My Software Wish List - A Historical Place Name Jurisdiction Catalog (HPJNC)

As many of my readers know, I "standardized" all of my place names associated with Events in my RootsMagic 5 database to current place names and locations, with the current country, state and county jurisdictions, during 2011. In this process, I combined all of my variant place names together. I did this task so as to put all of my localities "on the map" - so that they were geo-coded (latitude and longitude) to the present site in the software programs.  Being geo-coded, the online map features in the genealogy management programs could find them (they usually use Google Maps or Bing Maps).

That, of course, is not the "standard" way to name historical places in genealogical research.  The "standard" (recommended) method is to name the jurisdictions as they existed at the time of an Event (e.g., a birth, baptism, marriage, death, burial, will, residence, etc.).  For instance, I have many Events that happened in Medfield, Massachusetts, which is currently in Norfolk County.

My "standard" location for this place is "Medfield, Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States."  However, many records for my Medfield ancestors are in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, not Norfolk County.  My preference is that the historical place names should be used depending on the time frame of the event, but I'm stymied by the limitations of the genealogy programs and my desire to have the historical place names associated with a map location.

As an example, here is my list of place name jurisdictions for Medfield (and I may have them wrong... this is just an example):

1649 to 1691:  Medfield, Suffolk, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British America
1691-1777:  Medfield, Suffolk, Massachusetts Bay Province, British America
1777-1793:  Medfield, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States
1793-present:  Medfield, Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States.

Another example, this time for San Diego (city), California:

1769-1823:  San Diego, Alta California, Spanish America
1823-1848:  San Diego, Alta California, Mexico
1848-1850:  San Diego, California Territory, United States
1850-present:  San Diego, San Diego, California, United States

I described some of the historical place names I found in the RootsMagic 5 County Check system in my post "Exploring RootsMagic 5 New Features - Post 4: The CountyCheck Report."

There are at least two "standardized location databases" online for genealogists.  The two I know about are:

1)  The FamilySearch Standard Finder (https://labs.familysearch.org/stdfinder/PlaceStandardLookup.jsp).  A user can input a place name and obtain place name variants. the place type, the place time period, standard text,  culture, iso-code, geo-code (latitude and longitude) and an identification number for the place name.

This Standard Finder includes many variant names for the current place name.  However, it does not include all historical place names as an entity (e.g., the name of Raby in New Hampshire Province changed to Brookline in 1788).

2)  Dallan Quass has formed a standardized location database (see https://github.com/DallanQ/Places). He spoke about "An Open-Source Place-Finder for Genealogy" this at RootsTech 2012 (you can see his syllabus here) and says:

"The database contains over 400,000 current and historical populated places and higher-level political jurisdictions (districts, counties, provinces, states, etc.). It is based upon the place wiki pages at WeRelate.org. The database includes the place name, type (e.g., city, county, etc.) alternate names, the jurisdictional hierarchy that was in place in the early 1900's, earlier and later jurisdictional hierarchies, and geo-position coordinates."

Dallan's database has current place name locations, along with alternate place name(s), type of place, also located in, and geo-code latitude and longitude.

In order for genealogy software users like me to incorporate historical place names into their database, without going to every Fact in the database, while retaining the geo-coded information so that the map shows the correct location, my wish list for genealogy software includes:

A Historical Place Name Jurisdiction Catalog (HPNJC) feature that:

*  Contains a table of the included years, historical place name and jurisdiction(s) for each year range, the current place name and jurisdiction, and the geo-coding that finds the place on the map.  Simple examples of this would be my two lists above for Medfield and San Diego.

*  Depending on the Date of the Event in the genealogy database, the program finds the correct historical place name and inserts it into the Event Place field (perhaps with a "current location is ..." in the Place Description field, or in a Place Note field).  

*  Of course, this feature would need to be incorporated into an updated GEDCOM system and the different genealogy software programs and online family trees would need to be able to read it and write it.

At present Legacy Family Tree has a "County Verifier" feature that, if activated, warns the user that the county did not exist before the formation date.  RootsMagic 5 has a "County Check" feature that does a similar task, and offers a number of suggestions for the user to pick from.  Other software programs may have similar features, and I may not be totally aware of the Legacy and RootsMagic capabilities.

