Genealogy Conference

PolyGeo

00:02

I can only be in and out of the weekly chat today/tomorrow so have started by adding the link above to our Beta Stats page. Since I proposed the topic our visits per day have crept up a little to 535 (i.e. just in the amber zone) but our questions per day at 1.1 is anchored in the red zone.

Hi @JanMurphy

Jan Murphy

@PolyGeo Hi, I was looking at the stats.

PolyGeo

I think the single thing that we could do to increase the number of questions posted is to try and post a variety of questions from quite "easy" to more "challenging" to try and let our audience know that not every question has to look like it comes from a professional genealogist.

What's your read on the stats?

Jan Murphy

We have the 'Goldilocks' problem where I tend to do overkill and the newbies give no information. We need some middle questions that are 'just right'.

@PolyGeo My read on the stats is that we need more people.

PolyGeo

I think you've nailed it - more Goldilocks questions

Jan Murphy

Unfortunately I don't have a society to do word-of-mouth to. I was steered here by a programmer who knew Stack Exchange from the tech side, and I finally came over because of ColeValleyGirl.

PolyGeo

00:12

I think our stats on number of avid users are not too bad but some more in the 200+ rep category would be good.

Jan Murphy

We need more questions and more users.

PolyGeo

I guess that if we could get more new visitors then more of them may start to hang around for a while or to keep coming back occasionally

Jan Murphy

I get the feeling that we get a lot of hit-and-run questions and I'm not sure that people ever come back for the answer.

Are we retaining any of the new users? BeckyG had her will question and then asked a follow-up. That was good to see. DaveBlackston may stick around.

But it concerns me how few people are coming to the chats.

PolyGeo

To think about your hit-and-runs I just looked at the last 50 or so questions and they seem to be about half asked by people with <200 rep (often less than 50) and half by the 1,000 (often you and me :-)

I thought it was great to see BeckyG back this week and how she had taken your advice on board so positively.

Jan Murphy

I just remembered being in grad school and that feeling of being completely overwhelmed and not knowing how to get started on the problem.

It was great to see her come back.

One thing that concerns me is that I've asked a lot of questions that could be history.se questions. I don't want us to be taken over by history.SE because I get the feeling they aren't concerned with primary sources over there.

It's not unlike the relationship between anthropology and anthropological linguistics (linguistics is more techy and geeky, as is genealogy).

That's my gut feeling, anyway.

PolyGeo

00:30

It is a shame more people do not come to chat but chat is not really my thing either - I come more through "moderator conscience" and prefer the more permanent record that Q&A leaves - but it is great to see you so keen on it because we all interact in our own ways

I think I read and re-read Q&As but chat is harder to look back on

Jan Murphy

I was hoping the workshop weekend chats could be mined for Q/As but so far it hasn't worked out.

PolyGeo

I had not thought about a "history.SE threat" to our existence because I see what we are about is more fine-grained than their "big picture" - but I only did one year of History in high school despite it always having been a very keen interest of mine.

Jan Murphy

I was just reading the area51 FAQ "Should my idea be part of an existing site, or its own site?"

PolyGeo

The guy who dropped in last week was interesting - and I tried to drop in links to some of our Q&As to give him their flavour and to try and entice him to ask a Question or two.

Jan Murphy

Good job pulling out the biblical questions there.

Re: area51: " In general, if a site makes sense as part of a bigger site, it's better to have one big site than a bunch of little niche sites. Site X should be subsumed by site Y if:
1 Almost all X questions are on-topic for site Y
2 If Y already exists, it already has a tag for X, and nobody is complaining
3 You're not creating such a big group that you don't have enough experts to answer all possible questions
4 There's a high probability that users of site Y would enjoy seeing the occasional question about X"

I'll try to write questions in such a way they can't just be tossed over to history.SE.

PolyGeo

00:40

Just looked at the Area51 FAQ for the first time and that Merging Season blog is interesting too - I'm about to look at what's on/off topic for History.SE

From history.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic - it's not about Genealogy - so it looks like there is no threat of a "take over"

Jan Murphy

No, but if I ask too many 'context' questions without the nuts-and-bolts, how-will-this-help-me-find-my-family parts, it will Dilute Our Brand.

PolyGeo

The site stats of History are interesting - they are Beta like us but are about a year longer than us into it

1018

History – history.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for historians and history buffs.

Currently in public beta.

