Ian Goddard wrote (in soc.genealogy.computing): > It renders quite nicely with Seamonkey. "children" and John Kelly Brown Camino, which allegedly is closely related to SeaMonkey, does not connect the lines. But I'm not really interested in the lines. I'm interested in a way to define divs so that each person's div contains the divs of his parents, recursively, and the positioning, being related to that of the enclosing div makes the entire chart look right. So (using brackets for angles): [div class="person"] Person's details [div class="person father"] his father's details [div class="person father"] paternal grandfather's details [/div] [div class="person mother"] paternal grandmother's details [/div] [/div] [div class="person mother"] his mother's details [div class="person father"] maternal grandfather's details [/div] [div class="person mother"] maternal grandmother's details [/div] [/div] [/div] .person { most of the style info common to all; positioning info that puts his/her details to the left of his box, centered vertically in that box; margin, padding, and whatnot that makes that box big enough to hold the boxes (if any) of the divs within; } .mother { positioning info that puts mother's box in the lower right of the enclosing div } .father { positioning info that puts father's box in the upper right of the enclosing div } This would make automated chart generation easier: function show_person(ID, level) { if level = max { return } css_class = "person" if (level > 1) { if (person is male) { css_class = css_class & " father" } else { css_class = css_class & " mother" } print "[div class=\"css_class\"]" print details of person F_ID = father_of(ID) if found { show_person(F_ID, level + 1) } M_ID = mother_of(ID) if found { show_person(M_ID, level + 1) } } // end show_person But this is really more of a question for a CSS group, so followups to comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets -- Wes Groleau Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it. -- Robert A. Heinlein

In article <28856fc7-cc96-40f1-935f-2bbb60828c53 @n77g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, roni.segoly@gmail.com says... | |Did all immigrants come via Ellis island? | http://www.castlegarden.org is a good place to start for pre Ellis Island immigrants.

There used to be a shareware genealogy program (wish I could remember the name of it!) with a timeline capability to include every individual in the database and their dated events. The format was vertical - terrific for seeing ancestor peer-groups and understanding the relativity of the various ancestors' life events. Does anyone know of a current program that 1) produces a vertical time line and 2) can include the entire database (as opposed to just individuals and singular family groups)? Thanks! -- SCP

J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: > On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:11:46 +0000, Ian Goddard > <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: > >> J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >>> I can prove my ancestors "beyond a reasonable doubt" back to Adam and >>> Eve using the Bible and Irish Mythology - published and respected >> I think the word "Mythology" might be a slight problem there - though >> maybe not with an Irish jury. >> >> -- >> Ian > > "The Annals of the Four Masters" begins "when darkness was upon the > face of the earth". Sounds like Belfast c AD 1970 > "Milesian Kings" begins in 3501 BC. "Japhet was Somewhat later than the C-14 date for the Ballynagilly house. > the eldest son of Noah. He had fifteen sons, amongst whom he divided > Europe and the part of Asia which his father had allotted to him." - > that's from Milesian Genealogies. > The Four Masters would be tricky to check. Better stick to the Four Courts. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

Bob LeChevalier wrote: > Haines Brown <brownh@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> wrote: > Incidentally, I was once interested in how >> to render a descendant report entirely in CSS. Here's my little >> experiment: www.hartford-hwp.com/genealogy/Brown/brown-1.html . I didn't >> try to develop this little rendition experiment because no one seemed >> particularly interested. > > I'm not sure exactly what you were trying to do, but it doesn't > display correctly in my browser (IE7). The borders and the shading > and the text are all somewhat out of alignment with each other, such > that I don't know what the intended graphics are. There are two lists > of what I presume are offspring (one offset to the right, and one > left-aligned and below) which I am guessing are connected to the two > wives mentioned in the first box, but that isn't conveyed by the > graphics as opposed to my analysis of the text. > It renders quite nicely with Seamonkey. "children" and John Kelly Brown connect together and connect to Benjamin Webb Brown aligned with Elizabeth Vansant, the offsprint below those connect together an align with Lydia Hackett. All the children in the right hand column are connected together and to John Kelly Brown. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

