Can you help with our collaboration on Daniel Curran Sr. (1831-1912)?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

 

This is our very first Collaborative Profile of the Week: Daniel Curran Sr. (1831-1912). http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Curran-585

 

There have been many Profiles of the Week, but this is the one where we're taking it a step further. Our goal is to involve a large group of WikiTree members in working together to make it the absolute best it can be.

 

This profile gets the star collaborative treatment this week. Next Monday we'll start on a new one.

 

So you can help with anything -- anything at all -- related to Daniel Curran or his relatives' profiles?

 

Here are some possibilities, off the top of my head:

 

* Parents. This is a big one. Right now, his father John Curran and mother Sarah (Devine) Curran don't have anything on their profiles except birth and death dates, and that they were married in Ireland. There aren't any sources. Can anyone find any information about them? Or even just add sources for those dates? If nobody here can do it, maybe we can reach out to someone experienced in Irish research?

 

* Biography copy editing. The biographical content here is excellent, thanks especially to Profile Manager Paul Curran (Daniel's great-great grandson), but there's always room for improvement. An extra set of eyes always helps. Who will volunteer to give it a careful edit?

 

* Images. One thing I notice: there's a great image here of the "Ocean Chief" clipper ship without a clear mention of where it came from. I assume Paul didn't paint it. :-) Maybe someone could confirm the source.

 

* Image captions. We don't have an official WikiTree style for displaying inline images with captions. Maybe this is the time to experiment and agree on one?

 

* Format of extended quotations. Confirm with style page.

 

* Sources and footnotes. Paul and others have already done a remarkably good job citing sources. Maybe someone could confirm them and consider their formatting? One small example, I see a footnote that says "Dad's diary." The meaning of that would be clear to Paul and his family, I'm sure, but it's not the ideal style for a collaborative profile. We want to make sure that distant relatives and scholars could confirm these sources. We don't want to say "Dad" because that assumes that you know who the speaker is, where the diary is kept, etc. A future historian wouldn't know these things.

 

* Use of profile boxes. Cases like this where there are a series of template-based profile boxes (PoTW winner, Irish Roots, Migrating Ancestor) have led some people to ask whether we should reconsider the format, so they don't push the biography down too far. Maybe put them altogether into one box and/or aligned to the right? This could be a good chance to experiment and address that question.

 

* Additional sources. Is anyone able to find any additional sources for facts that are cited here?

 

* Add sections, like a timeline?

 

* Translations. Would anyone want to translate some of the biography into another language?

 

* DNA. Maybe someone would want to comment on how DNA could help with his genealogy, exactly who would need to be tested and why.

 

* Matches and merges. Would someone volunteer to confirm that there are no duplicates and that any non-duplicates with close names and dates are set as rejected matches?

 

The goal here isn't just to help Paul and improve on his ancestor's profile. We also want to use this opportunity to push the envelope on style. We want to establish this profile as a perfect example of what's done on WikiTree.

 

Could you help with any of the above? Or anything else you can think of related to Daniel or his family on WikiTree?

 

Please post here. Before you start anything I recommend posting an answer like "I'm going to check on those images now." Then when it's done post again.

 

Thanks!

 

P.S. I see there has already been great collaboration here, e.g. by Gaile Connolly, Bree Ogle, Terry Wright etc. A big thank-you to everyone who has helped and will help.

Comments

While I have nothing to add, yet, I find it very interesting that my O'Doherty's from Pollans (hop, skip and not a jump from LetterKenny) married into a Currans/Curren's family here in Ottawa.  Things that make me go hmm. Mags

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I'll try to do more copy editing. So far added wikilinks, changed capitalization, and removed the bit about Irish people being fond of a drink.

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Chris.

Do You want me to scan all the Victorian Land Papers in my possession

I did not do this before, as it would have taken up too much room, and thought it would have cluttered the profile

I also have a transcription of his wife Susan's Inquest no: 354 / 1868 it too would have cluttered the profile which was transcribed by Sheila Mary Curran nee Hancock (my mother)

the unfinished Diary was written by, Clarence Gordon Curran, (My Father)

 

regards Paul

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I would just like to add a brief comment at this time.  I think the suggesstion of a timeline is an excelllent idea.  I would like to know what others would think of making a timeline a standard part of all our profiles,  I frequently find myself sketching out a timeline when I am reading profiles.  How useful it would be if the timeline were made a new part of each profile!

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I wrote the source for Gordon's diary like this:

*  [[Curran-579|Curran, Clarence Gordon]]. Personal diary in possession of Gordon's son [[Curran-577|Paul Curran]].

 

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Paul,

I left a comment on the editing page about the Land Records = please see that.

I would actually love to see all documents there, but I fully agree with you that they would clutter the biography.  Instead, I would like to see them in the sources section.  Please see Stern-217 for an example of how I have been doing this.

Also, do you have a higher resolution image of the photo of Daniel Curran that I tried to enhance?  I feel terrible about not being able to do much to make it clearer because the resolution was too low to work with.

THANX,
Gaile

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Such great progress in 24 hours! Karen, thank you for all those edits!

Paul, it's your call on whether the sources are directly relevant and unavailable elsewhere. If so, I'd definitely want to scan them. Uploading them as images (and tagging as sources rather than photos) is the way to go. If it's a really large number you could consider creating a free-space profile for them, especially if they would serve as sources for others as well.

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Just wanted to ask if everyone was happy so far with the collaboration so far and if there was any changes or material you would like to add, if i have researched it and have sourced the material I will add the information for you

 

regards paul

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Paul,

All those documents are absolutely wonderful!

