Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Reader Resources Used in First Genea-Musings Contest

In the first Genea-Musings Contest to Win a 3-Month Ancestry World Explorer Membership, I asked the entrants to provide this information:

"What was the exact death date of David Jackson ("D.J.") Carringer (1828-1902), and where was he buried?"

Entrants must provide a link to the information (which can be found on Genea-Musings, and elsewhere). 


The correct answers were:

*  David Jackson Carringer died 20 January 1902 (in San Diego, California)

*  David Jackson Carringer was buried in La Vista Cemetery in National City, California.

My own source citation for the death date is the Carringer Family Bible pages in my possession.  There is no public vital record available to my knowledge.  Readers Barry Sheldon and Martha Grenzeback actually found an article in GenealogyBank that said he died on 21 January 1902 that I had heretofore overlooked (thank you, Barry and Martha!).  

As you might expect, I have written many Genea-Musings posts and have quite a few online family trees that have both the death date and the burial location included.  A Google search for ["david jackson carringer" died] yields results on Ancestry, WikiTree, Find-A-Grave, Mocavo, Scribd, Genea-Musings, Geni, and other sites, with variants.

I was curious as to the sources of the information found by my contest entrants.  Here is a summary by source for both questions (note that the numbers add up to 83, not 79, because several entrants provided more than one link):

1)  Death date of David Jackson Carringer:

*  Genea-Musings posts:  22
*  Ancestry Member Trees: 17
*  WikiTree.com family tree: 17
*  Geni.com family tree: 3
*  Find-A-Grave memorial:  19
*  Scibd PDF report:  4
*  GenealogyBank:  1

2)  Burial Place:

*  Genea-Musings posts:  20
*  Ancestry Member Trees: 12
*  WikiTree.com family tree: 13
*  Geni.com family tree:  2
*  Find-A-Grave memorial:  33
*  Scribd PDF report:  3

The big surprise on both lists for me is the WikiTree numbers.  It was #2 on the Google search list, and my guess is that folks without access to Ancestry Member Trees (#1 on Google search list) may have used the first free link available to them.  

Of course, all of the information was on the Find-A-Grave memorial for David Jackson Carringer (1828-1902):



Note that the gravestone does not list the exact death date.  The person who posted this memorial on Find-A-Grave found the birth and death dates on the Internet, probably on my blog or in an online family tree.

My thanks to all of the contest entrants for participating in my contest and playing by the rules.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/10/reader-resources-used-in-first-genea.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

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