Haines Brown wrote: > Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> writes: > >> One of the problems with data display in modern genealogy programs is >> that there is usually no way to communicate fuzzy truth. In Legacy, I >> can assign a confidence level to a source for a particular datum, but >> unless someone digs down into the innards of my data and looks at that >> confidence level, they'll never see it - it doesn't figure into any of >> the displays or reports above the obscure footnote level that in fact >> probably nobody will ever read, including me. So I never bother >> filling it in. > > Very interesting. What you are saying is that a print (printed page or > on a browser) cannot accurately reflect the reality of the lineage with > all its uncertainties. Normally when one prints something, what is > printed is static, unambivalent. Is it possible to print uncertainty? A > conventional way might be to use a dotted line rather than a solid line, > or lines with different colors, although that would be unconventional > and would require the display of a color key to indicate degrees of > uncertainty. The root problem here is that the traditional genealogical presentation standards were devised to present certainties. A document was likely to be used to illustrate a patron's descent from a notable ancestor. The patron wouldn't be pleased to have a representation that showed it wasn't clear that he was so descended. If we want to show finer nuances we need to devise alternative representations. One approach I've used to summarise a lot of information has been to draw boxes to represent families with links from the child of one family to the parent of the next generation. Where it's not clear which child in the earlier generation was the parent in the next I could draw links to each alternative. It would be perfectly possible to annotate such a link with one's thoughts about its probability. In practical terms I used (or misused!) Enterprise Architect, a UML package for this, largely because it was to hand. The families were represented by class symbols with the parents' names as the class title and childrens' names (and DoB) as attribute names. As EA allows a link to be pinned to a specific point on the symbol's boundary I could ensure that a link was adjacent to the correct child. EA allows notes to be added to the links - and to the families themselves. As an added refinement EA could be persuaded to allow symbols from different diagram types; I used the Synch symbol from the state diagram palette to handle the situation where I had two children of the same name on one generation and two fathers of the same name in the next but no information as to which was which. Such a diagram is, of course, static but could be revised as one's views changed with additional information. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:11:46 +0000, Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: >J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >> >> I can prove my ancestors "beyond a reasonable doubt" back to Adam and >> Eve using the Bible and Irish Mythology - published and respected > >I think the word "Mythology" might be a slight problem there - though >maybe not with an Irish jury. > >-- >Ian "The Annals of the Four Masters" begins "when darkness was upon the face of the earth". "Milesian Kings" begins in 3501 BC. "Japhet was the eldest son of Noah. He had fifteen sons, amongst whom he divided Europe and the part of Asia which his father had allotted to him." - that's from Milesian Genealogies. I guess we'll have to excuse all those old guys for calling tracing bloodlines genealogy. Would a sub for Mythology be Creative Reconstruction? Hugh

J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: > > I can prove my ancestors "beyond a reasonable doubt" back to Adam and > Eve using the Bible and Irish Mythology - published and respected I think the word "Mythology" might be a slight problem there - though maybe not with an Irish jury. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 19:01:08 +0000, Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: >J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >> On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:39:24 +0000, Ian Goddard >> <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: >> >>> J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >>>> I wanted to avoid your question. I don't know who appoints them. I >>>> suspect you could be one in the UK if you are a recognized authority >>>> on the subject. >>> It's a long time since I appointed anyone to anything and I certainly >>> wouldn't want to appoint anyone to define the bounds of genealogy or any >>> other area of study. It's simply not useful to do so as any such bounds >>> are likely to be outgrown. For instance a definition of genealogy from >>> not very long ago would have excluded DNA. >>> -- >>> Ian >> >> I am satisfied with a competent group setting standards for quality >> and accurate genealogy. I doubt that I follow (or even know) all the >> standards. A competent group will always be on top of change. >> >> I don't know that DNA would have been excluded. It's just another >> source, or tool, to be used. I doubt that any standard would even >> attempt to list all the tools that can be used. > >But this subthread (and, BTW, congratulations on engineering an >extremely interesting thread out of an uninspiring initial OT commercial >post) rose from your being somewhat narrowly prescriptive about what is >or isn't genealogy. I was too specific and needed to put it in reverse nomenclature gear. >I simply point out that a narrow prescriptive >definition of genealogy 10 or 15 years ago would have confined it to the >discovery and interpretation of records, mostly BMD and census with a >few other documents such as wills and MIs thrown in because that would >have been the raw material at the time. DNA would have been not so much >excluded as not included. I agree with "not included". >> I don't want to get bound up in semantics - I use the easiest and most >> recognizeable terms to most people. They may lose something in >> translation if you are not an American from the USA. >> > >Fair enough. > >As to standards ISTM that everyone contributing to this thread has come >from a background which has endowed them with the ability to apply a >degree of rigour to their thinking and I doubt they're in need of help >from a self-selected set of authorities. In fact the sum of their >contributions seems to me as likely to be of value to anyone wanting to >understand how to evaluate evidence as any prescriptive standard. But there are probably more readers than contributors since the thread got a bit confrontational. The benefit to several will be the discussion of various ideas and they can choose. Each of the wise among us will have taken something from the thread. >To throw in my own two penn'orth I'd like to point out that >circumstances can affect standards of proof. As one example, at least >in the court system with which I'm familiar there are two legal >standards of proof, beyond reasonable doubt and balance of >probabilities, depending on the type of case. One size does not fit all. What we don't know, that we don't know, will always be a problem. I can prove my ancestors "beyond a reasonable doubt" back to Adam and Eve using the Bible and Irish Mythology - published and respected works. But the links from my gg grandfather to my probable ggggg grandfather is theory that can't be disproved. My problem is that I have no proof other than no disproof. I understand that those who have disagreed with my methods here would quickly adopt my theory as gospel if they were of the line. I'm not ready to submit to mediocrity so quickly. But I have no problem if they do. DNA will make fools of a lot of us. Hugh