I have one problem, though.  I just cleaned up some of the scans and wanted to put them in your Space:Certificates_and_other_Historical_Data but the privacy level is green.  Could you please either make it white or add me to the trusted list?

THANX,

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Sorry Gaile

it is open now, it was always open, however, I was working on it with another profile and accidently changed the wrong profile privacy and did not change it back

regards Paul

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Chris

With regard to DNA as I said to Peter Roberts, I would love to do a DNA , However cost is too prohibitive, as I am a retired pensioner, and that cost could pay half my electricity bill or a phone bill. I am trying to save up so I can do it, but I am sorry my bills must come first.

Also I buy the occasional Certificate transcription as I can't afford the BDM certificate as even they are too high

So even though a DNA test would be great, at the moment, I get more information from the transcription.

Regards

Paul

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Wow! What an awesome way to start this project. Keep up the fantastic work, everyone! Thanks, Paul, for being such a great profile manager to work with.

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I agree, Abby. This has already been a great collaboration. Thank you to Paul and everyone who's contributed so far.

Answer 1

I will add a category for the ships arrival to Australia and Letterkenny Donegal

Comments

Nice! Thanks!

Answer 2

That painting turned out to be trickier than expected!

The National Library of Australia calls it "Clipper OCEAN CHIEF on her Australian Run" and attributes it to Duncan McFarlane.

Various art sites call it "The Black Ball Line Clipper Ship Ocean Chief" and attribute it to Samuel Walters.

Both Samuel Walters and Duncan McFarlane were 19th century British artists who painted ships. I would expect the National Library of Australia to be accurate, yet all the art sites seem to agree on Samuel Walters!

So, I found the painting but it still remains a bit of a mystery.

Comments

Thanks, Lianne!

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The painting was sold at Christies and Attributed to Duncan McFarlane

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/attributed-to-duncan-mcfarlane-the-black-ball-5259497-details.aspx#top

plus this site http://www.vallejogallery.com/artist.php?artist=duncan_mcfarlane&id=153

are experts in Maritime art they say Duncan McFarlane is often  confused with other artists

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Nice find, Terry! Thanks!

Answer 3

The only thing I did prior to this was, at Paul's request, I enhanced the old photos and uploaded the result to the profile.  The original ones, however are still there and the enhanced ones are at the end of a long string of pictures, so they don't show on the first page.

I'll offer to get photos in proper places and I will put captions on them, although someone else might want to decide on a nuniform style for captions and then go behind me and make corrections.

Answer 4

With the image caption I use [[Image:Terry photos-143.jpg|thumb|200px|'''Newspaper clipping''']] is this a acceptable way to add the caption? it centres  the text under the photo plus if you run your mouse over it it gives you the name of the photo Terry

Comments

I thought the text after the last "|" is only the mouseover and alt.  I just finished the photo of Daniel Curran's shop.  Please see if that is all right.  It looked like the first paragraph after the photo really belongs with the photo, instead of in the body, so I treated it kind of like an extended caption.

THANX

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One other question - I left the photo display size as it was before - 500 pixels, but I thought that the recommended style is for a maximum of 400 pixels to ensure that, on smaller screens, it will not bleed into the right column on the page.

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Hello Gaile if you add thumb to the image code it adds the title under the photo.I am just not sure if it is acceptable way of adding the image title  Terry

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Yes 400px is the preferred size for a photo ,500px do not display correctly on IPhones etc

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Terry,

As long as it works, I can't imagine why it wouldn't be acceptable.  In this case, I expanded the words in the caption to include the location and year of the photo, so it's probably better the way I did it under the picture.  I also made a change to the way footnotes 1 and 2 were placed to locate each one at the statement it supports.  In addition, I added a comment - only visible on the editing page - with a suggestion to allow others to make the decision whether to make the change or not.

I think comments on the editing page might be a good tool to use for collaboration purposes.

All the images will have to be resized ... if it's not done the next time I visit the page, I will do it then.  Right now, I don't have more time to spend on this.

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Thank you Gaile I will change the size  of the images this afternoon  I agree about the editing page thats a good idea

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Changed the size of the images from 500px to 400px so they display correctly on smaller screens

Answer 5

Just a background suggestion

 

 http://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Images-125

or

http://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Images-126

Comments

Jackie

I used the second option, thanks for doing that

Regards

Paul

Answer 6

How absolutely incredible to see the transformation of this profile through out the day today.  Can you say collaboration?!

You have all done a marvelous job.

Mags

Answer 7

Update - I just finished working on the entire "Life After the Railroad" section.  I enhanced the photos of the Catholic Church, formatted the captions under all photos, and tweaked the text a teensy bit for grammar.

Unfortunately, I fat-fingered the ENTER key in the midst of typing the comment and changes got saved before I finished the comment - I finished the comment after that and saved changes to get it in there, although I had not made any at that time.

I plan to also enhance other photos, plus all the source documents - THANX for adding more of those, Paul!  I can do a whole lot with the documents - they all will be much clearer and they will be rotated as needed to make them precisely horizontal/vertical.

I will also add footnotes in the text and put source documents themselves in the references section.

Answer 8

I've just gone through the bio with a proof reader eye and corrected typos and made some minor grammar changes. I am not a proof reader, so there may still be some errors to be found.

Answer 9

Thank you everyone that helped with Daniel Curran's profile,for making a wonderful profile even better.Chris has started a new thread for this weeks Collorative Profile here

http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/122304/help-with-weeks-community-collaboration-florence-1868-1938

This weeks its one of Sally Stovels profile Sally has done a great job but like most profiles there is always room for improvement If any member could help with the profile that would be wonderful just post how you can help