At 1:09 PM -0500 2/11/99, Sharon Sergeant wrote: >Last year, Judith Glad came up with a great project for our winter doldrums >where we posted our earliest Holmes ancestor with general migration path and >dates. I have been working on another project to do with migration queries and >would like to do a Holmes project based on Judith's work last year. As I see it, the "Earliest Known HOLMES" project was a way of collecting a focused set of queries -- a set of questions, not a set of answers. For example, my "EKH" was from Connecticut, born in 1804, and went to Madison County, New York. Anyone who saw that and who had HOLMESes -- earliest known or otherwise -- in Connecticut at around that time, especially any who went to Madison County, could get in touch with me and say, here, could there be a connection? Anyone who had an EKH in Independence, Iowa around 1900 wouldn't benefit from my posting -- but I could reply to *their* posting to say a grandson of my EKH moved to Independence near the end of the 19th century. Looking back at your message, I guess you're thinking in terms of a database of migration paths, not a database of queries regarding earliest known HOLMESes. That's really quite a different thing, and using the phrase "earliest known HOLMES" in connection with it is, I think, a little confusing. >How much detail would you like to see in such an overview style database? >Do you want to know if a date or date range is based on birth, marriage, >death, census, christening/baptism, land, church, business/civic, newspaper, >genealogy/history pubs, family bible or family recollection? Nope. Too much clutter. These details can and should be supplied in correspondance with the submitter, to make the database of queries less cumbersome to use... or via a link to a web site where the query submitter has additional information. I think for a database like this to be useable it needs to have concise, well-organized information, and pointers to more details if they're desired. >Do you want to know what the related families were in a particular area? Yes -- that would be useful. >Do you want the locations broken down into country.st/province.county.town >detail ? Absolutely. >I have constructed a somewhat detailed form that you can look at at >http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/7945/FamilyUpdate.htm >but think that that is too detailed, so I would like to find a middle ground >between that level of detail and my sample summary above. I haven't gone to your web page, but I thought the sample summary had too much in it -- too many names, anyway, and too much repetition of places. If your focus really is on migration patterns I think I'd set it up with data records keyed by place names; in each record would be an earliest (known) date and a latest, given name of the HOLMES who moved there, pointers to where the HOLMESes in that area came from and went to, and allied surnames in that area and brief comments. I'd cut it off no later than about 1925. Mine would look something like this: Submitter: Richard S. Holmes <[email protected]> Web site: <http://web.syr.edu/~rsholmes/genealogy/index.html> Place Start End Name From To 1 ?, ?, Connecticut, USA 1804 c1810? Hiram - 2 2 Hamilton, Madison, NY, USA c1810? c1910 Hiram 1 3,5 Allied: COOK, COLLINS, BLIVEN, BELDEN Comment: and Brookfield, Hamilton, NY, USA (neighboring town) for brief periods 3 Elgin, DuPage, IL, USA c1880 ? John C. 2 4 4 Independence, Buchanan, IA, USA ? ? John C. 3 - Allied: ROGERS 5 Cincinnatus, Cortland, NY, USA c1908 c1909 Clarence E. 2 6 6 Richfield Springs, Otsego, NY, USA c1909 c1912 Clarence E. 5 7 7 Albany, Albany, NY, USA c1912 c1915 Clarence E. 6 8 8 Schodack Ctr, Rensselaer, NY, USA c1915 c1920 Clarence E. 7 9 9 Nassau, Rensselaer, NY, USA c1920 1958 Clarence E. 8 - (The dates refer to the earliest and latest dates the HOLMES surname was there, not just the individual named. For instance, in line 2, Hiram HOLMES died in 1864 but his descendants were in Hamilton until about 1910. The numbers in the last two columns refer to the line numbers of the place they came from and the places they went to. For example, on line 5 (Cincinnatus) the family came there from the place in line 2 (Hamilton), and from Cincinnatus they went to the place on line 6 (Richfield Springs).) - Rich Holmes Morris: FLYING BARK (Newport News) Syracuse, NY / Genealogy: BELDEN (NY), COLLINS (NY,RI), CURRIER (NY,NH), Newport News, VA HANSEN (NY), HAYES (NY,CT), HOLMES (NY,CT), [email protected] JENSEN (NY), YORK (NY,CT)