This and That

 I've discovered continuing problems with my database.  I haven't contacted the software company to see what they suggest.  I think I first need to replace my computer and I'm waiting for my tax refunds to do that.  My database software is outdated; I haven't kept up with the newest editions but the problem (I suspect) is the age of the computer.  Memory problems begin at some point in the age of any computer.  It's definitely time for a new machine.

News of the one-name and one-place studies can be found in those blogs: Wormuth One Name Study, Beismer One Name Study and Rockland One-Place Study.   I have been working on the one-name studies most recently.  

In addition to the one-name studies, at WikiTree, I've been adopting orphaned profiles that are surnames in my family tree.  Orphaned profiles are profiles that were created by someone who is no longer there.  There are a lot of them.  Where the one-name studies include profiles of people with those surnames, wherever they may be, the profiles I'm adopting of other surnames are only in New York State where my families lived.  So far I've been adopting Odell, O'Dell, Flower and Flowers profiles, but, as I encounter them, I will be adopting profiles with any surname of my direct line ancestors.  Sometimes I do a search on just a familial surname and adopt any, in NYS, that are orphaned.  Since I have definitive origins for only one of my family lines, and I'm at brick walls on most of my family branches, it makes sense to adopt profiles with surnames that might lead to getting back another generation.

Because of my age and the increasing toll it's having my physical body, I've been preparing for the inevitable.  I highly recommend that everyone begin thinking about that beginning in your mid-30s, when it doesn't feel morbid; don't leave it to your family to deal with after you're gone.

It may feel distasteful but it's a gift to your family, if you take care of things like a will, burial arrangements, etc.

I will address this more later but, in this blog post, I want to say that I would be happy, if any of you reading this, would be interested in continuing this family history research.  I will be making arrangements to send various pieces of my documents, database, etc. to various historical and genealogical organizations.

I was just thinking, in the past couple of days, about all the blood relatives in my family tree and that pieces of them are in me; in my DNA.  Family history research reveals, if you will, the good, the bad and the ugly of families.  Family historians learn all kinds of things about individuals in their family tree.  I have identified, I think, some of the origins of some of my physical characteristics; at least, I'm guessing where they've come from.  Of course, that's only those from relatives and ancestors I've met or have photos of.  Going further back there's little chance of knowing.  Most of what we think of as ourselves is learned behavior; it can be unlearned and altered at will. Height, hair texture and color, color of our irises, etc. are inherited or hybridized from past generations.  Just that process is amazing.  I'll leave you with that.

Leave a note to tell me you've been here.  Thank you.

                              

Updates

 The Wormuth Name Study now has 235 profiles included, up a few from the last count.

The Beismer Name Study now has 238 profiles included, not much of an increase.

Nothing new on the Rockland One-Place Study.  

Most of the details about the studies will appear in the blogs, listed in the right-hand menu here.

I don't have a new computer and printer yet.  I waste too much time every day.

Upcoming plans for research are still on hold until it gets, consistently in the upper 50s or lower 60s and there are some spaces between rain.  I'm too old to want to run around the coutryside, outside, in the rain.

But, here are some things that I need to do over the next few months.

* find out what happened to the headstones in the Wormuth cemetery in Callicoon.

 * find out about burial in the Vandermark Family Cenetery in Debruce.  That's where I want to be, finally.

* find out about ground sonar/xray: how much it costs, if towns have their own equipment, etc.  I would like the Vandermark and Tyler Cemeteries to be done as part of a cleanup project.

* Visit the Old section of the Liberty, NY cemetery to find Joseph Odell's and Stephen Wormuth's burial places.  Good idea to call ahead to see if anyone there knows if there is a marker.

* Visit the town to see the actual death record for Joseph Wormuth where, so far, the only record of Harriet Barecolt, his mother, is found.  I have a transcription of the record, but I want to see the original and have been told that I can.

* Visit Craigie Clare in Rockland, Sullivan County, NY.

There are so many more things to do.  These are things that need doing away from here, where I live.

Please keep me in mind for copies of older family photos.

Please ask questions about the family histories.  If I don't know the answer, I'll try to find out.

Please leave a comment when you visit any of the blogs, if only to say you've read the latest blog.

