Not being an experienced genealogist/researcher, I hope this post is clear? In 1784 Samuel WEST was taxed on 450A of land in Sampson Co., NC, that new county's first tax list. No record has been found that Samuel bought this land so it is possible he inherited it. Land records to include state grants have been unsuccessfully searched in both Sampson and Duplin (parent county) Counties. No record has been found showing sale of these lands although it is known two of his sons and at least one grandson moved to Sampson from Duplin County. How do I proceed with attempts to determine Samuel's ownership of these lands? When and where did he obtain these lands? Any and all help appreciated. Fred, Sr. "Fred Frederick" <[email protected]>

> Has anyone noticed lately that when looking at family trees on > Ancestry that a growing number of them do not have a contact name, > only "unknown" at the top of the page. This really makes it > difficult to identify sources, connect with the contributor or > verify that the info is correct. I for one would like to complain > about it, but not sure where to send the complaint. > > Lois Brinks-Heath <[email protected]> I've noticed. Of 21 tress I viewed yesterday only 3 had contacts. But, based on the misinformation contained it's probably better to remain unknown. Who has time to send all those people proof of how wrong they are? It's best to use any "harvested" info as a clue, nothing more. You might try repeating, "It ain't nuthin' 'til I say it is." several times. Hugh [email protected] (J. Hugh Sullivan)

> > > Then there are family historians - good-hearted people who > > > sometimes (sometimes is a key word here) waive commonly accepted > > > rules of genealogy to please family and friends. This includes the > > > righteous among us who properly insist on bloodlines but who will be > > > in for a few disappointments when DNA testing is universal. > > > > > > J. Hugh Sullivan > > > > Mr. Sullivan: > > > > Your above comment (extracted from the full post), made me laugh out > > loud as I recalled my kin folks' reaction to the discovery I had > > made that proved the maternal GrGrandfather was illegitimate. While > > the kin folks knew this to be true, they did not want such records > > available for public use (the record was found at NARA) and they > > certainly did not want "the kid" knowing of and discussing this part > > of the family history. Many offers were made to me---payments if > > you will----to withhold that information. > > > > Your lines above gave me a good walk down memory lane. > > > > Fred Frederick <[email protected]> > > your post brings up a good point. as i work very diligently trying > to research my family history while I still have my mother and my > grandmother to use as sources i come across a situation where my > mother and an aunt had been married for a short period of time to > different men. neither of them wants to share any of their history > during those times. I know of these marriages because they were in > my lifetime so I have written them in my notes for use at a later > date but how does a person make others in the family understand that > this is a family history to share with our descendants so they can > know where they came from and who we are, They enjoy researching > with me and love to find new stories about our ancestors but still > are adamant about not sharing a small piece of their past. How can > we make people understand so they will share? > > Robin Percy <[email protected]> If there is any degree of "shame" or embarrassment you don't change their minds. It's not history yet because it happened to them - history is about dead people. Genealogy is not about morals but no one agrees with me. One of my sons was married at 17 and it lasted less than a year. Was it a "roll in the hay" or is it genealogy? My mother would never speak of her father because he divorced her mother. I didn't realize until after she died that she must have had a father. She never told me she had a miscarriage. It's gradually becoming easier to speak of those things. When a person's mind is made up they don't want to be confused by facts. Hugh [email protected] (J. Hugh Sullivan)

> If the uncle isn't related to me except by marriage, how could I be > second cousins once removed with his great-great granddaughter? > > <[email protected]> Because you're related to his wife? The second cousin is presumably her multi-great granddau as well. Lesley Robertson

> > > In the hope that some continued discussion will benefit newbies... > > > > > > None of my "proven" data is on any web site for several > > > reasons. > > > > > > J. Hugh Sullivan > > > > I looked myself up on the web and found that I had died in Scituate, > > Rhode Island a number of years ago. Reports of my death have been > > greatly exaggerated. > > > > Barbara Combs obie '70 > > Eugene, Oregon > > > > "Barbara J. Combs" <[email protected]> > > Either W. C. Fields or Mark Twain experienced the same thing and > remarked that the report was premature. > > BTW, where are you writing from? > > [email protected] (J. Hugh Sullivan) I am in Eugene, Oregon. I have never been to Rhode Island - one of the few states I have not visited. Barbara Combs obie '70 Eugene, Oregon "Barbara J. Combs" <[email protected]>

