Advantages of Genealogy as a Community Project

Tonight I tried to count all the ways that working on my family tree at WikiTree is creating an advantage I could not find or even purchase elsewhere. I only got as far as Templates, but there are many more.

Let me be clear: I would not have thought of templates on my own. Even if I did, I wouldn't know how to create one.

The template  below with the two flags may be used on any emigrant from one country to another - in this case, for my grandfather, who came from Finland to America in 1912.

Other templates I use frequently include a ship template, for gathering all the people who came on a ship together on one page, from the many various profiles, so that their history can be understood as a group.  What is the point of that, you ask?  Cousins often migrated together, extended family groups on the same ship with the same destinations. Family groups from villages kept their associations, language, religion and culture intact as much as was possible when they came to America. Being able to examine who was on the ship together can lead to breakthroughs in finding the maiden names of wives, for instance. Added to other clues, recreating the ship lists with categories may show our ancestors associations and give us clues to to extend our family tree.

The EuroAristo Source template, which provides an explanation and a link for documentation found at Medieval Lands, is not one I can reproduce here. See the profile of Robert de Vere for an example of how it is used.

Not all the examples I'd like to use will work on this page, as they are programmed especially for WikiTree. The point of templates is to have a compact bit that is quick to paste that collects or facilitates a great deal of information.The Template below is on my grandparents profiles who were both born in Finland, immigrated 1912.

This person migrated from Finland to America in 1912.

Nineteen Days Following My own Advice

I had it all planned out.

Import my whole family tree - one chunk at a time, into WikiTree. Connect all branches to existing people as I go. Cleanup the gedcom computer generated irrelevant stuff and add pictures and some new sources.

THEN -

Follow my passion, join the European Aristocrats project, and

ENJOY.

Except that,

I didn't follow my plan. I couldn't wait any longer, to go to work on the surety barons of Magna Carta 1215, or William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, or - well, you get the idea.

So, I'm still working on my Oregon Trail ancestors and other recent relatives. In between adding Medieval Lands to the sources section of Bigod, Clare, Percy, Vere, and so on. I uploaded pictures of Chepstow Castle and Pembroke Castle to William Marshal Jr. yesterday.

 Is it possible to consider these amazing monuments and not fall into a reverie on the lives of their builders?

Pembroke Castle on the Pembroke River, Wikimedia Commons, image in public domain.

Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire, Wales, Wikimedia Commons copyright Dennis Turner, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

What are your passions?

The uniform advice for a happy life in popular psychology and self-help books is: follow your passion. 

If you have a passion for cooking, enjoy it to the last bite. However you express it: friends over for dinner; chef in a restaurant; assembling a cookbook; your own catering business: which ever way you find to express your passion for cooking, do your thing, enjoy what you love.

This advice is not as easy to follow as it sounds. Take genealogy, for instance (well, of course). There are nearly as many ways to follow your genealogy passion as their are genealogists. You could:

• volunteer at the local genealogy society
• 
  
• make a family tree scrapbook for your grandchildren
• 
  
• organize a family reunion
• 
  
• collect old family photographs and curate them
• 
  
• travel around the country interviewing cousins and grandparents for a 'Who's Who in the Smith Family"
• 
  
• watch episodes of "Who Do You Think You Are?"
• 
  
• take genealogy courses
• 
  
• create your family tree on a website and share it with relatives

Any or all of the above would express a passion for genealogy.

The question is: what particular activities do you enjoy most or are best at doing (frequently the same thing). After four months exploring WikiTree, I have discovered some things I enjoy most, and other things I am not so very good at doing. Fortunately, there are others who have different tastes and different talents, so it all gets covered.

Specifically, I have found I most like the focused, quiet, scholarly activities which go into creating a well-documented biography of an ancestor. Visit my grandfather's profile, Kustaa Heikkila at WikiTree.

It is free for everyone all the time - you can join and add your grandparents to our tree.

Club 1,000 and other pretty things

For January 2014, starting the year off right with a Club 1,000 badge. I think it is very pretty.

