Effective _October 11, 2024_
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Biography

Stephen Corkey was born in Ireland.

Please could user Carruth-363 stop sending me private messages. They can change anything they like on any profiles I have worked on, delete all my edits, undo all my changes, that's fine, just stop the endless condescending messages. Thank you.

For other Projects, again I am quite happy for you to change, edit or delete my work as you see fit, at least on profiles outside my direct family. However I think all Wikitree users would appreciate some consistency of approach, if not between different Projects then at least within any one single Project. If you want to delete my work delete it, if you want to keep it keep it, but it's ridiculous for one person in a project to tell me to remove something then for one of their colleagues to restore it exactly as I wrote it.

I'm really into index pages at the moment, here's a list of the ones I run in case I forget them:

• Football Clubs
• Football Managers
• Football referees, administrators etc
• Newcastle United
• This Is Your Life
• BBC Radio
• UK Soap Operas
• UK Number 1 Singles
• BBC Category Research
• British Comic Artists and Cartoonists
• Index Pages

Why do you put Wkidata links at the top of your profiles?

When I make profiles for people who have them, I put a Wikipedia link near the top. This is because this is a genealogy site, not an encyclopedia. I don't think long detailed verbose wall-of-text biographies are necessary when other sites already house perfectly good ones we can link to. The genealogical information that Wikipedia often skips over is what Wikitree should prioritise. Parents, marriages, children, dates, locations, employment and achievements, with whatever records are available. Of course you can be a little descriptive and throw in interesting stories, but the main thing is that the important information is easily readable and not buried in text.

For the same reason I put the FindAGrave link under the death details in the biography, not buried away in the footnotes, it's something other researchers want to be able to quickly find and link to.

As the Wikipedia link is included in the Wikidata tag, and to avoid duplication, I just put the Wikidata tag at the top, with a little summary of why the person has a Wikipedia page. If they have a Wikidata number but no Wikipedia page then I bury it in the footnotes, it's only of interest to the bots.

That's my preference, if other people have set up profiles a different way I won't go changing it (however inconvenient it seems to me). But if I'm adding a biography that was previously empty or just a couple of words, I'll do it my way. If the profile manager wants to change it afterwards, that's their call.

I now leave it to other people to decide who is notable and who isn't. Just because someone is interesting to me doesn't mean they are interesting to everyone.

Most of my ancestors and family were Ulster farmers. Anyone looking at Northern Ireland families needs to be aware of these resources:

• https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie - birth, marriage and death records from the late 1850s/early 1860s through to 1921 (and beyond for Republic of Ireland)
• http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ - by far the easiest of the UK censuses to quickly browse, with free access to household lists and original records. Sadly there are only 2 full censuses available for Ireland: 1901 and 1911. 1926 will be available in a couple of years (they were somewhat busy in 1921).
• https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/services/go-groni-online - birth records for Northern Ireland currently for 1921*-22 (100 year limit), marriage records up to 1947 (75 years) and death records up to 1972 (50 years) - at least one 50p credit required on your account to search basic results, which is good enough for most circumstances, viewing enhanced results costs 1 credit, viewing full document costs 5 credits. (*covers earlier but irishgenealogy.ie is better)
• https://apps.proni.gov.uk/WillsCalendar_IE/WillsSearch.aspx - lists anyone subject to probate up to about the 1960s. Older records sometimes have the full will, most records just have a short abstract, but always include date of death and place of residence. Can be a bit hit or miss with wives, widows and spinsters.
• https://antrimandnewtownabbey.gov.uk/residents/births-deaths-marriages-civil-partnerships/cemeteries/ - Burial search portal useful for finding family members buried together, seeing when they died. Only certain Antrim cemeteries covered, other counties may have their own versions.
• https://www.townlands.ie/ - identify townlands, understand the geography, what's close, what's far away.

I just learned the correct way to address the wife of a Baronet, at https://www.baronetage.org/baronets/addressing-a-baronet/. It is not Lady Jane, it is Lady Doe, or Jane, Lady Doe. If you find incorrect information on a profile I have edited (there are so many!) please edit it.

If you have trouble finding "Always Turn The Page: The Corkey Story 1600-2000" by David Robinson I am happy to email you the pdf version on request. It's very useful for anyone with farming Irish ancestors.

I have some legal research training, and sometimes old court case texts (not just wills, but those too) can have helpful genealogical information, but they can also be obtuse and difficult to read. I'm happy to help if you find a promising case and want a simplified explanation of it!

Sources

• Me