> your post brings up a good point. as i work very diligently trying > to research my family history while I still have my mother and my > grandmother to use as sources i come across a situation where my > mother and an aunt had been married for a short period of time to > different men. neither of them wants to share any of their history > during those times. I know of these marriages because they were in > my lifetime so I have written them in my notes for use at a later > date but how does a person make others in the family understand that > this is a family history to share with our descendants so they can > know where they came from and who we are, They enjoy researching > with me and love to find new stories about our ancestors but still > are adamant about not sharing a small piece of their past. How can > we make people understand so they will share? > > Robin Percy <[email protected]> I don't think you can get someone to talk about something they really don't want to. I've hit that wall a couple of times myself. One thing I did do was I found a listing of one of the marriages in the newspaper archives in my area. That spurred a conversation that gave me a little bit more of information which included the approximate length of the marriage. I then found the divorce announcement (court stuff) in newspaper archives as was published in that time frame (not to long ago). .... Donna "D.M. ST. FELIX" <[email protected]>

> > > In the hope that some continued discussion will benefit newbies... > > > > > > None of my "proven" data is on any web site for several > > > reasons. > > > > > > J. Hugh Sullivan > > > > I looked myself up on the web and found that I had died in Scituate, > > Rhode Island a number of years ago. Reports of my death have been > > greatly exaggerated. > > > > Barbara Combs obie '70 > > All of my data proven and unproven are on the Internet, without any > names of the living and without sources, I have benefited so much > from online postings that I feel the drive to share mine. When I am > contacted I can send whatever sources I choose and we can converse > on any points that come up. It makes me feel so good when someone > writes me that they really appreciated the information and I have > had some great breakthroughs from the ones that I write to and what > a fantastic tool is the post it notes on many of the places that I > research. > Any questions are welcome newby or not > http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=purplevw1&id=I65255 > > Sandra Tyler Duncan <[email protected]> Kindly folks, I just wanted to thank all of you for the discussion in this thread. I think this is just the sort of stuff that a newbie like myself needs to read. (I've been dabbling for about 2 months now.) On top of that, the link in the 2nd post in the thread http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi is marvelous despite any of the shortcomings that have been mentioned. I typed in just my great-grandfathers surname and place of death and was rewarded with just one match which is unquestionably him, along with ancestors going back farther than I had ever imagined I would find. Perhaps not "unquestionably" to some standards (which subject I have also been looking into - should I really go looking for a physical copy of a book published in 1863 to verify that what was copied to the internet is correct???) but absolutely matching a great many points that my Mom had recorded before her death in 1999. In fact I am quite inclined to email the lady who has compiled the data (Diane) and offer her some of the "missing pieces" my Mom recorded, which she evidently does not yet have. I can't really "prove" that my data is correct, though some of it probably comes from old family bibles and tombstone inscriptions. I suppose you might call my Mom and myself "casual genealogists" who are interested in the line of descent and family history, but may never meet the accepted "proof" standards. Please don't think I am taking Diane's data as being necessarily correct either - I'm just happy to have a better and more extensive starting place to look. I think I've rambled enough, so I'll just say thanks again, and that if anyone has any more advice I'll gladly hear it. Regards, Charlie -- To email me, eradicate obfuscate, remove dot invalid and replace dot and at with the obvious. obfuscatecsquared3 at comcast dot net dot invalid If this seems paranoid I'm sorry but you should see the spam I've gotten! "CSquared" <[email protected]>

[email protected] wrote: > I was going to thank everyone for their responses but now I'm > confused: > > If the uncle isn't related to me except by marriage, how could I be > second cousins once removed with his great-great granddaughter? He is in your cousin's bloodline, but not in yours. He married your 3G aunt; even if she had borne her children by someone else, her 2GGDau would have been your cousin. > I think I didn't make my question clear, so I'll restate it. > > My "cousin's" great-great grandfather married my great-great aunt. > They raised my great-grandmother, the great-great aunt's niece, > whose mother died. Had your question been posed this way the first time, I would have answered with a different kinship term (second cousin, to be exact). A link through your "great-great aunt" -- a *sister* of your GGM -- lines up your cousin a little differently from a link through your "great-grandmother's aunt." But my answer as to the aunt's husband would have been negative, just like before. The question was originally posed like this: > > > I would like to figure out the relationship between me and a > > > "cousin." Her paternal great-grandfather married my paternal > > > great-grandmother's maternal aunt. The two of them raised her after > > > her mother died. Here is how I parsed it (make sure your newsreader is set to display fixed-width text): ______________ | | F [Maternal] F = H [Aunt and husband] | | M [GGF] M [GF] | | M [GF] M [Father] | | M [Father] Cousin | Kberry I presumed male ancestors in most of the intervening generations based on the word "paternal" in both lineage descriptions, but the principle is the same no matter which side you trace in each generation. The diagram does not dictate an identity for H, except in so far as he could not be anyone other than Cousin's GGF. It is only by virtue of his wife's bloodline that his descendants are your kin. Conversely, the father of Cousin's GF could be someone other than H (by what the genetically inclined call a "non-paternity event"), and Cousin would still be your cousin. It may be conventional to address the spouses of kin members in kin terms, but it is not biologically factual. > How am I related to the great-great granddaughter? How am I related > to her great-great grandfather? > > Kberry <[email protected]> What can I say? The answer depends on the reconstruction. Austin W. Spencer

