"Weekend Chat" - All Members are Invited! (14-15 Aug 2015)

Question

 

Welcome!  This is an ongoing "Chat" post that can be added to throughout the weekend.  All members of WikiTree are encouraged to join in, especially first-timers!

Say Hello and introduce yourself... where are you from and what are your interests?

Do you have any tips to share?

How can we improve WikiTree?

What do you enjoy most about WikiTree?

How do you spend your time when not online?

What's the weather like in your neck-of-the-woods today?

What did you do for fun when you were 18... music, cars, daring feats?

Do you have a unique pet?

Any great recipes to share?

... anything that you want to talk about!

Post answers here, comment on answers, up-vote things you like or agree with and have fun!  To receive notice when future Chats are posted, add Weekend_Chat to the list of Tags you follow.  You can edit your list by clicking on "My Feed" on G2G, then click to "add or edit".  Separate words with and underscore.

Comments

I love wikitree but for the how do you spent your time when not online, I barely remember :) wikitree has me addicted but I'm going to make myself step away tomorrow and go for a day hike in Desoto forest here in Mississippi. I've been over my head in the Knight family not even related to me but I found them interesting Newton and Rachel mostly but I don't like those little highlighted areas so am trying  to add other family too hoping eventually someone else will get interested and want to collaborate http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Knight-6571

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Hello again from Little Barugh, North Yorkshire.  What do I do when not online, well this week I have been sorting out my sewing room, which had become a dumping ground for stuff that needed taking to the proper dump, now it has gone and I have been doing alterations on drapes, and started making cushion covers and a table runner for a friend who has just moved house.  It was one way of preventing hair loss - I downloaded Microsoft 10 last week and have been having problems since, hopefully sorted now.  I just hope I can get my printer to work again. !

Also I have been enjoying watching our two new kittens playing together, a 3 week old female found dumped on a road into our village, Misty is now a rambunctious 16 week old, plus her 'toy-boy' companion Bobby, he is 9 weeks old, a cute little vacuum cleaner who loves toast, plus anything else that's available.  He and his two female siblings were dumped on another persons doorstep, our Vet took them over just about the time we decided Misty needed a playmate near her own age, as our older cats are now OAP's, and it's a bit like presenting your great grandma with a precocious and hyper toddler to watch over.

On the Family History front, I am a little frustrated with some of my unimaginative ancestors, and UK records in general.  My Winstanley's only seem to know two names, James and William, and the Birth records don't help much if you don't have a clue who their parents were, and Death records might be a little more helpful if they had a spouse or other next of kin name added.  I think some of the best records for information that I have seen so far are the Canadian Death records.

My husband's brick wall is still rock solid  :(  his Y-DNA is pointing to a certain line, but the connection still eludes us.

Answer 1

Good Morning from Northeast Ohio, United States.  We are looking at a very nice upcoming weekend so after working on a couple of construction projects this last week to prepare for the upcoming winter I am going to just relax in my RV for the most part for the next few days.  I will still check in here on from time to time but the most actual work I am planning is to cook some Salmon Burgers on the grill, along with some other stuff for those who do not like Salmon.

Comments

I love Salmon.  They are in the lake we live on but we never see them because they are in the deeper bays than ours.  I did catch one on a charter trip though, and our local restaurants offer it when it's in season.  Delicious!

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Keith, I cheated I bought the salmon at Sam's Club.  I do not care for the taste of salmon but I do like most fish, shell fish does not like me however so I have to be careful.  Where I live Walleye is the better known fish and is very tasty.  I went on several fishing trips on Lake Erie and everyone on the boat caught a Walleye except me, but they did share so it was not a total loss and at the end we would have a big fish fry at the home of one of the people on the boat.

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We do get Walleye and agree they are as tasty as any fish anywhere, but we don't get them very often because their numbers have been dropping here.  They are usually a surprise and a welcome treat.

I usually have no troubles with shell-fish and enjoy all, but one time I scarfed down a couple baskets of steamers and 2 lobsters and I had a reaction where all of my skin turned splotchy and hives puffed up all over.  With self medicating it subsided before long.  It made me nervous though the next time I ate a lobster... about a week later :)  Never happened again since.

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I had lobster once and got very sick for three days after just a tiny bite and will never try that again, shrimp affects me also so I just try to avoid all shell fish.  I found out later that my maternal grandfather had the same severe reaction.`

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Do you remember the episode of I Love Lucy where he takes her camping and she catches fish and bags a duck that is cleaned and already plucked?  Here it is (warning 26:31 long and hard to stop) http://watchonlinefree.tv/tv/i-love-lucy/season2/episode29/the-camping-trip

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Vincent I just checked and

Vincent and Dale are 21st cousins

That could be why I eat veggies too.

Answer 2

Looks to be a beautiful weekend here in Colorado. My in-laws are visiting which gives me another chance to get them into Wikitree.  They are retired, computer savy, and interested in family history but I just can't get them to log on to Wikitree! Maybe an "enter and get a chance to win a free early bird meal at Sizzler" would get them interested.

Comments

I like the photo idea. I've uploaded a couple, but if they see more it could make them want to upload some of their photos. They are plenty savy enough to scan/upload photos.

