The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy board under the new topic of Book about James Madison Williams born 1837 in Ohio... -------------------------------- The book I found is called >From that Terrible Field Civil war letters of James M. Williams Twenty-first Alabama infantry volunteers edited by John Kent Folmar IT has a ton of information about the 21st alabama infantry as well as James Madison Williams and wife Eliza Jane Rennison. James M. Williams parent-John Hugh Williams and Eleanor Frances Anderson, daughter of Hugh Anderson. Hope this helps someone, not my relation. (That I know of haha)
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams Genealogy board under the existing topic of Re: Looking for anyone who has Williams from Cape Breton N.S.... -------------------------------- Hello! Though none of the names sound familiar Williams is such a common name that doesn't surprise me! What and where have you researched so far so that others can help. You stated this was your first research project so give everyone an idea of what you have done so far in your search. What types of documents have you gathered, searched? How about online, what knowledge do you have of online research tools and places to look. I don't for instance want to mention www.familysearch.org and www.rootsweb.com if you are already familiar with all these types of sites. Doris Administrator of the Williams Database project (myfamily.com)
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy board under the new topic of New reference site... -------------------------------- I received this from the NEHGS newsletter today and thought it might be helpful. I've checked out the site and as the article says, it's pretty cumbersome to use if you look at it page by page. I found the answer for me was to click the "printable version" and download the document. Then you can move thru it like any .pdf file. Research Recommendations BYU Family History Archives Online by Michael J. Leclerc Brigham Young University has been working for several years to create a library of compiled genealogies and make it available for free over the internet. The BYU Family History Archives is a collaborative project between the Harold B. Lee library of BYU, LDS Business College, BYU Idaho, BYU Hawaii, the Church History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Family History Library. These groups have come together to make thousands of volumes available at http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/. The books are available as searchable PDF files, so you must have Adobe Acrobate Reader, Preview, or another PDF file viewer installed on your computer in order to read the books. Searching the books is a two-step process. First, you are brought to a page that searches the catalog of books available in the online library. You can search by surname, author, or title. You can also search all fields concurrently. This brings up a list of books that have been digitized by the library. The results fields are Title, Creator, Subject, and Description. Results can be sorted on any of these fields. The title and creator are linked to images of the book. Clicking on either of those links will open a new window. This window contains a table of contents pane on the left and a pane with images of the original pages on the right. The book should open to the search results, but doesnt always. It is sometimes necessary to perform a search within this window for the name you are researching. Unfortunately the PDF search functionality to find a name within a page seems to be disabled. You must read through the page looking for the name. Other PDF functions are also disabled. For example, the previous page and next page arrows at the bottom of the window do not work. You can move through the book, however, by clicking on the page numbers in the table of contents pane on the left of the window. You can save images of pages or print them out. The results fields are the same fields you will find in the Family History Library Catalog. This was done intentionally as these books are now linked into the FHLC. When searching the catalog online, books that are in the Family History Archive show the following link in the catalog entry: To view a digital version of this book click here. The BYU Family History Archives is a great tool for genealogists, especially if you do not have ready access to a large genealogical library. Because you can search the books for names, the online versions may be even better than the paper originals, which sometimes had incomplete indexes or no index at all.
The following new message has been added to the General Chit-Chat board under the new topic of Newbie needs some help... -------------------------------- Hello; I joined at the end of September and left a post in the Williams Geneology. I am attempting to research my father (John Williams) from Cape Breton. This is my first family research project and any help would be appreciated. Although a few people have looked at my posting; the only reply I got was one that I put in updating my first post. Kinda disappointing; I thought maybe someone out there might recognize my family tree. Anyone have any suggestions about where to go from here? I know that my father had aunts that lived in Boston MA and his brother Lloyd moved to the US.
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: Lineage/Pedigree Drive! Please Read!... -------------------------------- If you're using a Macintosh, get Reunion--it's terrific. You may not be planning to use any of the elaborate features--but after you've played with the program awhile, you might be surprised at how many things you'll actually start using.