> Has anyone noticed lately that when looking at family trees on > Ancestry that a growing number of them do not have a contact name, > only "unknown" at the top of the page. This really makes it > difficult to identify sources, connect with the contributor or > verify that the info is correct. I for one would like to complain > about it, but not sure where to send the complaint. > > Lois Brinks-Heath please give an url never seen that Hugh W -- Beta blogger http://nanowrimo3.blogspot.com/ visiting my past http://hughw36-2.blogspot.com/ re-entry http://snaps4.blogspot.com/" photographs and walks old blogger http://hughw36.blogspot.com/ MAIN BLOG Hugh Watkins <[email protected]>

> [...] > If the uncle isn't related to me except by marriage, how could I be > second cousins once removed with his great-great granddaughter? > [...] > > [email protected] What you aren't making clear is whether or not the gggdaughter of the "uncle by marriage" is also the gggdaughter of your "aunt". Some examples of nomenclature I use: An aunt of mine married, and she and her husband had children. They are my cousins. Another aunt married a man who already had children. They are my step-cousins. If an aunt had brought up her husband's nephews and nieces, I would consider them my foster cousins. (How I treat all three groups would probably depend on relative ages and how often we met.) In all cases, I would call the uncles "Uncle", but know that they were uncles-in-law. [email protected] (cecilia)

YES, YES!! IF WE CANNOT CONTACT THE PERSON WHO SENT THE INFORMATION I DO NOT THINK IT SHOULD BE ACCEPTED BY ANCESTRY.COM. MY TREE IS FULL OF ERRORS AND MY PRETEEN CHILDREN ARE IDENTIFIED!!!!! IT HAS A CONTACT THAT IS INVALID. PLEASE ANCESTRY, DON'T ACCEPT THESE TREES THAT ARE NOT IDENTIFIABLE!!!!! HOW CAN WE CORRECT AND DELETE? [email protected]

> read some of the old Bastardy Bonds. Some ladies > said "Oops" several times. > > J. Hugh Sullivan Purity is in the imagination of the beholder. Karen Rhodes Whose bigamous great-great grandfather got her into the IBSSG "Karen Rhodes" <[email protected]>

> Has anyone noticed lately that when looking at family trees on > Ancestry that a growing number of them do not have a contact name, > only "unknown" at the top of the page. This really makes it > difficult to identify sources, connect with the contributor or > verify that the info is correct. I for one would like to complain > about it, but not sure where to send the complaint. > > Lois Heath <[email protected]> Lois- The unknown trees are the ones that were added to One World Tree from the old old World Family Tree CDs. The contact info is private on those CDs and, therefore, also on the CDs. I know many of the trees on those old CDs are also included in WorldConnect--so you might search there for the same surnames and you may well find the submitter listed there. Joan [email protected]

Could someone who has access to the Dallas Morning News archives please send me these two articles: "Observes 84th Birthday" Name: Mrs. J. A. Lane Date: December 20, 1940 Paper: Dallas Morning News "Woodrow Wilson's Driver Passes in McKinney Hospital" Name: Sam Lane Date: October 21, 1949 Paper: Dallas Morning News I used to have access to the archives through Heritage Quest (through the Godfrey Library), but the Godfrey Library no longer has Heritage Quest. Mrs. J. A. Lane is my great-grandmother and Sam is her son. TIA. Laurie Nelson "Laurie" <[email protected]>

Dear List, I want to share this URL that was sent to me ... Hope it will be useful to someone. Kathleen TheShipsList website, online since August 1999, will help you find your ancestors on ships' passenger lists. We also have immigration reports, newspaper records, shipwreck information, ship pictures, ship descriptions, shipping-line fleet lists and more; as well as hundreds of passenger lists to Canada, USA, Australia and even some for South Africa. They have over 1800 totally free access web-pages with new databases added regularly Besides Passenger Lists - Marriage at Sea - Famine Emigrants - Ship Decriptions - Ship Wrecks - Ship Pictures - Events of 1862 - Ship Arrivals - Ship Rigging - & Rescource Links http://www.theshipslist.com/ Kathleen & Tim Anast <[email protected]>