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30 years or so ago I bought a load of those cheap photo albums at K-Mart where you lift the clear plastic and place the photo and put the plastic back down.  With time the photos are either stuck fast to the paper page or they are loose and fall out when you open the book.  I look forward to putting all those photos on the Wikitree but for now it's only on my "To Do List"!  Not only will this allow me to show the photos but will also help keep the originals from becoming further worn.

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Vincent,

When you do that, if you have any that are damaged, you can send them to me and I'll do what I can to restore them.

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Thanks Gaile.  I'll keep that in mind.

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I inherited my mother's and her siblings photo albums. Like yours Vincent they are in similar albums to yours with the problems you have now with time. What I've been planning and actually made a start on is getting them scanned in and then I want to amalgamate then into one family album. I bought some acid free card and plastic pouches and was thinking of using a ring binder so that the pages can be moved into a different order if and when I come across photos. My biggest issue is how to attach them to the card, a lot have information written on the reverse. I do scan that in as well so could print it out but if I stick the originals phots to the card then the original version of the reverse wouldn't be accessible and that doesn't feel right to me.  I'd welcome ideas.

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What I have planned is to mainly get them scanned, save to a hard drive (like several different memory sticks), and then upload them to the Wikitree.  I would like to put each photo on it's own into a clear pouch.  I have a source for the clear pouches at about €10 for a thousand but this could cost more if you don't have that source (try a wholesale bag company in the telephone book if nothing better or on-line maybe).  Then unfortunately my plan goes no further than just to put these pouched-photos into labeled boxes, after all, once they are scanned, they shouldn't need to see the light of day unless for some reason the scan is lost or a better system is developed in the future.

On the Wikitree or on the hard-drive details and information for the photo could be added.  As for the pouched photos I would think just a sticker with the subject's name and date would be sufficient on the outside of the pouch.  That's all I've thought of to-date but like I say I haven't done much of this yet except to scan quite a few onto memory sticks.

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Thanks Vincent that reminded me that I have some pouches with individual pockets in, that would work for the ones with writing on the reverse. I don't want to lose that because if nothing else it is an example of ancestors handwriting and sometimes a question is answered too. 3 out of 4 of my maternal grandparents children including my mother weren't known by their first forename. Two of their children were given the same first name of Emma. I'd found one photo which had Little Emmie written on the back and always thought this was my eldest Aunt, this week I discovered her copy of the photo and instead of her writing "Me" on the reverse which she did with others she'd written her siblings name on it.  Trivial maybe and it leads to the question, which will probably never be answered, of when my younger Aunt became known by her 3rd forename.

I am uploading them to Wikitree just uploaded this one, which was one of my finds this week. http://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/StollFamilyPublicPhotos-6

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Nice photo!  That could probably win the photo of the week contest even.  Now you could put that photo into a pouch and it needn't be touched again for the foreseeable future.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foreseeable#English

I had to open that tab to spell to spell foreseeable! :)

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Stores used to sell packages of corner holders that were mounted on a page and you slipped the four corners into them.  Then the pictures could be removed, looked at, and remounted.  Do such things still exist?  Sometimes the old ways are still better than the replacements.

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I've tried some binder pages which have 3 clear pockets for pictures in each page. Works well for being inexpensive and seeing the backs, but pictures tend to slide out when picked up wrong. I've settled on folding pages (pictures don't slide out anymore) but they have a mesh in the pockets which makes it hard to read the backs (so I scan the backs in like you do). http://www.pfile.com/product/k-jpf-46/4x6-Photo-Albums-4-6-Photos-Per-Page-Refillable

Answer 3

Good morning:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Marconi-13

I was asked a question about this orphan file, so I filled in all the blanks.

Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874 as the second son of an Italian father and an Irish mother.

Marconi was 20 years old when he embarked on a study of works by Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894). He began experimenting on the application of Hertzian waves to the transmission and reception of messages over a distance-without wires. In the early summer of 1895 Marconi was first to transmit a signal that was received at a distance of about 2km, despite a hill in its path.

Marconi registered his new company as the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in 1897. In December of 1898, the first wireless equipment manufacturing plant in the world was set up in an old silk factory in Hall Street in Chelmsford near London.

The age of long-distance wireless communication was born on December 12, 1901, as Marconi and his assistants were able to hear the three short bursts of the Morse code 'S' at the receiving station set up in a hospital in Signal Hill, St. John's Newfoundland.

Guglielmo married (1) Beatrice O'Brien on 1905.

Children of Guglielmo MARCONI and Beatrice O'Brien are:

Degna MARCONI, b. 1908761, d. 1998761.

Gioia MARCONI, b. 1916761, d. 1996761.

Giulio MARCONI, b. 1910761, d. 1971761.

His contribution to wireless telegraphy would earn him the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics which he shared with Karl Ferdinand Braun, head of the Physics Institute at the University of Strasbourg.

  Guglielmo Marconi Image 1
http://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/e/e9/Marconi-13.jpg

Comments

Probably back then the people wondered how he shrank the orchestra and got them into the little box.! :)

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Chris,

When I worked at Ft. Monmouth in New Jersey for a couple of years, I discovered that an outpost of the fort about 10 miles away, named Camp Evans, had a very interesting history.  It had originally been an estate in the du Pont family.  Marconi had come to them and asked if he could use that property for an experiment because it bordered the Shark River just before it emptied into the Atlantic Ocean and the land had high salinity, which he required.  The du Ponts not only allowed him to use the estate property, but also financed his work.  There is a replica of the tower Marconi erected there, which was used for that first historic transmission.

