The Vault In The Granite Mountain

Billions of records,yet to be indexed.

What About The Partnerships Family Search Is Making?

On February 4, 2014, FamilySearch announced a series of agreements with Ancestry.com, findmypast, and MyHeritage to accelerate the delivery of freely searchable genealogical records to family history researchers.

As a missionary I receive more questions on this issue than practically any other. Dennis Brimhhall recently posted this list of questions and answers regarding the partnerships.

These agreements are in line with the FamilySearch mission to publish online as many freely available, searchable genealogical records as possible.

The agreements are best understood in light of the overall pace at which searchable records are currently being delivered on FamilySearch.org. Notwithstanding the astounding success of the FamilySearch indexing program and the tireless dedication of hundreds of thousands of volunteers, it will still take many generations to index and publish just the records contained in FamilySearch’s Granite Mountain Records Vault. This estimate does not account for the more than 35 million new images of records that are digitized each month—and that rate is increasing.

FamilySearch indexing, is, at best, only a partial solution to the challenge of making searchable records available in a timely fashion. Clearly, there is a need for additional, creative approaches to providing indexed records, which is why it makes sense to partner with leading commercial genealogy providers such as Ancestry.com, Archives.com, findmypast, Fold3, and MyHeritage.

Working together, FamilySearch and its partners will bring billions of currently unsearchable and unavailable records to patrons decades before these records would otherwise become available.
Some people have questions about how this collaboration will all come about and what it means to volunteers. Below are answers to some of the most common questions.

Q.        Will records indexed by FamilySearch indexing volunteers continue to be freely available to all patrons?
A.        Yes. FamilySearch volunteers index and arbitrate with the understanding that their contribution will be made freely available to others. These partner agreements will not change this practice.

I have been told by Don Anderson and heard Dennis Brimhall suggest that there could be many more of these in the future.

It is really exciting to see that the big providers in the genealogy community see the value they often preach, that of collaborating. It is truly a good thing.

Continue to the family search blog for the remaining Q & A

Did Patrick Cragun Live In Pennsylvania

We find records of Patrick Cragun in Indiana. Did he come with an Irish group that settled in Pennsylvania?

Ireland the beautiful:

Or was Patrick Scottish?

I see little suggesting that we should research Pennsylvania for Patrick. However, Cragun researcher extraordinaire Gaylynne Heinger Hone thinks it worth some time. In researching for her awesome book on the Osborne's she found evidence that his Indiana neighbors came in a group from Pennsylvania. People traveled in groups for safety reasons. Perhaps Patrick was part of one of the Pennsylvania folk. Perhaps one of his neighbors had a daughter he married.

Family Search Wiki recently posted the below paragraphs about the Irish and Pennsylvania. The time period in history is right. Perhaps this will tell us more about the fabled Patrick.

Scots-Irish started coming in large numbers after 1718. They settled first in the Cumberland Valley area and later pushed into the western Pennsylvania counties of Westmoreland, Fayette, Washington, Greene, and Allegheny. Many Scotch-Irish eventually moved into southern states such as Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Kentucky. French Huguenot and Swiss families mingled with the Germans. Some Huguenots from New York migrated to Pennsylvania and settled in Berks and Lancaster counties. Swiss Mennonites began to settle in Lancaster county about 1710.

• Dunaway, Wayland F. The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania. Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1944. Free digital version at PA's Past: Digital Bookshelf at Penn State. Includes chapters on their Ulster background in Ireland, immigration, places of settlement in Pennsylvania, military involvement, economic, social, religious, educational, and cultural contributions.

Irish Quakers came to Pennsylvania as early as the 17th Century. An outstanding historical study with brief biographies and names of extended family members remaining in Ireland, and which provides a summary of Irish Quaker emigration and migration to the state, is: Immigration of Irish Quakers to Pennsylvania, 1682-1750 .

Here is an update on new FamilySearch and Family Tree.