Thanks.

                                                                      

Orthography - Spelling and Surnames

 Why am I writing a blog post about spelling in a blog about family history?  Because it's important. 

Throughout all the years that I've been researching all the branches of my family tree, I encountered variations in the names of ancestors.  Sometimes the number of variations of a person's name were so many and the time it took to look up every spelling that it was exhausting.

But, the fact is that the spelling of American English was not standardized until the early 1800s.

In addition, most people were not educated and were unable to read or write in our United States until the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Even then most did not attend school past a few years in elementary school.

The result is that the names in most early records were written by someone other than the person the records is about.  You will find records that were written by someone else and signed with and X that is indicated as "their mark".

Surnames, and even given names, were written as they sounded to the person writing them.  I often ask myself why they didn't ask how the name was spelled but they probably didn't ask because most people didn't know how their name was spelled.

I've begun to keep my eyes open for actual signatures of people but they don't appear that often and certainly not usually before the 1900s.

Even within a single document, written by someone whose job it was to write the document, even legal documents like wills, ordinary words, as well as names, can vary in older records.  If you look at a transcription of our own Constitution, you will see such variations.

Spelling could vary depending on the amount of education of the writer, the geographic area that the writer came from, the historic time frame of the document and personal spelling quirks of the writer.

So, a surname, in particular, can vary over generations, within a family.  

Why does it matter?  Because, being social animals, we need to understand each other when we attempt to communicate with each other.  

Most modern languages have a standardized orthography, so everybody understands how a word is spelled so everybody knows what word is being said or written so there is as little misunderstanding as possible.  Certainly, in terms of names, it can be very important to know who is being spoken or written about.

Also, originally, names meant something.  They were just a collection of letters strung together to make a sound.  They often told something about a person without actually seeing them.  The given name Rufus, for example, means red and was usually given to a male child with red hair.  

In the case of surnames, some told what occupation someone had, some were derives from a parent's name, from where the family lived, some on their physical appearance, etc.  That's a much longer subject and one that I'm not that interested in writing about but anyone can research that online.

My interested in this topic is that when we research our families, we need to remember that names, surnames and given names, vary in documents and sticking to the spelling that we're most familiar with is a mistake, if we really want to learn about our families.

I started the 2 one-name studies I'm conducting:  Beismer and Wormuth, because I've been frustrated with the variants and I'm hoping that researching the names will reveal more information about the various families and how they may be related or not.  

I don't have the origins of either family in my own family tree.  I have already learned, because of the variant spellings, that those variants often exist because of where those specific families were from.  If or how they were related will, undoubtedly, take much longer to determine.

Given Names

While you have every right to write your own name anyway you want (even though it may bug me), a name usually means something.  You may even have created a unique name for yourself, again, you have every right.  Does your name mean something, if it's a creation of your own?

Cultures vary in their treatment and their conventions of both surnames and given names.  I know what my given names mean; they suit me.  Interestingly, I know that I was to be called something else.  When I think about that name; it doesn't suit me.  I can't say why but it matters to me.

More about this in the blogs for the one-name studies, when I get to them.

News and Updates

Computer Issues:

A few weeks ago, maybe a month or more, I opened my genealogy software to work on something and found that my database was empty.  😂

Whenever I add things or make changes and close the database, I'm asked if I want to back up the database and I'm pretty good at doing that and I have a series of backups saved on the computer.  So, I systematically started restoring backups, one after another, starting with the last one.  I found one after another empty or only partially there.

I don't know what happened.  I have no idea but there are many possibilities.  

I, needless to say, was very upset, confused and frightened.  That's about 50 years of work.  It's one thing to lose the database but multiple backups as well....

I left it alone for over a week.

I was finally able, on my next try to find a backup that seemed recent and seemed normal.  So I restored it and renamed the database, saved the new database and backed it up with a new name.  But, I have no idea how much work I've lost.  So, I'm going to do what I've had to do once before when I backed up my database in preparation for upgrading the software to a new edition and found, after doing all that that I had completely duplicated every record in the database.  It took me 6 months to go through every records, systematically, to determine actual duplicates and merge them, as opposed to records that appear to be dups but are not.