As an epilogue, a lot of electrical parts remained on the property that dated from the interval when Marconi worked there.  The story gets very strange after that - at some point the property was the "world headquarters" of the Ku Klux Klan (unbelievable that would be in New Jersey, isn't it?) and later was vacant when, at the start of World War II, the Army started to use it as a mustering point for soldiers who had completed training and were awaiting orders.  They discovered all the discarded electrical parts left by Marconi and occupied themselves with finding ways to use it.  This was the start of Camp Evans becoming a communications center for the Army.  There are also abandoned pigeon coops there (you don't want to be downwind of them even today) that housed homing pigeons, trained for use to send messages during World War II.

Today, Fort Monmouth is the location of CECOM, the Communications and Electronic Command of the Army.

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Interesting Gaile, did you see all the photo's of his children?

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Vincent, I consider myself someone who has a good sense of humor and

 have enjoyed your comments many times but in some cases I scratch my head.

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During WWII, from 1943 to 1946, my father was the Director of Engineering at the Signal Corps Labs at Fort Monmouth. I was 6-9 yeras old and enjoyed playing on the post. We lived in one of the officer's quarters at Fort Monmouth. My father didn't talk about his work much at the time, but according to this web site "During World War II, Camp Evans was the Army’s radar home and Fort Monmouth’s "secret laboratory," ... where engineers and scientists worked in top-secret anonymity to protect the country against the German and Japanese forces." My father was given the Legion of Merit for his work.

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How interesting thank you for sharing Henry.

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I was wondering why he didn't put a glass window in the front of the little box so we could watch the shrunken orchestra

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Thank you Chris.  As an Amateur Radio Operator he is one of the big names that I follow.

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As I grew older (about 6 or 7) I realized there weren't people in the box but I thought for the longest time that live bands must be performing the songs I was hearing from maybe down at the radio station.

As a matter of fact, my buddy's father was a news director at a TV station.  This TV station had Popeye cartoons.  When we would go to the station to visit his father and watch him do the news, I would see these wooden life-size cutouts of Popeye, Olive Oil, Brutus, Wimpy, etc. and I wondered how they manipulated these wooden cutouts in order to make the cartoons.

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Vincent, I think I just found the connection between you and I!!!  You absolutely MUST be related to my grandmother, who also thought that they shrink people and put them inside the radio so they could talk to her.  I wrote about that in her profile.

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Genealogy at it's best.

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I can relate to your Grandmother.  She "knew" cooking isn't work! :)

Answer 4

Rainy and thundery day here in Eastern Ontario/Western Quebec, though the weekend looks spectacular!  I will be WikiTreeing from the patio by the pool - my summer offices for the Weekend if my family leaves me alone (fat chance).

Dale, I am not getting ready for Winter...I refuse.

No visitors to lure to WikiTree with promises of free earlybird dinners at sizzler.

I do have a headache going on with Firefox updates to my linux distro.  It was clocking my computer and crashing on exit - very rare thing for Firefox.  So I uninstalled it and and am working at a snails pace on chrome.  My Laptop may end up in the pool with the frustration I feel at waiting, even a second, for something to open.

I will work on continuing to research my Lords as one of the major sources I had has been questioned by two outside Lord researchers.  I have only found one mistake - attributing an ancestors civil war record to a cousin (I blame it on the name Nimrod and it's prolific use in my line of Lords).  I am also keeping the two outside Lord researchers up on the work I am doing to verify the sourcing.  It's kind of tedious, but it's good to have my own work as the base for this line now.  When I am done, I hope to have a nice conversation about my corrections with the original author.  I am sure that will go very well - really.

Mags

Comments

What a mental image you conjure up, Mags .... the house of Lords is located right next to your swimming pool!

(I never was much good at geography)

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Mags, I guess at the pace I move I feel that when they predict a very bad winter I better get started while I can.  I also run Firefox but I have Windows 10 and so far everything looks good.  I had a Linux machine but with what I do it was just too complicated so I gave up on that.  I don't care for Chrome either but do use it when I need to and I have not tried the new replacement for IE, Edge, yet.

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Gaile's Theme Song

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbjem_sam-cooke_music 

Don't know much about geography,
Don't know much trigonometry.
Don't know much about algebra,

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I love that Sam Cooke song (-:

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Hey that made me look and I don't think there is a Sam Cooke profile.  There is an unlisted Sam Cooke profile but surely the famous and fabulous Sam Cooke shouldn't have an unlisted profile.  I can listen to Sam Cooke "till the cows come home"! :)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvfbdg_sam-cooke-chain-gang-the-unforgettables_music

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Those are a couple of my favorites!

Nice to have on YouTube in the background.

Answer 5

Another sunny day in California Gold Country.   Our vines are doing wonderful, and it looks like another early wine grape harvest in our area.   The new norm.

We are preparing for the "Godzilla El Nino" being predicted for California, a couple of new retaining walls and new drainage.

This week I was working with two members to straighten out some duplicate branches and it made me realize how we have become very creative in how we name our children now.   I had one branch where all 6 sons named their first son after the immigrant grandfather....really?!?!?

Hope everyone has as much fun as I did!!!

