Week 9 of The WikiTree Challenge represented the power of collaboration by setting record numbers!
Challenge participants added 467 profiles to her branches. There were 125 new direct ancestors and 342 nuclear relatives of ancestors. Thirty-four of the new ancestors were completely new to Katherine.
Altogether, more than 40 members made 4,741 edits to her ancestor profiles. Many did research, while others worked on Space pages, looked up articles, added categories, and contributed in other ways.
Here are some highlights from our discoveries:
- Johann Broge and Christina (Boettcher) Brooge were found as new parents for Christian Broge. Johann was the second son of Michael Brooge and Christina was the second daughter of Christian Boettcher. They married in 1829 in Langenau, Prussia.
- Johanna Jahnke only had a maternal grandfather on Katherine’s tree. We worked as a group, and she now has three grandparents (The maternal grandmother is still missing). Johanna’s birth record was found in Germany, and is linked to the profile.
- Carolina (Ebing) Wendt was added as a mother to Helene (Wendt) Gorke. It turns out Helene had a twin brother! Helene gained five siblings while being researched.
- Thomas (Woods) Wood and Ann (Davy) Woods were added as new parents for Edward Woods. Edward gained nine new sibling! (William, Rachel, Mary, Anne, Benjamin, Thomas, John, Sarah, and James)
- Melchert Wynantse van der Poel and Caterina (van Alen) van der Poel are new parents for Ysaak (Isaac) Melgert Van der Poel. Melchert was born in 1670 in Albany, New York. His father, also named Melchert, was born in the Netherlands. Caterina was born in 1672 in Albany, New York. Her parents were also from the Netherlands.
Team Captain: Mindy Silva
MVP: Dieter Lewerenz
Bounty Hunter: Dieter Lewerenz
Special Mention: Many thanks to the Netherlands Project for their countless hours during the week correcting profiles!
For more information see the challenge scoring explanation and check out the week 9 statistics to see a summary of all the contributors.
If you missed the wrap-up LiveCast and want to see Katherine's reaction to our endeavors, you can view it at any time on YouTube.
Quotes from Katherine:
- "This is the most magnificent example of genealogy crowd-sourcing and generosity. I am just blown away!"
- "This is Christmas and birthday and anniversary and Easter all rolled into one ... and like drinking joy"
- “I am blown away by the kindness & generosity of the WikiTree community, and am so honored & privileged to have been the recipient of their selfless donation of time & expertise. Last night was truly one of the most exciting & memorable genealogical events of my life, and I'm eager to give back.”
