I just passed 200,000 page views on this blog. That means an indeterminate amount of people have clicked 200,000 times to get to my blog. Now that's not a lot for some webpages that get 200,000 hits per day or per hour. But for a little genealogical blog it's interesting. The person who was #200,000 was searching for Shadrach Hapgood. I hope he found the information useful. In fact, I hope all the 200,000 hits found what I wrote useful and helpful.
I'm close to 1,000 postings also.
This list is in no particular order. The list is mostly travelers and gay influencers.
In addition to those I subscribe to, I follow several other stations from time to time. No genealogists!!!
My history of social media is long and checkered. Shortly after Facebook was founded at Harvard, it became apparent that the students were communicating via Facebook rather than email. So all the faculty and staff, including us librarians, were encouraged to join Facebook so that we could communicate with the students in their chosen venue. So I joined Facebook in something like 2005 or 2006. This way fine but by 2010 or so, the general population was joining Facebook and it became a problem. You see, I have a unique name. If you search it you immediately find me. There is one other person on the planet that shares my name and he is Germany. So many people found me and friended me. All people from my past and mostly people I had left in my past for a good reason. It was terribly hard for a person with anxiety not to friend someone when asked and even though I didn't want to. So, I had left Harvard and I simply left Facebook. Michael is still on Facebook, but not me. Free, after all these years.
So I went through eight years or so without any social media and that was fine. But I wanted to stretch my wings into something current so for a New Year's resolution in 2018, I opened an Instagram account. Now I follow about 60 people neatly divided between travelers and gay influencers. I enjoy Instagram, but really don't know how to use it. Instastories are a mystery to me and I enjoy watching other people's stories I have too many hangups to share more of my life on stories even if I could.
I also subscribe to about 20 or so Youtube channels, again, neatly divided between travelers and gay people. A few people don't fit in either group, but mostly everyone is in those two groups.
I don't subscribe to any genealogy Youtubers, if there are any, and only one genealogist on Instagram who is more of a friend. I do post genealogy photos on Instagram though. Especially gravestones.
While fooling around after writing my previous posting on Thomas Goble, I ran into several websites that had his English origins. This site has an image of the marriage record of Thomas Goble. This site gives credit to the discoverer of this information.
So, I want to say the following: Why didn't they do the hard work of publishing the results of this English origins? I think they have it right. Thomas Goble of Charlestown has a wife Alice and this is a marriage record between a Thomas Goble and Alice Brookman. The year is 1619 and not too far off. Thomas's baptism is also found in 1591 and jives well with the rest of the records. Sadly, no one has done the hard work of publishing an article. I know firsthand what terribly tough work it is to publish an English origins article of that caliber; I've done it twice. But unless you do, this information is worthless.
Why? Because you have it uncited in most cases. You have people still confused between records of Thomas-1 and Thomas-2. You still have the Mousall marriage mistake. So, if they can't get the New England generations right, why should I believe the English generations. Plus no one has done the hard work of wills and probate to shore up this identification. All that's been done is a look at one parish records. None of the adjacent parishes have been checked and therefore Alice Brookman's identity is not known.
I believe this is a wonderful clue and points towards the English origins of Thomas Goble. Now the hard work must begin to fully prove it.
From the most recent issue of The American Genealogist which just arrived at my door yesterday, p. 157. Speaking of the Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists:
"The only qualifications for a Fellow are the quality and quantity of his or her published genealogical work, usually compiled genealogy, not abstracts or methodology. At the meeting this year, it was proposed that "publications" include those online. The Society had decided quite a few years ago that digital/online publications did not qualify as permanent contributions to the field. At this year's meeting, much was said on both sides of the question: Online publication is becoming increasingly common and increasingly excellent, but it remains fluid and its permanence is uncertain."
I do find this sad, but certainly something I agree with. I've tried to get people to up their games on the Internet and have only been met with indifference to hostility. For the time being the real work remains in print.
How deeply ironic that four days after the death of Bill Reitwiesner, Prince William of Wales announced his engagement to Kate Middleton. Bill and Gary Boyd Roberts literally wrote the book on the ancestry of Diana Spencer, Prince William's mother almost 30 years ago when her marriage was announced. Of course, this current romance has been brewing for a while and it's no surprise that Bill had Kate Middleton's ancestry already online. So when you next see some Ancestry person note the relationship of Kate and anyone or Diana and anyone, remember it's Bill's (and Gary's) work first, despite the fact you won't see their names given credit.
I will probably not live long enough to see King William V, but on that day, he will be the first British monarch in 300 years to be a descendant of Charles II and James II (the last being Queen Anne who died in 1714). He will also be the first British monarch descended from George III who will be eligible for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). So, there's a historical twist. Lastly, it seems Kate may descend from Sir Francis Knollys and Catherine Carey. Catherine's mother was Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife and mother of Elizabeth I. Catherine's paternity has long been in dispute and she may be the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII, which would add his blood back into the royal family. [the late Queen Mother may have been descended from this couple as well, and if so, then the current Queen would also be Henry VIII's descendant.] Kate's closest royal ancestor is Edward III, the same as mine. Of course, someday she will be Queen Consort.
