Well, chances are that you and I are cousins of some sort, and you've arrived on this page because you've just stumbled upon a page of a relative and my name is attached to creation of that relative's profile page on WikiTree.com! I've posted family trees going back up to 6 generations for each of my parents, and my wife's parents. For many of those direct grandparents going back many generations I've also added many of their siblings and their descendants. There are thousands of people attached to these trees. You may be surprised to have stumbled across this site to find profiles of people who were close to you yet so distant from the guy who put the info on this site. In WikiTree it's called cousin bait, and it's simply a way of seeking out people of the present to fill in the stories of our shared ancestors' past.
Why Wikitree?
It's open genealogy data. Wikitree is free to use and access. While paid genealogy websites are essential for digitization, transcribing, and sustaining bandwidth to provide access to images and information, Wikitree provides access to those not able to afford paid subscriptions and/or just don't have the patience or interest to delve into the source material that are the building blocks of family history. Its members collaborate by adding information to ancestral profile pages, and carefully cite their findings.
My Goal
Free your old photos!.
Genealogy is a very broad subject and it's important for any family historian to have a goal. Mine is simple: family photographs. By day I work as an illustrator so I'm naturally inclined to be very visual in my pursuits. So, in adding the document citations to the profiles here within I anticipate putting many more faces to the names of my ancestors and fellow descendants. (See more about photos below).
Many of the photos I've posted to WikiTree have been "borrowed" from paid sites. The purpose of this is to make them more available for people to see their ancestors. In doing so, I've added text on images identifying people that may otherwise get lost in the Internet ocean.
A plea
I've worked very hard to gather and transcribe family documents and while I realize some will stumble upon the information and copy and paste to their own histories without referring back to this website I urge those who share similar ancestral profiles to drop me a line and make yourself known. The photos and document transcriptions posted to WikiTree are a tip of an iceberg of other data you may be interested in seeing. So please, respect the WikiTree code of conduct and together we'll find out about our past.
If you have any photographs of ancestors PLEASE free them from their shoeboxes and drawers and share them with the world - not just on the paid genealogy websites but the free ones like this one. Ours and future generations will be grateful. Get them online, I'd be happy to help you! Just as important as backing up your photos is identifying information and saving the info to each scanned image. When naming image files add the who, what, where, and when to help retain information. Better yet, encrypting manually entered information on old photos should be made a best practice not just at WikiTree, but at all websites where old family photos are shared. It's an eye-glazing subject but it's important. Learn more about that here. Think of it as a 21st century way of penciling in information on the back of old photos. Here are just a few newly found old portraits which will live on.
My Genealogy Passion
Since 2010 I've been active in researching the family trees of both of my parents and the parents of my wife. During this time I have uncovered many generations long forgotten thanks to the exploding numbers of indexed documents being uploaded to the Internet. My quest is to fill in the blank part between birth and death dates. The ultimate joy is to learn an ancestor's name, and to use the data from census, birth, marriage, death and other documents to uncover a forgotten person's life with further discoveries of newspaper clippings, obituaries, and the ultimate prize, photographs. It's an addictive quest that truly touches upon history and connects we in the present with fascinating personalities of our past. Eventually, I aim to put it all together in book form.
I'm a big fan of collaborative research, but everyone diving into family research needs to establish LIMITS on how far along the twigs and roots one will devote time to for looking up and posting info. Here are a few other boundaries one should work within:
Firstly, my interest is in researching people who have come and left this world, not in researching those who are living. Also, I really only want to look up those who have a direct connection to mine or my wife's tree. In other words, while I've created many profiles for the spouses of my own blood relatives, I'm not interested in adding info about the spouse's parents and siblings and their spouses and kids etc. I've let out quite a few loud sighs over the years after complete strangers have messaged me with urges to consider adding such profiles to Wikitree. If you have greater interest in adding more background for those people I suggest joining WikiTree and entering the data yourself! If the privacy settings are open it's only mere keystrokes away.
Although intriguing, it's preferable not to be made aware of current family squabbles and gossip. I say this because in the short time I've involved myself in genealogical pursuits i've become aware that family disfunction is pervasive in everyones lives. While some of it can't be ignored, say, on the level of dysfunctionality between the Hatfield and McCoys, much of it is meaningless and should be left to the confines of your closest family members, and not me.
That being said, genealogy and history go hand in hand. It is often said that history is written by the victors with emphasis on the good at the expense of the truth. History should not be about glorification, it is an ongoing assessment of the past and never-ending quest for the facts. Bad things are committed by glorified institutions and people from history. They shouldn't be covered up. They shouldn't be suppressed because they might upset people or cause them to feel sad. Likewise, if an ancestor's tarnished legacy is unearthed in public documents, be they police, court, or prison records, or splashed across the columns of decades old newspapers, then they are subject to the same scrutiny pursued by historians. I have discovered there are crimes of murder in my family tree. One happened when a family of three was massacred in their home more than 125 years ago. Another, was a rather distant abusive cousin who was killed by his wife. Another, who, decades after committing murder, dined at family dinner gatherings with my unknowing parents in the 1960s. The latter two cases are under concealment out of respect for close relatives who are alive today. Eventually, however, the veils will be raised as they should be.