Recent Family Tree Changes

Print Pedigree now includes PIDs

A few weeks ago, we updated the Family Group Records to include the PIDs for each individual.  With this update, all users will now see the PID for each person printed on a Pedigree Chart in the format: Sarah Moulton (KWNK-3B7).

Review Merge comparison look changes

The merge page styling has changed slightly to make it more obviously that conclusions on the right are being copied to the left. Note the use of the gray background for Person B (right side).

Sources during Merge process

Sources are now preselected during the merge process to prevent sources from being unintentionally dropped during a merge.

To tell whether the source was on the original record before the review or not, look for the “undo” option in the upper right corner of each source.  In the picture above, the “undo” option shows which means it was not on the original record but was “added” from the second record as part of the process.  The “undo” option still lets the patron choose if they want to keep the source as part of the merge process or not.  The “undo” will move the source back to the second record and delete the source from the record when they complete the merge.  They may not want to keep a source because it is already on the record in another format (i.e. manually created versus system created) or decided it is an incorrect source (i.e. for a different person).

New FamilySearch Changes

There is currently a scheduled release for new FamilySearch on Tuesday, Feb 25^th.  In this release, there is one known change for patrons: A fix for the bug currently preventing patrons from seeing all children in the pedigree using Chrome.

How Would You Like Being Deleted Forever? Then Don't Delete Another In Family Tree

Certainly there is a delete option in tools, just don't use it. There was and in fact still is a major debate in the developer world on whether or not delete person should even be there.

A good rule to follow is don't delete if you didn't just put the person in, in the wrong place or family. When you delete it's gone, to never be found again in the system, by anyone, even the proper family.Any sources or memories that were added are also gone. So be aware.

Also, In researching a record that “disappeared” from Family Tree, we discovered if a patron deletes a LIVING record they have added then it is completely deleted from the system. There is no way to restore the deleted living record even by an admin.

Although patrons “add” living records through Family Tree, they are actually adding records to new FamilySearch. Currently, no living records actually exist in Family Tree until the enhancement (i.e. “private spaces”) is released later this year.  

What Is An Ancestor? Friday Is For Fun

Every Family Has A Story - What's Yours?

The Grumble Family: Friday Is For Fun Again

There’s a family nobody likes to meet;

They live, it is said, on Complaining Street

In the city of Never-Are-Satisfied,

The River of Discontent beside.

They growl at that and they growl at this;

Whatever comes, there is something amiss;

And whether their station be high or humble,

They are all known by the name of Grumble.

The weather is always too hot or cold;

Summer and winter alike they scold.

Nothing goes right with the folks you meet

Down on that gloomy Complaining Street.

They growl at the rain and they growl at the sun;

In fact, their growling is never done.

And if everything pleased them, there isn’t a doubt

They’d growl that they’d nothing to grumble about!

But the strangest thing is that not one of the same

Can be brought to acknowledge his family name;

For never a Grumbler will own that he

Is connected with it at all, you see.

The worst thing is that if anyone stays

Among them too long, he will learn their ways;

And before he dreams of the terrible jumble

He’s adopted into the family of Grumble.

And so it is wisest to keep our feet

From wandering into Complaining Street

And never to growl, whatever we do,

Lest we be mistaken for Grumblers, too.

Let us learn to walk with a smile and song,

No matter if things do sometimes go wrong;

And then, be our station high or humble,

We’ll never belong to the family of Grumble!

By L. M. Montgomery

The Whitaker Bible As A Source, Of Course

 

Collaboration on family history research is a time saver. It is also a way to work together to determine the facts. If you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints you should know that many serious non Mormon genealogists avoid working with us. They often find we just copy what someone else said, or even worse just jump to a conclusion, and publish that conclusion, without verifying if that conclusion is factual. As more and more of us catch the spirit of genealogy we need to be more interested in what is accurate than a green arrow.

By the way, the church family history department estimates that up to 80% of research is duplicate research. YUK! We only have so much time in our lives, let's not waste it with duplications. Let's also not be selfish with our research. I have to say, I find most genealogy buffs to be kind, courteous, and unselfish. What a great group of people to be aligned with. On the other side, it amazes me how many trees in Ancestry.com are private. What's the deal with that?