Comments

In my father's family the first-born son is normally given the paternal grandfather's name and the second-born son is given the maternal grandfather's name.  It's similar for the girls.  This is true of most Sicilian families I know.  I'm not sure if it's the same with non-Sicilian Italians but likely.  So my father has like 5 first cousins with the same name which I also have.  My elder brother got our grandfather's name.

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You are wonderful, Vincent!   I have been working on my brother-in-laws family from Sicily and your comment about names just helped me figure out a couple of relationships!   Yahoo!!!!

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Yahoo for me too because I've probably never uttered anything helpful in my life.  :D

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Do they all go by Vincent or do some use nick-names more often?

My grandfather, father, and I all have the same first name but my grandfather was called Robert and my dad got called Bob or Nick and I got called Keith (my middle name).  Even then we often got the wrong mail or phone calls.

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One of them is called Enzo.  My father was called Vinci as a kid but he always went by Vincent in my life (but he was 38 years older than me).  Only one of the first cousins even lived in Alabama and he didn't live in Birmingham, but at weddings and funerals or just referring to him you had to say Vincent from Gadsden, etc.  The others lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina or in Sicilia, Italia.  But then there's a more distant cousin in Birmingham with the same name and that was more often mixed-up with the post and stuff.

Answer 6

Sorry , this  would probably be categorised as a rant .It's  been on my mind, I hope it's not inappropriate

  I've been here a few months and have very slowly been putting my own ancestors on the tree. It's good to know that whatever work I have done in the past is preserved  for the future  Hopefully where I make mistakes  someone will correct them . I'm really enjoying this part of wiki tree.

What I'm really perplexed  and somewhat frustrated about  is the seeming emphasis on links to a very small group of the  English 'aristocracy' .Why?

This has probably  been brought on through trying to help by finding sources for the sourcerer's challenge and realising that some profiles  and links just didn't make any sense

 In the last month I've been only looking at the unsourced of 2 counties.I've found several examples where the links to specific people in England  have been tenuous to say the least.

I found  a  high church Royalist  Anglican who apparently travelled the Atlantic and became a strict Baptist (!)  A  carpenter who didn't know his age yet was the son  family of well educated, well documented, landed  lawyers .I could understand this 20 years ago when access to well documented secondary sources was limited let alone primary sources but now there's enough there to do some minimal checks.

There are  very many  people whose descent is from the serfs rather than the nobles. Land owners married other land owners; marriage was about money, land and power. On the whole, marriages took place within a very limited group of people . Joe Bloggs the shepherd,  didn't marry  lady Josephine de Bloggis , the baron's daughter.

Joe Blogg's descendants still went to America and elsewhere and their descendants are numerous . (well so 23 and me tells me since I have 900+ mostly from there)

 They didn't travel on the Mayflower, and many not until the 19th century.  It's more likely  they went in  steerage on an assisted passage, or on ships chartered by the Mormons  or even  'chained' as a convict.

Joe Blogg's ancestry is much harder to uncover and you probably will never be able to create a detailed lineage  but his story  can be just  as interesting even if it is necessary to read around it to set it in context.

Comments

Helen Rant away on the Weekend Chat it's OK.  I also don't think much about some of the "projects" on here, make that most if not all, but I just ignore them as much as possible and concentrate on adding sources to make WikiTree more accurate.

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If you compare The Wikitree to a 1000 piece giant jigsaw puzzle being put together on a very large table by a diverse group of people you can imagine mistakes will be made.  A 1000-piece giant jigsaw puzzle only has (I don't know actually) about 24 or 36 different shapes of pieces.  Like with a puzzle, once it is found that a piece fits and gets snapped into place, the sources will need to be checked, like the image on the piece of jigsaw puzzle will also have to match it's neighbors.  So the sources on the profiles will have to be thoroughly vetted to make sure the information matches the possibility and likelihood that it is attached to the right profile.  

I agree with what I think you were mentioning that it is highly unlikely the child of nobility relocates to some backwater village or wilderness, marries into a dirt-poor family, and loses all the advantages to which he likely would and necessarily have been entitled.  I think the reality is more likely that in many (should I dare say most) cases our ancestral searches will end with a brick wall at about 1800.

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Considering the notoriety of nobles it is amazing to me every time I come across a profile for one of them full of junk, without sources, but lots of phantastic connections to mythical people. I guess it is the fascination with the low numbers in years that you get with some of these lines, as opposed to have it end with "the goat herd from so-and-so" as the only indication for a father and no way of finding out who the goat herd of so-and-so was. Never-the-less, these aristocrat profiles are here and so we might as well clean them up because otherwise we become the laughing stock for new members who might not want to take the rest of WikiTree serious when they come across those profiles.

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Some of us are much more proud of our farmers and fishermen ancestors than our royals and boat passengers :)

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Yes, I 'm  really interested in 'my' shepherds and weavers, wool combers, etc They were part of what created wealth and the decline of their industry was what drove some  of them to pastures new .  (got the rant  on 'paper 'which was good)

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i have changed this comment to an answer.

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I was talking with an acquaintance when I had just started my genealogy, who said he had his line back to 350 AD.  I just marveled at that, and being polite, besides not having a frame of reference, said that was wonderful.  Many times in the succeeding years, I have thought of many impolite ways I should have expressed disbelief and demanded to see proof, but I hope I am never tempted to say what I think.  I have a Green line that goes back to 1695, but most of the rest of my lines fade about 1800.  All of these rely on the research of others, probably of many others.  There may come a time when I can contribute to some of those early lines, but I have been learning my skills on the generations in between.  I have helped one family find their connection to the Green line going back to 1695 and also proved that their great-grandmother didn't have one child, but six.  I have had help, but took the lead at finding my Grt-grt-grandfather's brother and sister who vanished from German records, but were never connected in America.  So I have helped where opportunity has matched my skills.  Widening my tree has increased my opportunities.  I'll get to the rest eventually.

