Ellen Smith

Thank you, Jane. Here's hoping that your genealogy work is going well.

Thanks. At the moment, I think that WikiTree needs to treat the origins of Lysbet Aersen as "uncertain" or "disputed," but I am not inclined to disconnect her from the Middagh parents she is connected to. What are your thoughts on this?

Like you, I would let it simmer awhile. I expect most would opt for accuracy over bragging rights, at least on Wikitree; but they will want to work through it themselves. It’s even possible, someone could turn up something altogether new. It will be fun to watch.

Thanks, Pierre. I am aware of that G2G, and I've been looking into the situation.

WikiTree has a project for Presidents. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:US_Presidents for information and see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:US_Presidents for links to the profiles for the presidents, plus links to categories for their family members.

At times in the past, there have been focused efforts to document "Founding Fathers" (category at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:American_Founding_Fathers), including (but not limited to) signers of the Declaration and the Constitution. There are categories for both of these two groups of signers: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Signers_of_the_United_States_Declaration_of_Independence and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Signers_of_the_United_States_Constitution

It appears that these merges had gone to default approval before you posted here, and subsequently you completed the merges. I'm puzzled as to why you thought the other profile manager needed to be involved in these merges, but I'm glad you got to do what you intended to do.

I went thru the whole process of "unresponsive profile manager", got on his trusted list and then info@wikitree released profiles away from Mike Stone. I was then able to complete them.

I thought the one was PPP, it merged to an unusual lnab (Ruine-1) but that seems ok to nns.

Sorry, Beryl, but I do not understand. The profiles that Mike managed had Open privacy, they were not project-protected, and the merge proposals you made in December had gone to default approval. Any pre-1700-certified member should have been able to complete the merges. PPP on a merge-destination profile does not prevent a merge. Indeed, one of the main reasons for PPP is to ensure that merges go in the right direction, regardless of who does the merge.

Did you get an error message when you tried to complete these merges after they had gone to default approval? Why did you think that you needed to be on the trusted list, or that the profile manager needed to be removed, first?

When I saw your request for help with these merges, I thought you were asking me to expedite merges that had not gotten to 30-day default approval yet, and I did not see impatience on your part as creating an urgent need for me to respond.

Those profiles created by Mike Stone were all locked. I got admin or info at Wikitree to open them.

Oh, dear me! That explains much! I had no idea that these profiles for people born more than three centuries ago had privacy protection. There is nothing in the profile history for the merged-away profiles to show the former privacy status, but now I see that there were no dates on the profiles (created in 2013, long before dates were required), so they were eligible to be private profiles. The profile manager has had only 2 edits since 2013, so he probably is a bit rusty about WikiTree policies and procedures, and didn't know how to help with this situation. Without his cooperation, only the Team could make it possible to merge.

I am very sorry that I didn't pay more attention, but as it happens there was nothing I could have done to fix your problem.

I've never seen the code "Privacy Level 60." What does it mean?

I used the Programmable Search Engine function and it says 60 is for Open Profile. BUT that must be because Admin removed Mike Stone from those profiles for me. I got an e-mail from admin confirming they had done so...

Phew! I'm glad you found these duplicates and glad they finally got merged. I hope neither of us ever sees this weird situation again!

Wow -- that's a lot of records for folks to explore! Thanks for sharing the news.

Hi, Anonymous.

I am pretty sure that the word "obyt" at the end of the record also indicates death. The death record is unlikely to tell you her birth name (the question you asked), but it would be interesting to have it deciphered. It looks like it contains more information than merely a report of death. Also, I note that the record page is full of people named Geiger. The record three up from this one is for Joannes Valentian(?) Christopher Geiger, and the one two up from this one looks like may refer to a woman as "nee Geigerin" (just a guess on the "nee"!). The names Geiger and Geigerin also appear earlier on the page. By compiling bits of information about various Geigers in Leimersheim, you may be able to discover some more information about your own ancestors.