I have begun a similar process tonight but will not continue until I have replaced this computer.  It's old and I'm finding other issues with it so best to start afresh with new hardware, an updated version of the software, etc.  I also need a new all-in-one printer because this one has had compatibility issues for years, especially with the scanning software.  I looking forward to a new set up in the next few weeks.

 The Studies:

As you may know, in addition to working on my own family history, as a member of WikiTree, I joined several projects of various kinds.  My profile there, shows a list of the projects I'm a member of, including those I'm coordinating myself.

My parternal grandmother, Ida Mattice O'Dell, was descended from Palatine immigrants who came from Germany, through England, to the American colonies in 1710.  I joined the Palatine Migration Project because of that.  

I started two one-name studies and a one-place study because of obstacles in the research that I thought learning more from those studies might overcome.  I work on all these different projects as I'm able and as I find information.  The point is to collect and report on information.  Each of those studies have their own blog as well.  The one-name studies are registered at the Guild of One Name Studies and the one-place study is registered with the Society of One Place Studies.  My membership in the former has lapsed and I have to renew.

The Beismer One Name Study now has a total of 239 profiles in the Study at WikiTree.  That means that there are that many profiles but each profile is not uniform in what information is included.  If I stumble on a name, anywhere, I search for it @ WikiTree.  If I find it, I add a sticker for the one-name study on that profile which automatically adds it to the list of profiles in the study.  I don't necessarily go into that profile and work on it.  I may not have visited it since I added the sticker.  If I don't find that name @ WikiTree, I have to create one, right then, on the spot, before I forget it or where I found it.  I usually use Ancestry to find out what I can about the person and add information to the new profile @ WikiTree.  I go back and work on profiles when I can.  The idea is always to have valid sources for information and to include basic information like birth, marriage, death, children, a photo, if possible, etc.

The Wormuth One Name Study now has a total of 229 profiles in the Study @ WikiTree.  The same process hold true of the Wormuth Study.  I am still working on the whereabouts of the headstones of the Wormuth cemetery that is in Callifoon.

I am, currently, the only participant in each of those studies.  It's a lot of work.  I tend to work in spurts.  Sometimes somebody tells me something and I get energized and get some work done.  

I'm also a member of the Flower One Name Study and the Swartwout One Name Study but I haven't worked on them in a while nor have I received any reports from those studies but I will report on them next time.  

I get daily feeds from WikiTree related to general news about WikiTree and notifications specific to topics I've tagged like these projects and surnames.  When I get a notification about a surname of a study that I'm a member of, I immediately go to the link for that notification and, if appropriate, add a sticker to a profile for that study.

I haven't done any statistical analysis of the 2 one name studies I coordinate.  I'm not fond of statistics as far as collecting them but I like to see them.  I haven't found a good method, yet, do that.  I supposed I can just create a spreadsheet for each that I leave open while I'm working on them and tick off the stats I want to collect as I go, then et up automatic totals, etc. so I get the stats each time I do some work.  I think I just solved that - except that I have to create the spreadsheet and go back and go through all the profiles that are already in the project...Aargh!

Finally, for right now, the Rockland, New York, One-Place Study, has been interesting recently.  There are now 3 participants though I have not been able to get in touch with the third person since she joined.  Communicating with the 2nd person has inspired me to find new resources and references.  There are currently 77 profiles in that Study. Those are mostly profiles of people who were part of the town's history.  There is also a blog connected to that Study and I've been working on profiles of the various hamlets within Rockland.  Rockland is an interesting place.  A lot of interesting things have happened there.  In my travels this Spring and Summer, I will be visiting the various parts of Rockland, the cemeteries, etc. and taking pictures which will appear on the blog.

Just a bit more

That's almost it.  I did discover that the Liberty Cemetery has a section that used to be called Old Liberty Cemetery and there appears to be a burial site for one of my "brick wall" ancestors, Joseph Odell, my 4th great grandfather on that branch.  I will be very, very happy if I find that is true.

Zoom meetings

We've had a couple of Zoom family gatherings.  Scheduling 2 consecutive meetings, one after the other, works to expand the time limit for free Zoom.  It looks like Saturdays and some work day evenings around beginning @ 6:30 or 7 pm, might be the best times to schedule.  I'll schedule these when I can and vary the times so different people can participate.

