Connectors Chat

Profile managers: Carol Keeling [send private message], Jamie Nelson [send private message], Susanna Hendrina Elisa de Bruyn [send private message], Greg Slade [send private message], and Matt Pryber [send private message]

Introduction

This page is a sub-project of the Connectors Project. For more details about Connecting, please see the Connectors Project page.

1. Connectors, please use this page to:
2. Chat with other Connectors
3. Let others know what locations you are working on
   1. It would be good to have at least one connector working on each country in the world, and at least one connector working on each subdivision of larger countries (states of Australia and the USA, counties of England and Ireland, provinces of Canada, parishes of Sweden, etc.). There is a list below, please enter your details and the locations that interest you. Further countries should be added where necessary.
4. Let others know what surnames you are working on
   1. There is a surname list for those that work on particular names; please also add details of the locations covered.
5. Ask for help, or offer to help others
6. Share hints and tips to make connecting easier for us all
   1. If you have any good ideas to help other connectors, please share them with us all.

Chat with other Connectors

See the comments on this page for previous chats among Connectors.

Let others know what location(s) you are working on

(Note: Because the lists of unconnected branches in each country are so long, we have spun them out into a separate Let others know what locations you are working on page.)

It would be good to have at least one connector working on each country in the world, and at least one connector working on each subdivision of larger countries (states of Australia and the USA, counties of England and Ireland, provinces of Canada, parishes of Sweden, etc.). There are lists for different countries on the Let others know what locations you are working on page. Please enter your details and the locations that interest you. If you want to connect in a country which doesn't already have a section there, please post a message on this page, and we'll add a section for you.

Because the Let others know what locations you are working on page is so large, it's hard to maintain. You can help by checking the branches listed there to see if they have been connected since the last time they were checked, and add more unconnected branches to replace them so that each jurisdiction (country, county, department, land, province, state, territory, or whatever) has at least five unconnected branches for people to work on. There are tips on how to do that in the "Adding unconnected branches to the 'Let others know what locations you are working on' page" thread on the G2G forum.

Let others know what surname(s) you are working on

(Note: Because the list of names that people are interested in connecting has gotten long enough that we have spun it out into a separate Let others know what surnames you are working on page.) To see (and add to) the list of names that people are interested in, please go to the Let others know what surnames you are working on page.

If there is a "(Name Study)" link after a surname, that leads to the One Name Study project for that page. See the One Name Studies Project page for more details about One Name Studies.

To find unconnected branches which contain a particular surname, go to the Let others know what locations you are working on page, and search for that surname. (Not all of the branches have the surnames that they contain listed in the table yet, but we are working to add all surnames which occur at least four times in a branch to the table.)

Help Wanted

Here are several lists of unconnected branches or individuals. If you wish to adopt one of them, just add your name in the "Working On" column, and let us know when you connect that branch so we can celebrate with you.

Free space profiles (like this one) work pretty much the same way that profiles for people do, so all the same syntax applies. So to show that you are working on a branch, edit this page, scroll down to the listing you want work on, and replace the number at the end of the line with two opening square brackets ([), then your WikiTree ID, then a pipe (|), then your name, then two closing square brackets (]), like this: [[Example-123|Ferdinand Grubstake]].

Similarly, when you connect a branch (or discover one that's already connected), add Connected (or Found connected) and then the date. Put three single quotes (') before and after "connected" to put it into bold, like this: "'Connected'" February 29, 2016. One of the page pruners will then delete that entry in a couple of weeks, after everybody has had a chance to celebrate the new connection.

Largest Unconnected Branches

(Note: Because the list of the largest unconnected branches in each country is so long, we have spun it out into a separate Largest Unconnected Branches page.)

See the Largest Unconnected Branches page for a list of the largest branches on WikiTree which have not yet been connected to the main tree, sorted in descending order by size (although you can set it to sort by any of the column headers).

Because the Largest Unconnected Branches page is so big, it's hard to maintain. You can help by checking the branches listed there to see if they have been connected since the last time they were checked, and add more unconnected branches to replace them so that there are 100 unconnected branches for people to work on. (If you go over, that's fine, but we are trying to keep the list up to at least 100 branches.) There are tips on how to do that in the "Adding unconnected branches to the 'Let others know what locations you are working on' page" thread on the G2G forum. If you add a branch to the Largest Unconnected Branches page, please also make sure that that branch is also listed in the Let others know what locations you are working on page in the section(s) where it belongs.