I think that this can be accomplished at some point in time, but it requires a fully populated historical place name catalog that genealogy software creators can utilize to implement a Historical Place Name feature (which implies that it should be Open Source, like the FamilySearch Standard Finder and Dallan Quass's Place Finder).  

What is your vision - your wish - for a Historical Place Name Jurisdiction Catalog (HPNJC)?  Can it be implemented?  Would you be willing to participate in the generation of an Open Source HPNJC? 

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/02/my-software-wish-list-historical-place.html

Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2012.

"Wikis for Genealogy Collaboration" at NSDCGS COGG Meeting on Tuesday, 12 July

...
The Computer Oriented Genealogy Group Meeting (COGG), of the North San Diego County Genealogical Society (NSDCGS), is on Tuesday, 12 July from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in the Carlsbad City Council Chambers (1200 Carlsbad Village Drive, Carlsbad CA 92008), and is open to the public.

Randy Seaver will present "Wikis for Genealogy Collaboration." 

The program synopsis and Randy's biography:

"What is a wiki, and why do I care?   A wiki is a website that permits easy creation and editing of interlinked web pages using a markup language or WYSIWYG text editor. Wiki software is used to create collaborative and community websites, corporate intranets and knowledge management systems. The origin of the word: “Wiki-wiki” in Hawaii means something quick and fast. The best online example is Wikipedia – the online collaborative encyclopedia.

"In this presentation, Randy will show and demonstrate some of the currently available wikis for genealogy that permit collaboration on genealogy information and family trees. The benefits and drawbacks of contributing to, and participating in, collaborative efforts will be discussed.

"Randy Seaver is a native San Diegan, a graduate of San Diego State University in Aerospace Engineering, and a retired aerodynamics engineer with a 38-year career at Rohr/Goodrich in Chula Vista. His ancestry is mainly colonial New England and Upper Atlantic, with some colonial German, French and Dutch forbears, and several 19th-century English immigrants.

"Randy’s activities include serving the Chula Vista Genealogical Society (former President, currently Newsletter Editor and Research Chairman); speaking occasionally to Southern California societies, libraries and groups; teaching Beginning Computer Genealogy senior adult classes at OASIS; and writing the Genealogy 2.0 column for the FGS’s FORUM Magazine. He is a member of NGS, NEHGS, SDGS, and CGSSD, and blogs daily about genealogy subjects at Genea-Musings, The Geneaholic, and the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe."

If you live in North County, and want to meet me live and in person, or just want to know about Wikis for Genealogy, please come to this meeting.

Uploading a GEDCOM File to the WeRelate.org Wiki - Post 2

...
In the first post, I uploaded a GEDCOM file with 1,775 persons to the http://www.werelate.org/ genealogy family tree Wiki. The process went very smoothly. However, I needed to take some actions before my GEDCOM information would be integrated into the family tree on the WeRelate genealogy wiki.

After using the "Add" menu "Upload GEDCOM" item page, and naming and uploading the GEDCOM file, I had a page with nine tabs across the top. I showed the "Overview" tab in the last post. The "People" tab had a list of people in my GEDCOM with any persons with a "Matched Page" already in the WeRelate family tree.

The third tab is "Families" which lists the husband, wife, marriage date and a possible matching family already in the system, as shown below:



That screen allowed me to "Exclude" any family that the system thinks is a possible match to my family, but I think that it is not a match. If I click the "Exclude" box, then a new Family Page will be created for the family. I didn't check any boxes, mainly due to ignorance at this point in time.

The fourth tab is "Warnings" where WeRelate.org tells me that there is a possible problem or error in my data. There were 71 of these warnings - such as "child births are less than nine months apart," "Birth of [name] occurred before marriage," "missing gender," "death is after burial," "husband was less than 16 years old when [name] was born," "wife was more than 50 years old when [name] was born," etc. All of these reasons are very plausible and helpful!

Here is the "Warnings" screen:

In order to continue with the upload, I had to at least look at each warning by clicking on it and checking the information and editing it if I wanted to. I chose not to edit any information, but I had to click on every warning message.

