Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Progress Report

My volunteer business of helping neighbors with their computers and networks has blossomed into a 50 hour a week activity.  So, I haven't had the time for genealogy I'd planned.  But I've got a break for the past week and I've made a lot of progress on the total set of family trees.  Here's some highlights:
  • I've finished the collection of information on Arthur Irving Leet and am in the process of writing the epic of his life.  You can go to the family web site to see progress.  I have a lot of the epic in a word document on my computer- just need to transfer.  One tidbit that hit me just yesterday as I was cleaning the Gov Leete tree.  George K Leet was a Col and on Gen Grant's staff.  As part of A. I Leet's epic, there is the published story of Gen Grant camping on or near A I Leet's land.  The Federalists were raiding the farm for food and were in the process of taking the only cow left.  Mrs. Leet had her husband's Masonic apron (he was that level 33- written about in recent best selling novels).  To make a long story short, the apron was shown to Gen Grant and he not only ordered the cow returned but provided food for Mrs Leet and all the farm hands (former slaves).  OK, make the link- George Leet would have been with Gen Grant.  To gain access to Gen Grant she would most likely have to go through Col Leet.  How about that!
  • I've been validating the main Gov Leete tree,  It is surprising to me how much information is erroneous, both in the book and on the internet.  For example, was the last name Leet or Leete... A lot of the internet entries have taken information from other family trees.  Tracing how the information got there, it looks like it is a combination of using the 1934 book and other non-substantiated sources.  It is clear that some have used  the original book.  So Leets were named Leete by default.  I have to look at all the documents to clarify whether or not the e is there.  In some cases, the name changes from parent to child.  And back again later.  Census data is somewhat helpful.   However, I try to rely heavily on documents that would have been in the person's own hand, like draft records.  In some cases the draft records conflict with the census information!  It take a long time to work through each person.
  •  I have been working on a web representation for our family that is new.  See http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/GenealogyGraphsFromXML/ for an example.  Pretty cool.  I now have a GED to XML converter.  I have to work on the code- need permission from the owner.  The generated schema is a mixture of French and English... obviously not a good idea. 
  • I've learned that Genealogy.com does not require turning over ownership of the information to them IF the tree is kept "private."  I can make the tree searchable:  anyone can locate a person in the tree, they just can't see all the tree and all the information without request.  I can provide anyone I want with full access, so family members can see the information.  I have to check on whether or not "living" entries are hidden with this approach.  
  • So my approach will be to publish everything as private on the Genealogy.com site.  I'll continue building the Leete Genealogy NA web site:  http://sites.google.com/site/leeteleetgenealogyna/ as a narrative site, where I tell the remarkable stories of the members and provide a complete family view for those who are not living- information that is already readily available. 
  • I have contacted many people and asked them to supply up to date family information.  This has not been a good experience for me.  Even some in my own family line have/will not provide(d) the basic information plus a photo.  I suppose there is a concern about private information.  However, for those who are concerned, google your own name and see what is readily available, admittedly some of it for a price.  You have nothing to hid because it isn't hidden!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Changes to myfamily.com web site and what it means to you

If you type the url http://www.myfamily.com, the result is an entirely new look:




Get to the old site by clicking the Sign in button on the left.  The direct url for the old site is http://www.classic.myfamily.com.  However, Ancestry.com has changes in the works and we can expect to pay for myfamily.com in the near future.  In addition, we may have to move over to the new site.   Adding this to the issues of free access to ancestry.com trees, with photos, stories, etc and the problems with security management and copyright ownership, these events encourage me to accelerate the development of the Google web site. 

This blog is one tool of many available to me through the leeteleet account.  Another is the web site:  http://sites.google.com/site/leeteleetgenealogyna/.)  A third is the Documents repository, where I can store all documents and link to them from the genealogy web site.  Plus, there's lots of disk space and it is free. 

One of the most important advantages of moving to Google is that I have better control over user security or, to put it another way, for most everything, I there is no security.  This blog requires no userid or password to remember; neither does the web site.  (Now, I do have secure areas within the google account to put identity sensitive materials, such as up-to-date trees.  We can correspond via email through the leeteleetlink user id.  We can also use the groups function, which provides the same functionality as the existing myfamily.com site. Let's see how this works. 