A genealogist with experience reading Latin church records from 18th century German churches probably would be able to explicate it for you, as the handwriting is reasonable legible. I suggest that you post a request in G2G requesting assistance with translating a German church record in Latin -- and include the URL https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSJY-1ZVY in the text section of the G2G section to make it easy for others to find it quickly. :-)

Wikitree policies call for us to use place names that existed at the time of the event, insofar as possible. "British Colonial America" is a modern term, not a place name that was recognized "back then." Thus, Wikitree does not use it in place name fields.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_America

Wikitree policy is to use place names that were in use at the time of the event. "British Colonial America" may be useful now as a descriptor of a past situation, but it was not in contemporary use, so WikiTree does not record it as the historic place name.

The existence of a Wikipedia article about British America does not prove otherwise.

I created this other John b. 1668 to John Whitman and Abigail Hollis, but only attached birth records for now:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Whitman-4908

The Whitmans are in my connection path to Julius Miller this week, so I thought I'd take a look.

I added some Whitmans as part of an effort to add another WikiTree connection path for Julius Miller, who was a connection target in the week just ended. I do not have any deep knowledge of this family.

As with many 19th century genealogies, I found Farnam less reliable for early ancestors than for the people who were his contemporaries or their recent ancestors.

I see that Farnam appears to have had a good bit of confidence in his version of the genealogy, and at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101067881399&view=1up&seq=340&skin=2021 Chamberlain agrees that John Jr. was the child of John born 1668. So I agree with you that John born 1658 should be disconnected from Dorothy Pratt (Chamberlain says he married Hannah Pratt) and the John born 1668 should be connected to Dorothy Pratt and her Whitman children, including John Whitman born 1709.

I was mostly using Farnam to help connect the modern family of Julius Miller's wife to colonial ancestors. After I found birth records for children of John and Abigail, plus a marriage record for John and Abigail, I identified John Whitman born 1709 as the John Whitman Jr. who married Abigail Hollis, so I created his profile. When I saw the existing profile for Whitman-338 connected as the husband of Dorothy Pratt Whitman, I connected John born 1709 to that couple as his parents and did not investigate the Whitman line any further.

Thanks for looking into this. You are correcting a long-existing error in the Whitman line. :-)

PS - My own connection to Julius Miller via the Whitman line was to Dorothy Pratt via my Pratt ancestry.

Oh, thanks! I swapped in the new John, so it will be interesting to see how that changes my connection to Julius Miller. I'll go add sources to the new John and see what I can learn for the older John and Hannah.

Hi, Albertus. My work on Ordways was only an effort to find family for some unconnected Ordway people and help form some skeletal family trees that will help connect other profiles. I have no Ordway relations, but was surprised to find that WikiTree had rather few Ordway profiles, and that the profiles that existed were not better connected to family.

Regardless, I did a little bit of looking at your Mary Wood problem. Wood seems to have been a somewhat common name among early New England settlers, which makes it more difficult to pin down a specific Mary Wood. (I have some Woods in my ancestry, too.) I did not even find a record of any Mary Wood being born 31 Oct 1653. Dean Crawford Smith, who is a respected professional genealogist with much experience in this time and place, does quote that date -- see <https://archive.org/details/ancestryofsamuel00smit/page/90/mode/2up>. According to the NEHGR article about Isaiah Wood, there are no deed records for Isaiah, but Dean Crawford Smith cites several land records related to Edward and Mary (Wood) Ordway that show associations with other children of Isaiah Wood. I think his work is a good basis for accepting Mary Wood as probably the wife of Edward Ordway.

Furthermore, I saw that the marriage record for Joseph Fuller is a torn page that identifies the wife only as "M." And the book at https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=78tMAAAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA177 shows Joseph Fuller and [presumably] Mary having ten children from 1690 to 1712, when a woman born in 1653 would have been age 37 to age 59 -- that is not consistent with female fertility in that age range. Thus, I think the case for connecting him to Mary Wood is weak.