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams Genealogy board under the existing topic of Re: Looking for anyone who has Williams from Cape Breton N.S.... -------------------------------- Hi again!! Just a little add on to my first post... I discovered in the 1901 census of Cape Breton my father's grandfather and his family. However my g-grandfather is listed as John; not George..... I am sure this is them, because the wife matches and so do the sisters. Does this help anyone?
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: DNA Results Page - Making Some Much Needed Changes... -------------------------------- Y'all, OK, the changes are finished (I think)! I have completed the upgrades to the Results Pending and mtDNA Results page. I have tried to test everything thoroughly and I think everything is working correctly. If anyone finds something that isn't, please let me know!! Also, I was able to get my spam fighting script working...basically, it scrambles your email address in the html code of the website so that it is unrecognizable to spambots. For the tech folks out there, it is an obfuscation function that takes the email addy from the database while the page is being generated, and changes each character to it's ISO value and puts that in the html code. To see what I am talking about, just view the source on any of the results pages and look for email addresses.....you won't find them...instead, you'll see a bunch of numbers preceeded by "&". From everything I have read, this is the best (to date) method of preventing the harvest of email addresses by spambots....now that may change tomorrow, but it should protect us pretty well. - Adrian
The following new message has been added to the Williams DNA Project board under the new topic of DNA Results Added - 28 Sep 06... -------------------------------- The following DNA results were updated today: Kit 70806 - 12 marker matches with Groups 5, 12, 15 and 20 as well as some non-match folks...this kit REALLY needs the 25-marker upgrade so I can specify which match is correct. For the time being, placing in Group 5. Kit 70983 - 23/25 match with Larry in Group 51....there is a weird dynamic with the mismatches in this group and further testing may end up splitting it into two distinct groups. Also posted the HVR1 and HVR2 mtDNA results Kit 24268 - panel 4 markers added to the database Kit 32985 - both HVR1 and HVR2 mtDNA results are now posted New Member: N36578 - Clinton Williams - who currently in the No Match group - Adrian
All, I wanted to let you know that this mailing list comes in two forms; one where every post is sent to you individually and one where all of the posts are send to you once a day. If you find yourselves overwhelmed with the mail notifications from the message board, you may find it easier to use the digest version of the list. To make this change go to the following URL: http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/DNA/WILLIAMS-DNA.html You will need to unsubscribe from WILLIAMS-DNA-L and then subscribe to WILLIAMS-DNA-D. There are links on the page that correctly format the messages needed to do this. -Laudon
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: DNA Results Page - Making Some Much Needed Changes... -------------------------------- Yay for you! Man, this really sounds like a Godsend-particularly for our long suffering webmaster. Instant results are much, much better! Now if you could figure out how to get FTDNA to auto-update the database, you might actually have some time to do more reserach of your own! Adrian, thanks so much for everything you do here! And I am truly glad to hear that changes are being made that lighten your load, even if just a little!
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: Lineage/Pedigree Drive! Please Read!... -------------------------------- Thanks to both of you. I'll continue to research my options. But of course, the big problem is (for someone who hasn't used a genealogical program-at least not since they were DOS based) looking at all those features and wondering which, if any, I'll ever use.