Jan Murphy

Are there any microhistorians over there that we could recruit? :D

PolyGeo

I think the "nuts-and-bolts" that I try to include in my questions are the references to specific ancestors i.e. Genealogy and Family History are personal but how to do get that personal experience is shared

I'm thinking that the link to Genealogy from History's Help should already be re-directing some of their potential traffic our way

Jan Murphy

Oh, do they have a link? Cool.

PolyGeo

00:50

history.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

Jan Murphy

Okay then, if they are older and they didn't want any genealogy questions, that's pretty clear.

PolyGeo

How do you feel about "cousin bait" in questions? Some here seem to treat it as a dirty word but I think handled correctly it could work for us.

Jan Murphy

I think our questions should be about how to work a problem. If the question is cousin bait also, that's fine. But the whole reason I like the SE format is that it allows people to apply their experience to problems that are NOT their own family.

So often on query boards, people say "do you have any information about [this person]?" and either 1) no one knows, so they never get an answer or 2) someone does, so the discussion goes off-line and no one else learns anything.

PolyGeo

I like to include my ancestor's names in my questions in the hope that distant cousins may stumble across them and come here to work on problems they and I have a personal interest but in a way that we learn from other users and educate using specific examples.

Jan Murphy

We are about the work.

Not the specific people.

One of my favorite questions was that "I looked at my mom's scrapbook about the famous detective".

I enjoyed cracking that mystery.

I guess the guy who asked came back and saw the answer.

PolyGeo

00:56

I think we should NOT allow people's names in the question title to reinforce that we are about the work but use real examples in the body so that it can be looked at from different angles

Jan Murphy

Oh, I like that!

Another tangent: one thing I noticed recently is that a lot of the tags have no description (some of them are my fault).

If I get some time, I'll try to clean some of those up.

PolyGeo

I also like to always have a question mark at the end of the title to remind us that we are about Q&A rather than discussion

Jan Murphy

About the titles: the thing to keep in mind is that the Q/As should show up in Google Searches, so the titles should reflect that.

PolyGeo

3

Q: How to find service record of Boston police detective (1945-1968)?

I have had no luck finding archives Det regarding Frank Murphy, (Franny, Francis). As a boy My Grandmother would show me a photo album with page after page of his exploits on and off duty! I was always amazed and have been unable to locate a thing now. The police dept. said, Do you know how many ...

Jan Murphy

Yes, like that.

Much better.

PolyGeo

01:03

I changed the original title of "My Great Uncle was a Boston police detective from 1945" - not the worst title but I think the current on looks better on a Google search result

Jan Murphy

Exactly, we want Google to pull the Q/A up.

PolyGeo

I would like to generalize the topic below but the asker came in with lots of enthusiasm so I am being cautious about if/when I will do that.

3

Q: Descendants of Sir William Blackstone, a historical puzzle

I have been researching my paternal line and have come across a stumbling block. My line can be traced pretty easily back to the beginning of the 19th century in Ohio, where we come across one Ebenezer Blackstone (1776?-1824). Try as I might, I cannot go back any further, but my searches have c...

united-states research research-methods england immigration

Jan Murphy

I'm hoping we can get a couple dozen questions out of this family. ;)

I went in and tagged the hell out of that question. I think he only had one.

Immigration should probably come off, now that he spun that out into a separate question.

I just retagged it with 'quakers' and 'ohio' and took immigration off.

Do we want a descendancy-research tag?

PolyGeo

Perhaps a title like "Determining 18th/19th Century England/Philadelphia/Ohio lineage?"

Jan Murphy

That would work.

I took off "research" and left "research-methods" (do both of those tags need to exist?).

PolyGeo

01:12

Tagging is something I have paid a lot of attention to in GIS SE (meta.gis.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/…) and my ideas there on appropriate have unfortunately not always been well received - here I do not feel as well qualified to take the lead

Jan Murphy

We could use the workshop weekly chat to thrash out some of those questions, if using Meta is too slow.

Oh, can we have a GIS chat one weekend?

I also want to get some more developers active here.

PolyGeo

I like the idea of geographic tags to the level of "state/province" (first choice) but countries and large cities too - so ohio, england and philadelphia all work for me

I like the idea if time tags to the level of century but maybe as we get more questions tagging to decades may become more appropriate

I think religion tags work too

For occupation tags I think a single one of just 'occupation' is too coarse-grained but one for every occupation would be way over doing it.