Not all the information I've added may be accurate. Some of it comes with a lot of source evidence, and some with only one source citation. Errors, and there are quite a few of them, may be viewed and corrected here. Some dates are and always will be in dispute. I've strived to show as many sources for dates as possible using the edit box on each WikiTree profile page. If you notice something incorrect please let me know, but if there's already source evidence suggesting what I have is correct prepare for some gentle push back. For many of the profiles I've created, at minimum, one source has been included to justify existence of a person in order to arrive at a profile with more available information, not to mention, this is a Wikitree standard. It doesn't take long to realize people of the past easily eluded official registration. This would include the vast population who died before 1841 in the English speaking world.
Videos
Over the years I've put together a few slideshows of old photos and mashed them up with old family interviews and music. Here's a few of them:
Here is a list of many of the outstanding websites that hold the sources for much of what you'll find through my family trees. If you have Canadian, Newfoundland, U.S., Scottish, Irish, and English history, like me, these are the Go-To places for Internet research:
FamilySearch - The best source of FREE genealogy info and images
Ancestry.com - Not Free, but the best paid site. The go-to place for original documents. I've built a huge tree there and every once and a while I buy a month or two subscription and top up profiles with new records.
FindaGrave - Headstones and burial grounds from around the world
FindMyPast - If you have British ancestors like me, this is the best paid site for getting the info you need. The National Archives is another good place, but prepare to shell out money
ParishChest.com - A newer site that's pay-as-you-go for UK Church docs not available anywhere else
Newspapers.com - A gigantic database of digitized newspapers. Great for unearthing obituaries, marriage announcements, and news stories related to your ancestors.
Fulton County Post Cards - Amazingly massive archives of old newspapers mostly from New York state
National Archives of Ireland - While much of the old records were trashed during the troubles, this is a good place for free census, Tithe books & Wills. Here's another good Irish site.
ScotlandsPeople - For finding information on Scottish Ancestors, but it's not cheap.
Cornwalls in Ireland is a WikiTree page trying to figure out the early background of my great-great-grandfather Edward Cornwall, who probably came to Oakville, Ontario from Cloonkeehan, Roscommon, Ireland.
Edy Bros. Photography Studios. I try to make sense of the chronology of the southern Ontario photography shops my great-great-grandfather William D. Edy and his brother James N. Edy ran with descendants from 1864 to 1922.
Edys Mills, Ontario is on a Wikitree page I started which is devoted to the hamlet of Edys Mills, in Southern Ontario, a once bustling mill town financed by the above mentioned Edy Brothers
WikiTree profile MacKay-333 created through the import of Haviland-Descendants.ged on Feb 10, 2012 by Graeme MacKay. See the Changes page for the details of edits by Graeme and others.
Only the Trusted List can access the following:
G.'s formal name
full middle name (P.)
e-mail address
exact birthdate
birth location
images (12)
private siblings' names
private children's names (3)
spouse's name and marriage information
For access to G. MacKay's full information you must be on G.'s Trusted List. Please login.
DNA Connections
It may be possible to confirm family relationships by comparing test results with G. or other carriers of his ancestors' Y-chromosome or mitochondrial DNA.
It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with G.:
100.00% 100.00%
G. MacKay:
AncestryDNA, GEDmatch A200662[compare], Ancestry member mumu2010
In doing a family search of my grandmother Mary MacKay I believe we maybe related through her half brother Malcolm J. MacKay. My great grandmother was Margaret MacIver, Donald MacKay’’s second wife. I would like to explore this possibility with you.
Thanks,
Valerie Hodges [email address removed]
Some of those photos you posted there totally blew my mind.
I'm assuming we're related through the Jerretts (Ada Bryant?)
Looking FWD to reading your research!
-Brian Mattys
Hi Brian, I'm double connected to Ada. She's not only daughter to my great Uncle Elias on my dad's dad's side, her husband Garrett was father to the husband of my dad's mother's sister, my great Aunt Edith. It took me about 20 minutes just now to figure this out! - Graeme
Thank you for adding me to your Trust List! It really means a lot. Hope I can expand your tree a whole lot more. Wish I could give you a star but it seems you have them already. Once again, thank you! Happy Researching :)
Wish you a Happy New Year. May 2018 bring you all you need to be happy.
Congratulation for adding your contributions in December. Whatever the quantity of your contributions, they all count. As I always say "Quality is better than quantity" to make a great family tree.
Hello 18th cousins twice removed! I ran across your Tricks & Templates page and wanted to thank you for a great post. I had not thought of putting the source information directly into digital photos. Great idea.
In doing a family search of my grandmother Mary MacKay I believe we maybe related through her half brother Malcolm J. MacKay. My great grandmother was Margaret MacIver, Donald MacKay’’s second wife. I would like to explore this possibility with you. Thanks, Valerie Hodges [email address removed]
Some of those photos you posted there totally blew my mind. I'm assuming we're related through the Jerretts (Ada Bryant?) Looking FWD to reading your research! -Brian Mattys
Wish you a Happy New Year. May 2018 bring you all you need to be happy.
Congratulation for adding your contributions in December. Whatever the quantity of your contributions, they all count. As I always say "Quality is better than quantity" to make a great family tree.
Thank you for being a Wikitreer,
Guy Constantineau - Wikitree leader
I'd like to invite you to join in the "Weekend Chat" on G2G Today!
Share personal successes, stories about ancestors, tips, projects you are working on, or anything else you wish.
New members stop in and say Hello, introduce yourself, share your story, or ask for help.
Pilots, Mentors, and Leaders of all kinds please add something... your advice is always greatly appreciated.
Hope to see you there!
https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/416270/weekend-chat-all-members-are-invited-june-30th-july-2nd
Maggie