The fifth tab is "Places" as shown below:

The above screen lists every place in my GEDCOM file, and notes if there is a matched place in the WeRelate.org system. Many of my place names have the word "County" in them, use state abbreviations, and don't have "United States" in them. The matched "Places" names are in the format of "Town, County, State, Country" (e.g., Westminster, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States). When my GEDCOM is added to the WeRelate.org family tree, my Place names will be changed to the matched Place names. However, any new Place names will not be changed since there are no matched Place names in the WeRelate system.
At the bottom of each tab screen is an explanation of how to use this information. In this case, the method to create standardized new Places in the WeRelate.org system format is provided. The explanation says that doing this task is optional - I don't have to do it in order to have my GEDCOM data added to the WeRelate family tree. I should have gone through this list and changed my unmatched Place names. I didn't do that due to ignorance.

The sixth tab is "Sources."

This tab is like the Places tab - the sources in my GEDCOM file are listed and any Matching Sources are listed. The explanation area at the bottom of the page explains how to match my GEDCOM sources to the Community Sources already in the WeRelate system. I should have gone through this list and changed my unmatched Source names. I didn't do that due to ignorance.

The seventh tab is "Family Matches" and is the most important tab, and the most confusing tab, in the process to adding the GEDCOM to the WeRelate family tree. There is a list of each family listing husband, wife, marriage date, distance (from what? - perhaps the youngest person in the GEDCOM file?) and the Matching Family information. If I have looked at a matching family and taken action to combine them or keep them separate, then that family is not bolded. If I have not looked at a given family on my list, that family is bolded. In order to progress to the import of my GEDCOM into the WeRelate family tree, I have to look at each "Family Match" and decide if they match an existing family in the WeRelate family tree or not.

Here is the top of my "Family Matches" tab screen:

In the screen above, I have clicked on the family of William Hawkins and Elizabeth Arnold in my GEDCOM file. There is a family with those names already in the WeRelate family tree, so the system asks me to compare my information with the matching information and decide if this is the same family, and the same family members. If so, I can check the box for my data to merge it into the existing WeRelate family tree data. A handy "Tip" box is shown on the screen above - it tells me how to do this task correctly. I'm not sure that I did them right.

In order to progress to importing my GEDCOM file, I have to make this decision for every "Family Match" on this list. I had 170 "Family Matches" to resolve and it took a long time. I may have made some mistakes.

The eighth tab is "Updates" which I didn't click on.

The ninth tab is "Import" which I gladly clicked on and saw this screen:

It says that my GEDCOM file will be reviewed by a WeRelate administrator before it will be imported, especially if there are a lot of warnings and families listed as "not a match." I clicked on the "Ready to Import" button.

Later that night, a message showed up on my Talk Page (My Relate > Talk Page) that said:

"The pages from your GEDCOM have been generated successfully. You may now:
o launch the Family Tree Explorer to navigate your tree
o view your network -- If you matched families in your GEDCOM to existing families, find out to which other WeRelate users you are related.
o view related pages not in your tree -- If you matched families in your GEDCOM to existing families, find out which people you are now related to that you can add to your tree (takes awhile to display for large trees).
o view a searchable list of the pages in your tree -- The searchable list will be available about an hour after your tree has been imported."

The bottom of my Talk Page is shown below:

I was happy that my GEDCOM had been imported into the WeRelate family tree. However, an hour later the bottom message (in the screen above) appeared, saying:

"Please pay more attention when you load your data [8 May 2010]
You just created duplicate pages for children of Family:Francis Cooke and Hester Mahieu (1) that already existed, duplicate parents for Person:Hester Mahieu (1) (and less well specified parents) that already existed, and created a duplicate child for Family:Joseph Holley and Rose Allen (1) that already existed. Just because a page has different data than you do, doesn't mean your page isn't the same person, especially when dates are only estimated with the precision of "Abt.". It means that you and the existing page disagree, which is usually because one of the disagreeing parties hasn't had a chance to see the definitive sources for that subject yet. Given that all these pages are very old families from which many people descend, and that several people have contributed to the existing page, it is usually prudent to leave it as is, and if, after thoughtful review, your sources still convince you that the page is wrong, to start a discussion, or manually edit it (in which case you would cite your source so others may be made aware of it). --Jrich 13:26, 8 May 2010 (EDT)

I must have made the mistake of not clicking the box and did not match the family in the "Family Matches" list. Oops. The administrator apparently did this for me, and sent this message telling me what the problem is and how to fix it myself.

This is actually an excellent feature - and an absolutely necessary feature for an interconnected family tree.

