User:Rlward/2007 3Q

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George Irwin Whitney...

Thanks for your help. I will try to pursue the indications you have given me. I spent a while trying to look for George Irving Whitney (as opposed to George Irwin Whitney) in your Whitney Wiki. I didn't find any such person referenced. Do you think that the two are one and the same?

In my quick cruise through all this (I only got into this yesterday), I learned some more about Whitney's.

For example, I learned that Richard Whitney became president of the New York Stock Exchange later on in the 1900's according to the Wikipedia. That source goes on to say that he was given entrance into financial circles in NY by virtute of the fact that his older brother George Whitney worked in the financial area in NY. Some how I got the impression that George Whitney was a "junior" and that therefore his father must be George Whitney (Irving or Irwin, I am not sure which).

The Wikipedia says that George Whitney went on to work for Goldman-Sachs. It also describes how Richard rose to prominence and then ended up being convicted for embezzlement in the go-go days of the stock market 20's and 30's which resulted in the crash.

I'm going to see if the local library has some (gasp) print documents concerning the early history of Goldman-Sachs just to see if I can go backwards from George Whitney who worked for them to his father.

Finally, I'd like to say that your Wiki is impressive. I'm used to seeing such things in the high energy physics realm but it was fun to see such an extensive use of a Wiki in the Whitney realm.

--D.

Census Conflicts

Robert:

I updated the census records for MA that you asked about. Also, could you give me a few examples of items where you see the differences?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 20:06, 15 July 2007 (CDT)

User Edit

Robert:

Could you verify the following user edit?

[1]

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 07:37, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

Census Link

Robert:

You added a 1790 census link to the following page, but it doesn't appear to be for the correct person: Family:Whitney, Nathaniel (1696-1776).

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 14:52, 1 August 2007 (CDT)

1790 Census Images

Robert:

Very interesting. I imagine that some of the census takers would have taken notes out in the field, and then copied this information to the official lists that they submitted.

It seems to me that linking all of the 1790 Whitney enumerations to the appropriate individual will allow us to identify when this happened. After we're (you're) done with the linking, we can then look to see which Whitneys on the census are unidentified, and which Whitneys in our database are missing an enumeration. We can then search through the records to see what may have happened. I'm hoping we won't have to completely research the Whitings!

By the way, I wanted to make sure you were aware that Vermont did not have a census taken in 1790. Because it was late to join the union, it had a 'census date' of 4 Apr 1791. This is why our census index page is 1791, not 1790.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:47, 2 August 2007 (CDT)

Men in 1790

Robert:

To aid in the 1790 census project, I have compiled a list of all men who should have been alive in 1790. I started with a complete list of all family pages, deleted those born before 1690 or after 1775, deleted those who died before 1790, and removed all (most) of the women. This leaves us with a pretty good list of candidates for heads of households on the 1790 census. As you try to identify individuals on the census, feel free to use this list. We may even want to start checking people off of the list as we find them on the census so we know who is left to find, and then at the end specifically go searching for them.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:17, 5 August 2007 (CDT)

1790 Heads

Robert:

Don't think of my list as complete. I was just thinking of it as a finding tool. We already have a complete list - the census itself! I envision this list being deleted when you're through. For now, if you find a person who you can't identify, you can search this list to see all of the existing family group pages for men of that name to see if it helps in your identification. If not, a new page may have to be created, just as you have done previously. I certainly don't want this to create more busy-work for you.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:45, 5 August 2007 (CDT)

Calvin & Haynes

DNA results for a descendant of Calvin show that he was a descendant of John Whitney. A mutation at one location hints that he may have descended from John's son Richard, though this is by no means a certainty.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:34, 5 August 2007 (CDT)

Wales

Robert:

Last night I created family group pages for each family or individual listed in the 1841 census for Wales. I've finished editing these pages this morning. I've also been working to create location categories and categorize them. I think the Category:Wales page is really looking nice now. Because these pages all are generated automatically when we categorize the location categories, I think we should change the Localities page to only include the countries. There is no way we could ever hope to keep this page up to date as we added a new location category, so let's not try. We simply link to the country category page, which then contains all of the locations within that country.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:47, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

Localities

Robert:

I grabbed the list of all "wanted categories" (from the Special pages), and also grabbed the list of existing category pages (all pages, category namespace). Then I removed those categories which were not locality related. Now I have a list of all localities, at least those which we have category tags for. I've placed those in a spreadsheet, and have a column for the existing category, and additional columns for Locality, County, State/Shire, and Country. I am massaging those columns and finding quite a few misspellings, etc. in them. I am almost complete with that data massaging. Next I will add in the counties and other missing fields from the entries. Once I am through with that, I'll send the file to you for review. When we are happy with the file, I will write a robot script to loop through each entry in the file, loop through each page which is currently in that category, edit that page, remove the old category, add in each level of the new category (i.e. "United States", "Vermont, United States", "Windham County, Vermont, United States", etc.), then save the page and continue. I have already extracted all of the high-level country categories and added them to the localities page.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:56, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

Invalid Link

Robert:

That's because the link is pointing to the current page. I think you have your page numbers off on the footer call.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 17:02, 14 August 2007 (CDT)

MA Tax Lists

Robert:

I thought you might find this document of interest. - Tim Doyle - Talk to me 11:57, 20 August 2007 (CDT)

List

Robert:

Yes, I've been watching. Remember that my list came only from pages which already existed, so it wouldn't include everyone. Your additions are a good improvement.

Now that we've done quite a few more, is your opinion of the project still favorable?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 18:13, 22 August 2007 (CDT)

Birthdate

Robert:

Could you check Family:Whitney, Samuel L. (1799-1863) - the birthdates don't match.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 07:30, 23 August 2007 (CDT)

Flagged Pages

Robert:

Thank you for looking into and taking care of the birthdate issue this morning. I was in the middle of working on the 1771 project and had too many windows open at the time to think about that.

This issue brought to light something that I think we have needed - a way to flag issues to return to without having to deal with it immediately. To solve this, I have created a "flag" template. To use it, simply add the following to the top of any page that you'd like to flag: {{flag|reason why it's being flagged}}. This will add a banner at the top and also add the page to a category so we can find and deal with them.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:59, 23 August 2007 (CDT)

1800 Boston

Yes, it appears the 1800 census for Suffolk County has been lost. Also, I've noticed that the 1771 Tax List has no one from Watertown - not sure if it was lost as well, or if they're hiding under another spelling.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 13:26, 24 August 2007 (CDT)

John Issue

Robert:

Take a look at Family:Whitney, John (1716-a1757). Note that John supposedly resided in Eastham, MA till at least 1742/3, then had a daughter bapt. 1744 in Kittery, ME, then back to Sherborn in 1747, then back to Maine. Son Nathaniel couldn't have been born 1744 if the father remarried and had a daughter baptized Apr 1744 by another woman. Son Josiah supposedly m. 1771 Brookline, MA, but if his father had been in ME since 1744, what was the son doing back in MA? I guess all of this is possible, it just raised a few flags for me. Could you review?

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 18:33, 30 August 2007 (CDT)

1771 Tax List

Robert:

I have just about finished identifying the Whitneys on the 1771 Tax List. There are 13 individuals still not identified, as follows:

• Two men named Charles. I can't find any appropriate men to assign these to, and they appear to have been fairly well off. The one in Stow may have been Caleb of Stow, who I was unable to locate.
• Three men named John
• Three men named Moses. Note that the Moses in Gorham could be either of two men.
• Three men named Samuel
• Two individuals with no name (-----)

Note that I found several instances where the same man was listed twice, once for his primary residence, and again for meadows or pastures in another nearby town. Typically he would have been listed as "nonresident", but not always.

If you want to attempt to identify these remaining men, I'd appreciate it, though I know you have your own projects which you are int he middle of.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 16:22, 1 September 2007 (CDT)

Page Moves

Robert:

As you may have inferred from my recent edits, I am working on a method in which you can flag a page for renaming and have an automated process do the busy work for you. You would simply add the following to a page "{{rename|newpagename}}". The next time I ran my script, all pages in that category would be renamed, all of the pages which link to them would have their links updated, and the redirect page deleted. This, I believe, would remove quite a bit of "busy work" from our plate and allow us to redirect it to something more constructive. Let me know if you don't agree with this approach.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 07:43, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Page Moves

Robert:

As you have seen, I have been making great progress on the page rename bot. It does the following:

1. Loads a list of all pages within Category:Pages flagged for rename
2. Loops through those pages one at a time, doing the following:
   1. Gets the page's contents and parses out the desired new page name
   2. Verifies that the desired new page doesn't already exist (now working)
   3. Gets a list of all pages which link to the page to be moved
   4. Loops through each linking page, replacing the old page name with the new page name
   5. Verifies that no further pages link to the page to be moved (gives a warning if any do still link)
   6. Renames the page
   7. Deletes the newly created redirect page (not yet working)
   8. Removed the template call in the page so it won't try to move it again

I just got the bot to remove the template call as your last message mentioned. I had it working on my test page and then all failed during the test of a 'live' page - I figured out is was the parentheses in the date range, and now have that issue corrected. It did cause me to have to make more edits to poor Amos's page than I had wanted. I still need to get the check in place to make sure I don't overwrite a page which already exists, and determine what I/we want to do about deleting the redirect page.

Keep in mind that the redirect pages, if left alone, will allow any outside links (si=uch as from search engines, people who have linked to a family, etc.) to still work. The downside is that the more redirects we keep, the higher chance we have of further page name collisions down the road. Removing them does not save space in the database, as even "deleted" pages are still there, just with a flag set.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 13:27, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

More Page Moves

Robert:

I think I have something that can now be used. Go to Recent Changes and select "show bots". That's where you can view all of the WRG-Robot edits, which I think need to be patrolled for a time to make sure all is well with the process. As you can see for Joshua, I added the rename flag at 14:17 and the robot made many changes at 14:18. If you could review these to make sure all was done properly, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 14:22, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Jabez Whitney

Robert:

I've been looking into Family:Whitney, Jabez (1767-1849). He had children by Elizabeth from 1790-1804, then Elizabeth died in 1808 and was bur. in Jones Cem. A daughter was buried in Orange in 1815, so we know the family still resided there at that time.

He had children by Sarah from 1810-1827. A "Sally", sp. of Jabez d. 1847 and was probably the same person as Sarah. She was not listed as bur. in Jones Cem.

Jabez himself d. 1849 and was bur. in Jones Cem.

The issue comes up when we see that there's another sp. of Jabez, "Ly", who d. 1846 and who was bur. in Jones Cem.

If the Jabez who m. Elizabeth was the same man as the one who m. Sally, then when could he have m. Ly? Since Jabez, Elizabeth and Ly are all bur. in Jones Cem., it is likely that both Elizabeth and Ly were wives of the same Jabez. If this is the case, can this Jabez be the same one that married Sarah/Sally?

Since the Jabez & Sarah had their first child in 1810, he could have been b. say 1792. Jabez and Elizabeth had a child, name unrecorded, b. 1793. I suspect that we have a father/son pair here who have been comingled. Thoughts?

Also, the 1830 census shows two older men: 1 male 80-90 and 1 male 60-70. The older female in the house was 40-50, so I suspect that the HOH was 60-70 with an elderly man (father?) living with them.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:18, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Jabez Whitney II

Robert:

I agree that "Ly" could have been Sally, but Sally's burial is listed in 1847. Ly's burial is in 1846. I still believe that we have a father/son pair. This is a page that I put together originally, so I think they should be split. Do you oppose?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:46, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Descendant List

Robert:

I've been thinking that it might be nice to include a list of WRG members who descend from certain family groups. If a new member links in, they can quickly see who their closest relatives are who are also in the WRG. Although we can see this with the "What links here" feature, most users would never comprehend this. I have put together a prototype. See Family:Whitney, Erastus (1790-1862). Let me know what you think. If we decide to do this, I can have the robot populate all of the initial links. It might be a good way to bring more people to the website (they have to create an account to have their name listed) and also lets them have more of a vested interest in the pages as their name is listed.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:58, 10 September 2007 (CDT)

Jeremiah

Robert:

Jeanne Neilon has stated that the Jeremiah Whitney that we have listed in 1820 in SC is not there. See Archive:1820 Census Extracts, South Carolina. Could you double check your other census source to verify, and if it does, copy and email me the image?