I have a 1920 census record which says a specific man was born in Russia/Poland and emigrated in 1905. His parents were both also born in Russia/Poland, and the native language of both is Hebrew. His wife was born in Pa, her father in Russia/Poland native language Hebrew and her mother born in Hungary native language Hungarian (struck-through and Magyar written above). Cheryl singhals <[email protected]>

> For those of you who resent having their hard-won > data re-posted by someone else: > Why are you posting things you don't want passed > on? > > Virginia Beck It's not a matter of not wanting our information passed on. It's a matter of being madder than a wet hen at seeing someone else claim as THEIR work that which WE have labored to produce. I want to be able to put my information out there -- I just want to do it in such a way that someone else cannot steal it and claim that THEY did all the work that *I* actually did! Karen Rhodes "Karen Rhodes" <[email protected]>

> > Has anyone come up with a way to design a genealogical website so > > that it is impossible for commercial outfits to harvest the > > information? Or at least difficult enough to make it not worth the > > trouble? I've toyed with mounting everything as graphics. Just > > putting up a GEDCOM seems to me the perfect bait for the commercial > > outfits' "bots." Finding a way to foil this particularly nasty > > habit of the commercial concerns would be a good use of time, to my > > mind! > > > > "Karen Rhodes" <[email protected]> > > I wouldn't say its impossible for commercial outfits to harvest the > info from the site I created, but I think it's difficult. I > basically created two versions of my family history site: a "lite" > public version and a family-only private version using server > security features with a unique username/password for each person to > keep the "meat" out of public view. > > I do still want to help those individuals that may find use in what > I've researched, so I create public versions of family tree branches > in graphic format, which while tedious, makes it a little harder for > robots to harvest. And I never post GEDCOM files. Of course I'm > happy to talk with anyone who thinks there may be a family > connection and share appropriate levels of information that way. > > As a last measure, I also make use of a robots.txt file to keep the > search indexing robots that "play nice" out of directories or files > I don't want indexed. > > My public pages are at http://www.mannfamily.cc/public/ in case > anyone is curious! > > Joseph Mann <[email protected]> Another way to deal with the issue is to create a private yahoogroup, limiting membership, and limiting access rights to members. You can store up to 20 Mb in files there. It provides maillist capabilities as well. Membership to a group is by invitation. Ed "Edward Feustel" <[email protected]>

> > None of my "proven" data is on any web site for several reasons. > snip> > > > I don't want it harvested by commercial groups for one. > snip> > Yeah, but there may be someone out there banging his or her head on > a brick wall -- as we all have done. And your information may be the > key to unlock the hidden vault they are seeking. snip> I'm pretty much a newbie here...have been digging for only about three-four years. Small tale follows..... There was a "stepmother" who married my grandfather after my grandmother died, and I always thought she may have been the mother of a bunch of rellies we used to visit in the summer, back when I was a child. Thought that was her surname connection to us. Now, this grandfather was impossible to find for a long time, and every time I tired of searching for him, I would search online for the name of the rellies. Yeah, I was head-banging, but I had so very little to go on, I did it repeatedly. :-) Lo and behold, one day I found a name I recognized....one of the summer rellies!!! Excitement ensued. I contacted the owner of the site, and learned that she knew nothing about this person; he was incidental to her line. But she referred me to a person who did, and who knew that this person's daughter was alive and the upshot of the whole thing was that I called and talked to the daughter. Well, it turned out they weren't children of the stepmother, but my very own blood relations! The woman I called turned out to be my first cousin. I learned quite a lot from her about the vagaries of my grandfather's family. And enormously enlarged my information. The point is, I would never have made this connection had I not stumbled across that name on someone's public web site. For that I shall always be grateful. Now, I am pretty sure there's no way to "tick-lock" anything placed on a public site. After all, it's all just electrons. Well, images might do it, but they're so danged unhandy and all. And I'm sure not gonna believe anything w/o proving it. But I am so glad it was out there, waiting for me!!! :-) It was just what I needed to break through, find new relations and finally nail the old bast .... er ... my grandfather. ;-) Adhani=C3=A1 =3D?iso-8859-1?Q?Adhani=3DE1?=3D <[email protected]>

> > In the hope that some continued discussion will benefit newbies... > > > > None of my "proven" data is on any web site for several > > reasons. > > > > J. Hugh Sullivan > > I looked myself up on the web and found that I had died in Scituate, > Rhode Island a number of years ago. Reports of my death have been > greatly exaggerated. > > Barbara Combs obie '70 > Eugene, Oregon > > "Barbara J. Combs" <[email protected]> Either W. C. Fields or Mark Twain experienced the same thing and remarked that the report was premature. BTW, where are you writing from? Hugh [email protected] (J. Hugh Sullivan)