Isle beaches is a subject that needs to be added. I would hope that environmentalists across the country would begin to use Wikipedia to document runoff issues and other concerns.

Is Ancestry Really a Fox in Rootsweb's Hen House?

I started out in online genealogy in 1994 by participating in a genealogy discussion board at America Online, which was then a pay service. Family Treemaker soon added an online site, so I tried posting GEDCOM files of my Carr surname data. But the AOL group was just a constant flow of new researchers with shallow questions, and FTM offered no environment for my data, so I took my discussion and online database interests to Rootsweb, a free site with lots of features for genealogists. I joined the CARR_L surname discussion list, which automatically routed me copies of letters from all subscribers. I was a busy participant in the exchange of information for about four years, I guess.

Rootsweb's WorldConnect has been the home for my latest GEDCOM files ever since. WorldConnect offers a place where my research comes to life, displayed for all the world to see. I find that many folks find my research at WorldConnect and write to me with questions, comments, or additional facts. I get email from around the world. And they poke at my family records all around the edges, not just the places I'm focused on. That can have serendipitous results.

When the pay service Ancestry bought Rootsweb in 2000, part of the deal was that Ancestry could display my WorldConnect data for the benefit of Ancestry's paid subscribers for as long as my data enjoyed free display at WorldConnect; if I removed it from Rootsweb, my data would no longer appear within Ancestry either. Copying and keeping or selling my data wasn't allowed. That remains the case today.

There are a number of genealogists out there who vocally resent Ancestry for commercializing Rootsweb. And some fear that Ancestry will without warning shutter their hard work behind a fee service wall one day without their permission. I exchanged a couple of emails in recent days with an official from one of the major free GenWeb-like services. She said most of her ilk have abandoned Rootsweb servers for this very reason.

I don't know whether to believe Ancestry's call for sharing at Rootsweb, or Kimberly's Genealogy Blog's assertions about Ancestry's benign intentions in dropping the distinct Rootsweb URL, or the Ancestry Insider's "independent" commentary about Ancestry's latest attempt to make profits while pushing the volunteer agenda at Rootsweb. Should I believe the Rootsweb public affairs statement about the switch in URLs or the rabid feedback of disgruntled users that can be found after the public statement?

My personal experience with Rootsweb/Ancestry has been great. I keep a free database at WorldConnect that automatically appears as well within Ancestry for its pay subscribers. I have the top of the line Ancestry subscription and use it all the time as an active hobbyist. I routinely view original images of passenger ship manifests, US WWI and WWII draft registration cards, census sheets from three continents, US naturalization cards, and newspapers. I've been around the block and haven't found these images anywhere for free, nor do I expect to.

I'm not much of a fan of the Ancestry end of the WorldConnect GEDCOMs. The display is awkward and users have a tendency to link individuals together who lived in different centuries. What's up with that? I find the data as useless as the old World Family Tree CDs I unfortunately bought from Broderbund in another life. I spent too much on them to toss them in the garbage, but they're worthless. I don't recommend the family trees you might find in Ancestry, but I get queries from users so there's some benefit, I guess.

While I search the web and use free services, I favor Ancestry's one-stop shopping because the various GenWeb sites can be difficult to use because they are not centrally indexed, their tables of contents are uneven in quality of organization, and their depth of contents depends on the interest of volunteers. Looking here and there for something for free when it is readily available for a fee may not be entirely practical in some research situations. It depends on how you value your time. I frequently find gravesite indices for entire counties in rural areas with only a dozen or so names. The names were entered by one volunteer who logged only those deceased of interest to him and his family tree. The GenWeb-like sites work when there are many volunteers, usually in population centers, but sites representing lesser populated regions often languish with the same dozen names year in and year out. The free web offers great promise for those with idealistic dreams and the time to dig through lots of records, but the process can be prohibitively uneven.

Just look at the cemeteries of Wetzel County, West Virginia at Interment.net. Only a few listings in each cemetery. Compare that with the cemeteries of Kanawha County, West Virginia, a much more populated place with many more volunteers.

So, I think Ancestry has capitalist incentives and probably never thinks first about the hobby. Sure, they've made life in Rootsweb's hen house a bit more annoying here and there, but no chickens have been harmed in the making of this firm. A few chickens have run away saying the sky is falling, but there is little evidence of that. As capitalists, Ancestry tries to supply an excellent product and keep resentments down in the community through appeasement and access deals. Rootsweb simply couldn't afford to live, so it was bought by The Man and now some people just can't get over it. Those of you who can afford a membership with Ancestry should consider it and quit griping. They have stuff you can't get for free. Don't kid yourself about the free web. It has lots of stuff, but it isn't effectively pooled and images of original docs are rare. I prioritize my membership at Ancestry, making sure I can afford it by doing without other things. The advertising faced by those who don't have memberships is an unfortunate cost of doing business. Those same ads annoy me; they are everywhere. Suck it up.

