Genetic DNA, New Website Reception, An Award~~

I've been busy with Genetic DNA since the new design went on line....Several folks have emailed with questions and thankfully, my answers were able to clarify the process for them just a little. Since joining the MacLeod YDNA project (with my father and my cousins James and Purdy) I've been a bit disappointed by the management of said project. The initial results of our participation were confusing to say the least and therefore disappointing. We weren't the only ones to feel this; I got busy researching how to interpret those results and eventually was able to interpret them to the point where I was amazed at what had been hidden.....Slowly, our fellow participants are realizing that they can learn more and with a little recruiting of their family members, possibly even learn a lot more......you can read more about this at MacLeod YDNA

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The reception of the new format for the website has been warm.....after an initial feeling of "where am I" most visitors are pleased with the ease of navigation. I've found there are a few broken links, mainly in the photograph albums, and I'm working on getting working properly. As I hoped, the effort of maintenance and updating has been much easier ~ a good thing since I've gotten a lot of new information from visitor's emails over the last month. I'm in the process of sorting through it all and adding it to the pages.....keep it up folks.

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I recently received a "Gold" rating from Heritage Awards, a web site that evaluates various genealogy sites and rates them according to some pretty strict standards. Walking with Ghosts received a 91 out of 100 possible points, had no penalty points but also received no bonus points. Reading the results I realized that I received "0" points because links didn't open in new windows.....I decided to run a poll to see what folks who visit the site would prefer...links that open in the same window allowing you to use your back button to return to where you were or links that open in new windows allowing you to switch between windows to view the information....please consider participating in the poll - it's to your right on this blog. I'd like to thank the three judges at Heritage for their time and their effort in doing this for genealogy site......

My Kiddo - April 2008

Die Wetterfahne



Come Away, Come Away, Death - Dallas





Signed, One Proud Mama!

Learning something new~~

Genealogy isn't just the gathering of names and dates and burial sites; it's so much more than that. The names, dates, and burial places don't tell you who your ancestor was - to get that information you have to dig a little deeper - work a little harder.

I love fairs. Everything about them. The smells, the sounds, the sites....could that be in my genes? Perhaps....because I just learned that our Abnett ancestors ran the Kentish Fairs in Maidstone back in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Ginger Beer manufacturers (yummy!), brick layers (wish that gene had passed down a little stronger everytime we work on those front porch steps), bakers and cooks and Fair Folks......

Changing Adresses~

I checked out a fellow genealogist's blog today. One of her recent entries dealt with a site re-design of a database of Civil War information; apparently the redesign resulted in changed addresses for the pages which in turn created a headache for those folks who had previously bookmarked those pages. The blog entry included a letter sent to the site owner reprimanding him/her for the confusion that had resulted from his re-design.

I felt for the poor site owner; after all, I've just spent the better part of two years searching for a way to make my own website (and the local site which is on my home computer) more organized, more searchable, and well...just better. I tried my darnedest to figure out a way to only change a few of the web site page addresses, but in the end, in order to facilitate future updating to the site, I had no choice. I had to work within the outlines of my own knowledge of web design and the context of the amount and type of information that the site incorporated. In the end, only the index page address of my own site remained the same (home page).

After 8 year of research, my site had grown to close to 200 pages with hundreds of photos and scanned documents all of which were in alphabetical order but with no generational or surname organization.....it had reached the point where maintenance of the site both locally and on the Internet was becoming a nightmare....that nightmare meant I avoided maintaining the site.....and so on. I couldn't find documents, images, and sometimes, even the page I had created for an individual without a great deal of effort. As a result, a lot of the information was outdated.

So, when I finally got down to re-designing the thing, I had to not only think of past visitors who had bookmarked old pages, but I had to think of myself and how to make it as easy as possible to maintain the site in the future. I had to come up with a way to make navigation of the site not only easier for me but for the visitors to the site. I tried everything I could think of to accomplish this without losing the old page addresses, but in the end, I knew that I had to give up that idea.

Folders were the answer - the only real solution to a disorganized mess. Folders and sub folders and still more sub folders - assigned by surname and then generation and then additional folders that contained all the documentation and the photos for that surname and that generation. i.e.

A. MacLeod Folder

I.Angus and Nancy Folder

a) Alexander and Sarah Folder

i. Alexander and Harriet Folder

ii. John N. and Kitsy Folder

iii. Photos and Documents Folder

b) Daniel and Catherine Folder

i. Annie McLeod Boykin Folder

ii. John Robert McLeod Folder

c) Photos and Documents Folder

B. Abnett Folder (following the same principal as above).

Folders solved the issue of my local site; I can find generations and branches and documents in a heartbeat. But all of that organizing would have been undone if I simply used the old way of uploading those pages to the Internet site....they would all go back in alphabetical order using the given name.....so all the folders had to be uploaded as well which changed the page addresses (addresses now include the folder names as well).