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: Lineage/Pedigree Drive! Please Read!... -------------------------------- Patrick, Great question! A little while back, out of curiosity, I took a look at how may different genealogy data management programs were out there and was a little surprised by how many there were....a number of them I've never heard of. It's hard to say one program is better than another...they all have common features and functionality, and at the same time, each has something that makes it different from the competitors. I actually started out using a program called Brothers Keeper and then moved to Family Tree Maker. Over the years, I have toyed with different packages, including Legacy and TMG (The Master Genealogist). In the end, I come back to Family Tree Maker and the only reason I can give is that it's the one that I am most comfortable with. I has the features I want and the use/navigation I prefer. Does this means it's right for you? Couldn't say. In the end, your best bet is to take a whirl thru the literature on the differnet programs (most of them have websites) and compare them. Nearly all of them have pictures of their interfaces and a list of their functions. As you look, as yourself questions like "that's cool but will I really use it?" and "do I like the way that information is displayed/laid out?" because when all is said and done, it will come down to whatever your personal preferences are. - Adrian
You're a marvel! thanks for all your hard work! Connie ----- Original Message ----- From: wwwuser@yourhostingaccount.com<mailto:wwwuser@yourhostingaccount.com> To: williams-dna@rootsweb.com<mailto:williams-dna@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 4:30 PM Subject: [WILLIAMS-DNA] New Message Posted in the Williams Genealogy Forums! The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: DNA Results Page - Making Some Much Needed Changes... -------------------------------- Y'all!! OK, I have semi-finished my changes to the results page and the spreadsheet. This went a little quicker than I thought it would. I have just finished uploading the new versions of the Matched Groups and No-Match results pages. Although they don't look it, they are significantly different from the old versions, mainly in that the data is all pulled from a database now instead hand coded in an html page. What's the big deal, you might ask? Well, a number of really cool things. First, this change reduced the size of the results page file from over 500Kb to just over 30Kb. This translates quite simply into a much quicker load time for anyone viewing the page. Also, since I have the information in a database, and the page is pulling it's information from the database, then anytime I make a change in the database, then the website is automatically up to date. For example, if I get a 12-25 marker upgrade result in: It used to be that I'd copy those results into my spreadsheet and then when I had enough time, I would copy those entries, by hand and add them to the 12,000+ lines of code that made up the old results page....then I would upload that to the website. Usually, it would take me between 2weeks and a month to get the latest results posted. Now, when I get the results in, instead of copying them to a spreadsheet, I copy them to the database. As soon as I get them in the database, they are viewable on the website....no waiting. So, the time to get the results on the site just went from weeks to literally hours. There are a couple of other changes with this version of the results page. 1.) You will notice that the kit numbers are all underlined. I have linked each persons kit number to their email address (as it is listed in the database). Hopefully this will solve a couple of things. First, hopefully it will reduce the amount of email I get, requesting so-and-so's email address. Secondly, I hope it will help with and possibly spurn more communication between project members. 2.) The order of the participants in the groups may have changed. Although this is just a slight modification, it may still throw some folks. The change isn't arbitrary either. Essentially, I have corrected a long standing problem with the results...the results have been out of order based on DYS values....the proper order of the results relies on them being sort by each DYS value. In other words, for any given group, the participants are sorted first by marker 383, lowest to highest, then marker 390, lowest to highest, and so on and so forth thru the entire 37 marker series. A good place to look to see this in action is the first three members of the no match group. The all have the same numbers for the first four marker, but at 385a, they are all different. And you will see that they are listed in the order. 3.) Mismatched values are no longer highlighted. I have struggled to come up with a way to do this programmatically and have not been successful. Before, this was a visual and manual intervention by me. Now that the results are automatically pulled from the database, I don't have the ability to manually perform this anymore. I said in the beginning that this is semi-finished. I still have the Pending Results and mtDNA Results to finish, but those shouldn't take very long (knock on wood). I hope that these changes meet with everyones approval and if anyone finds anything wrong, please let me know so I can get it corrected!! - Adrian ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to WILLIAMS-DNA-request@rootsweb.com<mailto:WILLIAMS-DNA-request@rootsweb.com> with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: DNA Results Page - Making Some Much Needed Changes... -------------------------------- Y'all!! OK, I have semi-finished my changes to the results page and the spreadsheet. This went a little quicker than I thought it would. I have just finished uploading