RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Weekly E-zine 22 June 2005, Vol. 8, No. 25, Circulation: 804,154+ (c) 1998-2005 RootsWeb.com, Inc. http://www.rootsweb.com/ * * * Editor: Myra Vanderpool Gormley, Certified Genealogist Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com Certification: http://www.bcgcertification.org/certification/ * * * Keep informed about the latest news, new databases, webpages and mailing lists at RootsWeb. Subscribe to the weekly RootsWeb Review. http://newsletters.rootsweb.com/ * * * Search and share family trees at WorldConnect: http://wc.rootsweb.com/ * * * Post and read messages on all relevant surname, locality, and topic Message Boards and Mailing Lists: Message Boards: http://boards.rootsweb.com/ Mailing Lists: http://lists.rootsweb.com/ * * * RootsWeb HelpDesk http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/ * * * =============================================================== IN THIS ISSUE: 1. NEWS, NOTES, AND SITES WORTH SEEING 1a. Editor's Desk: "Some Sites Worth Seeing" 1b. Tips from Readers: "Reinventing the Genealogical Wheel" "Taxing Treasures Online" 1c. Using RootsWeb: "Unmasking Some Ancestors" 2. Connecting Through RootsWeb: "Finding French Connections -- With Help from Canada" 3. New RootsWeb Mailing Lists 4. New Webpages at RootsWeb 5. New/Updated FreePages and HomePages 6. New User-contributed Databases 7. RootsWeb Review's Bottomless Mailbag: "Advancing the Cause" "Risks in Copying Others' GEDCOMs" "Officially Incorrect" "My Sources, Your Sources, and No Sources" 8. Humor/Humour: "Wheeler-dealer's Final Resting Place" 9. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints =============================================================== IN THIS ISSUE: 1. NEWS, NOTES, AND SITES WORTH SEEING 1a. EDITOR'S DESK: Some Sites Worth Seeing Scottish Mining Villages. Information on mining villages in Fife and Lanarkshire, Scotland including mining accidents, war dead, and photos. http://www.mining-villages.co.uk * * * Banburyshire (England). A site designed as a place where you can share your family history with others from this locality. According to the author, much of Banburyshire falls within north Oxfordshire, but the regional identity extends to parts of neighbouring Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. http://www.rootsweb.com/~engcbanb/ * * * Norske Roots. Thanks to Margit (Nysetvold) Bakke who alerted us to this jewel. Olaf Kringhaug, who was born in Norway 77 years ago, has taken on translating the "Nordmændene i Amerika" -- a 1907 book by Martin Ulvestad. The book tells of the early Norwegians who came to North America and where they settled. Kringhaug lives in British Columbia, Canada and has put this online because he wants everyone to be able to access it for free. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~maggiebakke/ulvestad.html Norwegian Genealogy Terms: http://www.sofn.com/norwegianculture/languagelessons/Lesson09.html * * * 1b. TIPS FROM READERS: Reinventing the Genealogical Wheel By Linda Bernin Reading the long debate about citing sources, I see one aspect of this that's being missed: When you don't document (cite) your sources, the result is only a starting place that can open up more questions than it answers. A written history of one branch of my family has become somewhat useless because of a lack of documentation in a family tree that was compiled by a remote relative of mine back in the 1960s. According to the story, my maternal g-g-grandparents John and Louise ARLT were (respectively) from Lyrinklingen and Aberramstadt, Bavaria and immigrated through New York in 1858. The history noted their eight kids and their kids' families. Unfortunately, we found many errors with the facts in then-current generations and looked to verify what we saw--but because there were no sources cited, we've found much of this information unverifiable. The cities of origin don't seem to exist and we've found no migrational trace of the family until they reached Minnesota around 1870. We've been in touch with older living members of the family, who simply point to the same researcher (long deceased) as the expert. We've also been in contact with other ARLT families with the same rare last name who have similar immigration dates, places and given names, but no one knows a connection to them. If the original researcher had noted where she got her information, we would not have to recreate the wheel to make sure we have accurate information about our family. * * * Taxing Treasures Online. By Doug Storie I recently discovered a previously unthought-of resource for historical info and the occasional photograph. While it is almost universal that we do not like the taxman (er taxperson. to be politically correct) we nonetheless must deal with them. Imagine my surprise when I found an aunt of mine on the 