Answer 7

Greetings from Regina, Saskatchewan - in the heart of the Canadian prairies. The weather has been on the hot side the last few days but the WeatherMan calls for cooler for the weekend.

My Wikitree activity for the past few weeks has involved adding siblings (and their families) for my ancestors. This week it's my French-Canadian quarter and there are a lot of them! My Quebec database has 30,000 names so I could be at this a lo-o-ong time. Altho' actually I'm not related to all 30,000.

When I began my Quebec research some 20 years ago,I made a big mistake. A real "no-no" in genealogical research. I accepted a cousin's "tree" of our Dumont family without checking his sources. After several years of research (with all lines back to France) I made the heart-breaking discovery that "that Joseph Dumont" never came west to Ontario in the mid-1850's as ours did, but was still living in Quebec in 1861, and later moved to the USA. What a shock! I'm not kidding, it was like a death in the family.

Anyway, with some help from other researchers, we eventually got on the correct family line. However the "wrong family" is still on my database and makes up a good part of the 30,000. By the way, I've also entered it on Wiki, didn't see any sense in all that research going to waste! Sometime someone may connect to it and will find their tree already done.

I've enjoyed reading these weekend comments. Keep up the good work.

Marie Svedahl

Comments

Well, that must have been shocking.  I bet at first you kind of went into denial and didn't want to look at it.  But you had to because you were working on it.  And then you just accepted it and carried on.  You're probably a better genealogist with all the practice it gave you.  Also, when you see those names you'll know right-off they're not the ones from your family.  It's good that you have added them to the Wikitree.  That's a nice story!

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Hi Marie, thank you for posting in the Chat!

I really feel for you, that discovery must have been hard to take.  Bless you for taking it in stride and continuing on the right ancestors.  Thank you for sharing your information on WikiTree even though it's not your direct relations... in the big picture it will help us all and our descendants to all know their ancestry.

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Oh Marie, what a story. I can empathise with you somewhat, for in the beginning of my family tree research in 1998, i was so eager to find out as much as possible as quickly as possible, i added several wrong ancestors to my tree. The names were right, but the persons were not. As i worked backwards from those false ancestors, i ended up adding more and more false lineages to my tree. (But not nearly as many names as you!) As my knowlegde of genealogy improved, i recognised the false ancestors for what they were, and, after painfully wiping them, their children, siblings and forefathers out of my family tree, proceded to look for the right ancestors. This took several more years of long hard work, but eventually i was able to find the true ancestors to replace the several false ones. I had early on in my research made several computer versions of my family tree, with photographs, which i had photographed and framed: alas, they included the false ancestors and their forefathers. They looked too nice to throw away, and i have become too lazy to make them anew. So I recently printed out stickers with the names of the true ancestors and pasted them over the names of the false ones. They are near the top of the trees and do not ruin the overall effect. So, i can empathise with you, and appreciate the hard work that you had to do all over again!

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Thanks everyone for the words of sympathy - but I did bring it upon myself. So, lesson learned and we move on. Despite my problem in reading the French language, I have found the Quebec records to be the most helpful and available. All of my ancestors passed through Ontario on their way to western Canada, including my French-Canadians. English, Scots, Irish and American, they all resided in Ontario for at least a couple of generations. Ontario records are good from 1850 to 1920.

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Wish there was a smiley for a big smile and thank you for  your story. I do hope that someone comes along and links to you other 'family'

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You show courage to admit your mistakes and growth in explaining your corrections.  These kinds of stories are more encouraging than stories of success alone.  I have worried over weak connections and fought hard to find more and better evidence.  In the process I have had instances when the evidence eventually proved I had made an error and it took hours to fix.  I believe that making a better tree makes me a better person.  Your story supports my belief.  I don't know how many people are in my tree, and even if I did it wouldn't matter to me because I only want to know how many people are correctly connected to my tree and I would always want that number to be 100%.  The only way to know that, is that I know in my heart that I have done my best with my time and skills.

Answer 8

I've been on vacation "out west" (United States). Had a great time. Lots of really great places to look at. I got up close and personal to the toxic spill in the Animas River, flowing from Silverton. The picture is the next day in Durango, Colorado.

Comments

All the poor fish!  That's a nice and clear photo,

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I can't even imagine what kind of an impact that is going to have.

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Yuk!!!

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Also, I meant a good photo of a yucky thing! :)

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What was spilled? Gosh that's terrible such a beautiful river is toxic ... makes one weep. And yes ^ the poor fish :(

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It was all the junk that had been sitting in an old mine in Silverton, like arsenic, cadmium, lead, aluminum and copper. The Governor of Colorado was drinking the water again a few days later (last Tuesday) to prove it had returned to pre accident condition, which wasn't all that good to begin with.

I've been feeling bad for the people who make their living, doing raft and tube rides down the river.

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Jeepers! How come it all ended up in the river? I assume the Governor is still above ground! Brave man drinking that water! If it's now safe ... where has all the arsenic and other rubbish gone? Did they manage to siphon those elements out of the water somewhere upstream or something?

