Genea-Musings

Friday, September 2, 2016

Am I Related to Hillary Rodham Clinton?

When my grandsons were here three weekends ago, we talked about some of the famous people they know that we are related to - like Queen Elizabeth, Barack Obama, and Tom Seaver. They then asked me if we were related to Hillary Clinton.

I didn't know, so I went to both Geni.com and WikiTree to find out.

1) On Geni.com, they found a relationship as 14th cousins thrice removed:

The common ancestors appear to be James Pickering, of Winderwath (1419-1497) of Yorkshire, and his wife Margaret Lascelles (1429-1495). My descent is through their son, John Pickering, of Gretton (1450-????), and Hillary's descent is through their daughter, Margaret Pickering (1444-????).

The American immigrant ancestors in my line are John Knight (1620-1701) and Mary Pickering (1598-1676) of Charlestown, Massachusetts. I don't know if my line back from John and Mary (Pickering) Knight is correct - the royal and noble books don't show that couple as royal descendants.
The line from the Pickerings to Hillary Rodham Clinton is a bit more tortuous - there are few dates and places given for some of her Roddam ancestors in northern England.

I judge this relationship to be a NOT LIKELY.

2) On WikiTree, they found that I was Hillary Clinton's 18th cousin. I quickly found Hillary (Rodham) Clinton's profile (Rodham-1) and clicked on the "Relationship to Me" link (it's under the person's name next to "My WikiTree), and the relationship chart appeared (three screens shown):

So, Hillary is my 18th cousin. The common ancestor for this relationship is Pierre de Luxembourg (1390-1433). My line back to Pierre de Luxembourg is in the Royal and noble lineages in several books and websites - it goes through Thomas Dudley, a Massachusetts governor in the 1600s. Hillary's line goes back through her mother's ancestry, which claims several generations born in Detroit, Michigan in the 1700s. The source is an LDS Pedigree Resource File. There are 40 other common ancestors according to WikiTree, and they all seem to go through Hillary's mother and a French/Spanish connection.

I judge this relationship to be a NOT LIKELY.

3) I'm afraid that I will have to tell my grandchildren that I don't think we are related to Hillary (Rodham) Clinton. It's OK, the grandsons weren't big fans of Hillary (or The Donald) anyway!

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/09/am-i-related-to-hillary-rodham-clinton.html

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New Records Available to Search This Findmypast Friday, 2 September 2016

I received this email from Findmypast this morning:

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New Records Available to Search This Findmypast Friday

Over 1.3 million new records are available to search this Findmypast Friday including;

British Army Casualty Lists 1939-1945

Over 1.1 million War Office records covering Officers and Nurses and Other Ranks. These lists cover individuals reported as killed in action, wounded, prisoner of war, missing, died of wounds, missing believed killed, dangerously ill, and involved in accidents.

Released in association with the National Archives, the collection is comprised of daily lists prepared by the War Office. The records consist of fully searchable transcripts and scanned colour images of the original documents. Each entry lists the person's name, rank, service number, regiment, status, and previous theatre of war. The image may also provide additional information such as a date of death or a notation on their previous status.

British Army Casualty Lists 1939-1945 BROWSE

Browse 102 volumes of casualty lists covering various World War 2 expeditionary forces broken down into different locations such as western desert, Malaya, Greece or France, as well as lists of casualties at sea, home and other overseas stations outside of theatres of war.

BRAND NEW RECORDS

United States, Transatlantic Migration

United States, Transatlantic Migration contains over 30,000 records that allow you to learn about your migrating ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Discover details about their migration to Canada and the United States from the late 1500s up to the early 1900s. The publications included in this collection can reveal vital information about your ancestors, such as birth countries, when and where they emigrated, ages, occupations, and details regarding spouses and children.

United States, Early American Families

Explore 140 publications containing over 86,000 records that will help enhance your research into the history of the United States and its founding families. The publications included in this collection contain a vast amount of details regarding the early settlers of America and their descendants. You may be able to learn the birth and death years of your ancestors, as well as other family names and significant locations.

United States, Early American Vital Records

Search over 14,000 early American vital records to find out if you have connections to some of the earliest European families to settle in America. These records can reveal vital information about your ancestors in the United States and Barbados from the 1600s to the early 1900s and includes many birth, marriage, and death registers, as well as publications detailing gravestone inscriptions, wills, and the military dead of the American Revolutionary War.

United States, Connecticut Town Vitals, The Barbour Collection

Explore over 18,000 vital records from the volumes of The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town records. Search 55 volumes of PDF images by your family or ancestor's last name and discover birth and death dates, children's names, and other personal details.