1930 census in Chicago. The address meant nothing to me nor was there a description to the home. A local librarian suggested I search the Cook County, Illinois Assessors' website: http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/index.asp After a few trials and errors there it was in color, the three-story walkup apartment that used to be home to my aunt, uncle, and cousin. It was 75 years old and just like I remembered many homes in Chicago to be -- long, narrow, with minimal yards or grass. Taking this idea I searched other counties that family and ancestors had lived in during the past century. Many homes were still standing according to the info on file. So if you want to know what the house looked like that Uncle Bob or Grandma Jones lived in, try the county assessors' office, maybe they have a website with pictures." [Editor's note: For more suggestions on how to use tax records to find and/or identify your ancestors, see RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees: Taxing Tales: http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson11.htm] 1c. USING ROOTSWEB: Unmasking Some Ancestors Randy RENO decided, after reviewing the material he found at RootsWeb, that he needed to study all information he and his parents and grandparents had gathered before he could determine if he could connect with any specific families in the online resources. He downloaded one of the free genealogy programs he found on the Internet and set out to record all information at his disposal. Randy's grandparents with the surnames RENO, VANATTA, RAMBO, and PHILLIPPI had been able to supply information about their parents and grandparents. This took Randy back to the mid- to late-1800s and he was amazed to learn that, until his parents moved to California most of his ancestors had lived in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area even in the 1800s. No wonder his parents had not heard stories about "the old country" and no wonder his mother had been told as a child that they had "always been here." The families had no direct recollection of their European origins whatever they may have been. In searching the Internet Randy had learned that the 1880 U.S. census was freely available at http://familysearch.org/ and he managed to locate the RAMBO and PHILLIPPI families in Philadelphia on that census He found his great-great-grandparents living with their parents, and discovered yet another generation. Armed with all this new information Randy felt ready to examine the mailing list archives, message boards, family trees at WorldConnect, and RSL listings again. It made sense that the more he knew from his family records that the further back in time he was able to go the more likely he was to connect with others researching the same families. He found quite a few family trees on WorldConnect that appeared to mesh with his own. He realized he'd need to verify the information in these trees because it was submitted by other people just like himself and might not be accurate. Randy learned that the RENO family that appeared to be his line had originated in France and settled in Virginia. It wasn't until relatively recently that his great-grandfather had settled in eastern Pennsylvania. Randy came across many different spellings for his surname RENO and this surprised him. The ranged from RENOU to RENAULT and a vast array of variants in between. Those names did sound French to Randy but he had to admit that he would never have guessed that RENO was originally RENOU/RENAULT or even that the surname was French in origin. Moving along to the VANATTA surname, Randy found a likely connection in the RSL listings. He learned that the name was originally Dutch and an RSL submitter had what appeared to be his line traced back to the Netherlands in the early 1600s. The family had immigrated to Ulster County, New York and then migrated down to New Jersey from which Randy's family had moved into the Philadelphia area. Randy was seeing a pattern developing -- that surnames are not always what they sound like today. He had to study the origin and see where his family originated and what the original spelling(s) of his names may have been. In this case, it appears that VAN ETTEN might have been the original spelling in the Netherlands. Randy couldn't help but wonder what the RAMBO surname held in store for him and he headed for the mailing list archives. How cool -- it turned out to be Swedish. Evidently his RAMBOs had been living in the Philadelphia area for ages. They had been among the earliest settlers in the area along the Delaware River, then called New Sweden. Turns out that RAMBO was an alias adopted by the immigrant ancestor since permanent surnames were not used in Sweden and the patronymic name that the immigrant ancestor had used in Sweden wouldn't work in New Sweden. Patronymic names