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Once they stopped the spill itself, the river cleaned up pretty quickly, When I left, it just looked a little greener than usual. The Animas River runs into the Colorado River and Lake Powell, where they estimate the spill is now.

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Shameful :/

Answer 9

Thank you, Keith, for the invitation. I'm just checking in and filling in a bit of information from my father's very extensive family history records.

Comments

Thank you for posting Lindsay... nice to meet you!

That's cool that your father shared records with you.  I value the family papers and treasures I have very much.  Recently I was given a lock-box full of family diaries, photos, letters, and such some of which are from over a hundred years ago.  WikiTree is the perfect place to store and share it with the rest of the family and anyone else who is interested.

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Being an only child, I've inherited the whole she-bang - 3 file drawers full of source material plus a heavily annotated, systematic summary of ancestors, aunts, uncles - great and greater, plus cousins and cousins of cousins. It would take me the rest of my life to put it up on WikiTree :)  My dad, being from a Quaker background, had a lifelong passion for genealogy and did interviews with relatives, saved dozens of letters on the subject, visited cemeteries, court houses, etc. gathering information from the 1930s until his death in 1994. He did about as much before the Internet came on the scene as anyone has been able to do on our family since. It's truly amazing, and it was a bit daunting to dig into it, which I only started doing in the past few years.

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My mom wanted to give all my dad's genealogy records away to a university library but I put my foot down! I wasn't even sure what all I have, and am still discovering new and fascinating stuff in it.

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Looking forward to seeing all you put into wikitree how amazing that so much documentation has been left for you.

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Welcome Lindsay !

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I don't blame you at all for wanting to go through it first.  Good call.

Each time I go back through to look at our stuff I find or figure out something new.

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My dad had everything from limited edition family genealogy records (e.g. "The Mendenhalls: A Genealogy") to really creative writing about our family (he was a published poet) in his archives. My poor mom had no idea!

Answer 10

I've been busy for the last few years putting wheels on many of the heavy things in my house.  This makes cleaning easy because I can just push everything to one side of the room and sweep and/or vacuum and then mop.  And then put the things to the other side and repeat.  I'm trying to get everything in my life to function easily so as I age I won't need to have somebody around just to move the sofa so the floor can be cleaned under it.  This has been especially helpful since we have cats with their associated hair and the toys they lose underneath the furniture.  The refrigerator needs its cooling screen vacuumed occasionally and the wheels makes this easy. The bed is no problem to keep the floor underneath clean.  The wife has a ban on carpets which normally absorb so much dust and dirt without realizing they function this way and since I prefer to stay barefooted when possible I appreciate a spic and span floor.  Cleaning time is reduced to nothing and in a few minutes I can have the place as sterile as a hospital(Which doesn't sound that nice but you learn to like it!)

Comments

Little wheels turning in my head - Wheels? ! ! yes, but really wish I didn't have the wall to wall carpeting, that they put in new homes, because it's so much less expensive than wood flooring.

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I go barefoot at every opportunity.

We pulled up several layers of flooring in our dining room and found Maple at the bottom.  We sanded all the paint off it and now we just use the natural wood.  I can't believe anyone ever covered it.  I think the boards might have even been hand cut and planed on the property so that adds to the cool factor for us.

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Anne, wheels are also made especially for furniture that sits on carpet.  If you put wheels on your couch you need to try to put the same size wheels on the coffee table that goes with it to maintain the height differential.  I can't say it's changed our life but it sure made cleaning easier (and more thorough).

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It's amazing the "improvements" that people did in the past like the maple floor with layers added.  In Birmingham, Alabama recently I read an article where the carpet was to be renewed in the Jefferson County Courthouse and when the old carpet was removed it was discovered there was a hand-laid mosaic map of Jefferson County in the floor of the lobby that had been covered so long nobody remembered it was there. Priceless really (or at least incredibly expensive in today's money) - it's a giant mosaic with tiny stones, all carefully polished before being set and the map is spot on in the detail of the day.

Answer 11

I am greeting tonight ! Makes me happy indeedy- do ( humming to the Sam Cooke musical link that Vincent posted )......

Comments

Greetings Maggie

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Thank you Maggie :)

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http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x266a6_marvin-gaye-mercy-mercy-me-the-ecol_music

Here's one from the same genre (too bad I didn't think about this one when there was discussion on wasting energy)!

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I have been listening to Willie Nelson songs because they are having  an outdoor concert series just a short distance away that is featuring Willie Nelson at Nelson ledges Quarry Park at 10 PM tonight.  The music started tonight and  most of the bands are playing Willie Nelson songs.  And yes we can hear the music from our patio quite well.

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I covered an old floor in the coffeeshop I ran back in the 90s here in Amsterdam.  I made a jigsaw puzzle by cutting the shapes of jigsaw pieces out of a nice plywood and varnishing them with many layers of yacht varnish and slotting them together. My idea was that I could lift out ones that got damaged from wear and duplicate them and repair the original until I had a complete second floor which I could then use to interchange with the original floor as would be needed.  That way the shop would never need to close to do floor repairs.  I managed over about a 8 month period to pull this off, never closing and literally between the customers legs.