Jan Murphy

Decades are probably too fussy, although I would make an exception for census tags. When I wrote a question recently I started to do a decade tag out of habit because Ancestry allows searching by decade.

PolyGeo

On GIS.SE I say if you think it is a tag that is likely to be used a few hundred times in the next few years then it is probably about the right granularity

Jan Murphy

For the religions, I think the Quakers especially need a tag because they have their own dating system.

I read your meta question on the GIS.SE and I can see why people thought it would be too many tags.

PolyGeo

01:21

Definitely yes for Quakers and many others because religion can tell us many other things about the people practising each in a genealogy context

Jan Murphy

So how else can we get more participation?

When I first started, I was trying to answer a question a day. I could go back to digging through the old questions, but writing new questions might be better.

But I don't want to take up too much space on the new questions / active questions pages.

PolyGeo

It's an aside but the problem my GIS Meta question was addressing was that a single big bucket tag (ArcGIS) was being applied to more than a thousand questions per year and to very different products and technologies within that large platform. I really just wanted people to use a product and version tag on any ArcGIS question so I didn't have to keep opening questions for which products I was not licensed to use.

Jan Murphy

Oh, I get that, but I can see why people balked, too. On the other hand, for a site like Android Enthusiasts (where I lurk but don't answer) it works better because there are fewer flavors.

PolyGeo

I would not worry about taking up too much room on the new/active questions page - the more Goldilocks questions the better wherever they come from

Jan Murphy

I found my first family in British India this week, so I'll be writing up a question on that.

PolyGeo

01:31

I suspect new questions will get us more traction (visitors) than re-working old ones - but some re-working is fine too - especially if it led to hooking out a part that was really an "unanswered question within a question"

Jan Murphy

I also need to write up the finding convict burials in Australia question.

PolyGeo

I have no British India ancestors but some of their cousins were there so I will be keen to see your question

Jan Murphy

This is a 3xgreat-aunt but the interesting thing is that three of the children's names are the same as my husband's grandfather's family.

PolyGeo

Convict burials sounds interesting too

Jan Murphy

A 2xgreat uncle died in Western Australia after being transported, and I don't have a burial place. One of the loose ends.

Or maybe I do know, it's just buried in the records I haven't processed yet.

Don't know if there are tickets of leave online either.

It's tempting just to write each person's name in my database on a slip of paper, stuff them all into a big jar, and draw one out each day to work on.

PolyGeo

01:40

"Unfortunately" I have never needed to look at convict records so may not be able to offer any great insight but one of my eight pairs of 2nd great grandparents came to South Australia via 3 years in WA so I have looked at their records a bit

Jan Murphy

I may have convict records in the US too (Georgia) but I haven't gotten back that far.

PolyGeo

I think there is a potential question in every ancestor I have - if not a lot of questions - and I am trying to write questions working starting with those that I think may be the "most interesting" to others.

Jan Murphy

I have found a lot of wonderful stuff at the state library websites in Australia.

I had a case study I was thinking of writing up, but I don't know how to make it a useful Q/A.

PolyGeo

I liked the result I got below this week - the more obvious answer led to a more likely one being uncovered

1

Q: What would Toller to Duke of Leeds do in Cornwall?

In another recent question (Is there Index to Cornish Mining Captains?) I referred to my 5th great grandfather Richard Boyens (sometimes spelled Boyns) who I believe to have been a Mining Captain at St Just in Penwith, Cornwall. This link refers to him dying in the house of my 4th great grandfat...

19th-century cornwall occupation

I am trying to make my Questions more "bite-sized"

Jan Murphy

Those were great questions. All the mining books I had read about so far were Welsh miners doing very different kinds of mining.

It was fun to learn something new.

The question I had was a variant of genealogy.stackexchange.com/questions/1863/…

How do you get the questions to show up in the block quotes?

PolyGeo

01:49

Sometimes I think including too many details can overwhelm the people we want to visit and stay - so perhaps we can keep back the "hardest to explain before any answer possible ones" until we get our users and visitors up

Jan Murphy

Fair enough.

PolyGeo

Just type ONLY the url and then hit send - try it! ColeValleyGirl showed me that recently

Jan Murphy

16

Q: How can I establish (and describe) my confidence that the child and adult are the same person?

My two general questions are: At what point can one say that, yes, the adult you have identified as your ancestor is the same person as the child you think might be your ancestor, and that you have therefore identified that person’s parents? What are some good strategies for recording your degr...

research-methods england relationship-mapping proof

So many of the questions I have right now are a variant of this.

