Connectors: Help connect old weymouth families

+15 votes
689 views

Since everyone is all pumped up about connecting following the connect-a-thon, I thought I would see if anyone is interested in working on connecting some profiles from the oldweymouthfamilies GED.  The gedcom looks like it was just and extraction of family groups from various sources, rather than a fully constructed tree,  So it contains lots of family groups, but many of them are just floating, and never found a connection to the tree.  I don't think this technically qualifies as a Lost and Found project because it looks like the import was fine, but its some great low hanging fruit in terms of reducing the number of unconnected profiles. 

AND this worldconnect database on families of Weymouth and Braintree is a well-sourced guide to find the connection points : https://worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=SHOW&db=spragueged

Here's the wikitree+ report showing the unconnected profiles:

http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebProfileSearch/Profiles.htm?Query=oldweymouth_families072011_GED+unconnected&MaxProfiles=5000&SortOrder=LNAB&PageSize=500

(Starting out with 1927 unconnected profiles)

in Requests for Project Volunteers by M Cole G2G6 Mach 9 (91.1k points)
edited by M Cole

I've connected or sourced a number of these profiles at various times, usually when working on Weymouth people. This is one of several old Gedcoms that somehow got imported without relationship connections between the people.

Volumes 3 and 4 of Chamberlain's History of Weymouth, Massachusetts are a great resource for identifying a lot of these people.

Thanks, Ellen!
I love the very deep roots of my Belcher family in this country.  I love learning about them.  Thank you for sharing. There seems to be more information available on these early New England families than my ancestors that arrived in the mid 1700's.  They have provided me with the most brick walls other than my Lithuanian lines.
Wow, the report just updated.  Down to 1694 unconnected profiles.  Perhaps some connection ripples from the connect-a-thon, but still very promising, that we might be able to get this close to zero!
I have been helping out, trying to work from the bottom up so I do not get in your way.  great to see the drop from 1927 unconnected to 1694.  we are making some progress.
Thanks for undertaking this project, M Cole (and S Stevenson). Given the high quality of Massachusetts records, this mess of unconnecteds is embarrassing.

Today I spent some time looking in Waldo Chamberlain Sprague's "Genealogies of the Families of Braintree" for people on this list who appeared to be from Braintree or Quincy. I managed to source and connect one individual (name of Dyer) and a cluster (including people with the names Hunt and Dyer).
Excellent.  Thank you S. & Ellen for working on this.

I've been working on some, although it is a little slower going that the initial ones.  I do try to get branches back to an immigrant (or an unknown origin ancestor) and often find inconsistencies that need to be resolved first.  But its all good stuff!  As you say, the Massachusetts records really make this pretty easy (at least compared to other regions).
Down to 1450. Only two pages now. If we keep this up we will

Get everything connected that can be connected!

5 Answers

+5 votes
This was my lunchtime project, and it took more time than I anticipated.  I recognised the Lincoln Bates names from Hingham, to whom I am related, and could identify Harriet Bates Lincoln and her husband Samuel B. Lincoln who are buried in Abington MA.  Added the Findagrave resource.  Then it was an easy identification of Samuel B's parents, who were listed as Unknown Lincoln and Unknown Rachel, as if Rachel were the last name.  Her name was actually Rachel Stodder, and his was Samuel Burr Lincoln, both of whom have researched profiles already.  I quickly connected Samuel B to his parents.  When I did that, the Unknown parents were no longer connected, so I had to go down into the depths of unknown land to find them, so I could adopt them and merge them into the existing profiles.  I did so.  There must be an easier way to deal with the bad at inception names, like Unknown Rachel-31, but this is the only way I knew how to do it.  Whether there is really a Weymouth connection I don't know.  Hingham and Abington, yes.
by Carolyn Adams G2G6 Mach 9 (93.3k points)
Carolyn, Thank you for working on this!!!

The name import issues are a pain.  I'm actually trying to go through to catch those first as there may be connections with other profiles (as you've found).

So far from what I've found there's always some Weymouth record connection even when it seems far afield.  A census record, a death or marriage record of a child. A mention in a Weymouth memoir.

Anyway, thanks again.
And now I have the Weymouth connection.  Harriet Howe Bates was b. in Weymouth with known parents.  Will connect her.
Nice, Carolyn. To connect her profile to the Tree while she's waiting for a merge, I connected her parents' profiles.
+5 votes
Wow! down to 1,163 unconnected profiles from 1,450 last week and 1,927 from July 18th when originally posted.
by S Stevenson G2G6 Pilot (253k points)

YAY!

And I think were already a little lower than that, since I think the data is from Monday, but the report just took a little while to generate.

I also reached out to Alyson X to thank her for responding to all the merges and privacy list requests.  She says to let her know if there are any questions.

Incidentally here is her website with the same database:

https://weymouthfamily.tribalpages.com/

I think all of the info imported over, but may be useful at some point.

I may have to go a little slower this week, but we'll definitely be below 1000 next week!

Thanks for all your work S! (And anyone else secretly working on this).

The PM has unlocked all the profiles since last week, so profiles we could not touch over the last few weeks are now accessible.  Most had notes in the bio's that hinted they were adults in the 1840's.
I also emailed her about the locked profiles last week.  oops.
I hadn't noticed any locked profiles, so that's great to know.

I think she's happy for the help. She's been super quick to respond.  I sent a lot of privacy list requests to change LNAB, because if I didn't do it when I saw it, I might never get to it.

I was thinking how hard it would have been to try to connect these profiles in 2011!  The tree is so much bigger, it usually takes just a couples generations if that.  But in 2011 it would not have been that easy.
Hi,

Thanks to all for their contributions to the OWF project which I developed over the last ??? 20 years?  There are many, many trees attached, as I can see you discovered.  My original tree was created to link the early settler families of Weymouth (many via Hingham).  About 15 years ago, I met an excellent researcher by the name of Chester Cowen, who passed away several years ago.  He never used the internet for research and physically visited archives across the country to obtain data for the Cowen lineage.  

I do have the list of locked profiles but this will take time to sort through.  Let me know if anyone in particular is needed.  

Warmly,

Alyson Dossett
Thanks Alyson.  I've really enjoyed working with the entries- so many differents paths in and out of Weymouth.

I personally haven't run across any of the private profiles.  I wonder if you send the list to info@wikitree.com whether maybe they can open them?
+6 votes
Down to 659!

Anyone else want join? I’ve been mostly working from the front of the report. I think S Stevenson has been working reform the bottom up. Somewhere in the middle would be a good place to jump in.
by M Cole G2G6 Mach 9 (91.1k points)
+6 votes
Okay, still working on this slowly.  Down to 449 unconnected.

Some families will be difficult. There are quite a few Irish immigrant families that will need to be connected through spouses and children rather than parents, and that may take awhile.

I've also been reviewing the pedigrees for some of the more common names to see that they are fully connected.  I've found a few dupes, or profiles that had existing parents or only needed one generation to connect.
by M Cole G2G6 Mach 9 (91.1k points)
+2 votes
Thought I would check in on this little project that started in 2019.  Originally almost 2000 unconnected profiles, now down to 291.

Some of these may remain unconnected, but I see a few that still look possible.  There are quite a few Irish families that were living in Weymouth in the 1850 Census, if that interests anyone.

Thanks to all the helped connect these profiles to the main tree.
by M Cole G2G6 Mach 9 (91.1k points)

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