And see Largest Unconnected Branches for the United States for those branches for the United States.

Unconnected Notables

Unconnected Notables need your help. Please try to connect them. There are thousands of notables whose profiles haven't been connected to the main tree yet, but we try to maintain the list so that there are always at least two unconnected notables listed on the Unconnected Notables page for each country in the world, and for each subdivision of larger countries (states of the USA, counties of England, landes of Germany, provinces of Canada, etc.). There are also pages and categories for specific groups of unconnected notables:

• Canada Project Notables Team or Unconnected Canadian Notables Category
• Unconnected Canadian Politicians
• Unconnected United States of America State Governors
• Unconnected World Leaders

Because these lists are so large, they're also hard to maintain. You can help by checking the notables listed there to see if they have been connected since the last time they were checked, and add more unconnected notables to replace them so that each jurisdiction (country, county, department, land, province, state, territory, or whatever) has at least two unconnected notables for people to work on. There are tips on how to do that in the "Adding unconnected branches to the 'Let others know what locations you are working on' page" thread on the G2G forum. (These lists aren't formatted in exactly the same way, but the general principles still apply.)

There is also a Notables List which the Notables Project uses as a to-do list for keeping track of which profiles of notable people need what improvements. Many of those profiles are also unconnected. (See the "Notables Profiles in need of Improvement" section, and look for profiles which have "No" in the "Connected?" column.)

Other places to find unconnected profiles

The Places to find unconnected profiles page lists several places to find profiles which have not yet been connected to the main tree.

WikiTreers who can help

• Abby Glann can help with Midwest US connections
• Carol Keeling will help with any connection query, mainly England but happy to look at any problems you have. Just send me a private message. I'm also slowly working my way through the unconnected lists that were created for the Grand Reunion, (these start at births from 1810 and work backwards), adding the specific county/state tag to profiles so they are easier to identify. I can focus on a particular area if it would help anyone.
• Bob Keniston can help with connections mainly in pre-1900 Massachusetts.
• Debi Matlack can help with connections in Georgia, USA back to pre-Revolutionary times.
• Greg Slade can help with Canadian connections, especially in British Columbia.
• Isabelle Rassinot would be willing to help with French and Belgian (West Flanders) profiles.
• Greg Lavoie can help with connections in Québec.
• Tessa Hope can help with connections in Ontario.
• Morgana Patrocinio Costa can help with connections in Brazil/Italy, and with records that may be in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or German.

WikiTreers who need help

• Theresa Ferracci Myers wants help connecting: John Robert Platt and other Platts he is connected to, starting with Joseph Platt and spouses Alice Kershaw with their connecting Kershaws.
• Shae Simpson: I need someone with access to France source data to take on a couple of profiles I created André Burthe (1772-1830) and his wife Suzanne Marguerite Sarpy (1787-1863) but do not have the time to dedicate to giving them the profiles they deserve. I added the Notables Project as an additional PM but would like to ensure that someone has them on their radar before I remove myself completely. I linked the wikipedia profile of André and added his wikitree ID to wikipedia already. Suzanne does not have a wikipedia profile but deserves one in my opinion.

Hints and Tips

• Here are Carol's tips:
  1. When adding new profiles to bridge a gap between a connected and unconnected profile, always start at the connected profile and work towards the unconnected. If you find that you can't complete the connection then you'll not be left with any unconnected on your watchlist.
  2. Looking for a profile to connect to:
     • Sort the relevant surname list by birth first, then (if over 1,000), select the 'show all' or up to 5,000 option
     • Search CTRL F, for the town, village, state, county you are looking for, check for profiles created by a different manager.
     • Sometimes doing a search within a surname list using the profile manager's name, might identify some of their profiles that are already connected, you then just need to join them up.
     • Find your unconnected person in another on-line tree. Make a note of the more unusual surnames that married siblings, cousins or children. Check for these names on WikiTree, remembering that all sources have to be verified.
  3. I run a query on Wikitree+ to get all unconnected profiles from a specific area. (e.g. just put 'unconnected kent maidstone') into the text search box. Once I've connected a branch, I run another text search to see if the profile manager has created any more unconnected profiles for the same area. To do this you enter their wiki-id with an underscore rather than a hyphen followed by unconnected and the location (e.g. for me it would be 'winton_239 unconnected kent maidstone'). (Maidstone is the county town of Kent in England)

