Who Was That Person?

Author Archive

Finally finished the blackboard section of the site — well almost finished I guess. It needs some beta-testing to make sure it works as planned — so go post some messages if you have any interest in Erie County! Free members can post messages to the blackboards, so there is no excuse not to to it.

The only part that is still lacking is the ability to edit earlier messages. That is not too important until there are actually some earlier messages to edit. It will get done over time.

Paid subscribers do have one advantage when posting to the blackboards, they may post links to other sites, and they may put photographs in their posts. Since paid subscription is only $10 per YEAR I’m sure any serious genealogist with an interest in the county will join, to take advantage of those (and other) benefits.

Managed to add a little over one thousand more individual listings this week too, which brings our total so far over 12,000.

Here is our summary of data entry progress for the past week:

Erie County NY Genealogy – rec2gen site
Week 10 ending Monday 25 Oct 2010
# Sources Listed: 150
# Articles: 1
# Places: 269
# Images: 12
# Scraps: 70
# Names in Db: 12,081 (1,102 increase)
# Factoids: 33,590 (3,671 increase)

Not much to report for this week; just continued to plug along and add a little data here and there. I was so busy elsewhere that I did not get time to work on the blackboard software, which requires only a couple more days work for completion. Added a baker’s dozen more source listings, and over 900 individual records to the site. That’s it for now.

Here is our summary of data entry progress for the past week:

Erie County NY Genealogy – rec2gen site
Week 9 ending Monday 18 Oct 2010
# Sources Listed: 150 (13 increase)
# Articles: 1
# Places: 269
# Images: 12
# Scraps: 70 (9 increase)
# Names in Db: 10,979 (911 increase)
# Factoids: 29,919 (1,922 increase)

This week I finished the programming to display the individual blackboards for each person listed in the database — but I did not put it online yet. No point in doing so until I finish the programs that let a user claim a connection (direct descendant, kinship or researcher) which is required before they can post on the blackboard. And (a minor detail) a program that lets the user actually post the message is not completed either.

As the stats show, I added over a thousand new individual records during the week, but not much else. This is, after all, just one of three major projects I have going on at the moment, along with my ongoing Irish Genealogy site and the ever-growing ClassyArts photohistory site.

I also need to re-do the main Rec2Gen site — it really does not make clear it’s mission. When I started it out I was working on the data model and incorporated that into the site — but now the Erie County site works as an example of how that works, I don’t need it on the main site. I’ll probably keep (and expand) the Scraps listing — I have thousands of those to add now.

Like all these other projects, it will get done, bit by bit…

Here is our summary of data entry progress for the past week:

Erie County NY Genealogy – rec2gen site
Week 8 ending Monday 11 Oct 2010
# Sources Listed: 137
# Articles: 1
# Places: 269
# Images: 12
# Scraps: 61 (1 increase)
# Names in Db: 10,068 (1,033 increase)
# Factoids: 27,997 (3,220 increase)

Much of my time this past week was taken up by work on A Biographical Chronology for Napoleon Sarony over on my ClassyArts site. I was amazed at how much unreliable and erroneous information was being bandied about Sarony — every site wanted a biographical sketch, but nobody bothered to do any proper research. My article introduces many previously unknown facts about Sarony, and corrects many of the mistaken claims.

Such misinformation is not unusual on the internet, but to find it regarding such a prominent figure as Napoleon Sarony was both surprising and disheartening — how much can we rely on the other information we find?

The big problem with these much-repeated but erroneous details is that very few reports include any source information with their claims. That is something I’m trying to remedy on the ClassyArts site in regard to photohistory, and on the Rec2Gen sites with regard to genealogy. It is not the errors that are the problem — we all make mistakes from time to time — it is the blind repetition of those erroneous details until they become so widespread that they are accepted as truth. If everyone included source citations for each relevant detail, then it would be easy to trace any error back to its source, and correct it. It is also easier to weigh the probability of any detail being correct if we know where it originated.

That is one reason why people tend not to report sources for this sort of information — they copied those details from a site they are in competition with! They do not want to lend authority to their competition.

On the Rec2Gen sites, it is impossible to enter any individual into the database without first entering the source of that information in the RECORDS section. Every detail can be traced to a full source citation.

I did work a little on the Blackboard function for the Rec2Gen sites, but not enough to complete it. So, despite the Sarony side-track, I still managed to add over 900 more names from the 1870 Buffalo City Directory and the 1880 Federal Census. In fact, I complete the part of Enumeration District 90 that is on the roll of film (or PDF ebook from archive.org, which is a digital copy of the film). More of that E.D. is on another roll/ebook, and I will continue with that this coming week.

Here is our summary of data entry progress for the past week:

Erie County NY Genealogy – rec2gen site
Week 7 ending Monday 4 Oct 2010
# Sources Listed: 137
# Articles: 1
# Places: 269
# Images: 12
# Scraps: 60
# Names in Db: 9,035 (930 increase)
# Factoids: 24,777 (3,067 increase)

Busy week at Rec2Gen and at my photohistory site, ClassyArts.com, where I finally finished updating the photo-entry program, so that more images can be added to that database. I also added some more genealogical resources to the Erie County NY Genealogy site.

In the realm of indexing, I added several more pages from the 1880 census for the town of Elma, and more pages from the 1870 city directory for Buffalo. Very nearly finished the names beginning with ‘C’ in that city directory.

If my estimate for the number of names in the directory is correct, I’m almost 20% done with that. Does that seem high for just finishing up the letter C? It might if you do not know the relative frequency of surnames by first initial. In the USA, the most common first letters for surnames (in order of frequency) are B M S C H W. So the B section was the largest, and C will be fourth largest alphabetical section, it is not surprising that the first three letters of the alphabet exceed the 12% of total one would expect if all letters were equally represented. I may also have underestimated the total number of names, which would further skew the results.

Work continues on the blackboard section for individual reports. The hardest part is making sure that it works seamlessly with another section that has not been written yet — the attestations module. With attestations, members will be able to assert (or claim), with justification (supporting evidence from records), that a particular individual record needs to be corrected, or that two individual records need to be combined because they represent the same person. The ability to combine the different citations to one individual is really the strength of the Rec2Gen system, and the main way in which it differs from other sites and genealogy programs.

Also in the design stage is the RSS system, which will allow notification for ANY surname, so that users can easily see if any new records have been added for their names of interest. Don’t worry if you don’t know what RSS is, or how it works. It is really simple, as I’ll explain in a future post. But if you don’t want to use it, there will be a regular web-page alternative available too.

Here is our summary of data entry progress for the past week:

Erie County NY Genealogy – rec2gen site
Week 6 ending Monday 27 Sep 2010
# Sources Listed: 137 (21 increase)
# Articles: 1
# Places: 269
# Images: 12
# Scraps: 60
# Names in Db: 8,105 (1,193 increase)
# Factoids: 21,710 (4,371 increase)