Having a brain cramp (2 Viewers)

[The_Doc_Man]

I'm having a problem and either my brain is fried (not impossible) or I'm missing something (also not impossible). The setup for this is complex, so bear with me. I am working on a complicated part of my Genealogy program, something to help me analyze structural errors in the family tree.

The specific problem I am addressing is the assignment of a person to a generation. It might be a bit pretentious but my generation is numbered 0. My parents are generation 1, grandparents generation 2, my step-kids are generation -1, and so on. This generation number is assigned by a really ugly stretch of code in which I look at the relationship between two people. The relationships are always either sibling, parent, spouse, or child. So if I find someone for whom I know their generation and have a relationship link to someone whose generation I DON'T know (yet), I can assign as either known person's generation +1 if relationship is parent, no change if spouse or sibling, or -1 if child. Simple enough. I've checked and it NEVER assigns a difference other than 1, 0, or -1 - so the problem isn't mechanical. The code that assigns this repeats sweeps through all combinations of <person 1, relation, person 2> - at least 28K combinations in total - until all generations are assigned or until anomalies show up.

As the analyzer proceeds, it finds LOTS of cases where generations on both sides are known, so it compares those cases. If it knows the relationship and the generations of both parties, it can test whether the generations are consistent. A huge percentage of the time, like 98%+, no problem. But sometimes I find a relationship between two people and their generation numbers not consistent with the relationship. This is an anomaly that means a parentage link is incorrect. It happens that sometimes the contributing sub-genealogies you get back can be faulty.

To identify the problematic generation assignment, I determine the path by which the generations were assigned. This is possible because each generational assignment gets logged as it is made. I can identify the step in which the generation was assigned for each person. To complete the analysis, I want to find an anomaly (i.e. two people with a relationship inconsistent with their generation) and step back through the generation logs for both sides of the relationship. This is where I have the problem.

I find the anomaly, then look at the two people and start tracing back the left-side partner (copying the relevant assignments along the way to the table that will drive the report) and then I want to go back to the same anomaly entry but start tracing the right-side partner's assignments. To achieve that, I have code that - before I start tracing EITHER side - I take a recordset clone from Me.Recordset into a separate DAO recordset object variable and I assure that the form's current bookmark goes into that recordset object. I start AND FINISH the left-side traceback, which DOES involve form navigation. In theory, all such traceback paths have to lead back to my record because it is the first record in the database.

At the point where I want to go back to the original anomaly, I copy the bookmark from the separate recordset back to the form's Me.Recordset.Bookmark - but it says "No current record."

...
    Set rsCurAnomaly = Me.Recordset.Clone           'remember where we are
    rsCurAnomaly.Bookmark = Me.Recordset.Bookmark   'save exact pointer
...
{code that steps through the relationships to find the given assignments}
...
    Me.Recordset.Bookmark = rsCurAnomaly.Bookmark   'find original marker

No records ever get deleted by this analyzer but there are some updates to records to mark "USED" so that if there is ever a double-reference, I'll catch it. (So far, hasn't happened.) What is wrong with this approach to return the analyzer form back to the anomaly? At the moment I don't have record autonumbers because I wanted to avoid that particular bit of manipulation. If I have to do that, I will, but I was hoping to just bookmark where I wanted to return for subsequent analysis.

 

[MarkK]

I don't fully understand your problem, but looking at the code, it might be useful to know that you can just assign a bookmark to a string. It looks like you have a separate recordset variable rsCurAnomaly, and it looks like all it does is support a bookmark. Instead, you should be able to do this...

    Dim bmk As String

    bmk = Me.Recordset.Bookmark
    ' do something with Me.Recordset
    ' knowing that any requery, including filtering,
    ' will invalidate bookmarks
    Me.Recordset.Bookmark = bmk

It is also possible that something you are doing in your "code that steps through the relationships..." is invalidating the bookmarks in Me.Recordset.

 

[strive4peace]

hi Richard @The_Doc_Man

Bookmarks are temporary. If the Recordset changes, bookmarks aren't valid. Perhaps store the Primary Key field value and find it again?