• Here are Greg's tips:
  • The first thing I'd do is look at your own profile. If the bottom of the page has a block of text which says something like: "Greg is 30 degrees from Rosa Parks, 19 degrees from Anne Tichborne and 18 degrees from Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on our single family tree. Check your connections or find your genealogical relationship with Greg.", then you are connected to the main tree on WikiTree, and it's only isolated groups in your watchlist which need to be connected. If that block of text isn't there, then your branch isn't connected, so the first step would be to connect your branch, at which point most (if not all) of the entries should disappear from your unconnected list.
  • I have had unconnected profiles in my watch list for all three reasons:
    • First, I updated some GEDCOMs before the current GEDCOM importing system was put into place. At that time, we were told to skip importing profiles if a profile for the same person already existed on WikiTree. What I didn't realise until later was that, sometimes, the profile that I skipped was the only link between other profiles and the rest of the branch I was importing, so I ended up with lots of isolated profiles or small groups of profiles. Once I realised what had happened, it took me a few weeks to work through all the profiles I had imported, and search for the existing profile on WikiTree which had prompted me to skip importing the linking protocol. So, for instance, an unconnected profile might refer to a spouse, a parent, or a child, but there isn't a link to that person's profile from the profile on my watchlist. In that case, I'd search for the "missing" person on WikiTree, sort through the resulting hits and check to make sure that I had found the right one, and, once I did find the right one, I'd link my the profile in my watchlist to the profile I found. For example, if a wife had somehow gotten disconnected from her husband, then, once I found him again, I'd edit her profile to add a husband, put his WikiTree ID into the box that says, "If the spouse has an existing WikiTree profile Help enter their WikiTree ID here:", then click on the "Add Spouse of..." button. Once I do that, then she'd be connected.
    • Second, I have a bad habit of getting interested in notable people. I'll read about somebody in the news, or on Wikipedia, or wherever, get all interested in them, and create a profile for them. But then, it often takes me forever to build out their branch far enough that I make a connection to the main tree. Some people have memberships on paid sites which can help them trace out connections much faster, but I'm not on any paid sites, so I just end up following whatever leads I can turn up until I make a connection. (A couple of times, it has taken over a year of on-and-off effort to get a notable connected.) So these days, I try to restrain myself from creating profiles for notables anymore. (Not always successfully, I'm afraid.)
    • Third, there have also been times that I have come across abandoned profiles for people with a family name that's in my family tree, so I sometimes adopt those, try to source them, and see if they're related to the people in my family with the same name.
  • In each of those cases, I work out the branch, following leads as I find them. If I find a marriage record for somebody, and the person they married doesn't have a profile connected to theirs, I search WikiTree to see if they already have a profile, and create a new one if they don't. The same thing if I find a census record listing parents, a spouse, or children of that person. In some jurisdictions, death records include the names (and sometimes even place of birth) of the person's parents, the name of their spouse if they were married, and sometimes the name of a child if they were an "informant" for the death registration. (I love the death records in British Columbia: they contain so much useful information like that!)
  • Then, once I've add all the parents, siblings, spouses, and children of the person I started with, and see if I can work out farther still: parents and/or siblings of the parents, spouses and children of the siblings, parents and siblings of the spouses, spouses and children of the children, and outward in all directions. It's tedious, but every new sourced and documented profile added to WikiTree makes that whole tree better and more useful, and eventually, I find that final connection to connect the whole branch to the main tree. Then, I go try and find somebody to pat me on the back for my accomplishment.
  • If you want to work on a branch from one of the unconnected branches tables:
    1. The "Linked Profile" in the table is frequently (not always) for the WikiTreer who created that branch in the first place, and will therefore have a privacy setting of Public or higher. But that doesn't mean that none of the profiles in that branch are Open. To find the open profiles in a branch:
       1. Go to the Linked Profile for that branch.
       2. Click on the WikiTree ID for that profile in the upper right corner of the window.
       3. Select "Family List" from the drop-down menu.
       4. To see the maximum number of Open profiles, set the "Showing 10 generations of" picklist to 15, click on the "both" radio button, click on the "with" radio button, set the "sorted by" picklist to "Birth Date", and then click the "Go" button. The list will probably get longer, and will be sorted with the oldest profiles (and thus the ones most likely to be open) at the top.
  • If you are working on profiles from a GEDCOM upload which have become disconnected:
    1. Check the Lost and Found Project page to see if that GEDCOM is already listed (and add it if it isn't).
    2. For each profile in the GEDCOM, check the profiles before and after it to see if they came from the same GEDCOM, even if they're not connected. (So if you're looking at Example-137, check Example-136 and Example-138.) You may find that the GEDCOM extends to dozens of profiles with the same last name, and because they come from the same GEDCOM, they'll have consecutive numbers except for those which have been deleted or merged away.
       • You may also find that, while most other connections have been lost, at least some spouses from disconnected GEDCOMs are still connected to one another, so that can lead you to more last names that you can check for consecutive profiles.
    3. If you find multiple profiles with the same first and last names, and the same (or close) birth dates and places, you may be tempted to merge them, but check first to make sure that you aren't dealing with cousins who have been given the same name to honour a grandparent, or (at least in some places at some times) siblings where the older sibling died before the younger sibling was born, and then the younger sibling was given the same name.
       • The person who uploaded the GEDCOM may have been working on that tree for weeks, months, or even years before uploading it, and in my own reconnecting work, I have sometimes made changes on the basis of a first pass at the sources, and then had to go back and restore the original data after checking further.