changed with each generation with the son taking his father's given name as his last name. The PHILLIPPI surname proved a bit more difficult to find in that different PHILLIPPI families seemed to have different countries of origin. Randy carefully attempted to match his own PHILLIPPI family to the ones he found at RootsWeb and luckily he was able to do so. After checking his family data with what he found in a WorldConnect GEDCOM and writing the submitter of that database to check out the sources, Randy learned that his PHILLIPPI surname had originally been spelled PHILLIPPE and that his ancestor had emigrated in the early 1700s from Alsace, France to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Prior to that his PHILLIPPE family had emigrated from Canton Berne, Switzerland to Alsace. Randy was amazed at what he had learned with a little work in compiling family records and then comparing and verifying what he had found online in the various resources at RootsWeb. But what amazed him most was that he had started looking for his probable Italian ancestors on all sides based on the sound of the surnames and he'd learned a couple of valuable lessons in the process. --That when a family has a recent immigrant ancestor -- they usually know about it and have "old world" family stories and heritage to back it up. --You can't always judge a name from the sound of it -- surnames evolve over time. Who would have thought that Randy would unearth a rich family history that included French, Swedish, Dutch, and Swiss ancestors with a little help from the many sources at RootsWeb? 2. Connecting Through RootsWeb. Thanks for sharing your stories. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Finding French Connections -- With Help from Canada By Graham Down in Melbourne, Australia As an Australian partly of French descent it was always going to be difficult finding out about the origin and circumstances of my 3g- grandfather from France. We are very few and as such the resources are very thin. Furthermore I don't speak French so the websites have been hard to follow. All I was able to find were his parents' names and a connection to the Normandy province (no town name). I turned to RootsWeb and subscribed to a mailing list for France. I found it valuable as it was dominated by Canadians who proved much better at researching emigrants from France than I. After making a post with my family names, I had no idea what trail I would be led down. Step 1)--I received a reply from a Canadian. She said she couldn't help me but put me in touch with an e-mail acquaintance who might. Step 2)--Her acquaintance, a Belgian, was researching the same name, but not necessarily the same branch. She couldn't directly help but put me in touch with another contact -- back in Canada. Step 3)--This third contact recognised the family names of both of my French 4g-grandparents and had a stray record of a marriage (different forenames) in a town in France. I found that this town had a tourist information website and e-mail contact. I e-mailed it to ask if it had a local history or family history group within the town. I also asked (apologetically) if that contact could be in English. Step 4)--I received a reply from the town historian who was very keen to help. I gave her all of my information to date and my objectives. Very shortly some information came through. My 4g-grandparents were not from that town but were found to be from a nearby village and their parents' were from other nearby towns. I had finally hit the jackpot. She was able to trace through the local records another five generations, supplying me with birth and marriage certificates. Step 5)--The town of one of my 6g-grandparents found out about this interest and sponsored the research about how one of their families had spread to Australia and put on an exhibition about them. This allowed the researcher to trace even deeper, where she uncovered a rich story about many siblings of my ancestors (including bishops, imprisoned and martyred priests and a Napoleonic War hero). She was even able to uncover the possible reason for the migration to Australia. As a further wrap-up to this story, the researcher was coming to Australia for a holiday. I was so glad to meet up with her and her husband when they briefly passed through Melbourne. We've kept up a pen-pal relationship since. I can't offer enough thanks to RootsWeb and all of the many people who have helped. I hope that writing this story goes some way as a thank- you. ======================== Advertisements ============================ Enter to win a trip to your ancestral home land and research assistance from a professional genealogist from Ancestry.com and TNT. Watch INTO THE WEST, a 6-week television event from TNT, (Executive Producer Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks Television). INTO