Weekend Chat All Members Invited ! (Dec 11-13, 2015)

Question

his is an ongoing "Chat" post that can be added to throughout the weekend.  All members of WikiTree are encouraged to join in, especially first-timers!

 

Do you have any ideas to share?

 

Have you witnessed any famous events?

 

Have you broken through any brickwalls through WikiTree?

New people, say Hello and introduce yourself!

Have you learned anything new or uncovered any techniques to improve profiles more easily?

G2G Pilots, Mentors, and Leaders... any fresh Tips for us?

Any special summer plans?

Any subject you want to chat about...

* Fads/hobbies when you were 18?

* What do you do other than Wikitree?

* Heard a funny one?

* Do you do anything to help people or animals that are less fortunate?

* Say something! (You know you want to!):D

Post answers here, comment on answers, up-vote things you like or agree with and have fun!  To receive notice when future Chats are posted, add Weekend_Chat to the list of Tags you follow.  You can edit your list by clicking on "My Feed" on G2G, then click to "add or edit".  Seperate words with and underscore.

 

Comments

Woohoo time flies when you're having fun eeh , it's my mums Birthday so family party tonight . Wish you all a wonderful weekend and enjoy !

Just a few days and it's Christmas already..counting down and amazing how fast a year goes by , our youngest already playing all Christmas cd's and excited , he loves Christmas :D And New Years Eve is a big event for a 7 year old as well of course !

Not in the Christmas mood already ? maybe this will help Christmas songs 2015/2016

 

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Weekend again and weekend chat time - will look to add to the "chat" later....

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Gelukkige verjaardag!

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Dankjewel Vincent ! :D We are going to visit her in a minute now, so don't know if I make it exactly on time tonight , but try my best of course ;)

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Thanks and we're looking forward to it Chris :)

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Ik kan je eerste uurtje als cadeutje voor je moeder doen!

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Dat zou wel heeel fijn zijn, als ik eerder terug ben en kan beginnen zal ik je wel aflossen hoor ! Bedankt ! Big Hug Powerr ranger ;)

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Power Rangers

A - C - T - I - V - A - T - E  !              :D

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Home and in , you're the greatest !

 

Answer 1

Do you have any ideas to share?

How to work better together?

Better editing experience to be on the same level as Wikipedia see below and video

Have you broken through any brickwalls through WikiTree?

I have helped others

A) Father unknown who was Eric Rosen together with Julie with started to read the household record and got some clues

I did some "forward" research and contacted a now living family member in Sweden and got a photo from her the "unknown" father   

B) Found the roots of Swedish American Jöns Andrew (Pålsson) Paulson (1851 - 1920) who left Skåne Sweden 1887 nov 19 see Research Notes from the work I and Drew did

We had

• Emigration date 1887
• Name in USA John Paulson and could guess his Swedish name Johan Pålsson = patronymic ==> son of Pål
• Birth date 1851 jan 12
• That he came from Sweden but not parish

Did

1. Used index service in Sweden SVAR and searched on Joh* Paul* born=1851 found some candidates
2. Selected some candidates
3. Did a search on Family Search and got Annelöv parish in Sweden for one
4. I looked in the Swedish church book and found him
   1. Tried to follow him in the church books but lost him
   2. Followed the father and mother and the father died ==> I checked the probate see video and it says the son John is abroad
   3. I realized the mother died before and then John was still in Sweden ==>I could find him in the Swedish books and see that he emigrated to the states and started the trip 1887 apr
5. I added a question on a genealogy site Anbytarforum and a person contacted me and he was living in Sweden and related to the person John Paulson so now they have contact both interested in genealogy

 
C) A crazy project is that we are adding 2606 parishes with information good for genealogy ==> Easier research in Swedish sources

I added Götlunda parish and added it to a profile and the profile manager Norm followed the link to a picture archive where people in Sweden upload pictures and mark them to which parish they feel it belongs to. He found a picture of a person in his family tree - Agnes

I have now found the Swedish person who uploaded the picture 2004 and his family tree and have sent an email... waiting on response
 

D) Another new member at Wikitree I helped tracking the Swedish roots to the north of Sweden and then succeded to track people who left for the USA (leaving from Trondheim?!?!)

We found Julia Greger Ellefson at find a grave and found Hazel M Larson Swenson grave. I realised the photo was from a person who just uploaded 30 pictures and thought maybe he has a connection

We contacted him and they were related so now he got his Swedish background and we got connections to now living people in the States

Have you learned anything new or uncovered any techniques to improve profiles more easily?