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:44:59 -0500, Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote: >Eagle@bellsouth.net (J. Hugh Sullivan) wrote: >>>One of my other incarnations has been as a member of an editorial board for >>>a scientific journal. Even when deling with professionals, with apparently >>>fairly well-enforced professional standards, I've still been saddened by the >>>low standards of research and historical verification by some. It's going to >>>happen, the only thing to do is find work-arounds. >> >>It's going to happen but why must it? I think those people need to be >>embarrassed. > >You make the assumption that they possibly CAN be embarrassed. > >If they don't take the work as seriously as you do, which is almost >certainly the case, they probably can't be. > >lojbab One way or another people who do sloppy, inaccurate work get left behind by those who don't. Hugh

Haines Brown wrote: > There are surely practical difficulties, but the notion of increasing > transparency or fading (quite different things) are easily handled in > CSS. Or Javascript or Java. Fading is interesting--what if the grandfather in the on-screen tree, along with all his ancestors, cycled, fading from one possibility to the next? I've seen images doing that, and acting as variable links at the same time, so that if you click on it, it knows which image you clicked on. -- Wes Groleau Promote multi-use trails in northeast Indiana! http://www.NorthwestAllenTrails.org/

Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> writes: > Haines Brown <brownh@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> wrote: > I find nothing in your summary objectionable. But you omitted one > concept I don't fully understand myself in its technical aspects, but > still use metaphorically when thinking about data and facts. > > That concept is the one of "fuzzy" truth values (and thereby fuzzy > logic). Very seldom can we assign perfect truth or perfect falsehood > to an alleged fact, and sometimes we aren't all that sure what > standard of truth we want to apply to a putative fact. This gets kinda difficult. Yes, our observations are approximate. I'll never forget studying standard deviation as a neophyte freshman ;-(. But this obscures the difference between objective probability (processes are actually rather random), and subjective probability (we are ignorant or our measurements are inaccurate). Fuzzy logic is an aspect of set theory that addresses degrees of truth, not probabilities of fact. The difference is often taken as being between subjective truth in the former case, and objective truth in the latter. The latter engages such things as a probabilistic causality that are quite independent of the observer. This is often brought up in the context of quantum mechanics, but it is of general application. Einstein insisted that God does not play dice, but now we all know better. On the other hand, fuzzy logic supports partial membership in a set so that our logical statements cab accommodate loose categories. > Hugh has three possible ancestors to his earliest "proven" ancestor. > He could, by whatever means he chose, assign a fuzzy truth value to > each of them, thereby entertaining all three possibilities at once. > If he ever gets further information, the truth values he assigns might > change. Yes, there are many examples. We might identify ourselves as "Americans", as Black, as male, etc. Each represents a truth in a certain conceptual framework. You might have some weak evidence that points to descent from a particular person, but you are not entirely sure. Is this a question of objective truth or of subjective truth where fuzzy logic would apply? Generally there is really only one father (as DNA would show), but we are ignorant of just who it is. So maybe fuzzy logic would be appropriate. > One of the problems with data display in modern genealogy programs is > that there is usually no way to communicate fuzzy truth. In Legacy, I > can assign a confidence level to a source for a particular datum, but > unless someone digs down into the innards of my data and looks at that > confidence level, they'll never see it - it doesn't figure into any of > the displays or reports above the obscure footnote level that in fact > probably nobody will ever read, including me. So I never bother > filling it in. Very interesting. What you are saying is that a print (printed page or on a browser) cannot accurately reflect the reality of the lineage with all its uncertainties. Normally when one prints something, what is printed is static, unambivalent. Is it possible to print uncertainty? A conventional way might be to use a dotted line rather than a solid line, or lines with different colors, although that would be unconventional and would require the display of a color key to indicate degrees of uncertainty. > I envision a tree display that would display the most likely choice, > but perhaps if you hovered on a particular link, it might display > multiple trees overlayed, with different colors or densities based on > relative likelihoods. That seems easy to do in CSS, but I suspect it is like your footnotes: people are unaware of the other possibilities until their mouse hovers over a person, fact or relation. For that matter, such as hover could easily cause a pop-up that provides the information about the uncertainty. But I get the impression your aim is to have the uncertainty immediately obvious rather than depend on the visitor to the site pursuing more information. Of course, nearly all display software does not use CSS, and since most of it is proprietary, there's not much you can do about changing appearances. All I know is that if one can display a lineage in CSS, what you suggest can be done. Incidentally, I was once interested in how to render a descendant report entirely in CSS. Here's my little experiment: www.hartford-hwp.com/genealogy/Brown/brown-1.html . I didn't try to develop this little rendition experiment because no one seemed particularly interested. > I could imagine that with proper calculation that I don't myself know > how to do, that immediate ancestors that one is sure of, would show up > dark and boldly colored, and as one works back up the tree towards > Adam and Eve, the lower probabilities of the data being factual would > show up less bold and dimmer. The lines one has more evidence for > would be strong, and the lines with weaker evidence or multiple > possibilities would show up weak (and expand into the multiple options > being displayed in the appropriate user-interface conditions). There are surely practical difficulties, but the notion of increasing transparency or fading (quite different things) are easily handled in CSS. -- Haines Brown, KB1GRM