Hallo Ellen,

thank you for looking into the Mary Wood question. I appreciate your work and insights very much, and i especially appreciate the new sources that you have brought forward: Dean Crawford, and the torn marriage record for Joseph Fuller, of which i had no knowledge. I shall work these insights and sources into both Mary Wood Ordway's and Mary Wood Fuller's profiles. Again, thank you! Albertus. Postscriptum - 21 June 2021. See here the fruit of your help, Ellen: Mary Wood Ordway, Mary Hayward Fuller, formerly Mary Wood Fuller.

I am sorry that my words offended you, Noreen. The problem I have with your received oral history is that it is contrary to the recorded history. Pieter van Woggelum was Dutch. There are records indicating that he and his widowed Dutch mother (who remarried in 1652) both appeared (apparently new arrivals) in New Netherland in 1652, along with his children who also were born in the Netherlands, and presumably also his wife. The only documentary record of his wife is that (1) on 16 June 1697 she (the “widow Makelyk”) was listed as a head of a household in Schenectady, her household consisting of herself and one slave, and (2) on 17 May 1703 payment was made for use of the large (adult) pall for the burial in Albany of Lysbet Mackelyck, deceased.

I could only conclude that the profile of Lysette Aktok was created to represent the wife whom oral history said was the daughter of a Mohawk sachem or chief, and that the name Lysette was a mistaken copy of the name Lysbet (the woman who needed the shroud). It is clear that Pieter van Woggelum existed and had a wife, but I do think that the profiles created to represent his Native wife are essentially fiction.

I do not know what to make of the idea that this woman was a Montauk or Montaukett (from eastern Long Island), since eastern Long Island was English territory (not Dutch) and Pieter van Woggelum lived in the Albany-Schenectady area (Mohawk territory).

It is a "colonial" way of thinking to believe genealogical research only consists of paperwork.  Oral history plays a huge part in First Nation stories of ancestors.  I am well aware of where Pieter Van Woggelum lived and well aware of Mohawk territory.  You don't think that a Mohawk could have taken a wife from the Montaukett and had the woman who would become the partner of Pieter VanWoggelum? In that line I have a first photo of a grandmother born in 1826. She doesn't hold any resemblance to her dutch heritage, but she does hold a resemblance of an indigenous heritage granted that is a few generations apart. The information that you hold does not tell us the heritage of this woman. And you cannot presume that the mother of his children came with him, don't you find it very strange that his wife is not mentioned, that in fact he comes with his mother? A distant relative of mine followed this line and actually went to Holland to meet with elderly people in this line who knew family stories handed down. They did speak of the fact that Pieter Van Woggelum did take an indigenous woman when he resided in New York. I know it seems amazing that history that far back could be handed down, but the history of my family told to me by my grandparents is astounding, it was handed down and handed down- no books were consulted, no paperwork was consulted yet today I find the trail... I do descend from William Bradford of the Mayflower and Plimoth Plantation as well as others at Plimoth and I do descend from Jamestown early settlers...and I do descend from Pieter Van Woggelum and his wife. All these stories amazingly told to me as a kid with no paperwork to consult...just grandma and grandpa sitting with me talking. Grandma even said we were related to Wayne Newton. Years later I find out indeed we are. Oral history is strong. Let's not be so quick to sweep it under the rug just because we do not have any paperwork. In fact, let's see if there is more oral history out there.

Noreen, it seems that you have an issue with many of the underlying premises of WikiTree and modern genealogy. You initially posted on my page because you were offended by my use of the word fictitious in a merge proposal comment. That was a personal concern that was appropriately addressed here, but your larger issues should not be focused on me personally.

My recent edits were in response to the forum discussion at https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1222512/merger-help-from-native-americans-project-pre-1600-profiles . I just happen to be the New Netherland project leader who handled some of the merge proposals that came out of that discussion. The forum (in general) and that discussion (in particular) would be a more appropriate place to present your opinions about oral tradition related to the Van Woggelum family.