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:55, 10 September 2007 (CDT)

Samuel of Woodbury

I'd just treat him as we do any other person for whom we're unsure of the parentage. Mention on his page that his true parentage is unknown, and then list the two proposed options and source them.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 19:02, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

Aaron Whitney

It looks as though my rename may have removed some of the edits I made to Family:Whitney, Aaron (1774-1848) today. I first put together a tentative list of children based upon careful examination of the census enumerations, then found the Guilford records, which almost perfectly matched what I had put together. I wanted to make sure you saw what I had been able to uncover.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 18:53, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

Disambiguation pages

Robert:

I love the idea. Would we create pages in the main namespace such as "Robert Whitney" and then link off to the various family group pages? We could then add an overview page that lists all of the names. Is this what you were thinking? This would allow people to type in "Samuel Whitney" in the search box, get to the disambiguation page, then click through to view the family. If there was just one person of that name, we could just redirect or choose to do a single link disambiguation. What about people with middle names or initials? Would we just add them to the page with the first name and list their middle names or should we also have a disambiguation page for the full name as well?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:36, 15 September 2007 (CDT)

Samuel Whtiney Disambiguation

Robert:

I've created the page Samuel Whitney and have added a few notes at the top. I think we should treat this page as a proof-of-concept and see how it evolves.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:25, 15 September 2007 (CDT)

Name Disambiguation Pages

The name disambiguation pages are now being uploaded by the robot.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 12:08, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Children Without Their Own Pages

Robert:

You're starting to think like me - I sat down about 30 minutes ago to start this project.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 17:49, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Two Asa Whitneys

Yes, I agree - that makes sense. Are we still documenting these Pierce errors on the page for that when we find them?

Also, see http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/WHITNEY/2005-12/1135863459

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 20:03, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Lisle 1810

Robert:

I hadn't seen "The Census Book", but it looks similar to the introductory material from the book "Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses 1790-1920" by Thorndale & Dollarhide. If you don't have this book, I recommend it. This book indicates that Cortland Co. (just north of Broome) as well as portions of Broome Co. are lost for 1810, so I think you are correct.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 21:26, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Plaintext

Robert:

I've been watching Carolyn post her 1830 CT transcriptions and it got me to thinking why we needed the plaintext div and the leading spaces. This shouldn't be the case at all. It appears that at some point in the census project, we started a page where the div had a missing quotation mark, and was thus tossed out upon rendering, causing us to add the spaces, and then this was repeated across many pages. In addition, using a "p" instead of a "div" adds less of a margin and is thus better, I think. Also, we should have been using class instead of id all along as well. "id" is used to assign a specific name to an item, and should technically only be used once per page. "class" just sets a specific class, which is what we are doing, and can be used as often as needed on a page. With all this being said, here is a summary of all of this:

1. Use <p> instead of <div>
2. Use "class=" instead of "id="
3. Use "Plaintext" and not "plaintext" ("Plaintext90" and "Plaintext80" are also available for 90% and 80% font size)
4. Opening and closing parentheses are required

Also, I've noticed that after making these changes on a test page that the space between lines is more than before. If you'd like the old look, I can adjust that, but it'll apply to all pages using the class.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:13, 17 September 2007 (CDT)

Josiah Corrections

Robert:

I agree with your Josiah conclusions. Feel free to make those changes. After we remove the information, what remains for Josiah though?

Also, I have issues with the RenameBot:

1. If one of the pages linking to the page to be renamed is a redirect page, the bot used to abort. I have fixed the abort - it now just skips the redirect. I need to figure out exactly what I want to happen in this case and deal with it. As we make more moves (and as the RenameBot is not removing the resulting redirect pages), more of them exist and the problem grows.
2. The bot currently searches for the old page name and replaces it with the new name, even if the old/new text is not a link. This hasn't been an issue as the pages we have been renaming have been pretty specific. However, imagine if we renamed the page "John Whitney". I need to change the script to only fix links.
3. I also need to enhance the bot to fix link parameters if those parameters are the same as the link itself, less the namespace. For example, [[Family:Whitney, John (1700-1800)|Whitney, John (1700-1800)]] as we currently have on the Given Name index pages. I would expect both to be updated.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 11:08, 18 September 2007 (CDT)

1790 Census

The Samuel Whitney that is listed as unidentified in 1790 in the Halifax District is most likely Samuel Whitney son of Joshua and Mary Whitney of Edgecombe NC. Halifax, Martin, and Edgecombe Counties are all very close to each other in NC.