ADDITIONAL RECORDS FOR EXISTING SETS

New Zealand Birth Index

Over 19,000 records have been added to the New Zealand Birth Index. Transcripts will reveal your ancestor's name, birth year the first names of their both parents and registration number. Post 1912 records may also include a stillbirth indicator.

New Zealand Marriage Index

Over 8,000 records have been added to the New Zealand Marriage Index. Each transcript will include your ancestors name, registration year, registration number and the full name of their spouse.

New Zealand Death Index

Over 21,000 records have been added to the New Zealand Death Index. Each transcript will include your ancestors name, registration year, birth date or age at death and registration number.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/09/new-records-available-to-search-this.html

52 Ancestors - Week 140: #185 Elizabeth (Ladd) Oatley (1735-1814)

Amy Johnson Crow suggested a weekly blog theme of "52 Ancestors" in her blog post Challenge: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks on the No Story Too Small blog. I am extending this theme in 2016 to 156 Ancestors in 156 Weeks. Here is my ancestor biography for week #140:

Elizabeth Ladd (1735-1814) is #185 on my Ahnentafel list, my 5th great-grandmother, who married #184 Benedict Oatley (1732-1821) in 1755.

I am descended through:

* their son #92 Joseph Oatley (1756-1815) who married #93 Mary Hazard (1765-1857) in 1781.

* their son #46 Jonathan Oatley (1790-1872) who married #47 Amy Champlin (1798-1865) in 1823.

* their daughter #23 Amy Frances Oatley (1826-1864) who married #22 Henry Arnold White (1824-1885) in 1844.

* their daughter #11 Julie E. White (1848-1913), who married #10 Thomas Richmond (1848-1917) in 1868.

* their daughter #5 Alma Bessie Richmond (1882-1962), who married #4 Frederick Walton Seaver (1876-1942) in 1900.

* their son #2 Frederick Walton Seaver (1911-1983), who married #3 Betty Virginia Carringer (1919-2002) in 1942.

* their son #1 Randall J. Seaver (1943-....)

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1) PERSON (with source citations as indicated in brackets):

* Name: Elizabeth "Betsy" Ladd[1–4]

* Alternate Name: Elizabeth Oatley[3]
* Sex:   Female

* Father: Joseph Ladd (1701-1748)
* Mother: Lydia Gray (1707- )

2) INDIVIDUAL EVENTS (with source citations as indicated in brackets):

* Birth: 9 July 1735, Little Compton, Newport, Rhode Island, United States[1,3-4]
* Death:   27 November 1814 (age 79), South Kingstown, Washington, Rhode Island, United States[3]

3) SHARED EVENTS (with source citations as indicated in brackets):

* Spouse 1: Benedict Oatley (1732-1821)
* Marriage 1: 2 October 1755 (age 20), South Kingstown, Washington, Rhode Island, United States[2–3]
* Child 1: Joseph Oatley (1756-1815)
* Child 2:   Rhoda Oatley (1758- )
* Child 3:   Abigail Oatley (1760-1831)
* Child 4:   Susannah Oatley (1762- )
* Child 5:   Jonathan Oatley (1764- )
* Child 6:   Lucy Oatley (1766-1814)
* Child 7:   Benedict Oatley (1773-1849)

4) NOTES (with source citations as indicated in brackets):

Elizabeth Ladd was born 9 July 1735 in Little Compton, Rhode Island, the third child and second daughter of Joseph and Lydia (Gray) Ladd[1,3]. The entry in the Rhode Island Vital Record book says[4]:

LADD, Elizabeth, July 9, 1735

Elizabeth Ladd was married by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Torrey of the Church of Christ, South Kingstown, Rhode Island on October 22, 1755 to Benedict Oatley[1-3].

They had seven children born between 1756 and 1773 in South Kingstown. All of the births were recorded in the South Kingstown town records[3].

Elizabeth Oatley died 27 November 1814, according to the South Kingstown town records. No gravestone marks his burial location[3].

5) SOURCES

1. Benjamin Franklin Wilbour, Little Compton Families ( Little Compton, R.I.: Little Compton Historical Society, 1967), page 391, Joseph Ladd family sketch.

2. "Rhode Island Marriages, 1724-1916," indexed database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org), Benedict Oatly and Elizabeth Ladd, 02 Oct 1755; citing South Kingstown, Washington, Rhode Island, reference 22395 p. 142; FHL microfilm 22,395.

3. Harry J. Oatley, The Oatley Family in America and Their Descendants (Providence, R.I. : The Oatley Family Association, 1970), page 26, Benedict Oatley sketch.

