John M. Switlik

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Role/Relationship

Descendant of PGM migrant Thomas Gardner.

This profile is part of the Gardner Name Study.

If it isn't obvious, love WikiTree.

President/Researcher for the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc.. My wife is first cousin of Dr. Frank who wrote the two books. Using Dr. Frank's book, the pedigree from Thomas Gardner and Margaret Friar is (numbers are from the book): (1) Thomas, (6) Samuel, (59) Abel, (79) Abel, (129) Simon Stacy, (188) Jonathan, (345) Benjamin Brown, Joseph Dennett, and Waldo Dennett (grandfather).

All but the last are in the 1907 book (the above numbers are bolded in the table that I typed in one night when I had access to both books; essentially, the 1907 book is about Samuel's line due to constraints of the time).

Research

There are many areas that we want to explore. I have started to collect material related to origins and to other areas. However, one effort was to document the pedigree of Frank Augustine Gardner, MD a little further than he had published: this article contains his Gardner ahnentafel with sources.

Work to now, on Dr. Frank's line, was the paternal side. Of late, I have access to his genealogy (handwritten by the good Dr) on his mother's side: 1907 Chart. We can use that to get his full ahnentafel accomplished. So, we would have a documented example.

... deleted --- Member|Magna Carta Affiliate

Had a chance to briefly chat with Douglas Richardson when he talked to the spring meeting of The National Guild of St. Margaret of Scotland in DC, in particular about his research methods.

WikiTree

Current interests:

• Medieval Project (recently founded)
• Working with the pre-1500 group.
  • Focus, initially:
    • Sanborn study here -- Gary Boyd Robert's post on the matter
    • Elizabeth (Cooke) Walton (ggp) Pending MC
    • Alice Freeman Thompson Parke (ggp)
      • Common errors (Joe Cochoit);
      • What we know
        • Alfred the Great (thru Ethelred II) , Charlemagne via Amy Gifford (abt. 1485 - aft. 1519) -> Lucy Morteyn -> Joan Gobion;
        • ur-mother, example: H.R.H. Charles, Prince of Wales;
        • Alice's descendants; ...
    • Richard More (in-law);
    • Mary Gye Maverick (ggp);
    • George Reade (ggp);
    • John Thorndike (ggp);
    • Jane Lawrence Giddings (ggp); review (Underhill-177)
    • Thomas Dudley (step-ggp); ...
• Frank A. Gardner, MD (first cousin of Grandfather of ASwtlk)
• Sidney Perley, the Salem researcher, par excellence. His work picked up by Lucie M. Gardner; printed in The Massachusetts Magazine.
• Susan Charlotte Graves, Great-grandmother of ASwtlk
• Alfred Eastman Lunt, Grandfather of ASwtlk
• Gladys Helen Long Gill, Mayflower descendant,
  • by William Brewster and John Alden
• Gateway Ancestors, John of England, Henry III of England

MC lines (using Connections): Note (03/23/2022) -- these check out with the MC Trails.

• Mary Gye to Roger La Zouche then to Saier de Quincy;
• Mary Gye to Henry Baynton then to Roger Bigod;
• Mary Gye to John FitzRoger then to William Malet;
• ...;
• MC Trails

Order of William The Marshal; yeah, William in his own right; Note (03/23/2022) -- oops, Connections got caught in an in-law maneuver. Need to check these using MC Trails and Richardson's works.

• William Marshal/Maud;
• William Marshal/Sibyl;
• William Marshal/Eva;
• William Marshal Isabel;
• William Marshal/Joan

All things Gardner

Persistence (technolgy): Using peerage.com, as an example (see link to WikiTree tops)

Forgotten or misunderstood (all early colonial)

• Conflicts, changes
• Joseph Gardner (married Ann Downing);
• Nathaniel Eaton (first Head of Harvard);
• Sir Christopher Gardner (itinerant knight runs up against lawyer/reverend)

TGSoc.org

This will be our main portal under the auspices of the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. which studies Thomas Gardner. However, too, we use it to discuss technical issues.

See our blog for continuing details.

More coming.

New England (North and South)

In my role of supporting Gardner Research, I have completed a score of applications for friends and family (as a form of proof). One task would be to go through these and add profiles and/or update where sources may not have been submitted to WikiTree. Another emphasis has always been to fill in information about collateral families. Too, I have run across a lot of colonials who did not have descendants now. I want to have these people noted (say, Joseph Gardner and Ann Downing - she who got Simon Bradstreet to sign a pre-nup - think of that). Actually, there is no end to the work, it seems. I have been at this nine years now and have collected, in my own database, tens of thousands of data points, some of which ought to be on WikiTree (sourced, of course).

Culture/History/Technology

In the broader scope, we have the continuing unfolding of the human experience which, of late, has been perturbed greatly by technology. As such, we have to cover areas that seem interminably open, at least, now and then. I use Quora for that and will be tying my work here with what I do there.

Example: What historical impact did the Magna Carta have?, Why do we need a Magna Carta for the web?

My roll-your-own (dealing with process and software) was a bounce back from ancestrydotcom. WikiTree has been an amazing find, of late. You see, there is content (what? AI will handle that?), and there is handling (which is the real driver?). These two can meet in the middle, but the hats are very much different. So, I will be bringing things over (of course, well formatted).

Biography

Career, etc.

The bottom of my Wikipedia page points to FB, Linkedin, and Quora. The Linkedin Profile has a partial resume.

... lots of stuff snipped, for now (essentially, worked in advanced computing and bleeding-edge software ) ...

Pedigree

Both sides of my tree are arrivals post the U.S. Civil War. Paternally, I come out of the northern area, say that of the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth. I have Switlik cousins still in Poland (Warsaw, for one). Maternally, I am out of the western part of Ireland (Roscommon County) where the free people live ;>).

Commentary

My first touch of looking at genealogy was in 2009. "ancestry," no doubt (soon steered off of there by an expert - now gone). By then, I had it with the leaves and the errors and started over. With? My own thing. It has kept me going til now. But, it only works for me (gads and gads of stuff collected on this and the other side of the pond).

Note: if anyone is interested, I am blogging my runs up against technology (from my viewpoint from decades of work in software - and middleware).

So, what to do? rootsweb can be flaky; others weren't up to snuff. Came into Wikitree about three years ago. Went back to my cave. Came back out. Wow. Wikitree has progressed. Here I am.

Now, I have done dozens of applications (for membership) using my method. I have blogged and published The Gardner Annals as well as Gardner's Beacon.

Wait! Not for me. Newbie. Post U.S.Civil War. Have a Warsaw cousin. We don't know much. Have some idea about them isles that started New England. But, it's more fun to have had a huge tree dumped in my lap. There, needing more work. Where to do it? Well, Wikitree. In the meantime, I will be assessing and writing.

Example: ah, I mentioned Wikitree - Content and specifics (sorry about the ads; we intend to pull this under our own website).

So, I have had the fortune to know people from New England North (all over the place) and New England South (VA and surrounds) whose ancestors were there so that the people were born there or those ancestors went west (or somewhere else). So, with the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc., we can take this focus: Culture, History, Technology. Note, genes come in the last. Except? They influence both culture and history.

Yes, I have read the original mathematical papers dealing with genetic processing. So, we can get into details. But, we have forgotten philosophy and need to bring it back. Many messes can be identified by our lack of proper attention.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by John M. Switlik.