I have start looking into Wikipedia and tested the new Visual Editor and I feel this is the way forward. I had look on the discussion how to do good sourcing and I feel we (Wikitree) has a challenge that will increase with new users

In the Visual Editor project people have identified that less and less people write articles for Wikipedia and one reason is the problem with the markup language.

I am 100% convinced if Wikipedia has a problem then Wikitree has a much tougher and bigger challenge as we will have many more editors....

See video at min 6 of the user experience adding Sources which is magic
Try it at the sandbox  

​Any special summer plans?

Maybe bike the Swedish Immigration path..

Any subject you want to chat about...
1) Make Wikitree a better place to share and learn genealogy

* What do you do other than Wikitree?

Biking  , Hiking 

Comments

Always great solving those Brick walls and love how many relatives get connected by online genealogy nowadays, I had a similar experience when I got in touch trough WT with my American cousin and together we solved our family Brickwall (looking back it was so easy, just two cousins marrying and when one of them past away the other started a new life in a different Country, but it was a Huge Brick wall for many genealogists for many many years). Of course added him to Facebook and now he got to meet all family members trough the family group we have there, we share stories and pictures, a great way to keep in touch :D

The template sounds like a great idea !

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Magnus what GREAT finds!!!

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Re Bea Wijma

I think we must be better learn from each other... one good way is to document what we do and when we have a success...

A) Template is one way ==> we get an standard and can get categorize it maybe do Wikitree template with fields .....
B) Find some categories to use for success stories
I looked today at a Swedish site and they have

1. Looking after now living Ancestors
2. Birth parish unknown
3. Birth date unknown
4. Research before the churchbooks = before 1600
5. Father unknown
6. Disappeared without a trace
7. Mother unknown
8. Wrong / different data
9. Legal questions
10. Emigration
11. Immigration
12. Research in the cities

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Yes we really should and it could work very well, I would prefer the categories , the person and story of his or her life , is what is the most important, so a profile should not be cluttered and filled with too many templates and categories. 

One of our members is now trying to collect/ find and get all Dutch categories sorted out and organized , to see what already is present and what we maybe still need and what categories are in fact duplicates (Yes we also have ''duplicate'' categories now :P) slightly different spellings, wrong spellings or different languages etc. 

I think people should also work or collaborate more before creating new categories with the categorization project, like the list you have there it has some good looking ones, my guess is some of those already are present here and  the category page is where if it is correct after some searching you can find them all. 

Than make one list of the ones you want to use and we could add this list to the different project pages or a free space page, so at least all members , will be able to find the proper categories more easy and if all people would use the same ones this could really work. :D  

Now many people use just too many different versions for the same thing (so one uses Category:The Netherlands and the other Category:Netherlands or Category:Holland , so that's also a problem, these profiles are now collected in three different places. The same would probably happen if everyone could create templates . 

So for the categories I guess we could use some sort of standard as well or at least a more clear page with just lists of the categories people can should/use .

 

Answer 2

About half way through Brian Kilmeade's book, "Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates"  Some of it seems similar to the situation we have today.

Comments

Yes weird sometimes how History repeats itself eeh ..

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The genre of that book is called financial propaganda, in this case with a clever historical disquise.

Those silly bankers will do anything to get a population to borrow money, they never care how long it will take to get repaid, the longer the better, their descendants can collect the interest on the debt for the next several generations.  :D

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Interesting book Frank, my wife's family may be in it:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Somers-392

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Richard Sommers is on pages 166 and 167, but I'm on page 141. He was Captain of the Intrepid.

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I belong to the local EAA chapter (that's Experimental Aircraft Association) and we had our Christmas party last night.  It always includes a "dirty Santa" game where everyone brings a present and then people pick numbers that determine the order in which they get to select a present or they can take one that another person already has, and then that person can take one from someone else or go and pick one from the presents that have not yet been taken.

Anyhow, the point of that long introduction is that I ended up with that book and am very much looking forward to reading it.

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I think a lot of people are reading it because the library only gave me two weeks. A while back I read "George Washington's Secret Six" another book by the same author, which was made into a TV series.

My thought is that the behavior of the Tripoli Pirates is similar to today's terrorists.

Answer 3

I am just working on unsourced profiles to get them sourced and getting ready for Christmas

Comments

Think that's one of the most rewarding jobs around here Dale, finally being able to remove unsourced templates or categories form the Unsourced ones and have fun preparing for Christmas :)

Answer 4

Well I went to a Mustang Club Christmas party and received as a gift

this little doll from the movie Caddy Shack. The club named him Caddy and my job is to take him to all club events and keep a photo album of all the stuff we do during the year. Oh and he sings "I'm Alright" from the movie. I'm having so much fun with him. I'm going shopping at "Build A Bear" to buy him some new duds.

