Snail mail genealogy research is still an important first step in doing a family tree. I do most of my research online these days, either at web sites or by email. But when I first started doing genealogy, the data I needed was too recent to find online. I needed birth, death, and marriage certificates, wills, and deeds, etc. The records were protected by privacy laws and couldn't simply be viewed online. So I learned to send out one or two research queries with envelopes and stamps almost every day. It was ultimately very rewarding when the replies began to roll in, so I kept the letters going out because it was so painful to have to deal with an empty mailbox as I waited and waited for my answers to come with the postman.
When email entered the picture for me around 1994, I tried printing them all out and three-hole punching them for binding. I soon realized that was insanity. The trick was to save keystrokes, so I copied and pasted the emails directly into my genealogy software's notes section. My family tree soon became a repository for all of my genealogy research correspondence. Eventually, as I learned how to post my data online at Rootsweb WorldConnect, I found I could share that correspondence with fellow researchers. I occasionally have to remove all or part of an email because the query includes personal commentary about the family member who always shunned his brother or hated his Aunt Mabel, etc, etc. While I might clip a personal remark here and there, I tended to preserve the quality of the writing itself, which I considered an indicator of reliability. Sloppy spelling or grammar might tell us all something about the correspondent: do you think cousin Flo can accurately transcribe all those dates and places of birth and death when she can't spell geneology or cematery or calvary?
So now my database is chock full of mail I've received over the past fourteen years, as well as data sourced from countless books, census records, etc. And it is all available for view online. I keep a Private file for the original copies of emails that people have asked me to remove from the Internet. I use a simple numbering code to indicate where the original might be found in the Private file, and the Private file listing indicates where the original email is mentioned in the database.
At some point, the Ancestry people will have to consider selling a service that provides for the legacy of digital databases after the death of the owner. I'm sure my wife isn't going to want to resolve the many little details of my genealogy hobby when I die. There's a market in this, Ancestry. Mark my words.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Pause That Refreshes
I've unpacked my books and started to get my home office in order for some serious research work again. But there is something about crating up your worldly possessions, moving them, and then unboxing it all that disrupts a researcher's mental flow. It isn't writer's block. My brain's computer is sort of on hibernate,seems to me. Research requires a certain spirit that comes from stability and persistence. I find myself looking around the office, pondering issues of interest, if briefly, and dabbling here and there in genealogy mail and Wiki miscellany, but I just have no will to launch into anything substantial yet. It's probably a syndrome of some sort that affects only researchers who move, and no one has ever bothered to identify it because there's no profit to be made on selling pills to temporarily stalled researchers.
I have several projects on the back burner, but even those will have to wait their turn while I acclimate. I'm certainly not at school any longer. The job and commute are part of the new routine. The ungodly early morning alarm and "My baby takes the mornin' train!" are a bitter pill after my luxurious school schedule. But I'm anxious to get back into research and production. For now, though, I must pause and rejuvenate.
I have several projects on the back burner, but even those will have to wait their turn while I acclimate. I'm certainly not at school any longer. The job and commute are part of the new routine. The ungodly early morning alarm and "My baby takes the mornin' train!" are a bitter pill after my luxurious school schedule. But I'm anxious to get back into research and production. For now, though, I must pause and rejuvenate.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Brick Walls
Genealogy is not a hobby for the impatient. There is no instant gratification. Answers only come in time, my friends. In my thirty years of genealogy research, the biggest frustration of my fellow hobbyists has been hitting the proverbial "brick wall." This usually means that the researcher has run out of obvious leads and is beginning to gnaw on his/her foot in despair. The necessary lead might take twenty or thirty years to appear, just like you see on the tv show "Cold Case."
In my case, I conducted family interviews and collected birth and death records back in the 1970s and 1980s. I did what additional research I could, even paying a genealogy society in Ireland to check their records. Leads dried up twenty years ago. The wall finally began to break down last year, when Ancestry started posting more passenger ship records from the 20th century. I finally found a slew of crew listings showing my grandfather's brother George as a night watchman aboard United States Lines passenger ships, something I knew from interviews but couldn't document before. Lo and behold, George listed two of his sisters as next of kin, showing married names and addresses! With that information I was able to search the 1930 Federal Census, get names and ages for each sister and their children and find precise birth and death dates using the Social Security Death Index. I used the death records to request free copies of obituaries from a local public library. The obituaries provided another sibling living in Glasgow, Scotland. I've requested a copy of one siblings Social Security application to confirm the siblings' parents' names. After thirty years of searching, I expect to be virtually chasing my line back to Ireland sometime this summer.