Here is some generic code I call FindRecordN, that I use a LOT! To find records using a numeric primary key:

Find Record

Find a Record on a form, usually using a combo box

msaccessgurus.com

for example, if you aren't IN the control with the value and want to pass it (skipped psCtrlName_SetFocus)

call FindRecordN( Me, "myPKname", , nPKvalue)

Me can be any form reference, such as Me.subformcontrolname.form or forms!anotherformname

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I knew about finding by PK, but I was hoping to not have to go back into the assignment code to include management of a PK. It is rather complex code already. But, auto-number PK with occasional empty-the-table/reset-the-PK, here I come.

I either forgot, or perhaps never came across the issue before, that bookmarks are temporary. That fact would, however, completely explain what I have been seeing. That table was originally supposed to be a simple log, but I had to add a flag to indicate that I had already visited the record and, because of its nature, couldn't use it again in the same scan. (A re-visit would be indicative of circular relationships if it happened.) The update of that flag must have invalidated the bookmark.

Darn the bad luck. Back to the drawing board, I guess. But that leads me to the question: Where did people go after making mistakes before drawing boards were invented?

 

[GPGeorge]

Spoiler:

I knew about finding by PK, but I was hoping to not have to go back into the assignment code to include management of a PK. It is rather complex code already. But, auto-number PK with occasional empty-the-table/reset-the-PK, here I come.

I either forgot, or perhaps never came across the issue before, that bookmarks are temporary. That fact would, however, completely explain what I have been seeing. That table was originally supposed to be a simple log, but I had to add a flag to indicate that I had already visited the record and, because of its nature, couldn't use it again in the same scan. (A re-visit would be indicative of circular relationships if it happened.) The update of that flag must have invalidated the bookmark.

Darn the bad luck. Back to the drawing board, I guess. But that leads me to the question:

Where did people go after making mistakes before drawing boards were invented?

Mostly into the jaws of the prey animal chasing them at the time, I suppose.

 

[GPGeorge]

I knew about finding by PK, but I was hoping to not have to go back into the assignment code to include management of a PK. It is rather complex code already. But, auto-number PK with occasional empty-the-table/reset-the-PK, here I come.

I either forgot, or perhaps never came across the issue before, that bookmarks are temporary. That fact would, however, completely explain what I have been seeing. That table was originally supposed to be a simple log, but I had to add a flag to indicate that I had already visited the record and, because of its nature, couldn't use it again in the same scan. (A re-visit would be indicative of circular relationships if it happened.) The update of that flag must have invalidated the bookmark.

Darn the bad luck. Back to the drawing board, I guess. But that leads me to the question: Where did people go after making mistakes before drawing boards were invented?

I sympathize, genealogy is a tough racket.

I long ago made a mistake in my family history database in the way I recorded "households". I later realized that sometimes people remarry and form new households following a death or divorce. For the most part, it's a non-issue, but there is one function which I've never been able to properly define to avoid children being assigned to "previous" households in which they never resided. If they were step-children as part of a second marriage, no problem. It's only when they were born into the second (or third) marriage and were NOT part of the prior marriage household that I have the problem. Short of throwing it all out and starting over, I haven't figured out how to finesse it with the current tables. One of these days, maybe I'll be moved to rearchitect it....

What you are doing is at least one order of magnitude greater, so yeah, good luck.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The Ancestry.COM site allows for divorces and multiple sequential marriages, but there is one member of my family that REALLY stretched their web generator. A particular woman has her biological father, birth-certificate father, adopted father, and step-father. The only one that was hard to get in there was "birth-certificate father" - the guy who was married to her mother but who, when the mother died, didn't want anything to do with the kid, and the biological father was a couple of states away when the mother died. So eventually her aunt and uncle adopted her to keep her in the family. But later, the aunt and uncle split and they both re-married. I gave up on the uncle's relationships because he married three times in total, making the later two wives step-mothers. Let's just say the diagram wasn't pretty.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

AND after all of this went down and drove me nuts for days, I finally traced it back far enough to find out that because of the somewhat isolated nature of south Louisiana communities in the late 1700s and all of the 1800s, there are some really crossed up branches in the particular part of the family tree causing me agony. A couple got married who were not otherwise related to each other, but that couple and the sister of the bride in that couple were BOTH in my wife's family tree separately as ancestors. The married couple were great-grandparents while the sibling and HER husband, because of having kids at a younger age (I guess) were great-great-grandparents. What I was seeing wasn't an anomaly of the program. It was a quirk of relationships in a small, isolated, low-tech community.

