The American Revolutionary War Project (1776) has a new sticker

Question

Over the past year we have answered a lot of questions from members who were confused about how to properly fill out the 1776 Project sticker.  The 'old' sticker had a lot of parameters that were unwieldy and confusing.  We have sought to simplify the sticker and make it easier for everyone to use.

The parameters for the 'old' sticker included:

{{1776
|image= 
|startdate=
|enddate=
|branch=
|units=
|unit= 
|rank= 
}}

Whereas the 'new' sticker contains only:

{{1776 Sticker
|image= 
|rank= 
|unit= 
}}

The 'new' sticker has been simplified to only the three data fields: image, rank, and unit.  If an image value is not entered the default 1776 image will appear in the sticker:

The sticker's default image can be overriden by using a specific image name (a British flag for British soldiers for example).  

The rank is very straightforward and is usually the highest rank attained during the war.  

For unit, we will use the existing category name for the unit.  If no category already exists, you can create it or else the profile will go into a maintenance category and a 1776 or Category Project volunteer will create it.  Going forward this will make all of the 1776 unit names uniform.

{{1776 sticker
|image= cooper-1.jpg
|rank= Captain
|unit= Pittsylvania County Militia, Virginia Militia, American Revolution
}}

The unit will distinguish the branch served in (Army, Navy, or foreign nation, Brittain, Spain), which Colony served for, which county, and the unit name.

'Other' units served in, dates of service, and other details should be described in the biography.  The sticker was never intended to replace biographical data and has become - in many cases - too difficult to format.

Blank data fields will dissappear.  This:

becomes this:

For Founding Fathers, Civil Service, and Patriotic Service, the previous sticker variants will remain:

{{1776 Sticker|unit=Patriotic}}: ... performed Patriotic Service in the American Revolution"
{{1776 Sticker|unit=Civil Service}}: ... performed Patriotic Service in the American Revolution.
{{1776 Sticker|unit=Civil Service}}: ... was a Civil Servant in the American Revolution.
{{1776 Sticker|unit=Loyalist}}: ... was a Loyalist in the American Revolution.
{{1776 Sticker|unit=United Empire}}: ... was a United Empire Loyalist in the American Revolution.
{{1776 Sticker|unit=Founding Father}}: ... was a Founding Father in the American Revolution.

Continued in comments...

Edit: updated description and instructions

Comments

After making this post I will update the project page and the 'new' sticker should be utilized for all new applications going forward.  If you have any 1776 ancestors or profiles that you manage, please update their sticker to the new format.  

There are thousands of examples of the 'old' sticker that will need to be updated to the new format.  We plan to work with Aleš to get the edit bot to convert as many as possible.  But for many, some parameters will be missing from the bio and will need to be transcribed.  We will organize a mini-challenge and ask project members, Data Doctors, and anyone who is interested in helping to manually convert the 'old' sticker to the 'new.'

In time we want to simplify all of the Military and War Project Stickers similarly.

I'm sure I've missed a few points; if you have any questions, please ask in the comments or as an answer.  We're looking forward to making the Military and War stickers easier for everyone to use.

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Thank you, thank you, for bringing about this long-needed improvement to this sticker.

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A while ago, I adopted five profiles that now appear in my Suggestion Feed with the code "896 Unknown parameter in template".  I believed that the issue was that the "Service Started" and "Service Ended" fields were blank in the sticker. I did not ignore them because I felt they were important Suggestions. Instead, I looked into them, could not find the research I wanted, and decided to put off making any changes until I could get more guidance.

I hope that making these changes will take care of my problem and I will be able to reduce the number of Suggestions in my Suggestions feed by five. Thank you for all of your hard work on making these important changes.

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I believe that this will eliminate that error for you.

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Thank you so much for 'streamlining' this sticker, SJ! It's terrific!

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Thank you for doing this! One question - what if the patriot served in more than one regiment within say, the Dutchess County militia? Is it possible to show that?

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This question came up in the discussion about simplifying the sticker.  There are two thoughs on this:

1.  In military biographies you usually list the unit in which you had the greatest distinction.  US Army soldiers are allowed to wear only 1 combat patch regardless of how many times they have been in battle and how many patches they have received.

Select the unit with the most distinction or time served and list the rest in the bio.

2.  "The purpose of a Profile Sticker is to highlight an important fact about a person or honor an important achievement. Profile Stickers support and decorate the biography. They are not intended to serve a unique functional purpose. (from Help:Stickers)"

So I would say, select the unit with the most time served or with the most distinction and list the rest in the bio.