In this Information Age, there will eventually be a revelation of much needed data. The trick is in the waiting. If I had put my genealogy work aside, I would have never made the connection I'm about to make. My approach was not to struggle fruitlessly against my brick wall but to develop my genealogy hobby more broadly, always checking on my relatives now and then but not obsessing on them. Carr surname research became my hobby, giving me a reason to stay in the game for many years and not give up hope. I still have a Carr brick wall to overcome, but it will be resolved -- eventually.
In my case, I conducted family interviews and collected birth and death records back in the 1970s and 1980s. I did what additional research I could, even paying a genealogy society in Ireland to check their records. Leads dried up twenty years ago. The wall finally began to break down last year, when Ancestry started posting more passenger ship records from the 20th century. I finally found a slew of crew listings showing my grandfather's brother George as a night watchman aboard United States Lines passenger ships, something I knew from interviews but couldn't document before. Lo and behold, George listed two of his sisters as next of kin, showing married names and addresses! With that information I was able to search the 1930 Federal Census, get names and ages for each sister and their children and find precise birth and death dates using the Social Security Death Index. I used the death records to request free copies of obituaries from a local public library. The obituaries provided another sibling living in Glasgow, Scotland. I've requested a copy of one siblings Social Security application to confirm the siblings' parents' names. After thirty years of searching, I expect to be virtually chasing my line back to Ireland sometime this summer.
In this Information Age, there will eventually be a revelation of much needed data. The trick is in the waiting. If I had put my genealogy work aside, I would have never made the connection I'm about to make. My approach was not to struggle fruitlessly against my brick wall but to develop my genealogy hobby more broadly, always checking on my relatives now and then but not obsessing on them. Carr surname research became my hobby, giving me a reason to stay in the game for many years and not give up hope. I still have a Carr brick wall to overcome, but it will be resolved -- eventually.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Good of the Many
While it's an unpaid thrill, it can be a rush to publish an article or image on Wikipedia. But many editors are out there selflessly doing the most mundane editing and checking imaginable. Some of that work has been taken over by "bots," computer programs that scan Wikipedia for errors and vandalism, but those who use Wikipedia regularly owe a great debt to those Wikipedians keeping the encyclopedia up and running. Somehow, Spock's highly enriched statement of devotion to others' well-being comes to mind: The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one.
One blogger points out that while 10% of registered Wikipedians (one hundred thousand out of a million) are frequent contributors (publish ten or more articles), the core membership consists of only 0.5% (5,000) of the membership. They are the ones correcting 'hte' to 'the' and reverting stupid remarks on the tuna fish sandwich article. (Yes, there is a tuna fish sandwich article. Leave the poor thing alone!)
So, join Wikipedia to write an article, but stay for a dose of grammar and police work and save the crew from oblivion.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Onesiphorus
I received a genealogy query the other day that demonstrates a few of my common research processes, so I thought I'd share. Someone had writtten to me eight years ago to provide a clue regarding the descendants of Onesiphorus and Patience (Dow) Page and their daughter Sarah, who married Sanders Carr. The recent query sought original source information from the person who wrote to me years ago.
Many people do genealogy research as part of a family project, often surrounding a death or as a legacy in anticipation of their own eventual demise. An eight year old email query often involves a change in email address, at least. In this case, the researcher seems to have done a number of searches in the 1998-2000 period and stopped. Maybe the copy of the email query sent to that old address will get through, but odds are against it.
So the next best thing is to see if the information provided has some level of quality and makes sense, what they call asset vetting in intelligence work. I quickly found a website with a listing of Salisbury, Massachusetts marriages, including that of Onesiphorus Page to Patience Dow. I also found a genealogy with obvious descendants of Onesiphorus Page and his supposed son-in-law, Sanders Carr:
6-Onesiphorus Page Maxfield (18 May 1808-4 Sep 1874)
sp: Abigail Hurd Cutts (22 Jul 1809-21 Jan 1896)
* 7-Sanders Carr Maxfield (26 Dec 1830-20 Oct 1834)
As long as there aren't a ton of spelling variations, an old name like Onesiphorus can really help narrow your searches. (The census enumerators had a field day with Barzillai Carr's first name!)
While cultures vary, parents may use the surnames or even full names of paternal or maternal ancestors as their children's names, especially if the ancestors were prominent figures in the community. They also may name the first boy and girl after themselves. So don't ignore the obvious clue in a person's name when you are trying to go back a generation or two in the family roots.
Many people do genealogy research as part of a family project, often surrounding a death or as a legacy in anticipation of their own eventual demise. An eight year old email query often involves a change in email address, at least. In this case, the researcher seems to have done a number of searches in the 1998-2000 period and stopped. Maybe the copy of the email query sent to that old address will get through, but odds are against it.