The local site is now a mirror of the Internet site and the Internet site is a mirror of the local site....this make maintaining the site 100% easier for me, with an unfortunate side affect being that the page addresses have now changed. I can only hope that a well maintained site - one that has all information updated on a regular basis - is a fair trade off for those visitors losing their bookmarks temporarily. (And each page now has links to every surname entry page on the site making it easier for folks to navigate - some pages even have the generations listed to aid in finding individuals).

I imagine that the Civil War database owner faced the same issue - how to keep it all organized for the easiest maintenance of the site.....and I'm sure that he/she tried their best to keep the page addresses the same but in the end, that desire had to be sacrificed for the long term benefit of both the research and the researcher....I know that's what I experienced.

February's Birthdays and Anniversaries

Anniversaries this month:

Meyers, Iva and Bryan

Westberry, Joanne and William

McLeod, Vicky and Kevin - 25th****

Gaylord, Sarah McLeod and Willis Gaylord 143 years ago

McLeod, Thomas H. and Sara 150 years ago



Birthdays:

1. Ross Leonard C. age 90; Truesdale, Hosea age 113; McLeod, Wilson age 117

2. Burgess, Anthony; Meyers, Sarah E. age 164

3. Blue, Henry age 109; McLeod, Thomas E. age 121

4. Moncrief, Joshua; White, Mary M. age 142

5. McLeod, Hampton D. age 136; McLeod, Angus Robert age 166

6. Westberry, Jesse; McElveen, Margaret age 140

7. Alger, Robert age 93

8. Horne, Sarah Bragg age 104

9. Phillips, Doug, Locklair, William

10. Westberry, Samatha; McLeod, Joseph C. age 140; Williams, Mary H. age 121

11. McLeod, Christopher; McLeod, James H. age 158; Hudson, Jochiam age 276; Holland, Mittie age 138; Brown, W. M. age 138

12. Wessell, Samantha; Davis, Sharon; Donald Ross McLeod Sr. age 113; Kevin Ross McLeod (grandson of Donald)

13. Westberry, Reginald age 72;Way, Austin

14. Griffith, Francis McLeod age 91; McCaskill, Margarette age 98

15. Cutshall, Norman;Hudson, Mary B. age 375

16. Smith, Sarah McLeod; Huggins, Martha McLeod age 168

17. Jessup, Mary L. age 202

19. Newman, Scott, Hopkins; Melissa Barfield, Tindale; Mary B. age 133; Arrants, Johannas age 239

20. Jesse Lazarus McLeod age 162

22. Westberry, Mary; King, Melody; McLeod, Richard T. age 162; Bain, Mary M. age 141

23. Foxworth, Margaret age 71; Dennis, Isobella J. age 150

24. Kritas, John age 92; McKay, Harriet age 119; Estes, Dorothy age 91

26. Westberry, Dr. Jesse age 92; Evans, Otto

27. Oldhouser, Bill

Walking With Ghosts~~~

I guess the title of the new site intrigues folks; because a few of you wanted to know a bit more about our ghostly experiences while researching...... I'll start with the story that caused my niece Skye not to want to spend the night with me anymore! If you dig around a bit on the website, you could read about it there...but to save you the chore of the digging~~

In June of 2004, David and I packed H off to summer camp where his two elder siblings were counselors and headed up the road to South Carolina for our annual McLeod Reunion and my annual research trip. I had a list of things I wanted to find in the courthouses, but the most important thing to me that year was to find the McLeod Family Cemetery where John Robert McLeod (h/o Sarah Cason) and Annie McLeod Boykin (w/o Col. Stephen M. Boykin) were said to be buried (both children of Daniel McLeod and Catherine McLean).

I had recently learned that the cemetery was on what used to be our family land; at some point it had either been sold or given to the New Hope Presbyterian Church where the grave yard was consecrated and used from then on for both McLeods and members of the church. Unfortunately, the church burned in the 1930's and the ground was left to return to nature...and nature was taking back the cemetery along with the rest of it all. I knew that any opportunity to find those graves was slipping away with each new growing season.

After the reunion on Saturday, David, cousins' Trish Sanders Brown and her daughter Elizabeth and I loaded up to drive to where we would begin the search. Trish had been there several years before and thought that she would find it quite easily, but nature had so taken it all over that it took us close to three hours to find the little place. Even asking neighbors didn't help us, they'd forgotten it was even there for the most part.

As we searched, I couldn't help but think that it was a little bit like the Blair Witch Project...you could hear the wind whistling softly in the trees, our feet crunching through years of undisturbed layers of leaf mulch, the cars traveling every now and then down the distance road almost sounded like the moans or growls of something........and the hushed excitement in our voices might have been mistaken for a little bit of fear and holding that camera steady was nigh impossible...and then we finally caught a glimpse of an old gravestone through the trees.