Haines Brown <brownh@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> wrote: >Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> writes: >> One of the problems with data display in modern genealogy programs is >> that there is usually no way to communicate fuzzy truth. In Legacy, I >> can assign a confidence level to a source for a particular datum, but >> unless someone digs down into the innards of my data and looks at that >> confidence level, they'll never see it - it doesn't figure into any of >> the displays or reports above the obscure footnote level that in fact >> probably nobody will ever read, including me. So I never bother >> filling it in. > >Very interesting. What you are saying is that a print (printed page or >on a browser) cannot accurately reflect the reality of the lineage with >all its uncertainties. Normally when one prints something, what is >printed is static, unambivalent. Is it possible to print uncertainty? A >conventional way might be to use a dotted line rather than a solid line, >or lines with different colors, although that would be unconventional >and would require the display of a color key to indicate degrees of >uncertainty. I was think more in terms of a dynamic on-screen display, since I think more people view genealogy data on a web page (or a display screen from their genealogy software). Print is rather too immutable. But certainly, there are a few techniques that would work with print, like those you mentioned. >> I envision a tree display that would display the most likely choice, >> but perhaps if you hovered on a particular link, it might display >> multiple trees overlayed, with different colors or densities based on >> relative likelihoods. > >That seems easy to do in CSS, but I suspect it is like your footnotes: >people are unaware of the other possibilities until their mouse hovers >over a person, fact or relation. For that matter, such as hover could >easily cause a pop-up that provides the information about the >uncertainty. But I get the impression your aim is to have the >uncertainty immediately obvious rather than depend on the visitor to the >site pursuing more information. I'd like both. I'm not saying it would be easy though. www.familysearchlabs.org has done some experiments with pedigree and genealogical data display that gave me the idea that some sort of dynamic display might manage to convey this kind of information. I think they use Flash. (But for all that I used to program for a living, I have no idea how any of this web-based programming works. I haven't yet figured out how to design my own home page %^). Incidentally, I was once interested in how >to render a descendant report entirely in CSS. Here's my little >experiment: www.hartford-hwp.com/genealogy/Brown/brown-1.html . I didn't >try to develop this little rendition experiment because no one seemed >particularly interested. I'm not sure exactly what you were trying to do, but it doesn't display correctly in my browser (IE7). The borders and the shading and the text are all somewhat out of alignment with each other, such that I don't know what the intended graphics are. There are two lists of what I presume are offspring (one offset to the right, and one left-aligned and below) which I am guessing are connected to the two wives mentioned in the first box, but that isn't conveyed by the graphics as opposed to my analysis of the text. lojbab