Dublin

Robert:

I have been trying to identify Mercy Whitney who was enumerated in Dublin, NH in 1790. I found an online source The History of Dublin, N.H. By Dublin (N.H.), Levi Washburn Leonard, Charles Mason on Google Books which lists the following Whitneys:

• 1779 Bascom Whitney warned out
• 1780 John Whitney warned out
• 1788 Mary & Hannah Whitney warned out
• 1778 & 1781 Nathan Whitney was listed as a lot owner
• 1788 Mary Whitney m. James Upton

I haven't been able to place any of these individuals. Any thoughts?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 21:30, 18 September 2007 (CDT)

Isaac

Robert:

Attempting to find the Isaac Whitney of Stamford, VT in 1790. There was also another Isaac and a Daniel there in 1800. Could the two Isaacs have been father/son, and if so, could they be Family:Whitney, Isaac (1746-a1800) and his son?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 21:51, 18 September 2007 (CDT)

Isaac again

Robert:

I can find only two Isaac Whitneys who we haven't found in 1790:

1. Family:Whitney, Isaac (1735-a1782) - although not found in 1790 or 1800, I suspect he had died. His younger sons were in Boston and Brookline, MA in 1802 & 1808, so I doubt he was the man who showed up in Stamford, VT.
2. Family:Whitney, Isaac (1746-a1800). He is in Holliston, MA until 1778 and then vanishes.

Do you feel comfortable with me linking the 1790 & 1800 census records to this man and on his page listing the entry as "(perhaps)" with a note on the page "He was perhaps the man listed in Stamford in 1790..."

Yes, I will extract the Dublin records.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:09, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

Hannah Watson/Taylor Lougee

I spoke to an old gentleman, Frank Lougee, who died in 2002. He read to me from papers kept at the Lougee homestead in Parsonsfield, ME - old bibles and letters. This came from one of the letters. I am still working with his granddaughter, to try and get scanned copies of the documents themselves.

On this place his son Taylor, born January 3, 1784, lived after him, married a Watson, and had two sons, Samuel and Thomas. Samuel resides near the old home yet. His wife Hannah dying, he next married a Tibbetts and had by her two sons, Greenlief and Sylvester, the latter now residing in Effingham, New Hampshire, where he has reared quite a family of children, among them a lawyer and two physicians Doctor George E. Lougee, of Freedom, New Hampshire, being one. This wife dying he married a third time, a Miss Hayes, and two sons were theirs, Hayes and Cyrus. Mr. Taylor Lougee moved to Effingham Falls, New Hampshire, in 1840, and there died.

    Name: Hannah Watson
     Sex: F
         Birth: 28 Sep 1778 - Gorham, Cumberland Co., Maine
         Death: 10 Apr 1816 - Parsonsfield, ME
        Father: Colman Phinney Watson (1751- ? )
        Mother: Patience Whitney (1748-?)

1. *Taylor Lougee (3 Jan 1784 - 19 Feb 1857)

      Marriage: 3 May 1806 - Limerick ME
      Children:
         1. Samuel Lougee II (1808-Aft 1880)
         2. Thomas Lougee

Kess.

1880 Census

E. W. Whitney listed in the 1880 Extracts as: 15) 1880 U.S. Census, Beat 11, Walker, Alabama, T9-0034, p. 98C - Ancestry.com is Elhannan William Whitney, father Hiram C. Whitney and mother Minerva Jones. Thank you.

Trouble with Patrolling

That can happen when the files are too large. It causes the program which compares the versions to take too long and it times out. We may want to think about splitting some of those large pages at some point.

The way I "patrol" these is this (though you're always free to just ask me to do it):

1. Hover over the "mark as patrolled" link on a "good" page, right click, and select "Copy link location".
2. Hover over the page giving you problems and write down the "rcid" number.
3. Paste in the link location and replace the rcid number with the one you wrote down.
4. Press enter and the page will be patrolled

Also, I noticed the renames on many of the 1850 & 1880 census pages. When we mark pages for rename, make sure that the link is displayed in red in the banner. If it's blue, that page already exists and something manual will need to take place. I changed 3 or 4 such issues to be flagged so we could merge them.

Lots of activity here today!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 18:37, 23 September 2007 (CDT)

Census Issue

Robert:

At one point you had a census entry on the page of Family:Whitney, Solomon (1709-a1758), but removed it on 9/1/07. However, the census record itself (in Lincoln, MA) still points to this page and the potential page still shows this Solomon as having been found. What should be done here?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 06:29, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

Found it - it was moved to his son's page. All fixed now.

Missing templates

Good call Robert! I've now deleted the old ones and changed all of the pages that were linking to them. The nice thing about this template is that we automatically categorize pages missing a certain census year, meaning that the "missing" list is now automated.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 14:42, 28 September 2007 (CDT)