A Club 1,000 badge means one thousand contributions that month to WikiTree. If contributions are over 1,000, there is not a Club 2,000 badge. How much over 1,000 did I go in January? That is my secret and I'm not telling:) There are people at WikiTree who contribute far more than myself, and it is not a competition. It is an acknowledgement that helps us see at a glance if a member is active. When a person works and takes care of family, a Club 100 badge each month is a large accomplishment, carved from precious personal time. In the end, it all goes to polish our mutual family tree, and we all reap the benefits. It is the best "club" where I ever belonged.

The other pretty things? I received a thank you for rejoining World Wildlife Federation this week - four shopping bags printed with images of rare animals. My next trip for groceries, the young lady behind me in line saw the panda picture on a bag, and exclaimed, "Oh, pandas! I love pandas!" "Me too!", I replied. We smiled at each other. Another 'panda' friend.

What will our grandchildren write about us? Beyond the basics of the family tree

Can you fill in the basic data for your four grandparents?

Name: surname at birth, married surname
Born: date and location
Married: date and location
Children: name and date born
Died: date and location
Buried: date and location

Beyond the basic data we document on a family tree, where else may we find out who our grandparents were?

Emigrated: (I have my grandfather's 1912 passport printed in Russian (in 1912 Russia ruled Finland)
Immigrated: My Finnish grandfather came through Quebec, up the Great Lakes, and entered the USA through the port of St. Albans in Vermont on Lake Champlain in 1912 - all records are online.
Naturalization records: records for my Finnish grandfather are online
Moved: changed residence? My Finnish grandfather is on 1920 and 1930 census records, Education: school, apprenticeship, etc.
Taxed: valuated on tax records
Military: My grandfather served in WWI, and his military records are online.
Profession: Grandfather Kustaa was first a logger, then saved enough to buy his own boat and fish for salmon on the Columbia River.
Religion: Christened, Baptized, Ordained, etc.
Elected Office:
Other:

A basic family tree entry for a President and a felon looks the same in the data. They were born, may have married, may have had children, they died. It is in the records generated beyond birth, marriage and death that we understand who they were. One lived in the White House, the other in the Big House.

The short list given here for other records is just the start for where to discover the lives of our ancestors. Other records may include newspaper articles; obituary; fraternities, court records; personal journals, letters, ethnic societies (my grandparents belonged to the Finnish Brotherhood); draft cards (cards for both of my grandfathers are online); and much more.

Like the pointillist style of painting, genealogists fill in one little piece at a time, until suddenly - voila! a picture emerges that is startling in the colorful details it reveals.

How is a family tree like an elephant?

I can think of two ways that a family tree is like an elephant.

They are both very big.

They appear to be different things to different people, depending on their view. A family tree is like the old story about blind men examining an elephant: the one holding the tail said it was a rope, the one holding the trunk said it was big snake, the one holding a leg said it was a tree.

Today I worked on the profile for Mehitable Johnson, born in 1644 in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

For the descendant who entered her data as sister to their Johnson ancestor, she was Mehitable Johnson. A different descendant whose ancestor was Mehitable's first husband described her as Mehitable Hinsdale. Another researcher who was filling data on their Root ancestors logged her as Mehitable Root. A descendant of John Coleman noted her as Mehitable Coleman.

Indeed, like the elephant, she was all of the above. She was born to Humphrey Johnson and Elenor Cheney; her first husband, Samuel Hinsdale, was killed by Indians, her second husband, John Root suffered the same fate, and her last husband, John Coleman, died before she did. She was widowed three times, and with her birth name, her record appears under four different names.

This is why WikiTree invented merges. Building one tree for everyone and their ancestors is a large ambition. It takes time, patience and special software. One of the best tools is the merge function. Because Mehitable is one person, not four people, I used the merge tool and captured the data from all four profiles into a single profile. Mehitable now shows up as the courageous, tenacious, wife and mother that she was, living on the frontier, raising her seven children, resilient and strong. She died at about forty-five years of age, August 4, 1689 at Hatfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Now, all her names: Johnson; Hinsdale; Root; Coleman are together on her profile. If you were a descendant and searching WikiTree for Mehitable under any of her names - you would find her.