A fellow researcher died on Friday. Bill had colon cancer for a while and the cancer won. He had the same dark sense of humor I have, and tracked his disease through a blog called Malignant Asshole. Most notably, he was a genealogist who researched famous persons so that the average genealogist might have fun knowing that they shared ancestors (i.e. was a distant cousin of) with a movie star, historical figure, rock star etc. However, his dark humor was evident there too. His lists always had the notorious as well as the famous. Jeffrey Dahmer and Gary Leon Ridgway were on those pages too. I'm not sure people brag about those two as cousins!
His and Gary Boyd Roberts' book on the Ancestry of the Princess of Wales came out in 1984. Additionally, he had his web page at WARGS.com. I contributed research to several trees most notably Jennifer Aniston and Tim Robbins. Bill was also a contributor on SGM for years (and like me, probably a lurker for much longer).
It's always sad when a good researcher leaves us. I have no idea how long his web site will continue, so visit now.
Among the pictures I am digitizing and organizing are some of people I cannot identify. That's one problem that we all face. What makes it a particular concern is that pictures come down to you from Relative A who may have inherited it from Relative B and it's B's in-laws, and not your family at all. How do you know?
Another set are pictures that are not my family but are identified on the back of the photo. The solution here was advised to me by the Practical Archivist. She said to upload it to Dead Fred. Evidently this is an orphaned photo site. Much like Findagrave, it is operated by volunteers uploading photos. So I uploaded two that were clearly identified. You can search Dead Fred on the other side too to find pictures of your long lost ancestors. I did a broad search for the surname Pinkham and got two hits. They were both group photos with men named Pinkham identified in the group. Neither were any close relation to me. The other surnames I searched all came up empty. At present there are just over 100,000 photos in Dead Fred according to their website.
From what the Practical Archivist told me and the promos on Dead Fred, people have found pictures of their ancestors that they might not have found any other way. So Kudos to Dead Fred. My next experiment will be to upload a purely unknown photo.
I told the Practical Archivist that I wanted to destroy the pictures I couldn't identify because I didn't want the next generation to be confused as to who might be in the photos. It was then that she told me about Dead Fred. I didn't have the heart to tell her my grandmother went through her photo albums and removed and destroyed all the non-family pictures, because she said, they had no meaning to anyone but herself. I know this because I watched her do it. Had there been an Internet then, I might have saved them and found out if anyone wanted them. Now we can.
If you don't own it yet, every genealogist needs to have a copy of Ann S. Lainhart's, State Census Records (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1992). I believe it has never gone out of print, and rightly so. It is a directory of all the state census records in the United States, where they are (originals), and what information they contain. I've had great success using the Massachusetts State Censuses of 1855 and 1865 as well as the Kansas State Censuses, which also ran on the "5" year from 1855 to 1925. These important genealogical resources may contain additional information not found on the federal censuses, and as you see from the above, you can track a family every five years, rather than every ten. Not to mention the 1885 and 1895 censuses help the hole created by the lack of an 1890 federal census. Not all states have state censuses and not all state censuses survive.
As we move in to the digital age more and more, this is a resource I eagerly await being digitized and, more importantly, indexed. With very few exceptions, these states censuses are not indexed and you always needed to slog through them town by town. This is why they were seldom used. However, the Kansas censuses have appeared on Ancestry.com and hopefully more will follow. The most important state censuses that need to be indexed, in my opinion, are the New York state censuses. I feel many brick walls will tumble if people can find their ancestors in the 1845 census (which is still head of household, but has birthplace), and the 1855, 1865, and 1875 which are all-name censuses.
As proof of the power of these sources, I direct you to Randy Seaver's Geneamusings blog. A little while ago, he found his wife's ancestress in the 1852 California census, which is online at Ancestry.com. This added enough information for him to knock down a brick wall, and get this family back from California to Australia to England. There he has gone back another two generations, and I would think that after 24 hours at the Family History Library, he could solidify that research and go back even further. It has been great fun reading the progress of his research and I have been living vicariously dreaming of such a breakthrough for myself. This post has a good summary of the posts, but there are many more. It was all made possible by a state census.
Geneabloggers is shaking up its blogging meme routine and having several options for each day of the week. I've been participating in transcribing records on Monday thanks to Transylvanian Dutch's invention of the Amanuensis meme. Now, there are literally dozens of people transcribing records on Monday.
The records themselves are interesting to read, but it is the breadth of the types of records that really grab you. If you are just starting out in genealogy (or even not), look at the types of records you can use: obituaries, letters, court documents, military records, deeds, wills, probate files, oral histories, diaries, and the list goes on and on.
Mr. MacEntee should catalog the number of different types of documents and use it for his presentations. It's a wonderful teaching opportunity and certainly can inspire someone to search in several new places.
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