So the next best thing is to see if the information provided has some level of quality and makes sense, what they call asset vetting in intelligence work. I quickly found a website with a listing of Salisbury, Massachusetts marriages, including that of Onesiphorus Page to Patience Dow. I also found a genealogy with obvious descendants of Onesiphorus Page and his supposed son-in-law, Sanders Carr:
6-Onesiphorus Page Maxfield (18 May 1808-4 Sep 1874)
sp: Abigail Hurd Cutts (22 Jul 1809-21 Jan 1896)
* 7-Sanders Carr Maxfield (26 Dec 1830-20 Oct 1834)
As long as there aren't a ton of spelling variations, an old name like Onesiphorus can really help narrow your searches. (The census enumerators had a field day with Barzillai Carr's first name!)
While cultures vary, parents may use the surnames or even full names of paternal or maternal ancestors as their children's names, especially if the ancestors were prominent figures in the community. They also may name the first boy and girl after themselves. So don't ignore the obvious clue in a person's name when you are trying to go back a generation or two in the family roots.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Circular Reporting
I've spent more than my fair share of time on the North Jersey Coast Line trains into and out of New York and Newark over the past thirty years. (The trains leave Manhattan by heading west, so the trains to the shore are said to be westbound, even in Matawan when they are heading southeast. NJ Transit gives you a polite hint by posting signs saying "Eastbound to New York" and "Westbound to Bay Head.") You can take the train to the plane these days, or head to Broadway or Monmouth Park racetrack. NJ Transit does a good job getting a lot of people where they need to go these days.
Friday afternoons in the summer months, though, the outbound trains from New York and Newark are crowded with tourists heading down to the shore, where they stay at rentals and hit the beaches and bars. I remember the young travelers strategizing how they planned to move from one shore town to the next when the one closes its bars an hour earlier than its neighbor. It was all very scientific. And since the party had already started on the train, it was also pretty annoying.
These tourists have come to be known pejoratively among shore residents as Bennys. The origin of the term is obscure, but there is no lack of opinions for what the term means. The New York Times ran a light community article a few years ago and it seems to have taken root as the unquestioned source for the origin of Benny as an acronym for Bayonne - Elizabeth - Newark - New York. A number of sites adopted the definition soon thereafter, so now the Wikipedia article is citing them all as proof of the meaning of the term. No one seems to have bothered to check to see that Bayonne was never a stop on the New York and Long Branch Railroad, the predecessor to the North Jersey Coast Line. Seems more likely to me that the Bay Head terminus, the last stop on the New York line since 1881, makes a much better choice for the Benny acronym. All the more since Bay Head was originally named Bayhead, so a BNY train ticket seems quite probable.
I've just suggested on the Benny talk page that they've gained false confidence in this Bayonne idea due to circular reporting. The publications seem to all use the same source and inappropriately magnify the analytic confidence. After all,the NYT reporter just talked to a few folks in Bradley Beach, probably on the beach or in a bar. It doesn't look like the reporter did any digging for hard evidence in the Asbury Park Press newspaper archives, and who knows if the fact-checkers even bothered to check sources on such a fluff piece.
Circular reporting is a constant threat when doing research. That threat makes careful documentation of sources that much more important. On top of that, one of the sources cited in the Wiki article is a compendium of sources, a sort of bibliography with snippets from the original articles. It is a nice tool but inappropriate as a footnoted source since it has no original content. Some of the links were dead and others traced back to dueling bloggers arguing over third person reporting and what they felt were common customs at the Jersey Shore. Such sources aren't credible or verifiable. Many alternate ideas for what Benny means are out there and probably should be rendered in the Wiki article.
The most annoying train rides are actually the evening rides towards the city, when music fans are heading to a concert at Madison Square Garden. They typically bring a case of beer and roll half-empty cans down the aisles and make a lot of noise. I guess they are for New York City residents the annoying equivalent of what the shore residents have to put up with at the beach. No doubt the city folks have a terse name for these typically disgusting revelers, but it is unlikely to be an obscure acronym.