Grateful for Honorable Mentions

Thanks, Erie PA Today, for mentioning my work with Wikiproject Erie in a blurb on 3 November 2008. My work on the Erie parks article at Wikipedia was commented upon favorably at Erie Blogs on 2 October 2007. Always grateful for a bit of recognition.

My Wikipedia photographs of Erie pop up here and there. They're no longer mine as I've contributed them to Wikipedia, but I still get name credit when people use them. The Turtle Island Project website used my pictures on their site, even in a video at You Tube, and my name appears in both. My photos end up at other encyclopedias that use Wikipedia as their feed, including NationMaster (see my photos of the Warner Theatre in Erie), and Brittanica.com (see my picture of the Erie Maritime Museum). Sometimes my image contributions get used in odd ways. Like to complain about zoos. I'm happy to provide the content. You can see a gallery of all my photo contributions to Wiki towards the bottom of my home page there. I encourage you to contribute interesting photos you've taken to Wiki.

Town Equals County (or Counties)

When you want to research your ancestors who lived in a particular town, you should be thinking right away about finding out which county or counties that town has been a part of over the years. Then explore county-oriented research sites online, like bulletin boards for genealogical queries and databases for vital statistics, cemetery records, land records, wills, and Bible inscriptions. If county records are sparse, turn to regional sites, then state sites.

According to certain shakey late-nineteenth century records, my Carr ancestors might have had their roots in the Manahawkin section of Stafford Township, New Jersey. Manahawkin has been part of Ocean County since 1850, but before that it was in Monmouth County. (Stafford Township was formed out of Shrewsbury Township in 1750.) Since I've been able to trace my Carr line back to Greenwich, New Jersey in Gloucester County, per tax records from the 1780s and Revolutionary War service records, I figure those Carr roots in Manahawkin must predate the Revolution. So, when I research my Carr line, I focus on Monmouth County research sites. I keep Ocean County in mind, however, because queries about a particular town can easily end up in the "wrong" county's bulletin board.

My wife's Pool ancestors (her grandmother's great uncle was US Senator John Pool 1826-1884) lived in Elizabeth City and environs before the Civil War. I did a bit of digging tonight for websites handling Pasquotank County. The USGenWeb Archives has a nice collection of resources. There's USGenNet, which has quite a few useful links. NCGenWeb has some links but looks to be needing volunteers. And NCRoots hasn't quite discovered Pasquotank County yet. (It hedges its bets by including historic Albemarle County, which for four years in the 1660s included present-day Pasquotank County.) Linkpendium might be helpful to some, but as the name implies, it is just a linking service. Maybe if you don't have Google you'll want to keep Linkpendium handy?

Continuing with this Elizabeth City line of discussion: If you want to actually meet other researchers and dig around in records, you might try the Family Research Society of Northeastern North Carolina (FRSNNC), which is based in Elizabeth City. My wife and I visited the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh back in the 1980s. They have a wonderful facility and tons of records. The state archives were loaded on a wagon and hauled to safety before the Yankees burned the town during the Civil War. The place, which has some of the oldest records in the South, is now understandably quite fire resistant. It looks like their online resources might be substantial as well.

Rootsweb has a town search engine. It can be helpful when you need some leads on where to look or if you just want to browse when you've run out of ideas. And if you have no luck with county or regional records, you can always check Rootsweb's State Resources List. Once you click on a state, it takes you to a page with a veritable cornucopia of links. Here's the North Carolina page, for example. If the list is unwieldy, try using Ctl F to search the page for keywords, like a county name or town or surname.

Analysis

I've been working on and off since February towards changing the Wikipedia article on analysis from a list article -- a roster of Wiki articles that include the word "analysis" -- to an article that actually describes analysis in a variety of fields of study. It seemed to me that a list format in this case was pretty lame and ultimately didn't provide sufficient description of the concept.

I posted my idea on the discussion page back in February 2008 and received a favorable response. As of today there have been over a hundred edits to the article by an assortment of editors. Amazingly, we've had to revert some vandalism from time to time. Hard to figure why anyone would target an article on analysis, but some people have time on their hands.