the new versions of the Matched Groups and No-Match results pages. Although they don't look it, they are significantly different from the old versions, mainly in that the data is all pulled from a database now instead hand coded in an html page. What's the big deal, you might ask? Well, a number of really cool things. First, this change reduced the size of the results page file from over 500Kb to just over 30Kb. This translates quite simply into a much quicker load time for anyone viewing the page. Also, since I have the information in a database, and the page is pulling it's information from the database, then anytime I make a change in the database, then the website is automatically up to date. For example, if I get a 12-25 marker upgrade result in: It used to be that I'd copy those results into my spreadsheet and then when I had enough time, I would copy those entries, by hand and add them to the 12,000+ lines of code that made up the old results page....then I would upload that to the website. Usually, it would take me between 2weeks and a month to get the latest results posted. Now, when I get the results in, instead of copying them to a spreadsheet, I copy them to the database. As soon as I get them in the database, they are viewable on the website....no waiting. So, the time to get the results on the site just went from weeks to literally hours. There are a couple of other changes with this version of the results page. 1.) You will notice that the kit numbers are all underlined. I have linked each persons kit number to their email address (as it is listed in the database). Hopefully this will solve a couple of things. First, hopefully it will reduce the amount of email I get, requesting so-and-so's email address. Secondly, I hope it will help with and possibly spurn more communication between project members. 2.) The order of the participants in the groups may have changed. Although this is just a slight modification, it may still throw some folks. The change isn't arbitrary either. Essentially, I have corrected a long standing problem with the results...the results have been out of order based on DYS values....the proper order of the results relies on them being sort by each DYS value. In other words, for any given group, the participants are sorted first by marker 383, lowest to highest, then marker 390, lowest to highest, and so on and so forth thru the entire 37 marker series. A good place to look to see this in action is the first three members of the no match group. The all have the same numbers for the first four marker, but at 385a, they are all different. And you will see that they are listed in the order. 3.) Mismatched values are no longer highlighted. I have struggled to come up with a way to do this programmatically and have not been successful. Before, this was a visual and manual intervention by me. Now that the results are automatically pulled from the database, I don't have the ability to manually perform this anymore. I said in the beginning that this is semi-finished. I still have the Pending Results and mtDNA Results to finish, but those shouldn't take very long (knock on wood). I hope that these changes meet with everyones approval and if anyone finds anything wrong, please let me know so I can get it corrected!! - Adrian
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy board under the new topic of Looking for anyone who has Williams from Cape Breton N.S.... -------------------------------- Hello everyone !! This is my very first family research project and I really need some help. My father was John William Williams born 1910 in Cape Breton Nova Scotia. His father was William Williams, his mother Alice Marsh. His paternal grandfather was George Williams who was reported to be from Cardiff Wales. He had one brother Lloyd who moved to the United States and a sister Elizabeth who married a Walker and remained in Cape Breton. My father passed away when I was 10 and unfortunately was not overly communicative about his family to my mother. She remembers him telling her that when he was a boy, he would vacation with his aunts in Boston MA. Does anyone have a missing branch on their family tree??
True they can't read it from the database, but they can run things to get the pages to display and get the email addresses. One way around that as you have done is make the forums section a sign up section and to avoid spamming to the forums turn on no anonymous postings allowed. If you use a robots.txt this can reduce spam from robots and spiders. You can also turn on mod_rewrite and set parameters. This way you can monitor your access logs and you will see repeat hits....such as emailsiphon, cyveillance. BUT be aware places like nameprotect.com and turnitin.com get around the robots.txt. Those are mostly spambots/spybots/offline downloaders that ignore the robots.txt You set your rewrite to block them.... example: RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} EmailSiphon RewriteRule .