My British India family is one of those "do I really have the right family or is this just wishful thinking?" cases.

But you have a good point, if I target a specific record group then I can write a bite-sized question that could be useful to many other people.

PolyGeo

I like the questions and answers that come from Verbeia - they are written in a clear and interesting way - but I always like to see just one question mark per question body :-)

Jan Murphy

I've appreciated your notes on that issue. As you've seen, I sometimes need a little help keeping focus.

PolyGeo

01:58

I'm going to have to drop out of chat now (for lunch) but hopefully others will pick up on some of our discussion points and continue it

Jan Murphy

Thanks for chatting!

PolyGeo

On one question per question - see gis.stackexchange.com/tour - where I was really pleased that its mods seized on the words I put up and used them

On our tour - genealogy.stackexchange.com/tour - I wonder if we should change "question and answer site for experts in, or people interested in" to "question and answer site for people (including experts) interested in" - bring people to the fore rather than the afterthought?

Bye for now

Jan Murphy

See you later!

ColeValleyGirl

09:03

@PolyGeo How I feel about cousin-bait?

5

Q: Can I post cousin-bait on this site?

What is 'cousin bait' ? 'Cousin bait' is a term coined by bloggers to describe genealogy blog posts whose sole purpose is to make contact with cousins researching the same family line. At WikiTree Thomas MacEntee defines it as: the term commonly used to describe any effort made to attract at...

discussion asking-questions

i.e. It needs to be a real question to survive and work as cousin-bait as a side-effect.

Verbeia

09:25

@PolyGeo thanks! I'll try to focus on one question per question.

to today's topic: more questions and more users is a virtuous circle. If we could get our questions per day to 3–5, that would really boost the site.

Verbeia

09:45

I am a moderator on Mathematica.SE. We had a fast run to graduation, largely because we did get a strong run of questions.

It is important to maintain question quality so that the regular answerers don't get frustrated. We've closed a lot of questions, but it was worth it.

DaveBlackston

15:16

Hi all -- I see that my initial question has been discussed here. Please feel free to modify/retag/etc to your heart's content. I'm still learning the ins and outs of the stackexchange community, and am eager to learn.

Most of my research has been in the attempt to identify Ebenezer's parents, but unfortunately a lot of the questions I have do not really lend themselves to the format here. I've been searching for him for a few years now, and I am excited to join a community of like minded individuals.

Not sure if anyone will see this, but thanks to everyone for putting this togetehr.

Jan Murphy

15:57

@DaveBlackston The Q/A format here does take a little getting used to, but I think it is valuable.

DaveBlackston

16:41

Indeed. I have a lot of questions, but most of them do not have a simple answer.

At least, for most of them I cannot think what a simple answer would even look like.

Jan Murphy

@DaveBlackston As PolyGeo was saying to me earlier, the trick is to break the questions down into bite-size chunks.

DaveBlackston

Yes, but even that is sometimes not so easy. ;)

BTW, thanks for chatting last week. Your advice sparked a newish trail for me.

Jan Murphy

For example: I recently found a file for a soldier in the British Army. I have MANY new questions. Consider the difference between these two questions:
1: How can I get more information about the movement of [military unit]?

@DaveBlackston You're welcome! That was what I was hoping. BTW, the Stack Exchange way is not to post thank you comments on Q/As, but there's no reason you can't drop into chat to send someone a thank-you note.

2: My soldier was out of the country on Census Day in 1881 -- did soldiers overseas have their own census taken?

Q2 is far more specific.

DaveBlackston

Will do that in the future. Still getting used to the various rules of etiquette here. ;-) And I do see the difference. brb -- gotta help with a quick errand.

Jan Murphy

Thanks for chatting!

DaveBlackston

16:55

back -- it was a very quick errand. :)

A lot of my questioons are more about rules of thumb. Say you have a lot of information, some of which is contradictory. How does one ferret out the "truth" in such a situation. Clearly it must be done on a case by case basis, but I don't have a feel for such things yet.

Jan Murphy

10

Q: How would you handle a census record that is almost certainly the target family but which has too many discrepancies?

Anna M. Alischer married Charles John Brockhouse in 1928 and had 3 children (1930, 1934, 1942). In 1930 they were enumerated in Beaver Falls, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. I think I've identified the family's 1940 census enumeration in White Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, but I am relucta...

united-states census-records pennsylvania

Like that?