THE WEST explores the struggles, triumphs, and heartaches of two families as they journey in search of the American dream. See it every weekend -- Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, starting Friday, June 10 8/7c on TNT. Click here: http://www.intothewest.com/ * * * ANCESTOR SEEKERS RESEARCH TRIP Salt Lake City, September 26-29 Spend four full days at the Family History Library (the world's largest) searching for your ancestors from the United States, Canada, and the British Isles. Get help from professional genealogists in overcoming your brick walls. Attend classes to improve your research skills. Meet others from throughout the U.S. and Canada who share your interest in genealogy! Call toll free at 877-896-0974 or visit http://www.ancestorseekers.com/rwr/ ====================== End Advertisements ============================== 3. New Mailing Lists at RootsWeb Request a New Mailing List: http://resources.rootsweb.com/adopt/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- MAILING LISTS. For an index to more than 29,200 RootsWeb- hosted genealogy mailing lists, visit http://lists.rootsweb.com/ NEW SURNAME MAILING LISTS BARTLAKOWSKI, BAUMBERGER, BLOOMQUIST COLONIUS MASKELL, MCCLAFFERTY SAGESER, SHEWELS WILTSE NEW ETHNIC AND SPECIAL INTEREST MAILING LISTS AZORES-DNA -- Discussing and sharing information regarding the Azores Geographical DNA Project NEW REGIONAL MAILING LISTS ITA-SICILY-AGRIGENTO -- Agrigento Province, Sicily, Italy (Provincia di Agrigento) ITA-SICILY-RAGUSA -- Ragusa Province, Sicily, Italy (Provincia di Ragusa) ITA-SICILY-SIRACUSA -- Siracusa Province, Sicily, Italy (Provincia di Siracusa) UKR-ZAPORIZKA -- Zaporizhia, Ukraine 4. New Webpages at RootsWeb To Request a Free Web Account: http://accounts.rootsweb.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------- Some of these webpages might not yet be accessible. They are created by volunteers, so if one that interests you isn't up yet, please check again in a few days or next week. http://www.rootsweb.com/~[accountname] Note that the ~[tilde] before the Web account name is required. For example, the Arenac County, Michigan Historical Society's website is at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~miachs/ U.S.A. cafresno -- Fresno County (California) ganehags -- Northeast (Georgia) Historical and Genealogical Society inmpwcd -- Mary Penrose Wayne (Indiana) Chapter DAR macha -- Catamount Hill (Massachusetts) Association miachs -- Arenac County (Michigan) Historical Society paorfhs -- Orbisonia-Rockhill Furnace (Pennsylvania) Historical Society vapcdar -- Pentagon (Virginia) Chapter DAR Organizations' Abbreviation Key: DAR = Daughters of the American Revolution 5. New/Updated Freepages and Homepages -------------------------------------- Can your cousins find your website at RootsWeb? Has it ever been mentioned here or do you have a new, updated, or substantially revised website at RootsWeb (it will have "freepages" or "homepages" in the URL)? Send the URL (Web address), along with a brief description, including the major pertinent surnames and what is available on your site, to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com FULLER, BUTTON. Family reunion news and links to family pictures and family history for descendants of George William and Charity (MANSFIELD) FULLER and James Ambrose BUTTON. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~benedictnews/fullerbutton/reunion.htm GARDNER, TIPTON, SIMAR, ROSBOROUGH, LAMPERT, JOHNSON. Includes obits and gravestone pictures and Civil War account of Washington W. GARDNER. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~dtgardner/ LOHR, FORTUN (FORTHUN). Some LOHR and FORTUN families of southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Other surnames include: ESPENHAIN, GREINER, HENSCHEL, HOLL, KARN (KARNE), LANZ, MACHEEL, MOSER, MUNSELL, NEITZEL, NEWMILLER, and SETZKORN. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~lohrd/home.html NICHOLS, DANIELL, BRYSON, and allied families. Includes recently added DANIELL and BRYSON lines. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~nichols1836/ 6. New User-Contributed Databases at RootsWeb http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit/ ---------------------------------------------- The following databases have come online recently. They are searchable, but not browseable. Search: To look for specific data or occurrence of text in a file. Browse: To view the entire contents of a file or a group of files. IRELAND. County Kilkenny. Callan. Selected baptisms, 1825-1875. 13 records. Kate Hanley http://userdb.rootsweb.com/intl/ County Longford. Longford Militia muster, pay list, October 1824. 426 records. Ray Whiting http://userdb.rootsweb.com/intl/ U.S.A. UTAH. Utah County. Lehi. Ole Elingson autograph book, 1886-1887. 