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Thanks - that makes a lot of sense. There's only so much info that can fit on a sticker.

-Deborah

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This is great because it is very difficult to find start and end dates for this war. Sometimes they served a few months or a few days at a time!

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Is the new sticker not to add the name of the patriot into the massive list already created?  

I do not see the new sticker adding to the list.

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Which list Beryl?

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List of Patriots - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:American_Revolution

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Here is where a patriot is now missing from the list:

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Griffin-446&diff=prev&oldid=109845157

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Thanks for the improved sticker Cousin.  I will swap it for the old one on the profiles I manage.

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Good work SJ and Steve.  One thing, the old Help Page Template:1776  still exists and should be removed as it still explains using the old format including start and end dates and to use {{1776}} instead of the new {{1776 Sticker}}.  I would leave the old Help Page up for a few months and just change it to say a new Sticker Format has been created and a URL to the new format Help Page.

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Thanks for this, I had an adopted ancestors profile that has an error in the sticker and I couldn't figure out why maybe edit bot will fix and if not will replace. Again thank you for your work!

Corrected not to bot...darn autocorrect!

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I have a question: would you look at Shockey-681 and explain what I did that made the “old sticker” format show up instead of the “new sticker” format?

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Angelique, you're missing "Sticker"

Change this:

{{1776
|image= 
|rank=  Private
|unit= 11th Pennsylvania Regiment, Continental Army, American Revolution 
}}

to this:

{{1776 Sticker
|image= 
|rank=  Private
|unit= 11th Pennsylvania Regiment, Continental Army, American Revolution 
}}

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Curious question here, as a DAR member we have "Proven" Patriots ~ persons that served or assisted in some way in the Revolutionary.  

Is this Badge only for those that served in the military in some way?

Also, do you require some sort of proof for this?

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Thanks so much! I got it!

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Hi Tammie, great question.

If you look at the original post you can see that in the lower portion there is the code for those who served in a capacity that was other than military or from the military of another country:

+ Performed patriotic service *
+ Performed civil service *
+ Was a civil servant
+ Was a Loyalist
+ Was a United Empire Loyalist *
+ Was a Founding Father

Each of the these above that has an * asterisk are those that would need Society approval (DAR/SAR/UE) to use the sticker.  The approval of one of these organizations would be the "source" for that profile.

For the others, and the military service regular sticker, the "proof" would be a source on the profile.  Probably the easiest to document would be Founding Father.  They are either listed on the Wikipedia page as a Founding Father or they aren't.  For the rest, a source that could support a statement of service in the bio would be good enough to use the sticker.

I hope this answers your question.

{{1776 Sticker|unit=Founding Father}}: ... was a Founding Father in the American Revolution.

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What is the new list url for the list of patriots?  

For some couple of years I understood the 1776 sticker would add the patriot's name to:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:American_Revolution

The new sticker does not add the patriots I've worked on since the change.

What is the point of the sticker then?

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His name is also still missing from the list of patriots.  Having applied the sticker his name should appear in:

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Category:American_Revolution&from=S

I have commented on this twice.  I've not been informed as to whether it matters or not.  I used that list for at least two years to check all the sticker work I've done on patriots making sure their names appeared in this list.

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Beryl, in the case of Jacob Griffin, in the sticker parameters, you were missing the portion in bold:

6th Regiment, Dutchess County Militia, American Revolution

He now appears in the big list in both the 2nd Duchess Regiment and the 6th.  As the American Revolution category is a mid-level category, you won't see his name on that page but rather on the sub-category pages.  The routing where he appears:

Category: 2nd Regiment, Dutchess County Militia, American Revolution, which is a sub-category of:
Category: Dutchess County New York Militia, American Revolution, which is a sub-category of:
Category: New York Militia, American Revolution, which is a sub-category of:
Category: Militia, American Revolution, which is a sub-category of:
Category: United States of America, American Revolution

While the sticker is simplified, the unit name and categorization structure is a bit more complex.  Steve has coded it so that any new unit name that does not match the existing category structure, the profile will be placed into the category:

Category: 1776 Project Needs Sticker Category Review

and will be reviewed by the 1776 team to update the category, remove it from this category, and place it into the correct unit category.  For unit categories that do not yet exist, we will create them and in this way, the unit structure will be uniform throughout the project.

This will be more work for us on the front end but should save a lot of categorization hours on the back end.

I'll update the project page and sticker page to reflect that the unit name should match the category name.  If the unit name (in a category) does not yet exist, the member will need to create it or else be patient as a volunteer gets to their profile in the maintenance category.