Betty

Comments

Hahaha love it Caddy sure is alright, my son (7) every year when he was in Nursery School had to take care of Flip the bear for one weekend, we had to take pictures and make a little book about the ''adventures'' they had during this weekend , really so much fun, the bear is famous among the little ones here because there's a children program on TV about him and his adventures as well .

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Make a wooden copy of him with your lathe and other equipment.  (make 2 - the second one will be better!)

Answer 5

Oh happy Friday - this WikiTree morning started off with a wonderful surprise, as I was entering the profile for a distant branch, that box (we all hope for, but seldom see) appeared with the person I was adding :D.

And after attaching my folks to him, I discovered that the wife I have not been able to find source for is already here, and many generations back of folks that I didn't have records for, are here also.  Love it, when I manage to attach to other branches of the big tree!!!!!!!!!!!

Comments

Congrats and love it too, but indeed it doesn't happen very often, always soo exciting to discover there already are relatives added here eeh :D

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Great that you have found a connection.....

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That is a good feeling to make that connection with pre-existing profiles!  :)

Answer 6

Do you have any ideas to share?

If you have North Carolina roots in Warren County, NCGenWeb.us has put the Warren County Voter Registration Lists 1902 - 1908 online. These are useful because people registering to vote had to list their ancestor who was eligible to vote in 1867, potentially helping bridge that missing 1890 census gap.

Have you learned anything new or uncovered any techniques to improve profiles more easily?

 

People are mad at Ancestry this week so maybe this won't go over well but ... I learned to use the Share on Ancestry documents to get a link that can be used to view the documents even if someone is not logged in to Ancestry. See the sources in my Lula Hinson McGee profile for an example of how it works. The bold source names are links. The link will bring up the share page. If you click the image, it zooms to full size and you can move around to see things.

If you have an Ancestry account and want to create your own links, these are the steps:

1. Open the document from the profile of the person you want to be the focus
2. Click the tool button
3. If you don't see "Email," click Share
4. Click Email
5. Input an email address in the bottom section. I use a yahoo email address that I reserve for genealogy and save the shares that I receive as a backup.
6. After you click send, a box will pop up
7. Copy the URL from the box
8. Use that URL in your sources. I usually delete the first "&" and everything that follows it.

The nice thing is that the share has both a print and back button. Assuming you're logged in to Ancestry, clicking back will open that document in Ancestry. Be aware that this only works for single pages.It won't work on the Will and Probate images.

Comments

Now that's really great ! :)  and is it allowed ? so no copyright ? or violation of the ancestry rules ? 

If it's ok that would make a lot of people very happy here , because I don't think people really are mad at Ancestry, but if profiles have these for non members ''death'' links and almost no info added to the Bio, it's just like watching an unsourced profile, all links will take you only to the sign up or subscribe page , so you still will have to search for sources that can be viewed by everyone : 

 

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As far as I can find, it doesn't violate any copyright rules. They do provide a link to their privacy rules when you create the share but, at least for the ones I'm using, the people are long dead. I'm not sure how they would feel about shortening the link because it probably disables some of their tracking about who created the share and when.

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Here's Ancestry's FAQ on sharing. Still don't find any guidelines or restrictions on how the links can be used

http://help.ancestry.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4931/kw/sharing%20via%20email

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Looks like it's ok eeh , and really a great solution, maybe you should let people know this in a G2G !

Thanks for adding it here Debi :D

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Cool with the shared URL but

Stupid question I have a tree at Ancestry but dont pay any more. It looks like they have changed so I need to have to have a subscription to see also already connected Ancestry material to my family tree which I assume is a change...... (sometimes its different functionality on ancestry.se and ancestry.com). Anyone who can confirm that..

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I don't have a way to answer that question. Since I have a subscription I can see things anytime I log in to see my tree.

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Guess you will have to pay again Magnus, I had the same with our tree at MyHeritage, I could view trees from other members , but my own tree I could not acces . My cousin payed (it's a family tree we all share) and now I have access again.

Answer 7

Busy week -Brightlingsea, Essex, England is an interesting place.          The first  Monday in December is "Choosing Day" in Brightlingsea for the Deputy Mayor. This refers back to the days of the Cinque Ports in England and is an ancient tradition. We are a "Limb" of the town of Sandwich in Kent and the connection goes back to medieval times. This is ceremonial not political and the Deputy is chosen by the Freemen of Brightlingsea. The ceremony takes place in the ancient All Saints church and is attended by a large number of freemen. The connection of Brightlingsea with the Cinque Ports is interesting and more information can be found on  http://www.cinqueportliberty.co.uk/

I have been a Freeman of Brightlingsea since 1971 and have for may years been able to attend "Choosing Day" - This year the freemen choose Tony Chapman, who is well known in the town and has been involved with a number of organisations in the town.