OK now, to the point of the Whitaker Bible: It's an historic treasure passed down since about 1600. We don't know when it became a Whitaker possession. We do know that it has been handed down for hundreds of years. It got out of the family and then back into it.

A challenge for those of us who are a descendent of William Whitaker Sr (1701 - 1789), who we know had possession of this Bible is to document the link between him and Lord John and Lady Alicia Lisle. Websites throughout the internet have Lord Lisle as our ancestor. If true, it is possible that is where this Bible became our heritage. Lord Lisle was part of Oliver Cromwells Court that sentenced King Charles I to death for murderous and treasonous acts. Lord Lisle was later shot by a bounty hunter and Lady Lisle was later beheaded by Charles son, after Cromwell died, and when Charles II took back the throne.

If you want to be a pioneer of facts, go to family tree and start proving what is there connecting William Whitaker to Lord Lisle.

T"he earliest known Whitaker ancestors were Joshua Whitaker and his wife, Jane Parker. They were born in the 1670s. They were forced to flee England around 1710 and went to the Isle of Man, which is located between England and Ireland. They almost certainly possessed the Whitaker Geneva Bible at this time. The Geneva Bible was over 100 years old when it left England. The Whitakers were Quakers and Joshua Whitaker was killed in some minor religious skirmish around 1715. Joshua Whitaker's wife, Jane, and their four children, William, Robert, Catherine, and Peter, fled the Isle of Man and went to Ireland. They and the Bible went first to Timahoe, Ireland. Jane Whitaker and her children lived there several years. They then requested a certificate of removal from the Quaker Church allowing them to move to Dublin, Ireland. William Whitaker, born in 1701, the oldest child of Joshua and Jane Whitaker, requested a certificate of removal in 1719 from the Quaker Church in Dublin to go to Pennsylvania. It is not known exactly when William Whitaker arrived in America, but he presented his certificate of removal to the Newark Monthly Meeting (a short time later called the Kennett Square Monthly meeting) on December 2, 1721. William's mother Jane, brothers Peter and Robert, and sister Catherine, as well as the Whitaker Bible soon moved to Chester County, Pennsylvania. William Whitaker married Elizabeth Carleton on February 13, 1722. William Whitaker being the oldest child got the Geneva Bible. William and Elizabeth Whitaker lived in Kennett Square from 1722 - 1734. They then moved to Bradford a few miles from Kennett Square. It was located in Chester County. William and Elizabeth Whitaker decided to moved back to Kennett Square in the winter of 1739. In December 1739 William and Elizabeth were all packed up to move back to Kennett Square when their house was destroyed by a fire. The Whitaker's lost almost everything they had in the fire, even their seed for next year's garden. They were able to save the Geneva Bible. You can still see where the fire melted and cracked on the leather outside of the Bible. The fire damage is also visible on the edges of the Bible's pages. The Bible shows water damage as well." This paragraph is from the writings and research of C Bruce Whitaker.

 

The above pages illustrate the value of an old Bible in our research. It also illustrates the generosity of others in sharing what they know or have. These photos were provided me by a newly met online distant cousin, Ray Isbell. 

Family Tree had people debating over facts regarding William Whitaker's vital statistics which were cleared up by the entry in the red box.  Now those debating the issue can move on to better things. 

This was often the only source of writing their history for families of old. 

 Yes, the Whitaker Bible as a source? Of course.

It gets a little gruesome, but this video re-enacts the trail and death of king Charles I. Our believed ancestors Lord Lisle is on this jury, and it is said he was the member of Parliament that delivered the summons to King Charles: thus the revenge on Lord and Lady Lisle by Charles II.

A Fun Video Song About Finding Our Cousins

The youth who attended RootsTech were treated to a great message. There were examples of the success we can have by using Puzzilla and inspirational talks.

This video was a hit.