Everything in the WeRelate.org family tree system is very well thought out, and has been developed over several years (the system is still in Beta). Quite a bit of the problem areas can, and should, be addressed by the submitter of the GEDCOM data. However, the administrators are necessary to check the GEDCOM file data, to keep the system running smoothly, and to ensure consistency in the submitted data, especially for notes, places and sources.

In retrospect, I should have reviewed the importing process more closely so that my GEDCOM file had better notes, places and sources.

We'll look at the Tutorials in the next post (which I should have reviewed earlier, I think!).

Uploading a GEDCOM to the WeRelate Wiki - Post 1

I demonstrated how to search the FREE http://www.werelate.org/ genealogy wiki in my posts Searching the WeRelate.org Wiki - Post 1 and Post 2.

How did all of that information get in the http://www.werelate.org/ database in a wiki format? In almost every case, the contributors uploaded a GEDCOM file to the website.

In order to make my "Wikis for Genealogy" presentation in May, I uploaded a GEDCOM to WeRelate to see how the system worked. When I click on the "Add" menu button on the Home page, I could click on the "Import GEDCOM" link, as shown below:

The "Import GEDCOM" page looks like this (Note that all screen images from now on are from May 2010, before WeRelate changed their page formats. However, the information on the pages appears to be the same as in May.):

There is a lot of helpful information on this page. for instance, the Instructions say:

"GEDCOM's containing up to 5,000 people can be uploaded."

"Pages for the people, families, and sources in your GEDCOM will be added to your tree. (Living people are handled specially.) A message will appear on your talk page when your GEDCOM has finished importing, usually in about an hour. "

The "Important! Please read..." section says:

"Towards a Single Tree. WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create a single, unified family tree with one page for each person that combines the best information from all contributors."

"Quality of Content & Participation. Ultimately, we seek pages that are well documented with strong sources; therefore you are strongly encouraged to include source information in your uploaded GEDCOM. "

"Uploaded GEDCOMs that contain no dates will not be accepted."

I browsed my computer files, found my GEDCOM file that I wanted to upload, created a name for my file as "richmond" and entered them into the fields on the upper left of the page above, and clicked on "Import GEDCOM."

After a few minutes, I saw this screen:

The screen said that the upload of my file was successful, and would be available in 10 to 30 minutes for importing into my "richmond" file.

Sure enough, after about 30 minutes, this screen appeared - it has nine tabs across the top. On this "Overview" tab, the text told me to click on each one tab in order, and follow the directions:

I also had the option to click on the "Return to WeRelate" button and finish my review of the imported data later, or to "Remove this GEDCOM" if I wanted to not have it included in the WeRelate database.

The "Overview" tab also provides a summary of the imported data. My "richmond" file has:

* People: 1775/0/0 : to be imported / matched / excluded

* Families: 294 / 0 /0 : to be imported / matched / excluded

* Warnings: 0 / 71 : read / unread

* Places: 465 / 107 : matched / unmatched

* Sources: 96 / 0 /0 : to be imported / matched / excluded

* Family Matches: 0 / 0 / 170 : matched / not matched / undecided

* GEDCOM updates: 0 / 0 : made / not made

This table tells me that the information in my GEDCOM has not been imported into the WeRelate.org database yet. Apparently, I have to work through the nine tabs at the top of this page. There are Warnings to be read, and Undecided family matches to be resolved.

I clicked on the second tab for "People" and saw a long list of the People in my GEDCOM file. I did not have to perform any actions for this tab.

In the next post, I will investigate some of the other tabs, and try to deal with the Warnings and the undecided Family Matches.

Searching the WeRelate.org Wiki - Post 2

In Post 1 of this series, I demonstrated how easy it was to search the www.WeRelate.org inter-connected online family tree website for a specific person, and the information that might be found for a specific person.

In this post, we'll explore some of the links to other people, to places and to articles.

First, starting from the previous screen in Post 1, I can click on one of the parents, a sibling, a spouse or a child of George Soule, the Mayflower Pilgrim. All names that go to a Person Page are linked. I clicked on Nathaniel Soule, son of George and Mary (Bucket) Soule, and saw his Person Page:




A user can quickly navigate from one person to another, up a tree, down a tree, sideways in a tree to siblings, etc. This works very quickly and efficiently. I ran up the online tree from Nathaniel Soule to my great-grandmother, Julia White (1848-1913), and then back down her White line to William White, the Mayflower Pilgrim just to see if there were any other researchers that had submitted information about these specific families. Usually, only the first two or three generations from the immigrants have submittals from other researchers.

