Sunday, September 29, 2013

FTM2014 - Ancestry Member Tree Connection - Part 1

I am cleaning up my Help Resources page, and watched a couple of the Livestream/ancestry / YouTube videos that the Barefoot Genealogist, Crista Cowan creates. and saw a surname, in a location that I know. In her September 26, 2013 video, she was talking about Collaboration, when you use an Ancestry Member Trees (AMT).

There is always a lot of negative words around the genealogy community about them, but Crista gave us an example of how to use them as part of our research. The surname of Ridgeway, and the Location was Egg Harbor, New Jersey. Now THAT got my attention.

With that hint, I will try to describe the steps I am taking, in light of Collaboration. I am using FTM2014.

I knew two things: Ridgeway is a Surname in my Family Tree and Little Egg Harbor is a location in my family file. The quickest way, for me, to see what I might have in Little Egg Harbor is to go the the Place Workspace, in FTM2014, select Little Egg Harbor in the Left Panel, and in the Right Panel will appear all of the Names who had an event there.

22 People had an event there.

What caught my attention first, was the ICON on the right which indicates that this Place is not in the Place Name Authority. I have blogged about how to resolve that, but this one hasn't been resolved yet. I want to take care of that first, as there might be a Resolved Place name where the others might be. Note: the County is Burlington County, and all of the dates are in the 1700's.

 

The normal way to resolve the place name is by clicking on that ICON, with the Question Mark (?)  and a pop-up window will appear, and you can move the text to the upper field, (up to the comma) which would put Little Egg Harbor there, then hit the search button. The search finds Little Egg Harbor, OCEAN, New Jersey.
 

I know that today, Little Egg Harbor is in Ocean County. so I may have entered something wrong, so I also moved Burlington to the upper field, with the up arrow on the Left of that window. The end result of doing that was:
 
 

That's not right, because it should be listed under Ocean County. Looking at the resulting map:
 
 

The Red Pin is not in the right place, it should be in Tuckerton.

Before I did anything else, I hit CRTL+Z (UnDo). You can also click on the Edit menu, and select Undo.

Back to where it was, unresolved. I want to resolve this before I move any further. Where is Little Egg Harbor, or is it really Egg Harbor as Crista suggested. 

The first place I would look would be Wikipedia and look for any information about County Border Changes.

Since my information called for Burlington County, I found this:

Anglo-European records of Burlington County date to 1681, when its court was established in the Province of New Jersey. The county was formed on May 17, 1694, "by the union of the first and second Tenths." (1)
OK, so Burlington County was formed in 1694. What about Ocean County?

Ocean County was established on February 15, 1850, from portions of Monmouth County, with the addition of Little Egg Harbor Township which was annexed from Burlington County on March 30, 1891 (2
Here is what that page said.
 

Ocean County was not established until 1850, but Little Egg Harbor Township wasn't annexed until 1891. 

For now, this place name will remain UnResolved. I will come back to resolving that place name in the future. I have a Task / ToDo list item in the Plan Workspace to resolve this. That task is not linked to anyone because it's a location task to be resolved.

Now to see the Surnames of who had an event, in more detail in Little Egg Harbor.

The Publish Workspace, Person Collection  and select Surname Report.

I only want a Surname list for those in Little Egg Harbor.. I select Individuals to Include, in the right panel, and it will bring a window up, where I select "Filter In" and another (filter in >) window appears where I will select "Other". I want to select Any Fact Places in the first entry, and type in Little Egg Harbor in the third entry. I leave "Contains" as the default.

 

This results in 37 people have that term in their Fact Locations. 
 

What I am trying to do, is to get a list of Surnames for Little Egg Harbor  
 

That will come in handy going forward.

I want another report, the Index of Individuals for that same list of people. The Person Collection (again) was selected and the Index of Individuals was selected.
 

Now I have some information to work with, based on my own database. I haven't yet gone to Crista's AMT.

My next place to research would be on Find-A-Grave. Those surnames, at least in my line, would have been Quaker. In a message to Crista on Facebook, she mentioned that her ancestors were Quaker, but didn't know IF there was a Quaker Burial Ground near the Meeting.

So, I looked and found the Friends Burial Ground, but it's listed in Tuckerton, Ocean County. Doing a little research on the history of Little Egg Harbor, this is the right place, found a website with some history on Little Egg Harbor and the address for the Quaker Meeting House.

Before I get into the car, to go visit, I wanted to see who might be there. 
 

There are 350 internments, on Find-A-Grave.com, looking at my list above, there are 16 names, in my database buried in that Cemetery 

Now, before I jump to any conclusions here, I went to Crista's Ancestry Member Tree. I don't want her tree, but I want to check the relationships that she has, against the relationships that I have. I don't want to copy her research, but I may, if we have some common ancestors want to collaborate with her, in the research. I am not yet even checking IF she has her file sourced or not. Not there yet. Just want to see if there are any matches.

Here is a what I saw:
 

A Richard Ridgeway with a Son Richard.

I looked at my AMT, and I found Richard Ridgeway, my connection of Thomas Ridgeway and HIS Brother Richard. So, our common ancestor, comparing these two trees is my 8th Great Grandfather, Richard Ridgeway.  Not ready to go down Crista's line yet, but I do want to go to that Burial Ground. (the result of that visit will be in Part 2)
 

I did find a book that was written in 1963, that is now out of print, "History of Little Egg Harbor' by Leah Blackman. 

I wanted to see where I received my information from, and also is from a book "Ancestors and Descendants of James and Ann Willits of Little Egg Harbor, NJ" (1898), Alfred C. Willits. 

Willits, wow, that's one of the names in that Burial Ground. In my Surname List there were 16.

The first book is out of print and haven't found it yet. It's on my Shopping list when I go down to Little Egg Harbor. But I, for some unknown reason, searched for it on Ancestry.com. It's online at Ancestry.

Hopefully, Crista will check this blog post, so that we can begin collaboration on this part of our family. It will be interesting to see her connection to my 8th Great Grandfather.

So who says, you can't make connections using an Ancestry Member Tree.

I see a road trip in the very near future.


(1) The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606–1968", John P. Snyder, Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. p. 93 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_County,_New_Jersey

(2) Snyder, John P. The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968, Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. p. 201. Accessed January 21, 2013.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_County,_New_Jersey

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