45 records; Yolanda Lewis http://userdb.rootsweb.com/bookindexes/ VIRGINIA. Richmond (Independent City). Pegram's Seminary students and principal, 1923. 17 records. Stuart Circle Hospital School of Nurses, Class of 1923. 13 records; Paula Lucy Delosh http://userdb.rootsweb.com/alumni/ Richmond Rebels football team, 1949; (American Football League). 22 records; Paula Lucy Delosh http://userdb.rootsweb.com/groups/ 7. FROM ROOTSWEB REVIEW'S BOTTOMLESS MAILBAG [Editor's note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the editor or of RootsWeb.com]. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Advancing the Cause By Margaret (Hotchkiss) Hibbard in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Like many others, I have been following the debate about copying GEDCOM's and recording sources correctly. Then a chord strikes and I too feel that I must enter the fray. Many people have displayed valid reasoning in their comments. However, one item that I have not seen mentioned is the option in WorldConnect found in the "User Edit -- Advanced" screen when you upload your GEDCOM. If you go to item #21, it allows you to enter text that will accompany any items that are downloaded by someone else. I have done so with this text: "For further information on this entry, please contact Margaret (Hotchkiss) Hibbard and my e-mail address. I have subsequently found this in other files as I searched for specific names and discovered that the person had used my file. There are two advantages to this -- my information is useful to someone else and my name has been cited as the source. My own GEDCOM does not show my sources, but I put a disclaimer in my GEDCOM header that sources will be provided upon request. That requires the other researcher to contact me for further information and provides me with an opportunity to exchange information and possibly make a connection with a new family member. We are all in this together. Let's take all the advantage we can each get to advance the cause. * * * Risks in Copying Others' GEDCOMs By Clyde Rowe, Jr. in Parkersburg, West Virginia, USA I agree with the article by Dorian Greenbaum about copying GEDCOMS and others' sources. I've seen a lot of the same thing, different people with family trees that read word for word with each other. The commentary of one tree matching the other as if they were written by the same person, and most likely they were. I have posted my tree to Ancestry.com and the Myfamily.com sites as well as RootsWeb. I'm fairly new to genealogy research, and I have had several cousin e-mail me, after posting to messages boards. They have sent me copies of their trees along with personal information. I've found many lost cousins. The thing that bothers me the most is that in just copying other people's work, we copy their mistakes as well. While I don't claim to be a great genealogist, I do try and research what I have. Especially if I don't have first-hand knowledge of it. It is so easy to make mistakes, some without even trying. I've found wrong information listed on courthouse records before, etc. As others in this publication have stated, "remember the information was given by a person and the clerks did not verify it!" The trees I've seen with the same commentaries and information bother me too. It would be nice if they stated that the comments were those of John or Jane Doe. When I first started doing my research I didn't think about listing [citing] sources. I had them -- I just never thought about listing them. I see where that is important now. When I've asked for sources sometimes I've gotten an angry response, while others simply have not responded. One researcher of my family name, claims that my fifth-great-grandfather fought for the British during the Revolutionary War, many others have blindly copied this information. When I asked about the source of this revelation from a cousin who also listed it, I got a sharp response telling me that they were very honest people and good researchers and pretty much "how dare I question them about their research?" My earliest attempt at my tree has its share of errors. The wrong last name for one g-g-grandmother. The deaths of my other g-g-grandparent are listed per family legend, which proved to be wrong. People have copied it and are spreading that misinformation. While looking at other people's trees on RootsWeb's WorldConnect I note that the e-mail addresses are listed, so it is easy to contact these people. Ask them if you can share information, maybe they have an updated GEDCOM they'll send you. I've been busy lately adding my sources to my tree, along with new information I've dug up. I haven't gotten around to uploading it yet to any of the sites -- I'm still filling in blanks. * * * Officially Incorrect By Bobbie Blair in Oklahoma, USA In doing family research for 15 years I've learned not to believe every thing I read