Curriki and Wiki Curriculum in K-12
I learned that Wikipedia's Classroom cooperation program is on auto-pilot; schools let them know they are doing projects as a courtesy, for future tracking purposes. Maybe something will come of it later? In the meantime, the blogosphere is discussing the need for curriculum so teachers can use Wiki in the learning process. I was pointed to Curriki, which is apparently developing curriculum, but I don't know much about them yet. Anything that trains young people to become responsible and productive Wikipedians could be a good thing.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Making Magic
The Erie Times-News ran a front page article on Friday about how a marker was being placed in Griswold Park in honor of Harry Kellar (1849-1922), a famous magician who was born near this downtown Erie park. As part of my WikiProject Erie duties, I routinely watch the local newspaper for stories that might affect Wikipedia's set of articles about the city. Luckily, I didn't have to write an article about Kellar, and it even mentioned that he was born in Erie, but I had to add him to the list of people from Erie article and I had to mention the dedication of the memorial in the list of city parks article.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Putting yourself out there
One of the benefits of posting your genealogy information online is that you get lots of neat mail. Someone wrote to me today to say her ancestors worked with my grandparents back in 1920 at the Mount Holly Inn in Baltimore, Maryland. (Of course the place burned to the ground in a huge fire in December 1920, but don't be blaming my grandfather, alright? I'm sure he had a decent alibi.) She thanked me for pointing out some sources where she might get a photo of the hotel.
I get mail daily from genealogists around the world seeking more details or asking for help regarding family members they've found in my surname database. A guy in New Zealand wrote me last year because he was writing a book about steamship stewardesses in the South Pacific and was interested in the correspondence my grandfather received from a young lady back in the 1910-1917 period.
Grandpa had a bunch of girlfriends and they all wrote him often. He stashed those love letters away and my aunt somehow got ahold of them and squirreled them away. It wasn't until she died that her sister found the letters and shared them with the rest of us. I hope you find a wonderful little stash of old letters like these and take the time to read and transcribe them. (You'll find links to my grandfather's history and correspondence on my genealogy home page to the right on this page.)
Online genealogy research is a combination of finding sources and putting your data out there for people to find. I encourage you to write a brief history of the family and upload it. Make a simple family tree using Family Treemaker software and upload the data for free to Rootsweb WorldConnect. It will get sucked into the Ancestry pay service database and you'll have both free users of Rootsweb and paid subscribers of Ancestry picking through your ancestors day and night. They'll write to you, so be nice to them and have fun.
I get mail daily from genealogists around the world seeking more details or asking for help regarding family members they've found in my surname database. A guy in New Zealand wrote me last year because he was writing a book about steamship stewardesses in the South Pacific and was interested in the correspondence my grandfather received from a young lady back in the 1910-1917 period.
Grandpa had a bunch of girlfriends and they all wrote him often. He stashed those love letters away and my aunt somehow got ahold of them and squirreled them away. It wasn't until she died that her sister found the letters and shared them with the rest of us. I hope you find a wonderful little stash of old letters like these and take the time to read and transcribe them. (You'll find links to my grandfather's history and correspondence on my genealogy home page to the right on this page.)
Online genealogy research is a combination of finding sources and putting your data out there for people to find. I encourage you to write a brief history of the family and upload it. Make a simple family tree using Family Treemaker software and upload the data for free to Rootsweb WorldConnect. It will get sucked into the Ancestry pay service database and you'll have both free users of Rootsweb and paid subscribers of Ancestry picking through your ancestors day and night. They'll write to you, so be nice to them and have fun.
The co- words of wiki-world
About a dozen grad students from Mercyhurst recently became Wikipedians and contributed articles, some of which were highly rated by Wiki editors. I'm presently trying to find out if the school is obliged (or if it would be somehow advantageous) to participate in WikiProject Classroom Coordination. It sounds to me like coordination is voluntary and mainly designed to keep large groups of kids in a computer lab from suddenly descending on Wikipedia. It does provide statistics to Wiki and the school, so maybe it would be useful.
When I find that a topic has no associated article at Wikipedia, I find my topic mentioned in an existing article (or add it) and create an internal link right there. That creates a red-letter link, meaning it's a dead link, doesn't go anywhere. I click the link and compose my article. When I'm done, I check Wiki for other instances of the term and create more internal links to my new article. Someone told me recently that this process requires collaboration. I'm not sure how that would work. Maybe I am supposed to go to the pertinent WikiProject page and suggest the idea? Most times I've been told to just go ahead and write it, so I don't ask anymore. When I'm off-base, and that's happened more than once, the editors flock to my errant article and quickly correct it.
In Wiki-world, cooperation calls for you to assume good faith and to try to work things out when there is disagreement. I've come up against some editors lately who are overly controlling and poor ambassadors of Wiki principles. Such struggles can test your patience. One senior editor I invited to intercede in a dispute had to step away to lick his wounds after slipping into an editing war with the offender. Fighting fire with fire isn't recommended procedure at Wiki. Calm, cool, and collected aren't all co- words in Wiki-world, but they should be.
