WARNING
- I AM NOT A 'REAL' GENEALOGIST!
THERE ARE ERRORS IN THE INFORMATION OFFERED HERE. UNTIL YOU COMPLETE ORIGINAL RESEARCH
THAT VERIFIES OTHERWISE, ASSUME THIS INFORMATION TO BE PURE SPECULATION AND
FICTION.
If
you have picked up information here, be constantly aware of the potential
(read, absolute certainty) of these errors. You may want to check back once in a while to see if I have
corrected something.
ERRORS
Obviously, I can be pretty certain about who I am and were I'm from
and I can firmly document some of this information back a hundred years or so
with original physical copies of things like a family bible, a civil war pass,
titles to property, and copies of information from the National Archives,
etc. However, the further back in
time you go, the fuzzier things get.
I have great respect for 'real' genealogists who have devoted enormous amounts of time and resources in achieving professional status and who spend their time searching probate records, etc., etc. - and I realize that, for them, the growing number of 'recreational, armchair, Internet, pseudo-genealogists', like myself, must be the source of considerable consternation. Once information, correct or incorrect, becomes available to significant numbers of people - it tends to have a life of it's own. Especially in the 'digital age', gross errors may be perpetuated for eternity. The only way I can respond is to say 'Sorry about that'. I do not intentionally mislead others or offer information that I know to be false. I invite them, beg them, (and you) to correct my errors. I receive entirely too much pleasure and satisfaction in my 'speculative' searches to quit - and I will share what I have with anyone who wants it.
Having said this, you
will also run into apparent errors that merely represent alternative, but
equally valid, information. The
spelling of family names is the most immediate example. Prior to the mid 1800's - public
officials, record keepers, etc. heard spoken names and recorded differing
phonetic equivalents. Beyond
surnames, you will run into versions of common names. I record many early Duch settlers here. You will run into the Dutch name and
'English' equivalents - Pieter becomes Peter, etc. Moving back to the 'Old
World', you may run into 'latinized' versions of names - Robert is recorded as
Robertus and Roger as Rogerus. The
decision to choose among the alternative spellings can be little more
sophisticated than 'tossing a coin'.
UNUSUAL CONVENTIONS
Marriage order:
I use Family Tree Maker from Broderbund as my primary genealogy
program. Every such program
imposes some limitations. A bother to me is that I cannot order marriages
without a marriage date. In some
cases you will find marriages dates of 'Abt. such and such' when I really have
no clue - they were just added to force correct marriage order. In other cases, I was afraid the
information would be misleading - or I just ran out of patience.
Christening dates:
When you see a birth date that looks like 'Abt 5 July, 1872', it
generally means that a christening date was available - but no birth date. These dates are usually close to actual
birth dates, but may also be several months later.
Unknown Maiden Names:
When maiden names are unknown, I've placed the married name in
parentheses - as in Betty (Boop).
For database management purposes, it allows me to distinguish a Betty
with unknown maiden name married to Mr. Boop from a Betty who married a Mr.
Smith.
Ukn:
Rather than putting in question marks for unknown names, I entered
'Ukn' - no particular reason - I just started this way and now my database is
so large that changing it would be a huge undertaking!
Notes:
In some cases, my 'Notes' for an given individual is quite large. I have essentially poured all
extraneous information into this field.
When exporting to GEDCOM format, some fields are intended for a specific
information type - and others 'fact1, fact2, etc.' have no convention at
all. I have found that there will
always be someone who will interpret the intent of a field differently and it
can be a headache if you try to merge their information with your own. I'll try to clean out extra fields in
my database - and allow those who might choose to merge my information with
their own to 'cut and paste' information from my 'Notes' field to whatever
field they deem appropriate.