even on official documents. For example, my husband didn't have a copy of his birth certificate so we sent for one, providing all the information. They sent us back a letter saying "the only person listed for the date, parents, and place we gave them did not have the name we gave them." Instead of my husband's name the record said that "John Henry" was the name of the child born to those parents on that day. Everything else was right except my husband's name. My husband thought maybe his parents didn't have a name picked out for him at the time so they just put down "John Henry." I told him they couldn't do that because that would have became his real name. We had to get three different sources using my husband's name to send back to them. No one in the family had ever heard the name before including older relatives, one was even living with his parents at the time of his birth. We used our daughter's birth certificate, his driver's license and his aunt wrote a letter stating that his name had always been the same and not John Henry. They sent us a copy of the original with John Henry on the front and on the back side they had the revised version stating the documents we sent to them as their sources. I have my own opinion of why his name was wrong. I think the doctor might have had two baby boys born that day and later when he had to record their births he got them mixed up. So there's another person out there with my husband's name on his birth certificate. I have found a lot of "official" records" that had mistakes but my husband's birth certificate was the strangest one of all. * * * My Sources, Your Sources, and No Sources By Jim Liptrap, in Spring, Texas, USA I have a suggestion for Mr. Greenbaum and anyone else (including me) who are very willing to share information, but objecting to wholesale gathering of information, including those very helpful stories, commentaries, and extras--particularly in the blind merging of GEDCOMs. When you post information beyond facts such as births, marriages and deaths, sign it. Add your name and a stable e-mail or website address where a third researcher could contact you. It seems that when you post your GEDCOM, you have to assume that it will be incorporated into someone else's, without editing -- even without being read. Put the documentation or source with the statement or record, so it gets copied, too. Later researchers will thank you, and may even contact you. But please, never just reference material as "GEDCOM downloaded 5/6/05" or "WFT," which is the opposite of documentation. This tells me that the information is not reliable, there is no way to check it, the "researcher" reporting such as a source is unknowledgeable, very likely wrong, and won't answer an e-mail inquiry about the source because he or she has no idea where any of the information came from. 8. Humor/Humour: Wheeler-dealer's Final Resting Place ----------------------------------------------------- Thanks to: Mark and Kay Smith who report that they saw this on a tombstone in Riverview Cemetery (IOOF) in Monticello, Indiana: "I've been in many a deal, but I went in the hole on this one" * * * Found a humorous sign or entry in census, parish, church, etc. records? Send to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com 9. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints ----------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIPTIONS. To manage your e-mail communications (i.e. to subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, or to sign up for others), visit our newsletter management center any time at: http://newsletters.rootsweb.com/ If you use a spam-filtering program, in order to receive the RootsWeb Review please make sure that you're allowing e-mail from: newsletter@reply.myfamilyinc.com The RootsWeb Review is a free publication of MyFamily.com, Inc., 360 West 4800 North, Provo, UT, 84604 * * * The RootsWeb Review does not publish or answer genealogical queries, and the editor regrets that she is unable to provide any personal research assistance or advice. RootsWeb Review welcomes short (500 words or less) articles, humor, stories, or letters, and reserves the right to edit all submissions. The announcement of books and products is provided as a community service and is not an endorsement in any way. All mail sent to the RootsWeb Review editor is considered to be for publication — send in plain text (please, no attachments) to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com * * * ROOTSWEB REVIEW ADVERTISING CONTACTS. Ad Sales Worldwide: Shana Davis, creative@myfamilyinc.com * * * REPRINTS. Permission to reprint articles from RootsWeb Review is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, provided: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Previously published in RootsWeb Review: 22 June 2005, Vol. 8, No. 25. * * * *