When I find that a topic has no associated article at Wikipedia, I find my topic mentioned in an existing article (or add it) and create an internal link right there. That creates a red-letter link, meaning it's a dead link, doesn't go anywhere. I click the link and compose my article. When I'm done, I check Wiki for other instances of the term and create more internal links to my new article. Someone told me recently that this process requires collaboration. I'm not sure how that would work. Maybe I am supposed to go to the pertinent WikiProject page and suggest the idea? Most times I've been told to just go ahead and write it, so I don't ask anymore. When I'm off-base, and that's happened more than once, the editors flock to my errant article and quickly correct it.
In Wiki-world, cooperation calls for you to assume good faith and to try to work things out when there is disagreement. I've come up against some editors lately who are overly controlling and poor ambassadors of Wiki principles. Such struggles can test your patience. One senior editor I invited to intercede in a dispute had to step away to lick his wounds after slipping into an editing war with the offender. Fighting fire with fire isn't recommended procedure at Wiki. Calm, cool, and collected aren't all co- words in Wiki-world, but they should be.
Geography Bound
I've been wondering if I should give up my work on Erie, Pennsylvania history because I'm moving away soon? I'm not even from Erie, so maybe my interest is fleeting? I won't have ready access to local research sources and I won't get the daily paper anymore. On the positive side, I've bought a couple of the classic local histories and have access to another one online at the Erie County Historical Society's website. Plus, I know the topic pretty well after researching it for over a year. And I've got friends here.
I'm returning to central New Jersey, whence I came a couple of years ago. I've been at Mercyhurst College getting my master's degree. I've been researching on Wikipedia as a hobby and having a lot of fun. Well, there was the time I tried to take Wiki pictures in front of the local television station. They got pretty upset when I went up to the antennae to try to take an art shot. I mean, it was into the sun and my camera is pretty pathetic, but they were ready to call Homeland Security and all. Geez. It wasn't like I was being secret squirrel about it. I parked right out front and walked up to the building. All of a sudden there was someone beating on the glass and warning me off. Oh, well, Such are the times we live in.
I've finishing what can only be described as an "Old School" experience here in Erie. I never tried to lead streakers to the quad, at least not that I remember, but my twenty-something classmates wonder sometimes as this fifty-plus character in school with them. I took up Facebook and became a maven of Web 2.0. It's been invigorating.
I've been keeping up pretty well with my genealogy email. I have an online database of over 60,000 names and I get quite a bit of mail. It's a surname database dealing with the Carr name. They're not all from my line of Carrs, so the individuals are different races, different countries, and different parts of the US. There's no end in sight to the work involved, and that suits me fine. I love puzzles.
So, welcome to my blog. I figure to talk about my experiences on Wikipedia and in my genealogy research. I'll tell you a bit about myself along the way, but not too much as you're probably not all that interested. Now and then I'll encourage you to get involved with Wikipedia by getting an account and diving in as a new editor. And from time to time I'll tell you to interview your elders and take some notes on your family history for posterity. But I won't nag you.
I'm returning to central New Jersey, whence I came a couple of years ago. I've been at Mercyhurst College getting my master's degree. I've been researching on Wikipedia as a hobby and having a lot of fun. Well, there was the time I tried to take Wiki pictures in front of the local television station. They got pretty upset when I went up to the antennae to try to take an art shot. I mean, it was into the sun and my camera is pretty pathetic, but they were ready to call Homeland Security and all. Geez. It wasn't like I was being secret squirrel about it. I parked right out front and walked up to the building. All of a sudden there was someone beating on the glass and warning me off. Oh, well, Such are the times we live in.
I've finishing what can only be described as an "Old School" experience here in Erie. I never tried to lead streakers to the quad, at least not that I remember, but my twenty-something classmates wonder sometimes as this fifty-plus character in school with them. I took up Facebook and became a maven of Web 2.0. It's been invigorating.
I've been keeping up pretty well with my genealogy email. I have an online database of over 60,000 names and I get quite a bit of mail. It's a surname database dealing with the Carr name. They're not all from my line of Carrs, so the individuals are different races, different countries, and different parts of the US. There's no end in sight to the work involved, and that suits me fine. I love puzzles.
So, welcome to my blog. I figure to talk about my experiences on Wikipedia and in my genealogy research. I'll tell you a bit about myself along the way, but not too much as you're probably not all that interested. Now and then I'll encourage you to get involved with Wikipedia by getting an account and diving in as a new editor. And from time to time I'll tell you to interview your elders and take some notes on your family history for posterity. But I won't nag you.
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