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.