This idea grew from the fact that I had a few pieces of scrap plywood to begin with and as I acquired additional money I could buy the next needed materials and continue working.  Otherwise there was no money for doing what was needed all at once and closing the business to do the work wasn't an option.  However, there was a bit of work that had to be done by the entrance to the shop which covered a drop into the basement and that was too dangerous to leave the shop open for the short time needed to change those pieces. So I decided to close the shop for the morning and have it open later in the afternoon for this one day.  

As I was in the middle of all of this three guys came walking up to me on the street wanting to come into the shop.  I told them regretfully that they could come back in a few hours and what I was doing, etc. and they were rather insistent that they come in but I wouldn't let them.  They went away and I thought one of 'em kind of looked familiar as they disappeared around the corner.  

I didn't think anything else about it.  Later that night, a customer, one of the neighbors of the shop said, "I saw you talking to Willie Nelson this afternoon", and I asked what he was on about.  And he told me that Willie Nelson was playing at the Paradiso (a famous venue in the neighborhood) for three days.  I didn't really believe him.  But I said OK and that was that.  I figured it was possible.  But done is done and that was it.

I told one of the girls that I had as a housemate at that time this story.  But she didn't really know who he was so it was no big deal for her.  But the next day she came to me and said, "That guy's down in the shop".  "Which guy?" "The one you wouldn't let in the shop," she said.  So I wanted to find out if this was really Willie Nelson so I went down to the shop.  

Well, it was him.  Sitting at one of the little jigsaw tables (I forgot to mention that I first made tables to go with the floor).  As I approached not so much to go directly to him but the shop was so small I had to to even get to the coffeebar.  He stands up and offers me a handshake which I take (and I can honestly say that guy has an iron hand like roustabout on an oil rig, not that I can recall getting a handshake from one of these characters but you know what I mean - I didn't realize playing a guitar for 50+ years did that to your hands.)  Secondly, he was so small.  I'm 5'11'' so not so tall but he must be 5'5" or less even.  Anyway, he stands and gives me a handshake and treated me like I was a King and he was a servant. It was almost embarrassing he was so polite and well-mannered. We had a cup of coffee and a little small talk and I of course apologized for not letting him in the shop the day before but I didn't want to overdo that and I also know that probably somebody with such a public stature as he has likely enjoys the occasional anonymity he can have by being where he was.  Nobody else recognized him.  There were a couple of band members with him but they stayed at the bar chatting with one of the interesting girls that worked there and I tried not to overdo it and I ended our conversation and left the shop

He didn't come back in the shop as far as I know but his band hung out in there for three of four days for many hours.  That's my Willie Nelson story.  And I'm not likely to ever forget I got to meet the man that besides his special voice and many accomplishments, wrote this song:

                http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3j5b7_patsy-cline-crazy_music

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Vincent, Willie is still humble. Last night he played at a small campground just a few hundred yards from my house and the crowd could not have been much over 1000 people.  He preforms there regularly at a festival in his name at this very small campground located right next to the Nelson Ledge State park in Ohio, which is a very small state park.  The ticket prices for the festival are very steep but the stage is only 400 to 4500 yards from my house and we can hear the music just fine from my patio.

Answer 12

Well I have just finished my second week of my new job!  Still love it, but I am so tired when I get home, all I do is stare at the Wikitree page and think, "where do I begin?  Didn't I already add that?  Wait, yea I did add that!"  Yes, it is like I am in a catatonic state and cannot wrap my mind around Wikitree!  I usually work on this at night because that was the only time I had.  But now that I do get home a little bit earlier, I just can't seem to focus!  Awe, but thank goodness for a free weekend!  Watch out Wikitree, cause, I think I am going to be busy on here, working on my Zahler family!

It has been hot, here in South Carolina!  Will sure be glad for some cooler weather to come through!  Mmmm...I smell boiled peanuts!  Think I will go sit with my Dad and eat a few and relax with some great conversations (he sure can tell some stories!), so that I can start afresh in the morning!

Happy Weekend everyone!

Comments

Hi Liz,

I live up north in Vermont but in 1986 i did boot camp at Fort Jackson in SC.  It was sooooo hot and humid in July and August!  I hope your AC is working or that a good breeze comes through soon :)

Answer 13

Good day,

I'm Marlene. I was born in South Africa but live in New Zealand these days. Our weather at the moment is cool and wet, but the prediction is that it may become a bit stormy in some regions today. At least the sun is out a little, and that makes a big difference.

 

WikiTree has been an amazing experience for me as it has not only put me in contact with many really awesome and helpful fellow genealogists, but it has also helped me to find some links in my own family tree that I never dreamed of finding.

 

I am really enjoying the possibilities that WikiTree present, both in finding and sharing information.

I just love logging in to WikiTree and seeing what the new day bings!

Comments

Hello Marlene, and Good day back at you.

Answer 14

G'day from Brisbane Australia, a beautiful weekend here. I've been researching my family since I was 15 (45 years) and it is really hard to get interest from the younger generation these days but I am having some success on "MyHeritage" where they are updating information that they have records of. I'm fairly new to Wikitree and still stumbling around quite a bit.

I am an artist creating photorealistic art through photography and videography - this is my passion which I had to put on the back shelf while providing for my family so I've only recently taken it up again. I've had a little success as my work has just been published and displayed at the Louvre in Paris. I'm currently reorganising my library's and portfolios for an improved online presence.