The stones were in pretty awful shape and it broke my heart just a little to read the names and the dates of those of my family who were buried there and now forgotten. Many of the stones were broken and lying on the ground, some were showing signs that it wouldn't be long before they were joining the already fallen, and far too many were missing completely. The fence that had once surrounded the little site was only evident by the slanting, rotting posts.....

Although we found John Robert's grave almost immediately (and a few other family members that I didn't know were buried there), Annie's stone was nowhere to be found. As I videoed each stone, I talked about the connection to the family if they weren't actually related or recited their ancestry if they were....and as I walked from stone to stone, stepping over tree roots and huge limbs and other debris, I would place the video camera on pause......

Quite a few times, I had to back track and re shoot a grave or two because I'd forget to take it off of pause, and so when we returned to the hotel to share the video I wasn't surprised to see that I had missed a few of the stones......

But after not finding Annie's grave, I was bitterly disappointed to see that I didn't have John's gravestone on the video either.....we re-wound that tape and went over it several times just to be certain that it wasn't there.....with my father Donald Ross McLeod Jr., his wife, Jan and my Aunt Madie there as witnesses. Seeing my disappointment, David assured me that he could find the graves again and that we would stop by there on our way out of town the next morning.

David was as good as his word because we walked right up and into the site the next morning and this time, not quite as excited or nervous, I was much more cautious with my recording and I made certain that I had John's stone on tape before doing anything else. The calm that we hadn't had the day before allowed us to really look at what remained of the lay-out of the remaining stones and slowly, we began to see a pattern.....our family members were mostly in a double line, stone after stone. We started to look for foot stones that gave us clues to where formerly marked graves were located....and finally, David began to gently move the dirt away from in front of one of those foot stones. Soon he reached stone and we began to think that we'd been very lucky.....

Before very long, David had uncovered Annie's entire head stone, beautifully engraved and all in one piece. Who knows how long her stone had laid there covered by years of falling leaves and blowing dirt...but we had found her. We videoed the stone and then gently propped it up against a tree that stood near her foot stone....and we headed home to Florida.

I couldn't wait to show the kids the two videos (Saturday's had had a certain Blair Witch quality to it as we first viewd it) .....we had been big fans of the Blair Witch Project years before, playing tricks on each other and our neighbors....they would love the video adventure even if the names and dates didn't mean anything to them just yet....

I started with Saturday's video.............and was shocked when suddenly, there where it had not been before, was John Robert's gravestone....remember, we had watched the video in the hotel room with 3 extra witnesses and his stone was not there.......I guess Annie wanted to be found, eh? I kinda like walking with ghosts.....

*disclaimer....I like walking with the ghosts of my family..that was in no way to be considered an open invitation to just any old ghost who wants to walk with me.......

Finished~~

I just uploaded the last page of the newly redesigned website ! And I breathed a huge sigh of relief~~because that thing has been hanging over my head for the better part of two years! I'm sending out the email letting folks know that its completed as soon as I finish this post (the site now has a link to this blog ~ and I need to make sure this thing is as welcoming as I hope the new site will be!).

From 2000 - 2003, I was dilligent in the maintenance of the website; well, actually two websites which mirrored each other.....but then we went on our farmhouse search and I got a bit distracted - still I was able to keep up with it. Then in 2004 we actually bought the farmhouse and moved into it and....well, the poor website began to get neglected.

Four months after moving in, just as I was getting ready to jump back on the genealogy wagon, I had a computer crash.....from that point on, I just never got back into the habit of maintaining the site the way it should have been maintained.

Then, in mid 2005, the first of the DNA project results started coming in and I spent the better part of a year learning about genetic DNA and well, you guessed it, I neglected that poor old website. From then until now, I have had three attempts at a redesign and update of the thing each of which stalled out about a quarter of the way through....until this past November.

My computer began to drag its feet whenever I got on it; finding a photograph or a research piece began to get progressively more difficult; I was finding duplicates of images and documents all over the poor puter and suddenly, I'd had enough of my own disorganization. And I got serious. And I got down to business....spending an average of 2 hours each evening on the website and re-organizing the puter at the same time.....until I finally finished the last page on Saturday.

The new website is completely up to date on all of the research but perhaps most important is that it should be easier for everyone to navigate now.....I know that folks were getting as lost on the old site as I was in my computer!

If you've come to this blog from the website, a little reminder~~ you will need to re-book the pages and hit refresh from time to time to make sure that you are 1) able to return to the site when you need to (most page names have changed despite my attempts to do this without that happening) and 2) seeing the most up to date version of the pages.....

Happy Researching! Here's hoping that someone in my family tree may be someone in yours!