I would say, break it down on a record-by-record, or event-by-event basis.

@DaveBlackston About this week's topic, on how we can make the site better ... let me say again, welcome to Stack Exchange! I appreciate your enthusiasm. What drew you to Genealogy.SE, and how would you spread the word to others?

DaveBlackston

Yes, in general, but my sources (and contradictions) are a bit different. My initial William Blackstone question is an example. After thinking about it quite a bit, I could not come up with a consistent factual timeline that had Sir William being an actual ancestor of Ionia.

(writing up an answer to your q now...)

Like I mentioned, I have been poking around trying to find Ebenezer for awhile now.

Jan Murphy

@DaveBlackston That's a sign you've jumped ahead a bit too quickly. Perhaps it would help to focus on Ionia's time period and look for more clues.

It can be helpful to try and write up a question, even if you don't post it.

Although of course we'd rather have the new question rather than not.

Hello, @ColeValleyGirl!

DaveBlackston

I just started a new job with restricted internet, and the stackexchanges are on the allowed list, so I spent some time poking around there. I was happy to find the genealogical SE!

ColeValleyGirl

Hello -- this is really a fly by -- my partner is in mid-PC rebuild and is needing a lot of handholding....

Jan Murphy

17:06

OUCH.

ColeValleyGirl

'sa pity because this is looking like a good discussion.

May find time to drop in tomorrow.

Jan Murphy

@DaveBlackston is going to be a huge help to me.

I'm struggling to break my questions into the bite-sized pieces PolyGeo suggested and looking at Dave's problems is helping me get new perspective on my own.

DaveBlackston

As far as spreading the word, I am more than happy to tell friends about the site, though I have been working in isolation for the most part, and have few friends with this particular interest.

Jan Murphy

That's okay, just keep asking questions.

DaveBlackston

Are questions about the reliability of specific sources fair game? For example, I have a number of factoids I have obtained from the SAR/DAR databases -- how reliable are they? (I can post this as a real question.)

Jan Murphy

17:12

That's a good question -- you can post a factoid and ask how you can find primary sources to confirm them.

DaveBlackston

Good idea. :)

Jan Murphy

It's basically the same problem I have with the big LOWELL biography I talked about. "What did Cousin Delmar look at?" is a constant refrain when I read his book.

DaveBlackston

Heh.

Jan Murphy

So asking about EACH specific question is fair game.

Greetings @Arrowfar, welcome back.

Have you interviewed any of your family since we chatted last week? ;)

user116848

@JanMurphy Oh, Hi!

user116848

17:14

Hello! peeps

Jan Murphy

The topic today is how to attract more users and questions to this area.

user116848

Nah :)
But I know they are of Arab origin. But that is from a long time ago. My most recent past is from Pakistan.

DaveBlackston

@JanMurphy, no, I haven't. I do have a remote cousin investigating the same questions, but I haven't heard from him in a bit. He knows all the "family lore" about Ebenezer, and has already done a brain dump on me. ;-)

Jan Murphy

@Arrowfar Genealogy 101 is to start with yourself and work backwards in small steps.

DaveBlackston

(oops -- didn't realize that q was not for me... ;))

user116848

17:18

I thought it was for me. Was it? :D

Jan Murphy

@DaveBlackston Not to worry, you can both answer.

I was telling @Arrowfar the last time we chatted that recording one's own story is also important.

user116848

Yeah I agree :)

Jan Murphy

If we don't record the stories of our own time, then genealogists of the future won't have any information about our era, and it breaks the chain.

DaveBlackston

Yeah, I've often toyed with the idea of making a personal/family wiki that I could pass down to my kids. Getting started is the hardest part.

user116848

Why did you remove it. It was fine.

Jan Murphy

17:22

4

Q: How do I perform a biographical interview?

I have a couple of elderly relatives who have not kept a journal and refuse to write down their "life story." I really would like to know their stories and who they were and who they are. They have their favorite stories that they rehash every time I see them, but I'd like to get more. I have no ...

untagged

I was trying to put in the link to the question itself and not my answer, which was not very good.

user116848

I see.

Jan Murphy

You can find lists of interview questions on the net -- they are intended for you to use when interviewing someone else, but you can use them to get ideas for a self-interview, too.

I don't know if any of our current questions have links to those lists. I'll have to write up a new Q/A.

@Arrowfar, I have no idea what records survive from Pakistan. That would be a good challenge.

I like a challenge.

Another "Genealogy 101" principle -- records are often created because some law requires them.

