The 'new contact' I spoke of last time as having data about Cousin
Gertrude ALLEN Farley, turned out to be a "new" cousin, a granddaughter
of Gertrude. Now we know of a number of her cousins - more good
candidates for attending our 2008 reunion.
For those of you who don't know, are interested, but don't want to look
Gertrude up in our on-line CaPaNe database, Gertrude, who died in 1943,
was a dau. of Rev. William A. Allen (1858 - 1916) and Lettie Kemp (1858
- 1901); daughter of David Cook Kemp (1831 - 1929) and Harriet Campbell
(1832 - 1903); dau. of Mary Blackwell (1806 - 1863) and James Campbell
(1798 - 1865); son of Mary Harper (1749 - 1844) and Joseph Campbell
(1748 - 1822). And, of course, Mary Blackwell was a dau. of Enoch
Blackwell (abt 1764 - 1816) and Sarah LUGG Clinch Blackwell Campbell
(1776/77 - 1867), James' aunt as well as mother-in-law.
OUR ON-LINE TREE.
Our published tree continues to grow. Our tree, "Campbells of Nelson,
PA & Related Luggs & Blackwells", now contains 5079 individuals and 2358
marriages. But it's not like the "meter" in front of a hamburger chain,
quantity is only part of the story. Every update contains "better"
data. Some middle initials, where none was present before. Some middle
names, where only an initial was present before. Maiden names added for
some wives. First names added for some husbands. Marriage dates and
places added. Burial locations added. Etc. and etc.
But additional data is still "quantity" -- quality steadily improves
also. I have chosen to include in the tree the best data available to
me, even if it's only from a single source of dubious reliability. That
may horrify some, but I feel a questionable lead is better than none
at all. Reasonable people may differ - that's partly why they make so
many flavors of ice cream. But even pieces of data that seem reliable
often turn out to be incorrect.
The bereaved hurridley dictating and obit may make errors or be
unfamiliar with the early life of the deceased. The tombstone engraver
may have relied on a faulty obit (or have been hung-over). Newspaper
reporters, typsetters, etc. make many mistakes. Volunteers "reading" a
cemetery may easily misread a weathered or damaged tombstone. A
weathered '8' may appear to be a '3'. A weathered 'L' may appear
to be
an 'I'. Or a transcriber has a problem reading the reader's
handwriting, or introduces a transcription error when typing it up -- or
a typo is introduced when the cemetery reading is entered on the web.
It's only when multip;e sources of truly independent data are available
that we can have well founded confidence in having a reliable "fact".
Any single official document, marriage license, death certificate, birth
certificate, etc. may contain errors in the original document.
To each his, or her, own. But it seems preferable to me to include a
datum from a family bible, even tho such entries are often incorrect,
than to not have a date or name at all. As additional sources are
found, corrections get made. The biggest fault of "Internet
genealogists", in my view, is that they constantly copy from each other
-- so that what may at first glance appear to be multiple sources turns
out to actually be a single, unreliable source, propagated at electronic
speeds. As always, it's a good idea to take what you read with a grain
of salt, and verify "facts" yourself, as much as possible.
I'm happy to answer questions, including those about sources. But it's
surprising how many questions I get from subscribers of this list -- the
answers to which are on our on-line tree. The data on that tree is
rarely more than 10 days old. Thus on the average, there's less than a
week's research that's not on the published tree in some form. Of
course, for living people, RootsWeb "cleans" what I send so that their
first, and middle if present, names are changed to 'Living' -- and their
dates and places omitted from the web version. For questions about
living people, you will need to ask, and in most cases, to ask directly,
not via the mail list. For deceased individuals, it's usually
preferable to ask your questions via the mail list -- others may be
interested in your question too. And some subscribers may have a better
answer than I do.
Seeing on the Internet version of our tree that 'Living Hollenbaugh',
female, m. 'Living Pease', male, doesn't tell you much. But it may
enable a relative to discover our web pages. Lots of searches of
RootsWeb's WorldConnect pages (or their Ancestry analog), are made just
using a couple's surnames. Especialy when the surnames are not very
common ones.
ROOTSWEB
Speaking of RootsWeb, I have heard no complaints about problems with
their mail list server changes. I assume no news is good news.
COMPUTER SECURITY NOTE 5 - FIREWALLS. (Ignore if not of interest)
In addition to having up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware programs
that are run routinely, it's also necessary to have a "firewall". These
can be either hardware and/or software. Their purpose is to keep
"Hackers" out of your computer. They can be just snoopers, identity
thieves, vandals, or those wanting to place programs on your computer to
do spaming for them, run denial of service attacks from your computer,
or store porn on your computer instead of on theirs. My wife was a
victim of vandals. They corrupted the hard drive on her machine so much
that we had to reformat the drive and reload all software - and those
files that were backed up. It's times like that that you become
painfully aware of what you HAVEN'T backed-up.
Microsoft's Windows XP operating system does contain a limited firewall
that may keep out some hackers, but most experts agree that the
security fearures from other vendors -- some of them free -- are much
better. When you get one you will be amazed at how many intrusion
attempts occur every hour. Some people have a false sense of security
because they use a dial-up connection, so no one "knows" the IP address
for their computer, it changes every time they call.
However: 1) hackers don't usually care who's computer they hack, any one
they can enter will do; 2) your Internet Service Provider (ISP), has a
small group of phone lines for your area - each with it's own, permanent
IP address. Hackers use programs that automatically try IP addresses
one after the other by sening out a hello message, called "pinging".
Once they get a reply, they proceed to try to hack whatever computer
they reach.
The firewall I use also monitors outgoing data FROM my computer. So, if
a hacker or spyware does manage to place a program on my computer, the
firewall intercepts those data transmissions to foil the bad guys (or
bad gals).