You can compare the status of the article today (right) versus before I proposed the project (left). The comparison, which is called a diff, isn't always easy to understand, so I'll offer my grim attempt at an explanation. The gray boxes on the right indicate text blocks that haven't been altered from the earlier version. The green boxes on the right are text boxes that have been added/changed, while yellow on the left are ones that have been removed/changed. If a box is new or removed, it will have white space on its left or right. If a box is changed, red text in a green box indicates added text, while red text in a yellow box indicates removed text. Wiki shows a simple example with explanations, but it isn't a very thorough exemplar. For a broader discussion of diffs, see Jonathan D Nolen's blog. (I also came across this interesting what-if piece on the merits of the BBC using diffs to track news editing.)

There's plenty more work to be done on the analysis article if you're interested.

Going to the Movies: Hollywood.com and IMDb

I am such a research hound that I can't even go to the movies without doing a bit of digging first. My routine is to check the local fare using Hollywood.com to find my local area's movie listings. Hollywood asks for my zip code then automatically gives me the showings within a 15 miles radius, closest first. Rather than bother clicking on the movies and reading Hollywood's lame reviews and customer comments, I just open another window and use IMDb to check out my choices.

BTW -- I use the Groowe Toolbar in Firefox, which lets me quickly toggle between search tools like Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Dictionary.com, Clusty, IMDb and a bunch of others.

The trick with IMDb is to pick a movie and go right to the External Reviews, either on the left under Top Links or at the bottom under Related Links. For comparison, have a look at Zack and Miri Make A Porno at Hollywood.com and IMDb. Hollywood leaves you with little. IMDb maybe has too much information on the main page for a particular movie, and its contributor reviews are only marginally better than Hollywood's, but it offers a nice collection of external reviews. (Watch out for the trailers and clips across the top of the main page of any movie -- they have ads that have to run first. Go to the Top Links on the left and tap the trailers and videos link there. (There are presently five offerings on that page, each the same as the last. Oops! But at least there are no ads that I could find.)

IMDb is of course valuable for its cross-linking database of actors and films. In our current example, Seth Rogen is Zack and Elizabeth Banks is Miriam. (I'd say Ms Banks is associated with the more illustrious list of movies, but neither of them is getting a block of sidewalk yet.)

I have to say, while I'm on the theme of movie reviews and research, that I'm sorely disappointed that At The Movies (the former Ebert and Roeper nee Siskel and Ebert show) has degenerated to a movie promo show. Two thumbs way down for the new show. Lucky I have the Internet to help me out, but what ever happened to sitting on the sofa for my weekly half-hour of film criticism? The show wasn't perfect by any means, but I miss it.

An Audacious Solstice Is Upon Us

I stayed up late last night to see Obama's acceptance speech, so I'm more than a bit bleary-eyed as I get ready for work today. The sun's still not up on this new day, but the darkness cannot mask that something is different. It feels like Christmas came in the night and I should go downstairs and see if Santa brought gifts. It's an expectation, not that everything is now fixed, but that our journey towards darkness suddenly stopped. The sun halted in its tracks out in the solar system; a kind of solstice reigns over the gears of despair. In the pre-dawn I can feel us drifting to a halt. The screeching of brakes was last night; our bodies are gently shifting with the change as the train settles to a stop and prepares to head a new direction. It is eerie quiet. I know in my head that the weather will get colder for quite a while yet -- the worst is possibly yet to come -- but at least I have the inner assurance that spring will certainly come and with it the rewards of warmth and light. Before last night hope remained elusive. What a wonderful speech in Grant Park! I look forward to the dawn and the look on others' faces as I make my way into the city.

Wikipedia and the Church

I've done some disparate work on church-related topics at Wikipedia. I did quite a bit of work on the Roman Catholic Diocese of Erie while on sabbatical in Pennsylvania. I wrote an article on the diocese's St Peter Cathedral there, as well as the Catholic Trinity Cemetery. I added to a piece on a local bishop named Tobias Mullen. I also wrote an article about the Jewish temple in Erie.

I tried to get the Presbyterians rolling along by adding articles about the Synod of the Northeast and the Synod of the Trinity, and adding substantially to the article about the Ardmore Presbyterian Church, but so far no Wikyterians or Presbypedians have taken the bait to continue adding articles about individual churches, presbyteries, and synods. They seem happy instead with the meager exposure provided by a simple list, where they each take the quick and easy route of adding an external link to their church website. Hopefully some day they'll realize that Wiki is a great place to build their church histories (and evangelize a bit, too, in the process). (Forward a copy of this blog to your evangelism committee and tell them to get to work.)

BTW: Wiki lacks a good article about vicariates and how they're used in the Catholic church. While working on the Erie Diocese article, I learned that vicariates are subdiocean regional groups. Wiki relegates vicariates to the vicar article, but much more could be done there.