The WikiTree Native Americans Project has found that many, many, Americans have family traditions of a Native American ancestor -- particularly Pocahontas -- that are unsupported by all known evidence, and in many cases can be proven wrong. Similarly, there are many family traditions of descent from European royalty that are demonstrably wrong, and there are many other traditions about ancestors of European origin that cannot be proven or disproven because the records have been lost (or perhaps have not been found yet). WikiTree profiles can discuss oral history traditions in the text, but we should not make connections between people unless they are supported by documented genealogy. The members of the Native Americans Project research various Native lineages, including those that are supported by documented evidence, those that are contrary to the evidence, and those whose validity cannot be determined from the known evidence.

Hi, Sharman. I am frequently amazed by how easy it can be to find records for some of our earliest ancestors, but I have also learned that many records are missing. Some records are missing because of things like fires, but there are others that just aren't there. We can only guess why. One factor in New Netherland is that many baptisms, and probably also marriages, were conducted at the homes of the parties, which might be a significant distance from the church, by traveling domines. It is easy for me to imagine that when they returned to home base after several days on the road they might have failed to accurately record some of the ceremonies they conducted (but that is only a guess). Also, sometimes a recorded event turns up in an unexpected location (maybe most of the children were baptized in Kingston, except for one child whose record is in New York or Poughkeepsie).

Sometimes it seems like everybody who has significant New Netherland ancestry is related. That is not actually true, but since you and I both seem to have roots in Kingston and its environs, I guess I expected that we would be distant cousins. Glad to meet you, cousin!

Names are something most of us are confused about when we dig into New Netherland genealogy. Danielse is not a middle name. It is a patronymic name -- a last name derived from his father's given name. WikiTree naming conventions call for us to identify people by the names they were actually known by, and Dutch people of his time seldom had modern-style surnames. Instead, they had patronymic last names. The New Netherland Project uses a strict interpretation of the naming convention, wherein we use the name(s) recorded for each individual person, rather than attempting to standardize among siblings. Other names that might be used in published genealogies and similar sources are recorded in Other Names data fields to aid in searching. Apparently we have not found any evidence that this man was ever called Van Antwerpen (or variant forms) in his lifetime, although his father does seem to have been recorded with that name.

I am way behind on awarding badges. Please consider yourself a member, even if you do not have a badge yet.

Ellen, I'm thankful for your response and am also appreciative of your explanation in attempting to answer my question. That said, I find that explanation not totally satisfying. Firstly, I don't find the old Dutch naming conventions, or patronymics, confusing at all. In fact, when used as I suppose it was intended, it is very straightforward and reveals much more information than just the words.

I agree that Danielse is a patronymic name, but it certainly is not a last name, as you infer. Van Antwerpen is the surname or family name, if that's a better descriptor. Leaving it completely off of his name is foolishness, when we know it really should be there. In "A history of the Schenectady patent in the Dutch and English times : being contributions toward a history of the lower Mohawk Valley", our subject is quite clearly referred to as; Arent Danielse Van Antwerpen in it's narrative regarding the patent. Your last sentence regarding his father is the tell-all for me. He had surname... we should use it! I'm not a neophite nor am I simple.I would just like this group to use a little reason. Thank you kindly, I'm waiting anxiously for my badge! Respectfully, Jim

Hi, Mark.

You and I have a lot of ancestors in common. We map out as 5th cousins via a Townsend connection, but we are also 7th cousins, 8th cousins, etc., via other shared ancestors. I see that you tested on FTDNA, and I've posted my data there, so I looked for you on my report there. You aren't listed as a DNA match (that's not surprising, as there's a low chance of an autosomal match at 5 generations on a line where we would not have received X chromosome DNA).

I expect that I'll continue to see you around, cousin!