Help us improve this week's collaborative profile, Frederick Bowditch

Question

Frederick Bowditch (1855-1920) is this week's lucky guy who will get some great updates from the community. He's the fourth selection for Collaborative Profile of the Week.

What can you do to help improve his profile? Here are some ideas; choose from them or come up with your own way to help and let us know in the answers what you're working on:

* It's a long shot, but I wonder if we can track down a photo for Frederick. His obit is the main photo now.

* Add a background photo?

* Can we find an actual birth date for him?

* Did Frederick have siblings? If yes, they need added or connected.

* Frederick has little in his biography. Does someone want to give this a crack?

* Once a bio is in, we'll need reference tags to the sources, too.

* He should be in a few more records and census, let's find those and add them!

* What other categories apply?

* His surrounding family could use some biographies, though Kyle has made a great start with sourcing.

Take off with it, everyone! Thanks for your help. These profiles have been amazing you've built up.

Comments

Thanks in advance to everyone who's willing to contribute a little something.

When you start investigating, be sure to post an answer here.

When you see someone else answer, click the + arrow to vote it up.

These posts will help keep the question at the top of G2G, in addition to keeping us coordinated.

Answer 1

I added his mother's obituary to her page. It lists his siblings

Comments

I cleaned up the obituary and marriage images, but did not remove the originals - leaving it to others to decide if they want "doctored" documents instead of the authentic originals - delete whichever set you don't want there.

Let me know if there are more images that need enhancing - I won't be watching this thread..

---

Thanks, Anne and Gaile!

---

We need to be careful were not uploading copyrighted images or images restricted under usage licenses. Please include source info on any image pages.

Answer 2

Added some categories

Comments

Thanks, Veronica!

---

Added, birth, death, sources and categories.

---

Great, thanks Sally!

Answer 3

I started this profile as part of the "connect to AJ" project since he's an ancestor of James Spader, who was married to one of AJ's cousins.  As such, my research was pretty thin - just find a source or two and get the profile up there.  I'm happy to see others improve upon any and all of my work here.

Answer 4

I'll look up the census data and add his siblings.

Comments

Siblings are added. I looked up the census from his young life. But didn't get to 1900, 1910 and 1920. They're still left to research.

---

Thanks, Anne!

Answer 5

I'm trying to find his original birth record. So far, no luck finding it in Brookline vital records. Still searching...

Comments

There don't appear to be birth records for Brookline before 1857. I did find evidence of his father William I. Bowditch (who was very active in local politics) in Brookline as early as 1856. Brookline Town Records are available through Google books and there are MANY instances of his father recorded there.

---

Thanks, Jillaine!

Answer 6

I'm looking for something to be the background image.

Comments

Thanks, Anne!

Answer 7

I found a picture of Fred, Jr from the MIT yearbook, so I added it to HIS profile. I found a Private family tree on Ancestry.com that says there's a picture, so I contacted the owner of that tree and asked if they would share the photo with us.

Comments

Awesome, Robin. Thank you!

---

No go on the picture - tree owner says that there is NOT a picture of Fred Sr on his tree.

Answer 8

I added some more to his bio, using Census data from the 1900's and his obit.

Comments

I proofed and fixed some references. Thanks for fixing the image, Gaile!

---

I also added connections to names in the bio. One child is mentioned, William E., who doesn't have a profile. If someone has access to the census data and could add him that would be great!

---

Actually William has a profile but was probably listed as Earnest when you looked,, He changed his name. I was working on him.

---

He doesn't appear to be connected yet unless I am missing it. Thanks, Anne!! I'll check back later after you have had time to finish to see if I need to connect him in the bio.

---

He was connected but his name was Earnest. I've added the link. He's a sibling, not a child, were you looking in the wrong list.?

Answer 9

Hello all I worked on this biography today, mainly fine-tuning it a bit (hope you all agree - make any changes you deem necessary!) and adding a couple of sources like his "find-a-grave" web site. I also worked on filling in his wife's family tree as it was sadly neglected but a lot of good information is "out there". As always, please correct and update wherever you see errors. Thanks! Chet Snow

Comments

Chet, would you go back and check the paragraph on his marriage. You had an extra ref or one too few </ref>s, and I want to make sure, that when I corrected it, I got what you wanted to say correct.

And, gosh, I guess I'm not so old I can't learn new things. I really thought those footnote numbers belonged before the punctuation.

---

Hi Anne, I looked over the paragraph and don't see any problems; the phrase you deleted perhaps is better in the footnote. Both the Rev. Lyon and Mrs. Forster's maiden name were Lyon but my research found no close family tie despite the same surname. I also found that their home at 164 Rawson Ave was built in 1898 and it's still standing and now for sale again, so I added its photo and a comment. I suppose I should add the real estate source as a reference... will do it before closing now. Chet

---

Brain disengaged, I could not figure out why you put that phrase in there. Ah! His wife's mother's maiden name. Those Lyon's were a prolific bunch, they still live in the area I live in and my husband is descended from a branch of Lyons.

Thank you

---

Hi again Anne, I assume you live in the region then... Actually, at first, reading the marriage registration, I thought Rev Lyon might be the bride's uncle - that would merit being on the profile... But, my research showed me that his Lyon family were only remotely (if at all) related to Mrs. Anita Lyon Forster's family (mother of the bride). To avoid having someone else have to go thru that work (took a while to figure out) I put in that phrase. But I agree it is best in the Note and not the main text. Hope you like the House photo that I added - as someone who lives in Arizona where our house is considered "old" (it was built in 1974), seeing that 1898 mansion in such great shape was amazing to me.

---

Thank you.

Here, 1898 is not old (for a house). 1700ish is old. Then I went to Italy (especially Venice), and discovered what old really is.

I had found a different photo of the house, that's actually a better photo, but the angle just made the house look like modern everyday house. Yours shows the interesting architecture. Check out that roof line, so the two feet of snow slips off.

---

There's a lot more information and family tree information available on both sides of this family.  

Working on the Forster/Foster line for Elizabeth Forster got me started thinking about the project I'm currently working on because if you look back far enough you'll see the name Dane in the Foster ancestry.  That gave me the idea to try to complete a 5 generation descendancy tree from the original Dane colonists (maybe even write my own book: "Dane Genealogy" or "Dane Descendants", something like that).

---

Thank you, Chet, Anne, and Kyle!

Answer 10

Well this was a fun exercise in collaboration. I added links for four of the censuses and made a couple of other minor changes. I also removed a "See also" entry that was also source. I also added notes in the explain your changes field.

Comments

Nice. Thank you, Marty.

Answer 11

This profile ended up so much better than I imagined it being. I thought, we'd find the census data. But having the obit (Thank you) even before we started improving opened up a whole bunch of avenues.

Great Job Everyone. Thank you