Don't worry. It hasn't gotten quite as far as me being my own grandpa. But the family tree got a little crazier than I had anticipated.

 

[GPGeorge]

I have cousins to whom I am related through both my mother and my father. (She's actually the genealogy wizard in our family, by the way.) That was another small, isolated community. As a kid the people to whom we were not related tended to be the most recent arrivals as the area grew.

 

[Cotswold]

I find this interesting and only just seen the post. As with everyone else, I have written my own program.

The difficulty with biological, step, adopted etc of different fathers has not occurred in my trees.
To me only the biological father is of interest, as they are the ones that take the tree back. I will record multiple marriages and therefore stepmothers, or whatever but not multiple fathers. I don't see that they have much relevance in the pursuit of ancestry. If the tree of a wife is traced, I would only trace her paternal line. To start on her female branches, whilst interesting would turn a time consuming operation into pure drudgery. In the case of multiple different types of fathers, they would be relegated to notes as their ancestry is of no interest to me. I would just see their presence, simply of interest only. Although I will admit that the female lines of people we actually knew when we were young have had more attention than those I didn't. But even then only mainly with regards to their paternal line.

I have traced and proved back to 1550 for my paternal line and 1620 for my maternal line. Last count was a total of over 600 individuals. A logistical problem I'm on with at present is certificates, census records and address images. In total I have nearly 800 documents and the software to quickly relate each certificate to people has been a pain. Whilst I can from a census record, open copies of the original documents and from people open their various certificates, census and address locations, actually locating and linking them to view the images is, at the moment is too time consuming. Mainly because a single person can have certificates for birth, baptism, marriage, census, death, will/probate, Electoral Roll, gazetteer, Notes, Divorce, partnership, Association and Photograph.

I have never placed my trees on Ancestry, Find My Past, or used a third party system as they don't carry enough detail. Few will even handle the census. I have yet to see on Ancestry a correct version of my tree developed by someone else. They so often presume and assume but do not prove. Americans will often make mistakes on event locations. I presume because they look at the map and think that's not far away. But they appear to fail to understand the only option was to walk up and down hills taking a day each way. With only Sunday off, not often an option. Same as today really, horses were for the toffs in Britain. The land, mine and factory slaves had to walk and every town didn't have a train station even in the 1800s. I once told someone on Ancestry where their tree was wrong and had to shut the conversation down as it was turning into too much work explaining it all. At one point this American lady was trying to correct me about people born in the 1890s that I actually knew! That was the final straw. Then in the end they didn't totally correct the tree. Never again! If they are happy with their tree, fine. Even if it's a dogs breakfast, I'll leave them to it.

If anyone is thinking of tracing their family tree, the main sites are Ancestry and Find My Past. There are others, some free. Unfortunately you will need to subscribe to both because for unknown reasons each does not have all of the data. Each has missing records that the other has.
Both appear to have been written in the last century and it can be very time consuming locating details. You cannot view data in one, minimise and look somewhere else. It is open and close. Although I have had two copies of Ancestry open at the same time. Ancestry is the worst. If you are looking for census data to reduce the view screen quantity you will want to do a year at a time. In that case, each time you choose a different year you have to re-enter everything again. Although FMP is far better for census searches and most other searches. FMP past will carry entered data forward in other similar related screens but it never happens in Ancestry. One irritating bug in Ancestry is when you definitely know names or dates and set one to exact to reduce the dross. As soon as you set that, you will see nothing at all. Brilliant.