The References at the end of each sketch, if listed, may be linked to a Source Page. Here is the Source Page for the Robert Charles Anderson book, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633:




On each Person Page, each place listed for Facts and Events are linked to a Place Page. Here is the Place Page for Plymouth, Plymouth County, Massachusetts:





Using the "Search" tab in the menu line, a user can search for articles about people, places, topics, events, users and anything else that might have been submitted. I searched for a number of surnames. One of the articles that came up was this one for William Bassett (1595?-1667) that was submitted:

Note that the article above was not submitted as information into the Person Page for William Bassett, but was submitted as an article. It does link to the Person Page for William Bassett, the Person Pages for others mentioned in the article, the Place Page for Plymouth Colony, etc.

The www.WeRelate.org wiki is a place that a user can submit almost anything related to genealogy - persons, places, topics, etc., and it will be accepted and used. They encourage member submissions. This can be a wonderful website for family information, genealogy education, genealogy projects, etc., but people have to use it and contribute to it. Right now, I think that it's a "hidden gem."

Go explore the Community Portal to see what has been added with a focus on a specific area or time frame. The introduction to the Community Portal says:

"Welcome to your community portal. This is where you can find out what's happening at WeRelate, read and participate in ongoing discussions, join a WeRelate project, make announcements, invite collaborators, ask questions, and learn what tasks need to be done."

There is so much more to the WeRelate.org wiki - I will try to explore more features in the next few posts in this series.

I'm curious - has any reader used WeRelate.org, or decided not to use it? I would appreciate comments as to why (or why not) readers have used it. What are the problems with it? How could it be improved? Readers could also provide feedback on the website - I'm sure that Dallan Quass and his team would appreciate that.

Searching the WeRelate.org Wiki - Post 1

I haven't posted much about the www.WeRelate.org genealogy wiki recently, although I did a "Wikis for Genealogy" presentation that included WeRelate in May 2010. At that time, I uploaded a second GEDCOM file with my White ancestors that included many colonial Rhode Island and Plymouth Colony ancestral families.

One of the comments in my presentation was that WeRelate is a bit difficult to navigate because information about each family (husband and wife) was on one web page and information about each person was on a separate Person page. In June, www.WeRelate.org modified their page design and really improved navigation - it's much easier and user-friendly now ( had nothing to do with the change!).

Www.WeRelate.org is an online family tree system in a wiki format. It is an inter-connected family tree, meaning that it is one big tree where each person has a page - there are not supposed to be separate pages for the same person in two or more trees. Researchers like you and me can submit a GEDCOM file to WeRelate, but we have to match any persons in our database with persons already in the WeRelate database. This is done person by person, and can take awhile if we submit a large GEDCOM file.

To submit data to WeRelate.org, you need to register as a user. The data that is added to the WeRelate.org family tree is what you submit. However, if more than one person submits conflicting data for the same person, the wiki feature permits all submitters to collaborate and discuss the differences with each other. For some historical persons for which there are many submitters, the content is "semi-protected" based on a consensus reached by the moderators on the system.

All of the data on the WeRelate.org system is available to view and search for free. To see how the system works, the home page has some tutorial videos that guide a new user through the website and system. These are well done and very helpful.

I want to demonstrate the Search process in the screens below and they will show some of the breadth of the system. Here is the Home Page screen:




I clicked on the "Search" link in the menu row and it shows six choices - All, Articles, People, Images, Sources and Places. I wanted to search for a person, so I clicked on the "People" link and saw the search fields:




I chose Given Name = "george" and Surname = "soule" and added Spouse given = "mary" in the screen above, and saw:





The search field with the match results are shown above. I picked the first name on the list, George Soule, husband of Mary Buckett. George was a Mayflower passenger, and is one of my ancestors. The George Soule "Person Page" came up (four screens below) with:

On the first screen above, the "Facts and Events" information about George, the name of his spouse and the places are listed in blue - these are links to other Person pages or Place pages. On the left sidebar are the wiki-style links to Edit, History, Rename, Unwatch, Trees, etc. Below those links is a list of the WeRelate.org registered members that have submitted or are watching the specific person. I'm on that list.

