Hello WikiTreers!
Week 50 of the WikiTree Challenge for James Tanner has wrapped up. It was a whirlwind week full of collaboration, profile additions, corrections, profile cleaning, and incredible discoveries! Team members once again took on the challenge and impressed us with their level of dedication and expertise.
Challenge participants added 445 profiles to his branches. There were 133 direct ancestors and 312 nuclear relatives added to WikiTree. Fourteen of these direct ancestors were beyond James' brick walls and completely new to him! With his primary tree already being so thoroughly researched, this was amazing!
Altogether, more than 34 members made 3,122 edits to his ancestor profiles. Many did research, while others worked on profile narratives, looked up articles, added categories, and contributed in other ways.
Here are some highlights from our discoveries:
- An exciting breakthrough was made on the Hamilton line yesterday! After travelling to two counties to search through the records, a probate file was found that connected Margaret (Turner) Hamilton to her father Jesse!! Though he had died intestate, one of the court registers held a notation listing the children, and allocating a guardianship fee to the executor Francis Ray. Thanks to S Lutes for helping with that exciting discovery!!!
- In accordance with our 'Year of Accuracy,' researchers worked hard to verify all information on the ancestors profiles. While doing so two corrections were made on the Linton line. Joan found that Elizabeth (Robinson) Sutton's father was a Peter Robinson, not a Robert like first thought. Then I Speed, after diving deep down a rabbit hole, found that the mother of Ellen (Glover) Ellison was really Margaret Bramhall instead of Peggy Nelson. Way to go team!!!
- Mariane Larsdatter, James’ 3rd great-grandmother, had no parents on the comparison tree. Research proved her parents to be Laurs (Laursen) Larsen and Maren Andersdatter! There are now six new direct ancestors on this line!! These ancestors were from Denmark. Luckily we had Hanne and other Danish experts to work on those for us!
- Laurs Thomsen, Mariane’s paternal grandfather, was a farmer who married Anne Laursdatter and had six children with her. Mariane’s maternal grandfather, Anders Jensen, was the son of Jens Hansen and Inger Andersdatter (which will be two more new ancestors once added!). Anders and his wife Johanne Larsdatter had six children.
- There was a bit of confusion about Ove Andersen, James’ 4th great-grandfather. While his birth record clearly said his mother was Else Sørensdatter, further research showed that her sister Karen was the wife of Anders Jensen in other baptisms, and that Else was simply a witness. Our researcher concluded that there was an error in Ove’s baptism record and that Karen was his mother as well. This will open up new lines for James to research!
Team Captains: Janet Wild & Joan Whitaker
MVP: Maddy Hardman
Top Bounty Hunter: Hanne Henriksen
Honorable Mention: S Lutes
For more information see the challenge scoring explanation and check out the week 50 statistics to see a summary of all contributors.
If you missed the wrap-up LiveCast and want to see James' reaction to our endeavors, you can view it at any time on YouTube.