Note:  if you want to comment on any post I make, use the Comment link at the bottom of this post.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Family Tree Vetting

I've appended the dialog between Vi James and myself earlier in this blog because I wanted to give the reader a glimpse into the laborous process of vetting a family tree.  In general, here's the process I'm following to update the 1934 book's information

  1. I've been loading EVERYTHING on the internet I can find about each person in the 1934 book into a single tree.  
  2. Along the way, I've discovered at least 7 "root" Leet(e)s who immigrated to the US or Canada and that appear to be related to the identified Leet(e) families in the United Kingdom.  Therefore, I've had to start trees for each of these and rearrange all the information in the 1934 book, which erroneously included people from these other root immigrants. 
  3. I have to go through each individual and determine what information is genuine and what is erroneous.  I have to rename and classify all the documents, both primary and secondary, and attach them to the appropriate people.  
  4. I have to change the available information on each person to be consistent with the primary documents and I have to evaluate whether or not the information in the secondary documents is accurate.  Note that census data, which you might consider primary data, is really secondary, since someone has "read" the census data and typed the data into some database in order for it to be electronically retrieved.  
  5. In addition, the primary and secondary documents provide much more information than was documented in the 1934 book, such as occupation and relationship to neighbors.  I have to factor that information into the "story."  
  6. Particularly difficult is identifying the "root line" each Leet(e) I find on the web is related to.  The area of PA, OH, IA, KY, and NY is very significant, because the various lines "crossed" in those states. 
  7. As I work on the primary tree, it rapidly grows to the point where it is difficult to manage in an electronic environment; the size often approaches .5 GB.  So I'm trimming the tree as soon as I can.  I create a separate tree for each female Leet(e) to track her descendants.  This was not done in the 1934 book.
  8. I also trim the tree at about 1880:  every Leet(e) born during that period gets their own tree.  This means I've got over a hundred trees in process, with the list growing daily.  
Also, consider finding an individual in a couple hundred trees if you don't have an central index of the individuals.  You have to open each tree and search.  Given the large databases I've constructed, there are usually multiple hits for any given name.  I have to figure out if I already have something on that person and, if not, which tree that person belongs to.

I'm describing the process so you'll understand why very little has been published.  If I publish the trees too soon, they will contain errors.  The errors propagate through the on-line genealogy community as quickly as the juiciest gossip.  That just leads to more work by me and lack of trust in my work. 

To clean up the process I've described, I'm developing my own software that works with both Ancestry.com and a free (open source), sophisticated application called GenealogyJ.   It is written in Java and the source code and APIs are available.  It is well designed for me to add the features I need to facilitate the vetting and publishing process.  For those of you with some IT experience, what I am doing is groundbreaking:  I'm developing an XML schema and XSLT transformations to meet my needs.  It will work off the standard 5.5 version of the GED, which is one XSLT transformation of the schema.  Of course, it is taking time to develop the software. 

There are four web-based genealogy sites that I support:
  1. LeeteLeet Family GenealogyNA is the "golden" site, where I publish my completed or nearly completed work.  Note that this is NOT ancestry.com.  Ancestry.com is corrupted, and the available support does not meet my needs.  It's also not a good situation when it comes to owning the results. 
  2. LeeteLeet at MyFamily.com is the private site for sharing information in a controlled environment.  We'll continue to share information through that site.
  3. The Google user id leeteleetlink@gmail.com and complete set of Google tools under it. 
  4. This blog (http://leeteleetblog.blogspot.com/)
My general communication and thoughts will be through the blog.  Communication that should remain private will be through the myfamily.com site.

I'd like to thank everyone for their help.

William Mathews, Farm Manager for Gov Leete

I received the following note via my father from Marc Matthews:
My name is Marc Matthews and I am trying to find information on my 10th generation back in time grand-father by the name of William Mathews, he supposedly was a farm manager for Governor William Leete, in the 1600's. He has been referred to as "Leete's farmer". Look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, Marc Matthews
I haven't researched this, so I'm looking forward to a dialogue with Marc. My father, Gerald Leet, said:
In the "History of Guilford and Madison" by STEINER Edition 1975: "Besides the patentees, William Matthew, Mr, Leete's farmer, was admitted planter April 2, 1674." I'm not sure what "planter" means but I suspect he had his own farm after working for Mr. Leete"
I think the first thing to do is to clarify the spelling of the last name. Is it Mathews, Matthew, or Matthews? Next, identify any relationships between the two families by looking at both ancestors and descendants.
At this point in time I don't have any identified relationships. Nor do I have any stories. It would be great to expand on this lead.