One of my distant relatives Charles Brasted ( Brasted-20) held the post in 1926.

Hope people find that bit of history interesting....

Have a good weekend........

Comments

It really is interesting and was looking for what a Freeman is exactly, is it : a ​person who has been given ​particular ​special ​rights in a ​city, as an ​honour ?

And the Freeman are the ones who choose the Deputy Mayor ? 

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I became a 'Freeman of Highgate' back in about 1970 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swearing_on_the_Horns

(sorry not an academic answer!)

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In the case of Brightlingsea - being a freeman did give you certain exemptions, but these have all but disappeared. It is rather a tradition. To become a freeman - you must be, either  born in Brightlingsea, or  married to a Brightlingsea woman or have lived in the town for a year and a day.

The freemen attending the "Choosing Day" ceremony "chose" (elect) the Deputy.

There is a social side to this as their is a "Gild of Brightlingsea Freemen" who organise a number of social events during the year.

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Great Helen and Chris, it sounds like a great tradition :D

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To be a little more academic, the Freedom of the City of London was obtained in the past after fulfilling an apprenticeship in the City and earning the right to set up business there.There are some excellent records that allow you to see the original indenture and then the later grant of the Freedom. Later, descendants were also able to gain their Freedom of the City through patrimony ie because their father had been a Freeman .One of my husbands ancestors was apprenticed as a fishing rod maker and gained his Freedom as a  member of the Fishmongers guild .He then  passed on the  Freedom to his son by patrimony. .http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Crouch-1380

The Freedom of the City of London https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/about-us/Pages/freedom-of-the-city.aspx

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I guess it's something similar if not the same as the Poorters or as the Free citizens during the middle ages eeh, we don't have this tradition in Holland anymore, at least not that I'm aware of , but you keep this tradition alive so that's a great thing :)  

And a great profiles you have created Helen !

Answer 8

Well, today marks two months since I started my new job in the Netherlands. It's been quite the experience already, moving across an ocean and all. Now that I'm in Europe, I'm curious to explore connections over here. 

Originally I didn't know of any Dutch connections in my family, save for the fact that the German branch of my family sailed through Rotterdam before coming to Canada. But this September while I was visiting in Saskatchewan, my eldest aunt explained that there is likely a second Dutch connection, and I'm interested in finding out more.

The known facts are that my great grandfather, Daniel Schulz was born in 1882 in one of the German colonies in Russia, and lived at some point in the Caucasus before escaping (following raids) to live near Emkendorf, Germand as refugees, prior to immigrating to Canada in 1921 on a ship that sailed from Rotterdam (the SS Scythia, I think). Much of this information has come from oral history & various documents that were passed on to me. 

The Dutch connection would be Daniel's father, who was a medical doctor. I think that his name was John or something similar. According to my aunt, John had studied medicine at a university in Amsterdam. She related to me that her father (my grandfather, Daniel's son), had fibbed to his wife prior to their marriage, describing himself as being "Dutch", as at the time, during WWII, "German" had too many negative connotations; this came up when my aunt was enrolling at school, and each student was asked their ethnic heritage...

This isn't much information to go on, but it's what I have at present, as very little remained in the way of official records of Germans in Russia & the Ukraine; nearly all records of their existence were expunged by the Soviets (or so I've read). But it may be a good way to "skip over" the lost material and to find some better clues that can be substantiated in other ways. ... gotta be a bit optimistic as a genealogist! 

So I have a few places that I'm gradually making plans to visit in the coming year: (1) Stuttgart, Germany for this: http://www.bessarabien.de (2) the Amsterdam City Archives, as the records from the period when Daniel's father (may have) lived in Amsterdam appear to not be digitized yet, & (3) Edinburgh, since this branch of my tree came from there.

Comments

Hi and welcome in Holland JN that's indeed quite an experience I can imagine , hope you will have a great time here !

We have a Dutch Roots Project here , so if you need some help, just ask in a G2G tag Dutch_Roots and we can all try if we can find something :D

For example the medicine study of a man named Jan (Johannes) (John) in Amsterdam is something we could check . I'll see if I can find something for you this week .

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wrong place!

Answer 9

Hi Gang

How about this crazy weather! It is almost 80 today in Williamsburg, VA.

At least the pretty decorations keep the holiday mood alive.

Thank you Bea for hosting the chat this week. I love the weekly chat. It adds a nice touch to G2G.

Slow & steady for me on Wikitree this week.....enjoy the holidays.