So first consider what records would have been made.

But not all records are kept after their initial usefulness has passed.

So you have to see which ones might have survived.

Then you have to figure out what archive has them.

And then if you are doing long-distance genealogy like most of us are, you have to consider if anyone has made them available online.

user116848

Sorry 'I see' got copy pasted:)
Yeah you are right though. I also don't know about any records of genealogy here.

Jan Murphy

So studying your family's history is a combination of recording your own family stories and looking for whatever records may have been left behind.

Think about your own life. Do you have a driver's license, a library card, a green card, etc.

A passport.

A birth certificate.

user116848

Yeah. And there are so many family trees among one family. I mean cousins and second cousins and so forth....

Jan Murphy

17:33

Exactly. One idea I like to think about is recognition. If we are working on our close-to-us family we can recognize that a record belongs to someone we know.

We know if we have found a record about our family because we have been at that house and we recognize the street address.

So you apply the knowledge you have from your own life to the study of any records you find.

Even if you can't find records, you can study local history to get a sense of how people lived.

So it's fun -- you can focus on whatever aspect you like.

Some people study places. Some study everyone with the same surname. Some concentrate on their own family. It's all fun.

It's like thousands of jigsaw puzzles all dumped into the same box.

So if you want to get started, start with yourself, and when you get stuck, ask questions.

user116848

Yeah. We have lots of record of how people lived in particular areas in the past here. But not exactly the genealogy, because people's way of life in the past is still being taught in schools stc. here. As far as genealogy is concerned that is something complicated I reckon :)

Jan Murphy

Well, strictly speaking, genealogy is proving the line of descent.

user116848

Yeah I know

Jan Murphy

Many of us study the wider history of the whole family, and also places, so we call it micro-history.

Genealogy is detail-oriented, but that is why it is fun.

user116848

Like this civilization, which existed in Pakistan a long time ago.

user116848

17:41

Mohenjo-daro

Mohenjo-daro (IPA: [muˑənⁱ dʑoˑ d̪əɽoˑ], English pronunciation: /moʊˌhɛn.dʒoʊ ˈdɑː.roʊ/; (Sindhi: موئن جو دڙو, Urdu: موئن جودڑو‎), lit. Mound of the Dead) is an archeological site in the province of Sindh, Pakistan. Built around 2600 BCE, it was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, and one of the world's earliest major urban settlements, contemporaneous with the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete. Mohenjo-daro was abandoned in the 19th century BCE, and was not rediscovered until 1922. Significant excavation has since been conducted at the...

user116848

There are many similar examples.

Jan Murphy

The draw of ancient history is strong for you. ;)

user116848

haha

Jan Murphy

How can we lure you to the modern day? ;)

user116848

But that is too much ancient like you told me last time :)

user116848

17:42

Well I am interested in modern day too.

user116848

Oh, I get it I seem to stray from the topic, which is to preserve genealogy for future generations.

Jan Murphy

familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Pakistan

As we said last time, it is difficult to make connections between our own families and the ancient world, because too many records have been lost. The ancient civilizations are worthy of study, but so is our era.

user116848

I agree

Jan Murphy

If you have questions about the broad sweep of history and the ancient civilizations, there is also history.SE.

user116848

Yeah history SE. I should definitely check it out!

Jan Murphy

17:51

Remember the main point of Stack Exchange is to ask questions for which there can be an answer.

To get precise answers, it helps to ask precise questions.

But as we said before, if you want to study and document your own family's history, you are welcome to ask questions here.

It would be good to have more geographical areas to explore.

@DaveBlackston You mentioned starting a wiki for your family. Don't forget that other people may be interested in your work besides your own immediate family.

I think we miss out a lot of the time by not working with others in our own geographical areas of study.

Also, other people studying immigration records pre-1820 would know of resources that I haven't explored yet.

So @Arrowfar, you said you stopped by because you saw people chatting. What attracted you to Stack Exchange?

user116848

Wow! so you remembered that I said that :) It's true actually haha
You mean this SE or any other?

Jan Murphy

Any of the areas on Stack Exchange.

How did you find out about it?

user116848

Well, I chat and ask questions on ELU and ELL sites because I am very interested in English language.

user116848

I found out about SE sites by googling and browsing different stuff :)

Jan Murphy

Ah, okay, through a Google search.

user116848

18:03

Yes :)

Jan Murphy

And maybe someone blogged about the sites?