* - [F,L] See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html for more information. If mod_rewrite is not enabled on your system you can use mod_setenvif as you can find in using Apache to stop bad robots http://www.evolt.org/article/Using_Apache_to_stop_bad_robots/18/15126/ Also in the access logs you will find others--- claim to be from referrer pages like www.iaea.org or a user-agent that will have the phrase Microsoft URL Control. I would also suggest checking out http://www.webmasterworld.com/ as they have lots of information on blocking robots and preventing spam. You can also search Google for something like EmailSiphon htaccess or htaccess block robots to find additional examples and lists of User-Agents to block. For a more heuristic approach to identifying rude robots, check out Neil Gunton's A Spambot Trap and Lee Killough's How to Defeat Bad Web Robots With Apache. Both demonstrate techniques for setting traps within your website for rude robots to fall into. Lim Chee came up with an interesting way to hide email addresses from spammers see http://phoenity.com/newtedge/hide_email_spambots/ For those of you wanting to know about spam: How do spammers get email addresses? Spammers generally gather email addresses in the following ways: Using spambots to scour web pages This is the main focus of this page. Spambots basically follow links and grab email addresses from "mailto" links, storing them as they go along. Using spambots that scour usenet If you've been on usenet (aka newsgroups) you know the deal: you have to hide your email address or you will be swamped with spam. Not only do you have to disguise it in the body of your post, but in your newsreader client settings as well. Spambots love to grab those email messages. Specialized spambots Some spambots are more specifically designed to scour certain places, such as a local bulletin boards, chatrooms on AOL, etc. Usually it is up to the company running a service to discourage or prevent use, not the users. Buying lists from other spammers or companies You may have seen the spam - "Over 1 million email addresses on a CD!" Not just CDs but on ftp sites, web pages, etc. Once your email is harvested, it may get copied around for years. The only good news is that they want to charge other people for their hard work, so it does usually cost them some money to buy the addresses. From a mailing list This is a partiularly despicable way. Spammers join a mailing list, then gather the email addresses of the members, either from a list of the members provided by the mailing list software, or from people as they post. It's hard to avoid this, short of not joining the list. On some mailing lists, you can "lurk", that is, hide your existence so that nobody knows that you are on the list. Until you decide to post, that is. :) By people themselves Commonly seen as part of a spam message: "To stop any future mailings, just reply to this message with a subject of REMOVE". Yeah, right. If you reply to the spammer, you accomplish three things: 1.. You verify an email address for the spammer as valid. 2.. You verify to the spammer that you actually read the mail, and took the time to reply to it. 3.. You demonstrate your lack of anti-spam knowledge to the spammer, by falling for this trick. All of this means that you are more likely to receive more spam by replying. This scheme is also known as a opt-out mailing list and is a terrible alternative to opt-in. Other ways Web pages and usenet are the main ways. The Center for Democracy & Technology has written a very good report entitled Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report. Jill > Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:45:28 -0400 > From: wwwuser@yourhostingaccount.com > Subject: [WILLIAMS-DNA] New Message Posted in the Williams Genealogy > Forums! > To: williams-dna@rootsweb.com > Message-ID: <E1GRwOO-00071V-On@cgi0905.int.bizland.net> > > The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: How to get those in a group to communicate??... > > > -------------------------------- > > Thomas, > > You bring up a very good point and a common concern for many > folks. > > We should not have to worry about spambots (the programmatic > robots that scour the internet and harvest email addresses) for one > simple reason. The email address are all stored in a data base and > the only way to get them out is to run the webpage itself, which then > runs a small piece of programming to "select" that information from > the database. The spambots cannot run the webpages...they can only > look at existing html code and pull from that. And, they cannot read > from a database. > > I hope this helps to quell anyone's fear about spam! It has long > been a concern of mine and I make many efforts to protect everyone > from it. > > - Adrian
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: Lineage/Pedigree Drive! Please Read!... -------------------------------- Patrick, I have used several programs and really the best I have found is Legacy Family Tree which can be found at http://www.legacyfamilytree.com . The best part is the standard version is free and the Deluxe is only $29.95. For most purposes the standard works just fine. It is easy to use and will allow you to capture just about anything about your family.. Take a look, give it a try and if you don't like it try another one. Regards Rea http://drwilliams.org ;D
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: Lineage/Pedigree Drive! Please Read!... -------------------------------- Adrian, you already have my pedigree in word format. I've been looking around at genealogy programs for a long time, but just can't seem to find the 'reason' to buy one over another. And especially as I've recently made a breakthrough that drags my line back another 3 generaltions, I guess I need to start doing Gedcoms. Do you have any input on 'the best' program? Inquiring minds wanna know. ;)
In a message dated 9/25/2006 8:19:31 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, mousecook@earthlink.net writes: As far as name and address being listed, as long as it is for members only, I don't have a problem. I would not like to have it open to the general public. I have to agree with this also, as long as it is for members only and not the general public. Also would like to ask, since I had my nephew take the test for me, would they list his address or mine?? He is not into genealogy and so would prefer mine were used. Peggy Williams Peterson
The following new message has been added to the Williams Genealogy Forums, on the Williams DNA Project board under the existing topic of Re: How to get those in a group to communicate??... -------------------------------- Excellent! :D