On the right sidebar are the list(s) of Parents with Siblings and further down are "Spouse(s) and Children. all of the names have links to Person Pages.

Further down the Person Page, there are sections for Origins and Will of George Soule. For persons that have a lot of information posted, the submitted information has been broken up into sections.

At the bottom of the Person Page is a list of References that include any footnote numbers in the "Facts and Events" area (but not the notes area), plus whatever additional references were added.

For the case of George Soule, a significant portion of the text added came from the Wikipedia article for George Soule.

For some of the persons in WeRelate.org, the Facts and Events, the Research Notes and the References have been "vetted" by knowledgeable persons with access to "authoritative" references. For George Soule, those "authoritative" references include Wikipedia, the www.MayflowerHistory.com website, a Massachusetts town vital record book, and several town history books. In many cases, the information from Robert Charles Anderson's compendium "The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633 has been summarized and used.

While the www.WeRelate.org website has only about 1.8 million Person Pages in the system, there may be information on those pages that is helpful to researchers. I encourage my readers to at least search for their ancestral families, and if you like the system to register and contribute to the system.

I really like the WeRelate.org wiki concept and think that it has been implemented well. The site is still in beta test, but has matured well and is useful as a resource and an inter-connected family tree site.

I will write more about navigating on the WeRelate.org website, about some of the other features, plus my experiences in submitting GEDCOM data to the site.

Tutorials for WeRelate.org

I had the privilege of meeting Dallan Quass, the creator of www.WeRelate.org, the largest genealogy wiki available to date, at the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in Little Rock. I also attended one of his two presentations also to obtain more information about how to use www.WeRelate.org.

Dallan's recent WeRelate Blog post alerted me to the Tutorial page on the WeRelate site here. There are a number of video and text tutorials on this page, with six of the videos being newly released. Here is the list of tutorials available at this time:

Video tutorials

Overview

What is WeRelate? (5:20) - what is WeRelate.org and why should you care? (new)
Tour of WeRelate (8:00) - a quick helicopter ride around WeRelate
Why share your genealogy? (5:12) - five reasons to share your genealogy with others (new)
Why share your genealogy on WeRelate.org? (7:15) - nine reasons to share your genealogy on WeRelate.org (new)

Getting started

Part 1 (6:01) - wiki etiquette, page-oriented genealogy, and search (new)
Part 2 (7:02) - creating and editing pages (new)
Part 3 (9:39) - import a gedcom, get around, connect with others, joint projects, and ask questions (new)

More

Pedigree maps (4:45) - pedigrees, maps, and timelines!
Older a bit out of date, but you may still find them useful
Navigating WeRelate (5:00) - using the menus, searching, and editing pages
Basic concepts (2:56) - pages, titles, namespaces, and index numbers
Creating a person page (4:27) - demonstration
Creating a family page (4:45) - demonstration

Text tutorials

Entering your first family on WeRelate - Includes screen shots
Family Tree Explorer tutorial - Building and navigating your family tree
Person pages tutorial - Creating person pages and linking supporting sources and images
Family pages tutorial - Creating family pages and linking supporting sources and images
Images tutorial - Uploading and annotating images
Research tutorial - Researching names, places, sources, etc.
My Relate tutorial - Creating a profile, user pages, and shared research pages; collaborating with others
101 Ways to use WeRelate.org

Day 3 at the FGS Conference

My day at the FGS Conference started with a quick turn around the Exhibit Hall, and then I attended Rick Sayre's presentation on "Researching in Government Documents" at 9:30 a.m. His talk concentrated on the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention Papers (1774-1789), the American State Papers (1789-1838, 38 volumes), and the U.S. Serial Set (1817-present, over 14,000 volumes). These record sets invaluable to researchers, if their ancestors are in them, because of the biographical detail, unique source material, and the broad scope of the records. Rich provided information about the unique distribution and catalog system, and the accessibility to them at repositories and websites. LexisNexis and NewsBank have the entire sets online, while GenealogyBank has a limited subset of them, and HeritageQuestOnline has a small percentage of them.