• Here are Abby's tips for working on Unconnected:
  1. Use other tree sites for hints (NOT AS A SOURCE!). I do this by either searching for unique names I might find in the branch I'm working on then trying to find another name that isn't too terribly common in WikiTree on the tree I find the first person on, then trying to figure out how they're connected. Then, I start to look into sources to see if I can connect them the same way on WikiTree.
  2. I make the bulk of my connections by working "sideways". If I'm lucky, I'll be able to trace a line straight back into Colonial America or something, but most of the time I use marriage records and birth records to find spouses then trace their family, adding all the siblings I can and their spouses and just keep following sources as I can find them, rather than dwelling too long on one, direct ancestry.
  3. This one is important-if you get stuck, ask for help! Enlist other projects. Did you work a line back to Scotland and cannot get any further? Post in G2G and tag the Scotland project. Same with if you find someone was Quaker (which would be lucky because they keep AMAZING records). Post in G2G and tag the Quakers project to see if they can help.
  4. Go back to the beginning. I often make so many additions and feel like I'm going nowhere that I get discouraged. I step back and go back to my starting person and start to look at whether I left a possible connection line unresearched. Sometimes that line produces just what I need in far less time than I spent looking at all the other lines I already built out.

• Here are B.W.J.'s tips for working on Unconnected:
  1. Use marriage records of parents and siblings to find more surnames in the village/area they live
  2. Then I use WikiTreePlus to find all surnames in that village/area (sorting by surname), looking for profiles with a different manager and trying to connect to those profiles where the surname matches
  3. The period 1811-1917 can be searched with two surnames in a lot of Dutch archives, using "father & mother" for marriages, this results in a lot of possible names
  4. I keep track of name-combinations that I have looked into in a simple Notepad file

Resources

• The Data Error 106: Duplicates between global tree and unconnected lists pairs of profiles which look like duplicate entries, one of which is in an unconnected branch and one of which is connected to the main tree. These may be useful in connecting unconnected branches.
• The DBE Unconnected page lists reports for different countries in the world, showing unconnected branches with at least one profile which says that the person in the profile was born or died in that country.
• If you are trying to connect a notable, there is a site called Ethnicity of Celebs which lists a bunch of celebrities, and then lists the name of their parents, grandparents, and sometimes great-grandparents. It mostly (but not exclusively) covers entertainers, and it often doesn't include dates or other critical information, but at least the names give you clues when searching for sources. (Some profiles do give pointers to the sites where the names came from, which can be helpful.)
• The census records on the Library and Archives Canada web site are particularly useful if you're working on Canadian branches, because they can help you find links (parents, siblings, spouses, children, and sometimes in-laws).
• The Needs Profiles Created category includes profiles which contain source information for people who don't (yet) have profiles created for them on WikiTree. You may be able to connect your branch by looking through the category for family names in the branch you're working on.
• If you are trying to connect a notable, pay attention to the Wikipedia entry for that notable, in as many languages as you can access. Quite frequently, the entry in one language will contain information that the entry in another language lacks. You may also find that there is another notable with a Wikipedia entry only a step or two away from the notable you're working on. (It's amazing how much intermarriage there is between notables, children of notables, and grandchildren of notables.)