singhals wrote: > Chad Hanna wrote: > >> rsegoly wrote: >> >>> Hello, >>> >>> I am looking for relative who immigrated from Dorohoi Romania to US >>> sometime between 1900-1915. He was married and his family followed him >>> later. >>> >>> I know his surname was Schleifer. >>> >>> I found on Ellis island only one possible candidate (Mortiz) >>> immigrated 1904 and his age was 24, but it say he was still single. >>> >>> I am not sure I can read the hand writing as English is not my mother >>> tongue, can someone have a look at the record? >>> >>> Did all immigrants come via Ellis island? >>> >>> In case he's the guy, any advice how do I find his relatives in US? >>> >>> Roni >> >> >> Not all immigrants came via Ellis island. >> >> Some will have arrived via other ports on the Eastern seaboard (the >> main alternatives being Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New >> Orleans) and some will have travelled via Canada and crossed the >> Canadian border. It might be worth reading John P Colletta's book - >> They came in Ships >> >> Note that many European immigrants will have travelled via the UK and >> outgoing passenger lists can be found at http://www.ancestorsonboard.com/ >> >> As a Brit, I feel unqualified to offer advice about this, but I'd be >> tempted to look at the Federal Census for 1920, 1930 to try and find >> the family together. >> >> Chad >> >> > > > Ummm ahhh... PURELY in the spirit of paying forward some of the grief > given non-British asking questions on soc.gen.british ... ;) > > LOOK at a map! New Orleans is many things, but "Eastern Seaboard" isn't > among 'em. It's one of a half-dozen or so Gulf ports. > > Among the Eastern Seaboard ports not mentioned would be Savannah and > Miami and in some time periods, Alexandria VA. > > Cheryl John Colletta's book mentions that there were over a hundred ports of entry, ranging from Portland, Maine to Galveston, Texas. I'm sorry if my shorthand offended you but I meant to include the Gulf of Mexico. There are many such questions that perplex those outside the country, e.g. what exactly is the mid-west? My main concern was that the OP's original question wasn't being fully addressed. Chad -- Chad Hanna Systems Developer FamilyHistoryOnline www.familyhistoryonline.net FreeBSD Apache MySQL Perl mod_perl PHP

J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: > On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:39:24 +0000, Ian Goddard > <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: > >> J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >>> I wanted to avoid your question. I don't know who appoints them. I >>> suspect you could be one in the UK if you are a recognized authority >>> on the subject. >> It's a long time since I appointed anyone to anything and I certainly >> wouldn't want to appoint anyone to define the bounds of genealogy or any >> other area of study. It's simply not useful to do so as any such bounds >> are likely to be outgrown. For instance a definition of genealogy from >> not very long ago would have excluded DNA. >> -- >> Ian > > I am satisfied with a competent group setting standards for quality > and accurate genealogy. I doubt that I follow (or even know) all the > standards. A competent group will always be on top of change. > > I don't know that DNA would have been excluded. It's just another > source, or tool, to be used. I doubt that any standard would even > attempt to list all the tools that can be used. But this subthread (and, BTW, congratulations on engineering an extremely interesting thread out of an uninspiring initial OT commercial post) rose from your being somewhat narrowly prescriptive about what is or isn't genealogy. I simply point out that a narrow prescriptive definition of genealogy 10 or 15 years ago would have confined it to the discovery and interpretation of records, mostly BMD and census with a few other documents such as wills and MIs thrown in because that would have been the raw material at the time. DNA would have been not so much excluded as not included. > > A male and a female procreate. The offspring and their descendants are > the basis of what many people call genealogy. If the momma isn't sure > who the daddy was it doesn't change the genealogy - ir might change > the names of record. > > I think genealogy that does not include events is too skimpy to > consider. Those events are the family history of the genealogy. > > I don't want to get bound up in semantics - I use the easiest and most > refognizeable terms to mose people. They may lose something in > translation if you are not an American from the USA. > Fair enough. As to standards ISTM that everyone contributing to this thread has come from a background which has endowed them with the ability to apply a degree of rigour to their thinking and I doubt they're in need of help from a self-selected set of authorities. In fact the sum of their contributions seems to me as likely to be of value to anyone wanting to understand how to evaluate evidence as any prescriptive standard. To throw in my own two penn'orth I'd like to point out that circumstances can affect standards of proof. As one example, at least in the court system with which I'm familiar there are two legal standards of proof, beyond reasonable doubt and balance of probabilities, depending on the type of case. One size does not fit all. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: > Eliminate everything that is untrue, and whatever remains, however > impossible it seems, must be true. I believe A. Conan Doyle caused > Sherlock Holmes to say that. It was more like "When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Of course in real life, 1. Are you sure that's impossible? 2. Are you sure the remaining item is the _only_ other item? -- Wes Groleau ----------- Curmudgeon's Complaints on Courtesy: http://www.onlinenetiquette.com/courtesy1.html (Not necessarily my opinion, but worth reading)