4. "Rhode Island, Vital Records Extracts, 1636-1899," indexed database and digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com), Volume 4, Newport County Vital Records, page 134 (image 501 of 691), Elizabeth Ladd entry.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/09/52-ancestors-week-140-185-elizabeth.html

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Findmypast Adds 4 Million More Records to U.S. Marriage Collection

I received this press release from Findmypast today:

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FINDMYPAST ADDS A FURTHER 4 MILLION RECORDS TO UNITED STATES MARRIAGE COLLECTION

Includes significant additions from Arkansas, West Virginia, Illinois, New England, Tennessee and Massachusetts

Springfield, Illinois: 01 August 2016

Leading family history website, Findmypast, announced today at the 2016 conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies the release of over 4 million new marriage records in the latest instalment of their United States Marriages collection.

Released in partnership with FamilySearch International, the records contain more than 8 million names and marks the latest stage of an ambitious project that will see Findmypast digitize and publish the single largest online archive of U.S. marriages in history.

Covering 360 years of marriages from 1650-2010, when complete this landmark collection will contain at least 100 million records, more than 450 million names from 2,800 counties across America. More than 60 per cent of the records will have never before been published online and the collection will only be found in its entirety exclusively on Findmypast.

While the United States Marriage collection includes marriages from nearly every state, this latest installment includes significant additions from Arkansas, West Virginia, Illinois, New England, Tennessee and Massachusetts.

The records include marriage date, bride and groom names, birthplace, birth date, age, and residence as well as father’s and mother’s names. Customers with family trees on Findmypast will benefit from leads connecting relatives on their trees with the marriage records, thus generating a whole new source of research.

Commenting, Ben Bennett, Executive Vice-President North America and International for Findmypast said:

“The United States marriages project is central to Findmypast’s growth strategy in the U.S. The millions of new U.S. records will complement Findmypast’s massive collection of British and Irish data. Many of these new US marriage records have never been available online before and we are excited to help our customers make new discoveries and fill in the missing pieces in their research.”

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/09/findmypast-adds-4-million-more-records.html

Findmypast Offers a Starter Annual Subscription for $34.95

Findmypast is offering a starter annual subscription for $34.95 at http://www.findmypast.com/starter.

The banner says:

"If you're just starting out on your family history adventure, then this is the package for you. For only $34.95 a year you can access over 2.9 billion records, including US birth, marriage and death records, US immigration and travel records, US newspapers and our collection of UK census records. Oh, and did we mention we're also over 50% cheaper than our competitors?"

Please note that this Starter subscription, with 2.9 billion records, does not include some of the premium databases on Findmypast, including the U.S. Marriage Collection, the England parish records and civil registration.

This Starter package may be cheaper than their competitors (Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com), but the competitors offer all of their databases for a single annual subscription rate.

For reference, the Premium annual subscription, with 8 billion records, is $239.50 or $19.95 per month. You may be able to get a discounted Premium subscription by contacting Findmypast.

I already have a Findmypast subscription, but I thought my readers and colleagues might want to investigate the offerings at Findmypast.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/09/findmypast-offers-starter-annual.html

Treasure Chest Thursday - Post 329: List of Children Births of Jonathan Thurston (1659-1740) in Little Compton, R.I.

It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the birth record for all of the children of Jonathan Thurston (1659-1740) in Little Compton, Rhode Island:

The births of Jonathan Thurston's children is:

The extracted information from this record is:

THURSTON, Jonathan, 1650, died 1740

THURSTON, Edward, of Jonathan, Oct. 18, 1679

THURSTON, Elizabeth, Nov. 29, 1682

THURSTON, Mary, March 20, 1685

THURSTON, Jonathan, July 5, 1687

THURSTON, Rebecca, Nov. 28, 1689

THURSTON, Content, Aug. 18, 1691

THURSTON, Sarah, Nov. 9, 1693

THURSTON, John, July 12, 1695

THURSTON, Eleanor, Nov. 26, 1696

THURSTON, Hope, Nov. 26, 1698

THURSTON, Abigail (m. White), May 7, 1700

THURSTON, Patience, Feb. 16, 1702

THURSTON, Amey, Jan. 29, 1705

THURSTON, Peleg, July 8, 1708

THURSTON, Jeremiah, May 8, 1710

(THURSTON, Susanna, May 20, 1712)

(THURSTON, Joseph, April 25, 1714)

(THURSTON, Job, July 1, 1717)

The source citation for Abigail Thurston's entry is:

"Rhode Island, Vital Records Extracts, 1636-1899," indexed database and digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com), Volume 4, "Newport County Births, Marriages, Deaths," Little Compton Births and Deaths, page 174, Abigail Thurston entry.

