Who Was That Person?

Archive for the ‘Erie County NY Genealogy’ Category

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)

It hardly seems possible, but the Erie County site has only been online for five weeks now. I didn’t have time to do much on the site this past week, but just a couple hours each day was enough to make some progress. I’ve begun indexing names beginning with the letter ‘C’ from the 1870 city directory, and I added names from a few more pages from the 1880 Census, enumeration district 90 — the town of Elma. My plan for the censuses is to do one enumeration district outside Buffalo from 1880, then one from Buffalo from 1900. Then I’ll add some parts of the 1850-1870 census, doing a town or ward from the city at a time. The enumeration districts have a couple thousands persons each, so they should go fairly fast — towns and wards can be much larger. Bit by bit, we can accomplish a lot, that is my philosophy.

The main progress on the site is not yet visible — I began coding the chalkboard pages. Each individual in our database will have a chalkboard, where members (free members or paid subscribers) will be able to claim their ancestors and post information, comments or questions about them. The system will also post messages, such as indicating changes in the record (paid members will be able to correct records, combine records that apply to one individual, etc.) or addition of new records for the same name.

When members write on their ancestors chalkboard, they will have complete control over who sees that message — the whole world, only other members, only others claiming descent from that same person, or just one individual (private messaging).

There will also be three levels of connection members can claim in relation to the ancestral person: direct descendant, kin (related collaterally or by marriage), or possible relation (exact relationship unknown). People claiming direct descent from an ancestor will automatically be added as a descendant of the ancestors of that person, if they are in the database or added to the database at a later date.

Needless to say, this takes a bit of programming, but I am making good progress at it. Here then, is the summary for the end of the 5th week of the Erie County NY Genealogy site:

Erie County NY Genealogy – rec2gen site
Week 5 ending Monday 20 Sep 2010
# Sources Listed: 116
# Articles: 1
# Places: 269
# Images: 12
# Scraps: 60 (11 increase)
# Names in Db: 6,912 (1,205 increase)
# Factoids: 17,339 (3,411 increase)

I find it easier to keep blog postings updated if they follow a specific frequency. When the Rec2Gen sites are more mature that will mean monthly progress reports, but during this frenetic building period I think more frequent news is warranted. So for now, I’ll post each Monday giving a synopsis of progress from the preceding week.

Since this the first of those weekly updates, I’ll just summarize progress to date, to provide a starting point. I registered the rec2gen domain at the end of May 2010, so the idea took shape a few weeks earlier, let’s call it May first just to make it easy to remember. Bits of the idea have been knocking around in my head for the past ten years, but only in these past few months have I decided to really take action.

I put the www.rec2gen.com site online July 12th, as recorded in the first post on this blog. I was still rethinking and tweaking the details of the system at that time, but I was concerned that even as I went online, that home site poorly represented the much grander idea behind it. So I hurried to get Erie County NY Genealogy online, so I could demonstrate the plan, rather than just talk about it. Just over a month later, on August 17, the Erie County site went live.

Software

As the demonstration site, I wanted to build the Erie County site using the same software customers will be able to use if they decide to build sites for other counties. So I wrote the program, but it is not ready for ‘prime time’ — there is a long way from functional to user-friendly. In other words, it works, but only I know how to use it. I need to go through and make it user-friendly, and ‘idiot-proof‘ it so new users can do no accidental harm, plus ‘harden‘ it so that if a malicious user got in, they could do no permanent damage. Programmers call programs in this state a ‘beta’ program, and that is what was used to build the Erie County site.

Before I could enter data, I had to enter the sources the data were derived from. I decided to make this a program to add content to the site, with the ultimate goal of including every major source of genealogical data, with information on where it can be accessed. I have barely begun to enter the thousands of sources for the county — in the summary below you can see there have been 116 Records entered so far.

Next, we needed programs to enter and record data and extract factoids from that data. There are going to be many of these eventually, each optimized for particular types of data in particular formats. For now, there are programs to enter ’scraps’ — old photos and memorabilia; city or county directories; lists of names (explained in this post); and census information.

I also decided to a graphics section to the site — so I wrote programs to enter and display pictures. These are the ones you see when you click the ‘images’ link on the county site. I entered a dozen of those in the Erie site (some come from the scraps collection), but have hundreds more to do.

The Data

There is a section on the site for general articles, where I have posted just one article so far. And there is a Geography page which lists the placenames for the entire county (269 for Erie County so far), with links to a live map of the locality. Additional information may be added to those pages in the future.

The heart of the site though is the database of names, each of which in turn is linked to the appropriate source citation and in the case of scraps, also an image of the original item. In the near future we will be adding a ‘blackboard’ page where descendants can discuss information on a particular ancestor, and code to allow people to ‘claim’ ancestors in the database.

So, here is our current status, and starting point for future progress reports:

Erie County NY Genealogy – rec2gen site
As of Monday 13 Sep 2010
# Sources Listed: 116
# Articles: 1
# Places: 269
# Images: 12
# Scraps: 49
# Names in Db: 5,707
# Factoids: 13,928