Bob LeChevalier wrote: > Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote: >> My great-grandfather's family history gives specific birthdates >> for all his twelve siblings. Most of them are they day after >> the dates in his mother's Civil War pension file. Is that weird? > > No. In French and Canadian records quite often the baptism date is > recorded (and remembered by the family) as the date of birth, even > though it is often the day after the actual birth. If the family you > describe was Catholic, I'd suspect that is what the family remembers. Nope. Father was a United Brethren minister. No Catholics among the children or their spouses. Parents married in Illinois after the Civil War, spent most of their married life in Missouri and Kansas. >> In the library here, there is a publication of the local genealogical >> society purporting to be tombstone inscriptions of a small cemetery >> near me. It omits many stones, includes much info that is NOT on the >> stones, and gets dates wrong that are clear and easy-to-read on the >> stones. > > Sounds like they may be cemetery records rather than tombstone > records. The tombstone dates were of course what the stonecutter was > given, which may not have been the same document that ended up in the > cemetery records. Claimed to be tombstone inscriptions, and mentioned in the intro that one might also check the records at _______ church. > Going through French baptism records, which are written in the books > sequentially, just this past night I ran across a series of dates 10 > Jan, 13 Jan, 14 Nov, 20 Jan. Recording the month wrong can in fact be > a typo. In some parts of Canada, priests traveled around doing baptisms and copied them from notes when they got back to their church. So that might explain getting out of order. But I don't see anyway someone writing OR typing could see "March" and think they saw "April." And obviously the proofreading was nil, because that was only one of many, many errors, additions, and omissions. -- Wes Groleau Change is inevitable. Conservatives should learn that "inevitable" is not a synonym for "bad." Liberals need to learn that "inevitable" is not a synonym for "good." -- WWG

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:34:07 GMT, Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote: >J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >> I think you miss his point. Wes I was hoping he would be more >> successful in avoiding semantics than me - which was his point. > >Just yankin' yer chain.... > >-- >Wes Groleau Keep on truckin'. I have a quality yanking chain that enjoys working out. 8-) Hugh

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:33:02 GMT, Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote: >J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >> It's also totally acceptable to me. But if I find a Groleau in my line >> I'll ask about your recording standards. > >Every page of my WorldConnect DB starts with > > > WARNING: Database does contain errors. > >and ends with > > > Accuracy NOT guaranteed; but [please send corrections] > > This data may speed up your search; it can NOT replace it. > >and GEDCOM snippets downloaded from there (no longer allowed) >contained a header (1) chastising anyone who fails to check >sources and (2) forbidding commercial use. > >None of that stopped several people from merging or copying it >without the disclaimers, nor stopped Kindred Konnections from >selling the entire file. > >-- >Wes Groleau Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. That's why I no longer put my logical reconstructions on Internet and why I never make my trees public. I enjoy meeting people online and switching to e-mail for research and exchange of info. Hugh

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:12:30 +0100, "Lesley Robertson" <l.a.robertson@tnw.tudelft.nl> wrote: >"J. Hugh Sullivan" <Eagle@bellsouth.net> wrote in message >news:47b60295.32453555@newsgroups.bellsouth.net... >> All that can be sourced to the Family History Library, >> Ancestry.com and other sources. So much for sources without adequate >> confirmation. A lot of people are just lousy genealogists - and a >> bunch of them don't seem to care. >> > >But that shows that the system works - they give their source, which is >readily seen to be unreliable and the info can therefore be discarded. That's fine if one wishes to be nothing more than a wheat and chaff separator. I want someone to do that for me. >One of my other incarnations has been as a member of an editorial board for >a scientific journal. Even when deling with professionals, with apparently >fairly well-enforced professional standards, I've still been saddened by the >low standards of research and historical verification by some. It's going to >happen, the only thing to do is find work-arounds. It's going to happen but why must it? I think those people need to be embarrassed. The problem is that, once generally accepted, the thing grows exponentially. A wrong repeated by enough people becomes right. >"Everyone says, therefore it's true" is the fastest way to start alarm bells >ringing. Eliminate everything that is untrue, and whatever remains, however impossible it seems, must be true. I believe A. Conan Doyle caused Sherlock Holmes to say that. Hugh