Before 11 a.m., I ran upstaits to watch the Peabody Ducks waddle from the elevator to the fountain - they make a big deal of it. I thought the ducks showed little or no regimentation - didn't even march in a straight line. Then I decided to wander through the exhibit hall and talk to exhibitors, including Dean Richardson (http://www.genlighten.com/), Leland Meitzler (http://www.familyrootspublishing.com/), Craig Scott (http://www.heritagebooks.com/), Steve Anderson at the FamilySearch exhibit, the Ancestry.com exhibit, and the FamilyLink exhibit. I even took some pictures of these exhibits, but will not post them now. In the process, I met Thomas Jones, Beau Sharbrough, Christine Sweet and Juliana Smith for the first time. At the FamilySearch exhibit, Steve showed me the link for the Family History Lesson Series provides useful guides. Those beginners lessons look useful to me.


Then it was time for lunch, and I ate in the lounge area adjacent to the exhibits, with several of the other attendees. I wandered back into the exhibit area, and ended up at the FamilyLink site just in time to see the GenSeek presentation by Jim Ericson. It was interesting, and the potential for GenSeek being the portal to the genealogy world is high. We are all waiting for the launching of GenSeek for the Family History Library Catalog access and links to online databases, but the GenStream feature has the possibility of keeping track of what a researcher has pursued and to make contact with other researchers with similar interests.


I had to run off to attend the 2 p.m. presentation of "A Detailed Look at Footnote" by Roger Bell of http://www.footnote.com/. Roger did a great job of walking the attendees (only about 50% attending use footnote.com) through the home page options and links, the search process, the search results, filtering results, and how to use the filmstrip and annotation features. He also described connecting record images to persons in the user's gallery, uploading images to the gallery, and the Footnote Pages feature. He closed his talk by showing how to use the different collections found on the home page, like the Vietnam Wall and the USS Arizona Memorial. In the Q&A time, I asked if there were plans for adding family trees to the website, and he said that they could do it, but that it wasn't planned. This presentation was done online, and was really well done by Roger.

At 3:30 p.m., I attended Dallan Quass's presentation of "Discovering WeRelate: An Introduction to the World's Largest Genealogy Wiki." Dallan is the creator of http://www.werelate,org/, and presented the reasons to share your research using WeRelate - to leave a legacy, to involve family members, to connect with distant cousins, to become a better researcher and to create well-documented, accurate and free source of genealogy information. He said that the ideal solution for a connected family tree is to encourage sharing within families and within the genealogy community. In the WeRelate wiki, anyone can browse the information, but a person has to register for free to edit, and the persons that add to or edit your information are usually relatives or other researchers that share your ancestors. The site has quality control in the form of a permanent history of all changes, change notification to the original submitter, and a recent changes portal for the site administrators to monitor suspicious activity. http://www.werelate.org/ is still in beta, but Dallan anticipates that it might launch in 2010.

One more turn around the exhibit hall at 4:30 p.m., and I decided to head back to the hotel for an early dinner and my final edit of the CVGS September newsletter. In doing so, I missed excellent presentations by Elissa Powell, Thomas Jones, Barbara Little, Laura Prescott, Pat Stamm and several others. It would have been a hard choice! But my butt is sore from sitting in the chairs squashed together, and I tend to doze in the late afternoon. Thank goodness for syllabus materials!

When I got back to my room, I found that Linda was off campus doing laundry, so I worked on the newsletter until she returned. We left at 6:30 p.m. for dinner at Bosco's down at the River Market, amid a sea of Arkansas Razorback supporters having a rally, followed by a concert. We got back on the trolley by 8:30, and I polished up the newsletter and sent it off in PDF format to my colleague for printing on Sunday. Then I read my blog lists (only 132 posts today!) and wrote this tome.

There is one more day left at the conference, and I need to find some "Best of Genea-Musings" posts to put up over the weekend until I have Internet access on Tuesday night in Branson. Any suggestions?

Facebook for Dead People - a MOAGFT?

Janet Hovorka (the Chart Chick) and Donna Pointkouski (What's Past is Prologue) have had fun speculating today about "Facebook for Dead People" on their blogs (and on Facebook). Donna went so far as to create Facebook entities for some of her family, and then had "conversations" between them!

The issue is really "what is the best way to create a Mother of All Genealogy Family Trees" (MOAGFT) in which everybody (billions of persons throughout history!) has an individual page. From several sources, I know that LDS FamilySearch Labs is really struggling to make this happen in New FamilySearch.