I've just taken this short break to say Hi and fix a few profiles in Wikitree from a recent gedcom upload :)

Comments

Nice to meet you Peter :)

Congratulations on the Louvre... that sounds like success to me!

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Sounds like success to me too.

Answer 15

I have my once a year, tomato sauce from the tomatoes, simmering on my range top. It smells delicious. Can't wait to pour it on top of spaghetti and chicken tonight.

Comments

mmmmmmmmmm :)

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i like fresh tomato sauce :)

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I'm going to Schiphol.  It's a six hour flight, add an hour or so to your house from JFK or La Guardia.  See you at dinner time.  Thanks

 

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LOL, Keith and Vincent. Vincent watch out which tail you light.

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If I bring some (yuck) okra to trade, could you set another place at your table for me?

Answer 16

Morning all. Nice weather here in NW Mississippi. After a note earlier this week in G2G about watch lists over 5K, I've been paring mine down. I'm also working the August Source Challenge. It's a great way to "prove" profiles, yours, others, and especially Usourced ones. I have an abundance of Massachusetts profiles. Fortunately that is a state with a lot of published sources, vitals and family genealogies. It's a slow process, but the Unsourced category is by far the largest cat, and could be even larger. Join the challenge and help out, y'all.

Bob

Comments

Keep up the good work with the Unsourced profiles Robert.  I am working on a lot of Unsourced profiles myself, most were uploaded from a GEDCOM in 2010 and then abandoned.  I don't bother much with the challenge and do not add most of the unsourced profiles I come across to that because I find a source for the profile first most of the time and some days I can clear out an entire family without ever having to add them to the catagory.

Answer 17

Greetings from Amsterdam, Netherlands. It is rainy here today, but warm. I am a Wikitree member only as of January of this year, though i am acquainted with WikiTree for several years already. I have found nearly every kind of person in my genealogy. They only have in common, that they were all of the european race (english, irish, dutch, german), and - as far as i can trace my family backwards - belonged to some form of western christianity (anglican, catholic, dutch reformed, lutheran). Other than that, i have found very much variation: ancestors who lived to be over 100, ancestors who died young, ancestors who had eighteen children, or who only had one child; farmers, fishermen, sailors, soldiers, clergymen, peasants, burgers, gentry, noblemen, women of loose life, men of strict-life, even a woman burnt to death as a witch; those who took their own life, those who died of tuberculosis, alcoholism, diabetes, in tragic accidents or war. I especially value the photographs that i have either received or found. I look for a bit of myself within their faces. I am fascinated by all of my forefathers - whoever, whatever they were in this life - and hope very much to meet all of them in the next life. One of my fantasies is to see them all standing in a long orderly queue stretched out before me, so that i can pass them in revue. Eternity is a long time: so there won't be a lack of time to put my fantasy to practice! I do regret two things: i.e., that two of my most important lines end at 1818 and 1830 resp. (namely, my maternal surname line and my paternal surname line); and, that i have not succeded in making contact with anyone on my father's side who is closely enough related to me in order to give me much wished for photographs and to do much needed autosomal or Y DNA testing with. None of my paternal half-siblings wishes any kind of contact with me. So, i am left with no DNA confirmation for my paternal line. And i only have a photo of my father, but not of his own parents. What to do? :(

Comments

Glad to have you stop by to chat Albertus. I too have a "brick wall" in the early 1800's. I mostly just ignore it and work on all the other wonderful family lines that I have left.

I love your thought of having all the ancestors lined up in heaven waiting to meet and greet. Was that great grandfather as mean as everyone says, or will he give me a big hug, now that he doesn't hurt anymore?

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Hi everyone ,

Home from a great relaxing Holiday and slowly preparing for and getting used to normal daily live here again, Albertus great to see you here at the weekend chat :) , maybe you could try the cousin bait for some of the paternal profiles, if you didn't already that is of course, I came in contact and we had a brick wall break trough because my American cousin, I didn't even know of till we met trough Wikitree, used it , so it really seems to work ! 

Have a great week everyone , loved reading all your posts, pictures and of course the music ;) !

Answer 18

This is where I spend my free time in the summer.

Comments

Sorry I tried to add a picture of my summer home but I cant see the image so I must be doing something wrong.

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I have a picture that looks like that. It's titled "polar bear in a snowstorm." A little snow would make me a lot cooler. Here's Dale's picture:

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I will come back in a couple of months and take another picture with the snow Anne. But the two slide outs will be back in by then.

Answer 19

Happy weekend everyone. Tomorrow or later today here I am going to another family renunion before my niece returns to Australia. She's been here with her children for 3 weeks and this is the 2nd reunion with my sister flying in from Switzerland for the first. Mostly there will be a different set of people at this one so I'm looking forward to it and being able to take more photos. Hopefully the weather will stay dry so we can gather outside.

What do I do offline? Gardening, sewing and cooking, with the latter I invent a lot of recipes because of food intolerance. One of the fascinating things I love about genealogy is finding out where the talents that my generation and the younger generations have stem from. We have master bakers, chefs, dressmakers, master tailors, cabinet makers and silk screen painters as our ancestors.  For me it creates a link to those ancestors.

Answer 20

I love Wikitree.  In my spare time, I work on my other pet project... I am president of our local American Legion Auxiliary.  Trying to come up with a few fund raisers for this fall.  I live in East Central Indiana.  Any other Wikitree members in my area?