Eighteen children are listed with Jonathan as their father. For some reason, the last three have parentheses around them. It may be that the mother of those three children was not the mother of the other fifteen children. Jonathan Thurston probably married his first wife in 1678, since the oldest child was born in 1679. She was probably at least age 18 at marriage, meaning she was born about 1660. If her last child was Jeremiah, then she would have been age 50 when he was born. She may have died soon after.

Of course, there may be three wives or more for Jonathan, but there are very few "holes" between children - the only gaps between children of more than two years are 1702-1705 and 1705-1708.

Jonathan Thurston named 12 of his children in his 1735 will; Rebecca, John, Hope, Amey, Peleg and Jeremiah were not named.

The handwritten Little Compton town records may shed some light on the children and Jonathan's wives, although James Arnold, who transcribed the records, was known to be very careful, but errors do occur. This is what I have at the present time.

Jonathan Thurston (1659-1740) is my 7th great-grandfather. I am descended through Abigail (Thurston) White (1700-????), who married William White (1708-1780) in 1729.

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The URL for this post is:

Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Adding Descendant Information the Easy Way - Post 3: Stimulating Hints in the Ancestry Member Tree

I wrote Finding Descendants of Rudolph Spangler (1738-1811) In the FamilySearch Family Tree on 23 August 2016, and followed that with Adding Descendant Information the Easy Way - Post 1: Importing it From FamilySearch Family Tree on 25 August 2016. In the latter post, I laid out the steps I'm taking to add descendants of Rudolph Spangler to my RootsMagic database, starting from the FamilySearch Family Tree. In Adding Descendant Information the Easy Way - Post 2: Importing it to an Ancestry Member Tree, I created a GEDCOM file in RootsMagic and imported it to a new Ancestry Member Tree. Immediately after I imported the tree, I had 277 Hints, including 178 Records.

The next Step in this process is to let Ancestry.com find Hints for the persons in the tree. Ancestry does this every day, adding a number of Hints by searching for several persons in the tree, seemingly at random. However, if I add a person, or edit a person, the Hints for that person are searched again almost immediately.

I have found that I can "stimulate" Hints in the Ancestry Member Tree by clicking on the black down arrows that indicate there is one or more generations that are descendants of the person with the black down arrow. I spent an hour or so "stimulating" new Ancestry Hints in this tree.

After doing that last week, I now had 3,778 Record Hints today:

Some of these Hints were generated by Ancestry's "normal" Hint search which occurs every day, and generates 10 to 30 Hints in this specific tree.

However, if I click on the black down arrow below a person profile (see the black down arrows below for William J. Nes (1857-1902) on the lowest line of descendants on the screen below), which indicates that there are descendants for the person, more generations of descendants already in the tree will appear:

William J. Nes is the person with a white name and a black background in the middle of the screen below:

After clicking on the black down arrow, two more generations of descendants of William J. Nes and one generation of his sibling were added to the screen. All of these persons were in the database already, but Hints had not been generated for them. As you can see, there are now Hints for most of those persons (the green leaves).

I took the two screen shots above within one minute of each other and about two minutes after I took the first screen shot with the Hints count before I stimulated Hints.

How do I know that I stimulated Hints for those persons? Here is the Hint summary page immediately after I took the last screen shot above:

The "Records" Hint count is now 3,837, an increase of 59. In like four minutes. The most recent Hints on the Hint list shown are for the 11 people that were "stimulated" by clicking the one black down arrow. Note that "stimulating" by clicking one black down arrow caused Hints for the sibling of William J. Nes to be created too.

So Step 4 in my process outlined in the first post in this series is well underway, and I can move on to the biggest task in Step 5.

Now I have enough (more than enough!!) Hints to work with. I will go person-by-person through the tree adding content and sources to my RootsMagic database from those Hints.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/08/adding-descendant-information-easy-way_31.html

SCGS Jamboree 2011 Genea-Fun Part 2 -- Post 428 for (Not So) Wordless Wednesday

I'm posting old (and sometimes new) family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they won't be wordless posts like others do - I am incapable of having a wordless post.At the 2011 SCGS Jamboree in Burbank, there were a lot of geneabloggers and we had a ton of fun. It's been great fun scrolling through my photos of this three-day event and laughing and remembering everything we experienced.