Overall they are both very slow to use but I would say FMP is slightly better but tends to be more expensive. On the Irish census and other Irish records, most appear to have been lost in fires. That applies to Northern Ireland as well as the Irish Republic. The last British census to many will be 1921, plus the 1939 census, which was only partial due to WWII restrictions. The 1931 census was lost during WWII bombing. So the next available will be the 1951 census in 2051. Maybe ask as many people living now for address and other information in circa 1951?
It is a time consuming labour of love. I'm thinking when I've finally finished my program may well be amongst the largest I have created in Access. If it is ever finished. It is so tempting to just keep adding to it. To me it is not like a commercial application where you say that's it, draw the line, it is complete. You'll find dates are different. Years are the same but months have more possibilities. As well as the months you have JFM, AMJ, JAS and OND. Also Circa, Estimated and blank of course. It's all good fun.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The difficulty with biological, step, adopted etc of different fathers has not occurred in my trees.
To me only the biological father is of interest, as they are the ones that take the tree back.

We have different purposes. I'm building something that I hope will one day be interesting or informative to my grandchildren so that they can know some of the family stories. For example, I am forever cut off from some of the stories about my paternal grandmother because no one is left who knew her and could tell me about her. Having the family tree as a springboard for discussion, I have stories to pass down to those who might one day care about them.

If the tree of a wife is traced, I would only trace her paternal line. To start on her female branches, whilst interesting would turn a time consuming operation into pure drudgery. In the case of multiple different types of fathers, they would be relegated to notes as their ancestry is of no interest to me.

If I stayed only with patrilineal research, I might not have discovered that my wife has a distinction that is the Cajun equivalent of "coming to America on the Mayflower." By tracing matrilineal ancestry, I can identify the family name and time frame during which several of my wife's ancestors left Acadia, Nova Scotia and popped up in Donaldsonville, (south) Louisiana. It exactly correlates to the "Acadian Diaspora" that occurred in the 1750s. My wife is DEFINITELY a true and original Cajun by ancestry, not just by having lived in the area. If I avoided matrilineal ancestry, I would have never found the Doiron (dwa-ron) family who started it all by moving south from Canada.

I have traced and proved back to 1550 for my paternal line and 1620 for my maternal line. Last count was a total of over 600 individuals.

Because of divorces and such, I've got extra family sub-trees to trace. I've got over 2000 persons. I didn't get the international option, either

Few will even handle the census.

Ancestry.COM handles the census but there is a very special USA consideration. Until 1950, all censuses were hand-tabulated. The first computer census was 1950. And because of the handwritten "analysis pad" (spreadsheet) method plus Spencerian-style cursive scripts, you are at the mercy of the handwritting of the census take, and have to hope that the person was conscientious. Example: My mother's family name was Hassell, but bad handwriting caused some mid-1800s censuses to list them as Harrell.

FMP is slightly better but tends to be more expensive.

Yes, the subscriptions are not cheap for either source. Which is why I promised myself that this year, I was going to shut it all down. But I've been barraged by other projects that have legal implications and thus have gotten sidetracked yet again.

 

[Cotswold]

Ancestry.COM handles the census but there is a very special USA consideration. Until 1950, all censuses were hand-tabulated. The first computer census was 1950. And because of the handwritten "analysis pad" (spreadsheet) method plus Spencerian-style cursive scripts, you are at the mercy of the handwritting of the census take, and have to hope that the person was conscientious. Example: My mother's family name was Hassell, but bad handwriting caused some mid-1800s censuses to list them as Harrell.

Names and their spelling are always a problem.
I've seen some in later 1800s censuses incorrectly translated by maybe not that interested census recorders. Or the fact that the people on the census didn't know how to spell their names, so couldn't correct them. I wonder at times if thy were asked if it was right and they nodded, or said "aye, thys reet" (yes, you are correct) so they didn't admit to not being able to read.