What are the other major genealogy data providers and family tree purveyors doing? I think that they are all trying really hard to figure out how to create the MOAGFT. There are some clues on some of the web sites.

www.Ancestry.com has "People" pages in their Public and Private Member Trees databases. Each person in a member's database has a page with Facts, Family Members, Images, Notes, etc. The user can attach images through an upload from their computer or by finding record images in Ancestry databases. Here's a view of my father's entry in the Ancestry Member Tree:


When I was in Provo in January, there was a good conversation about Individual Pages - see it in Day 2 in SLC - A Visit to TGN - Part 3.

Will Ancestry.com create a massive MOAGFT seeded with all of the Individual Pages from Public Member Trees, and put them into a wiki format so that collaboration can occur among all interested researchers? Maybe!

There are not many public views of New FamilySearch - I found this Person Page on the FamilySearch Labs site for the Life Browser:

Facts, Family Members, Notes, Artifacts, etc. are shown along with several timelines and locality maps for each person. My guess is that these pages will be created for every person in the New FamilySearch database.

www.Footnote.com used the Social Security Death Index to seed over 80 million "Footnote Pages" on their web site. Here is a view of my father's Footnote Page:

Facts, Family Members, Stories, Images, Videos, etc. can be uploaded for each person, and the person can be linked to parents, a spouse, and children.

The first, and largest to date, Person Wiki was started at www.WeRelate.org in 2007. There is a page for each person input by the user (I uploaded a GEDCOM). Here is the screen for my grandfather, Frederick Seaver:

The Family Relationships, notes, images and other information can be added to the person page in a wiki environment. The wiki environment means that other researchers can add or edit information to an existing page subject to certain protocols.

So which one will be the "winner?" Will it be all of them, or some other family tree and database provider, that hits on the "magic formula" that causes most of the genealogy world to jump onto the "Person Page" bandwagon? FamilySearch and Ancestry certainly have the most information to start out with.

Isn't the future of genealogy research intriguing and interesting?

The WeRelate Genealogy Wiki

When the WeRelate web site (http://www.werelate.org/) started up last year, I was really impressed by the potential of the web site and the wiki concept. Like several others, I uploaded one of my databases to try it out, and found that it was easy to use. I posted about my experiences at http://randysmusings.blogspot.com/2007/08/testing-werelateorg-wikigenea.html.

My WeRelate home page is at http://www.werelate.org/wiki/User:Rjseaver. I noted today that four other people are "watching" my page - including bloggers Harold Henderson, Denise Olson and Apple.

Occasionally, I receive a notice via email that someone has edited one of my pages and I check it out. However, I haven't added anything to my people/families since I uploaded the database in August 2007.

I really like the wiki concept. The site is very readable once you figure out how to navigate it. I haven't fully explored it myself -- and I need to, I think, in order to better understand and use it. They have some tutorials for users at http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Help:Tutorials. The creators and dedicated users of WeRelate are trying hard to improve the web site and make it user-friendly.

The main page for WeRelate claims that there are over 1,500,000 people/families in this genealogy and family history wiki. This pales in comparison to other "user-submitted" web sites, but it is the most for a wiki site. On WeRelate, each person and family has an "article."

There is an interesting discussion about "junk genealogy" and some visitor statistics in the article at http://www.werelate.org/wiki/WeRelate_talk:Junk_Genealogy. The visit statistics for April show that they had 11,432 unique hits.

I wonder why more people aren't using the site? It may be just a lack of publicity, or it may be the fear that the submitted data will be "stolen" or "sold." Some people seem to be loyal to the web site where they have placed their data.

My opinion is that every web site of this type needs a "critical mass" of information before the larger group of "family tree genealogists" find it, no matter how many announcements and blog posts are written. People check Ancestry One World Tree and Public Member Trees, FamilySearch Ancestral File, Rootsweb WorldConnect and other user-submitted databases to find others researching the same person or family because they have submitted data to them or know about them.

Apparently, WeRelate doesn't have that critical mass yet. I hope they do soon, because I think it can be a real benefit to genealogy researchers everywhere. I fear that only a small percentage of researchers are aware of WeRelate.

If you are thinking about uploading your genealogy database (in a GEDCOM file format) to a FREE database, I encourage you to do so at www.werelate.org. It has, in my opinion, the best ease of use, user interfaces, person and family information, and highest potential to be of real help to the genealogy researcher community.