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When I check Jacob Griffin's name is still missing from https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Category:American_Revolution&from=GREENEJames

Assuming then that this list is no longer in use.

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The header at the top of that page reads:

This is a mid-level category. Profiles should be added to the narrowest category possible, but may be placed here when further information is not known. See How to Categorize.

Eventually, all individually listed profiles will be removed from that page.  They will be placed into their correct sub-category, or for those that a sub-category cannot be determined, a category page something the likes of Category: Unit not determined, American Revolution.

You'll notice that George Washington isn't on that page; he's in his category page: Category: American Founding Fathers

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Thank You for explaining the updating process now underway.

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You're welcome Beryl.  Think of military units like an address:

Company = Town
Regiment = County
New Hampshire Militia = State

I would never list my address as "United States of America."  My mail would never find me.  Likewise, the whole purpose of categorization at Wikitree is to collect people in groups that can be best used to aid the process of genealogy.

As an example, it was assumed that Miller was the maiden name of my 5th great-grandmother, Rachel (Unknown) Newville, Miller.  But upon further investigation it was found that she was married to a James Newville and her maiden name unknown.  A subsequent search of her second husband John Miller's Revolutionary War Militia roster turned up James Newville who received pay up until before Rachel was married to John.  We believed that James died and John married Rachel.  John's will later listed the Newville children so that we know we had the same folks.

As communities were small, men in the militias were neighbors and often relatives, having a category that lists the smallest possible unit will provide the best results for those who are looking for clues to their ancestors.

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This is too complifusing.  I've just deleted the sticker

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Good job folks on streamlining the sticker. I like it very much! But I'm struggling to make it work. I get a red Template:1776 sticker instead of the actual sticker. Not sure where my error is.

The profile I'm trying to correct is: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mack-226

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The word Sticker needed to be capitalized.   All done.

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Lois - I should probably hide all my comments about the various problems, which I eventually figured out (I probably will).

Short answer - if you know the state your ancestor served & his rank, you can do it. Say he was a Major serving in  Virginia. Just use

{{1776 Sticker
|unit=Virginia, American Revolution
|rank=Major}}

If you don't know the rank, just use

{{1776 Sticker
|unit=Virginia, American Revolution}}

And you're good to go!

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I did hide my previous posts. I'd left them up before because it pointed out that if you have an underscore, the sticker doesn't come out right...

good:

|unit=Virginia, American Revolution

messes up text:

|unit=Virginia,_American_Revolution

And as Robin found out, capitalization matters ...

{{1776 Sticker

(uppercase "S")

Cheers, Liz

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Lois, I'll add this to the project page:

"When in doubt, just use {{1776 Sticker}}."

And you'll get the default sticker:

It will put the maintenance category that the unit needs to be determined and that can be sorted later.

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That's what I HAD

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You had {{1776}}

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Tilton-1351&diff=111202028&oldid=106704229

What you should put is {{1776 Sticker}}

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It looks the same to me, but it's back.

Thanks. Unlikely I would have found that myself.

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Looks great!

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SJ - the Template page says to use unit=Patriotic Service instead of just Patriotic, which creates 1776 Project Needs Sticker Category Revi

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:1776_Sticker

Answer 1

This is excellent, SJ!

Comments

Time to make a few posts Natalie!  Maybe this star will get you out of this :

This is excellent, SJ!

answered 1 day ago by Natalie Trott G2G6 Pilot (666k points)

Answer 2

This is excellent, SJ!

Answer 3

It would be very selfish of me if I didn't say thanks to Steven Harris who did the heavy lifting on creating the new sticker.  Thanks Steven!  I think I'll make a Wonderful Wikitreer post for him later 

Comments

Thank you Steven and SJ. I certainly did not realize how many empty start and end dates were in past stickers I had put on. They do look better.

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(Please provide more information - at least 5 characters)

Answer 4

All I know was that Col. Peter Willats served as an Ensign in the American War for the British Army under Wellesley (Duke of Wellington).

The war was between the French and Spanish in the south with about 50% of the colonists fighting against the British Parliament.

Answer 5

Really nice work, SJ!  Thank you for your work on that. I'm sure this will make the stickers much easier to use.

Answer 6

Thank you for this sticker. I think it is wonderful.

My ancestor is William Walter Long b abt 1736 Ireland D Dec 16 1806 Pennsylvania married 1744 Dec 10

Martha Hutson b 1720 PA-Oct 15 1810 Alamance, NC

married 1744 NC

He was also married to Elizabeth Templeton 1746-1802 married 1770 Dec 27

Thank You'

Lennis Geiken

 plasticava@aol.com