1) The "Blogger Island" in the Exhibit Hall foyer hosted Thomas MacEntee's "Geneabloggers Radio" show - here's Thomas with Donna Wendt beside him, and Lisa Alzo on the right foreground on a laptop:

2) Here's a wider view of the Blooger Island during the show, with (from the right): Thomas MacEntee, Donna Wendt, Kim Von Aspern, Amy Coffin, Sheri Fenley, ????, Ron Arons, Donna Pointkouski, Elizabeth O'Neal (standing), ????, Kathryn Doyle (with laptop), Terri O'Connell, Elyse Doerflinger, Daniel Horowitz (standing), ????, and Lisa Alzo (reading the chat board).

3) Another view of "Blogger Island" during the radio show, showing the same people, with Caroline Pointer (on left in back of Thomas) and Diana Ritchie (on right, in back of Elyse Doerflinger), and CeCe Moore standing on the far right:

4) Terri O'Connell, Cheryl Palmer and A.C. Ivory talking at a round table in the foyer:

5) A.C. Ivory, Emma G., Steve Webb and Gini Webb at the same round table (with someone eating dessert on the far right):

6) Kim con Aspern Parker was all smiles:

More later - I have lots of pictures of geneabloggers gone wild!

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/08/scgs-jamboree-2011-genea-fun-part-2.html

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

RootsMagic Provides More Information About Ancestry.com Synchronization

I received the August 2016 issue of the RootsMagic Newsletter yesterday - you can read it at http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8e85643d5218349ea32bc4f19&id=1bd2682a44. The Archive of RootsMagic newsletters is at http://www.rootsmagic.com/Newsletter/Archive.aspx.

The first article is "When Will RootsMagic Sync with Ancestry?" The article says:

"When will RootsMagic sync with Ancestry? - The RootsMagic / Ancestry sync is scheduled to be released by the end of this year.

"What does this "sync" include? - RootsMagic will let you share data (in both directions) between your RootsMagic tree and your personal Ancestry online trees. This includes people, events, notes, sources, and media. In addition, RootsMagic will be able to display WebHints from Ancestry, and allow you to download and attach those documents to individuals in your RootsMagic file.

"Will the Ancestry sync features require me to buy an upgrade? - If you are using RootsMagic 7, the Ancestry sync features will be a free upgrade. If you are using an older version of RootsMagic (6 or older), you will need to upgrade to RM7 to use the new Ancestry sync features.

"Will I need an Ancestry subscription when RootsMagic's sync is released? - You will need an Ancestry account to use the new sync features in RootsMagic. Some features will work with the free Ancestry account, but other features will require you to have a paid Ancestry subscription. The features and records available to you will depend on your subscription level."

There are two key issues regarding RootsMagic synchronization with an Ancestry Member Tree here:

* Sharing data between RootsMagic and your Ancestry Member Tree. Apparently, this includes people, events, notes, sources and media.

I believe that this will work in a similar way that RootsMagic currently shares data with the FamilySearch Family Tree. The user matches a person, then adds content (people, events, notes, sources and media) from one file to the other so that both files have the same information.

I don't believe that this will work like Family Tree Maker 2014 syncs with an Ancestry Member Tree, whereby pushing one button makes the information for every person in the FTM file the same as is in the Ancestry Member Tree file.

Of course, I may be wrong. We will have to wait until the end of the year to find out.

* RootsMagic will display Ancestry.com WebHints, and users will be able to download and attach documents from Ancestry to RootsMagic persons. This may work like Family Tree Maker 2014's Web Merge feature wherein the record is brought into the database for an event and with a source citation and media item.

Again, we will have to wait until the end of the year to find out.

I think that this is all good news. RootsMagic has been consistent in their statements all year, and, hopefully, will succeed in making the sync and download/attach document features work efficiently and logically by the end of 2016. I'm looking forward to be able to do these tasks in early 2017. Stay tuned.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/08/rootsmagic-provides-more-information.html

2016 Rockstar Genealogist Nominations are Open

Nominations are now open for the 2016 Rockstar Genealogist on John D. Reid's Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections blog - see Rockstar Genealogist Nominations are Open.

John's criteria for being a Rockstar Genealogist are:

"Rockstar genealogists are those who give 'must attend' presentations at family history conferences or as webinars, who when you see a new family history article or publication by that person, makes it a must buy. If you hang on their every word on a blog, podcast or newsgroup, or follow avidly on Facebook or Twitter they are likely Rockstar candidates."

The blog post has a list of those who have been nominated from past years and he solicits nominations for other potential rockstars.

The deadline for nominations is noon (EDT?) Friday, 2 September, and voting for Rockstar Genealogist in various categories will start on Saturday, 3 September.

Please participate - check your favorites to make sure they are nominated, or nominate someone who meets the criteria, and then vote when the opportunity is available.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/08/2016-rockstar-genealogist-nominations.html

Pages

Friday, September 2, 2016

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Tuesday, August 30, 2016