Today's topic is about how to attract new users and more questions.

user116848

No I don't read blogs. But yeah I have noticed some SE sites on blogs too while browsing etc.

Jan Murphy

Last time PolyGeo posted the links to some of our questions he thought you might be interested in. Did you look at them? What did you think?

user116848

Which questions? The ones I asked that day about history?

Jan Murphy

I think he posted one of the questions about can we link to biblical figures?

user116848

18:08

Yeah I remember that. I looked at that question and found out that history isn't precise that far back.

Jan Murphy

I may be away from the keyboard for a while -- it is almost time for lunch.

user116848

I mean dating back to biblical times. Yeah I remember I was talking about firon etc. here instead of at history SE :D

Jan Murphy

Nice chatting with you.

user116848

Bye!

DaveBlackston

18:35

@JanMurphy -- Just posted the first in what may be a series of (hopefully) focussed questions.

Thanks for your encouragement. :)

Jan Murphy

20:06

@DaveBlackston I recommend:

shopfamilytree.com/the-family-tree-problem-solver-x3302

The Family Tree Problem Solver
Tried and True Tactics for Tracing Elusive Ancestors
By Marsha Hoffman Rising
Why Family Tree Magazine Editor, Diane Haddad recommends this product: "This updated best-seller helps you get past frustrating genealogy challenges by focusing on solving brick-wall problems: finding birth and death information before official vital records began, locating ancestors in pre-1850 censuses, dealing with common names, working around missing records, and more.”

Jan Murphy

22:43

Hello, @Verbeia!

Verbeia

23:05

Hello! This has been a very active conversation.

Jan Murphy

Not always on topic, however.

I've been banging away at my British Army in India question.

So I don't know if I've asked before, how did you find Stack Exchange? I was referred by a friend, and already knew ColeValleyGirl from another forum, so when I saw she was involved in Genealogy.SE I decided to come over.

Verbeia

Never mind about on topic. The good thing is that people are thinking about more questions. I've stopped trying to do big general questions and doing smaller questions.

Jan Murphy

Me too, although as you can see my latest is a big prelude to a small question. I'm hoping that others who are unfamiliar with the Army records can discover that record set from reading my question.

1

Q: Were British Army families stationed overseas enumerated in any Census returns?

I have located a record for Alfred Clarke in the United Kingdom, Chelsea Pensioners' Service Records. The TNA record series number is WO 97, and the original images are available at Find My Past. Seven images are available on Find My Past for this service member, a four-page bound folder/jacket...

19th-century sources british-army india

Obviously other records to fill in the holes would be good, too, but the 1881 Census seemed a good place to start.

But that service record was like hitting a jackpot.

Verbeia

i found SE via stackoverflow. I use Mathematica and participated there for programming help. Mathematica.SE spun off as a separate site later.

Jan Murphy

I see.

When I first looked into SE I didn't quite understand how the format worked but I hope I'm starting to get the hang of it.

I guess the other question I could ask is whether there are other sets of parish records from churches at British Army outposts. Hm.

Verbeia

23:17

I found that answering questions was just as good a way to learn as asking them.

Jan Murphy

Oh, better, but we need more questions, too.

Verbeia

Don't know if I ever shared this with you.

24

Q: Cleaning mildew from old documents using Mathematica (Image processing)

While visiting family over the holiday period, I managed to have some good mother-daughter bonding over how far back I’ve managed to trace the family tree (Mom is in her 80s and doesn’t do computers). I’ve been using the usual databases like Ancestry.com, familysearch.org and asking the odd quest...

image-processing

Jan Murphy

Oh, yes, I saw that. Brilliant!

I don't know if you shared it with me directly, or I saw your pointer to it in an answer, but what a great idea.

The problem I'd like to be able to solve is bleed-through.

Since we have both the image we'd like to read and the image that has bled-through, could it be done?

I can usually make out the words but it would be an interesting challenge.

On a more humble scale, I've been using IrfanView and playing with gamma correction to read some of the WO 97 records.

Verbeia

Oh, there is a function ImageSubtract. I am quite busy at the moment (I just bought a house and need to put my current house on the market. Cleaning up is hard with an eight-month-old!) so not much time for either Mathemaitca or genealogy, but let's find a time to do a Q&A. Do you have an example image pair?

He's awake, gotta go. Nice chatting!

Jan Murphy

See you!

@Verbeia I'll try to find one sometime.

Transcript for

Genealogy Conference