WikiTree

Despite ongoing concerns, I am a big fan of WikiTree.  There is a learning curve.  It is FREE.  If you join and put a tree there and need help, I can help.  I took the WikiTree PIP (Profile Improvement Project) Voyage, where they give you a mentor and you improve 2 profiles you've already created.  So, I can also help you in return.

That's it.  Whew!!

                                                           

News and Updates

 Just a couple of quick notes:

We had our first Zoom Reunion yesterday, Saturday, February 3, at 3:00 pm.  Our next will be Monday, February 5, at 6:00 pm.

I will vary the times so  people who can't make it to one might be able to make it to another.

Right now these are just general gatherings and include people from all my family lines.

I'm aiming to have one general meeting a month and the other meetings will vary according to interest and schedules.  Right now they will be a little more frequent until it just changes.

Later, I will have Zoom meetings for more specific family history topics like my one-name studies.

If you're interested in any of it, email me at familytracker@yahoo.com.

Recently doing a quick search for some Hogancamp ancestors, I encountered many of the variant spellings of the name so I thought I'd post here the spellings I'm familiar with, so far:

Hogancamp

Hogencamp

Hogankamp

Hogenkamp

Hovancamp

Hovencamp

Hovankamp

Hovenkamp

Even those single differences in letters can mean a great difference in search results depending on what web site or datebase you're searching.  It's very tedious and time consuming.

I'm almost always interested in getting more family pictures.  I'm always happy to share and hope others feel the same.  Right now I'd like to find photos of the following people:

Fanny Flowers Odell

Joseph W. Wormuth, Jr.

Nettie Reeves Wormuth

Nettie Winner Beismer

Rachel Odell Beams

Benny and Sally Beams

William Marcus Wormuth

Reginald Houck

Beatrice Odell Dempsey 

Adelia Odell Ingraham

Lena Ingraham Tyler

Jesse Odell O'Dowd

Bertha Odell Kniffen

Joanna Odell DeWitt

Louise Odell Oliver and George Oliver

Anna Odell Ward

Catherine Odell Merritt

Rosa Odell Vandermark

Minnie Odell Lowe

Nora Beismer Eronimous

Mary Beismer Conklin

Elizabeth Beismer Bossley

Alameda Wormuth Kelly

Sarah Wormuth Edwards

Henry Flowers

If you're looking for a family photo, let me know; I have a lot.  A lot of people have shared photos with me and have left me photos.

If you want to know more about my ancestors, ancestors that we might share, be sure to check out my family tree at WikiTree.  It's free.  

That's it for now.           

                                                                                       

Happy 2024

 It's been a while.  I've been very distracted and haven't been working on family history research much.

But, this is a new year and I'm going to try to be organized (never a natural thing for me).

In Memoriam:

We lost a family member during the Christmas holiday.  William "Willie" Beismer

https://landersfh.com/tribute/details/2297/William-Beismer/obituary.html

In Memoriam:

Aunt Betty Hall, Elizabeth "Betty" Hall, born Elizabeth Odell, passed in September 2023; the last of my father's siblings.  We just learned about her passing during the Christmas holiday.  We have not yet found an obit.

NEWS

I will be starting virtual reunions very soon.  

I just have to do a little planning and scheduling.  I will be using Zoom.  So, if you're interested, you'll have to get Zoom.  It's relatively safe, as software goes.  I have not hosted before, only participated, so I have to learn a few things first.

What is Zoom?  Zoom is a video chat app that's free.  I've used it many times.  You need a computer with a camera and microphone which are usually built in to your computer.  You're sent a link for the session.  Somebody (me) starts the session and click on the link to join the session.  You can be visible or invisible.  Everybody who's joined will be able to see whoever else is in the session, if they have made themselves visible. I will spend some time in our first session explaining anything you need, that I know, about Zoom.

The purpose of the virtual reunions will be to discuss family history ONLY.  I will set up separate reunions for specific families that I'm related to.  I will email the Zoom session link ahead of time, usually a day ahead.  I will also post a announcement of the reunions in various social medias. 

You can just listen and watch or you can participate.  I hope you'll join.  

Later