 

Comments

Now that's really a pretty and quite different Christmas decoration !

Still one week to go here before  Holiday starts , so enjoy Doug and your welcome of course, love the Weekend chat as well and always looking forward to it :D

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The decorations here are different from where I was raised near Philadelphia. Check this link:

http://www.history.org/almanack/life/christmas/decorations.cfm

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Great stories and decorations , even came across some familiar names de Witt and more , so thanks for the link Doug :)

Answer 10

While filling in a source list today, it occurred to me that I'd used one that might be overlooked by other researchers, mainly because accessing them is tedious. You can glean a lot of information by reading the social columns of small town newspapers; it's especially helpful when identifying relationships. Once upon a time, newspapers published more personal information than they do now, and in small towns they documented minor events. For example, I was able to identify the birth name of a great-uncle's second wife by finding a tidbit saying that her brother was in town from _______ to visit his widowed sister. It can give you insight into the personality and interests of someone you may know only by their name and significant dates. Start by contacting the newspaper to ask where their old copies are archived. If you can only look online, check out the state archives before forking over for a paywall.

Beware, though. You might not like what you find. I once idly typed the name of one of my father's great-grandfathers in a search engine only to find he was wanted for murder. They didn't say "alleged" in those days. I was able to figure out how he knew the victim (they'd served in the militia together), but not how the case was resolved. Was he ever charged?  Tried and judged innocent? He didn't move away for 20 years and had several children after the event, so apparently he wasn't convicted. The most interesting bit to me was how much his description on the wanted proclamation resembled my father.

Comments

Our local newspapers in the past carried a great deal of news about Brightlingsea, Essex. . There were local correspondents for the Essex County Standard, East Essex Gazette and /Colchester Express the main active newspapers when I was younger. Local organisations were asked to submit reports of the meetings and events. I remember my mother writing reports on the Co-operative Women's Guild activities in Brightlingsea.

Newspapers from the past can give an insight into the lives of our ancestors.

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I've found the Library of Congress's Chronicling America site to be a real treasure trove of local newspapers for just this purpose. One of my ancestors, Clement Brown, lived in Vermont, and he along with his family members popped up several times. Reading those social/personal notes really helped... and one brought me tantalizingly close to finding who his Quebec relatives were: a sister whom he hadn't seen for decades visited him, but alas no name was given :-(. 

My great-great-grandfather, Samuel McDowell however is a better example: a newspaper social report of brothers travelling to his funeral was key for learning who his family was: it's the definitive evidence that I have showing how he's related to other McDowells from PEI! (The Island Archives newspaper collection was the go-to place for that.) There was actually a guy descended from Samuel's brother who was an avid genealogist (sadly, he passed away not long before I could have corresponded with him), who had traced nearly every descendant of the same McDowell family that Samuel was from, yet hadn't found any records either. So that one reference was a bit of a miracle find.

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I agree, Deborah. I've been using local newspapers all day today. My profile Improvement project this week has been adding profiles for the parents, wife and ten siblings of Canadian author Stephen Leacock http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Leacock-19 (How does one put these links in properly?) In Canada, the 1921 Census is the last one available, so I find the newspaper archives invaluable. Where else would you find that his niece still swam off the Leacock dock at the age of 98 or that his sister was Calgary's first pathologist? Now I'm going to check out that PEI link JN - thanks!

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Wauw Deborah that's quite a discovery eeh, maybe you can find something more about how it ended or what happened exactly in (criminal) court records ? And you are absolutely right, while trying so hard to find records we tend to forget about sources like this , so a great reminder. 
One of my ancestors became quite interesting because of the newspapers :D

Answer 11

I have just returned to Herndon, Virginia after spending 10 days visiting my son and his family (daughter-in-law and three grandchildren) in Westport, Connecticut for the first few days of Hanukkah. I had a wonderful time and the weather here on the East Coast of the USA has been amazing. Today it is 72 degrees F (22 C) here in Northern Virginia. I know it is not scientifically accurate to generalize from a single example and say this is due to global warming, but it was good to hear that the nations of the world have agreed to take action against greenhouse gasses, and to attempt to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees C. My grandchildren may benefit from the actions we take today.

Comments

Still hoping for a white Christmas here , but they were talking about 12 C here as well, and rain :(  It really seems to get warmer , but looking at the years where we had the Elfstedentocht , it seems this happened before as well (no Elfstedentocht means no Ice ) . But indeed it's better we all try to limit the temperature, if that's possible, for all next generations . 

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A little past the weekend,  but my daughter posted a picture of her geranium, outside in northern New York, that was in full bloom again on Sunday.