I also suspect that accents had a lot to do with it. On one maternal line their name in church records in the 1700s frequently changed. I have seen seven different spellings in the same church records. It ended up as Oldbury but was recorded as Qwberry, Olberry, Owdbery, Owbury etc. One actually changed from baptism to marriage and from the handwriting, different vicars not getting the accent. Of course none of them could check it because they couldn't read or write. From the handwriting clearly all different vicars and a different interpretations of the accent. Even my own name way back sometimes had an extra 'e' in the middle and occasionally they shifted it to the end. Which caught me out in earlier days. When I moved it about I found the results. I often think that our names and spelling were dictated by the last vicar's interpretation of what was said.

My brother in law's father was in the first World War and his family name was Jeffries. When he signed up the sergeant said you don't spell it like that. It is spelt Jeffreys and so it remained for the rest of his life and for his children and grandchildren.

 

[GPGeorge]

Names and their spelling are always a problem.
I've seen some in later 1800s censuses incorrectly translated by maybe not that interested census recorders. Or the fact that the people on the census didn't know how to spell their names, so couldn't correct them. I wonder at times if thy were asked if it was right and they nodded, or said "aye, thys reet" (yes, you are correct) so they didn't admit to not being able to read.

I also suspect that accents had a lot to do with it. On one maternal line their name in church records in the 1700s frequently changed. I have seen seven different spellings in the same church records. It ended up as Oldbury but was recorded as Qwberry, Olberry, Owdbery, Owbury etc. One actually changed from baptism to marriage and from the handwriting, different vicars not getting the accent. Of course none of them could check it because they couldn't read or write. From the handwriting clearly all different vicars and a different interpretations of the accent. Even my own name way back sometimes had an extra 'e' in the middle and occasionally they shifted it to the end. Which caught me out in earlier days. When I moved it about I found the results. I often think that our names and spelling were dictated by the last vicar's interpretation of what was said.

My brother in law's father was in the first World War and his family name was Jeffries. When he signed up the sergeant said you don't spell it like that. It is spelt Jeffreys and so it remained for the rest of his life and for his children and grandchildren.

My genealogist cousin has commented on the variant spelling problem of family names for years. That, along with records lost in church fires, etc. makes her avocation extremely difficult.

One of our ancestors was either Irish or Scottish, or perhaps from a Scotch family who immigrated to Ireland. He ended up in New York at the age or 11 or 12, probably unaccompanied. But beyond that definitively identified event, she's been totally stymied. According to DNA testing, in fact, we have as much Scandinavian DNA as Scottish, and both more than Irish DNA. We were all told we came from England and Ireland, but the DNA says not necessarily so.

Dawn has threatened to make a trip someday to research on the ground, which I truly hope she decides to do some day. She's visited cemeteries throughout the east coast of the US, so I know she's serious about the idea.

 

[MajP]

@The_Doc_Man
IMO this is a graph theory problem. You have a directed graph and you need to span its entirety. Logging generations as you go starting from a given starting node.

I have done quite a few of these graph theory problems demonstrating some different algorithms including some basic genealogy.
Depth first searches
Breadth first searches.
dijkstra / floyd warshall
Spanning trees
TSP

Here is the last one I did which would employ a somewhat similar spanning method:

Optimising Routes

i was going to ask about the piggyback status, and how it worked. You can pick a trip that has 0 vehicles to ship. You will see if another driver has previously driven that trip. Then it will assign the current driver as a piggyback and not increment the number of cars shipped on that trip.

www.access-programmers.co.uk

If you are interested, I could try to build an Admin table that could identify potential discrepancies/conflicts in generations and relationships.

This table could hold the following
TblGenerationRelationCheck
-- PersonID_FK (foreign key to a person)
--BFS_Generation
--BFS_Conflict
--DFS_Generation
--DFS_Conflict
--Notes

My thought without doing this is to start with a single Node (probably you) with a baseline generation
1. Span the graph (tree) using a Breadth First Search and log the generations for each person
2. Normally as you span you check if the node has been visited and disregard it. In this case you check if it has been visited and if the generation is the same as the generation coming from another node. If not log it as a Conflict. This would mean the path from your brother / sister to your parent or grand parent is generating a different value then the path from you. This would identify a relationship issue
3. Do the same thing with a Depth first search logging the generation and conflicts.
4. log the conflicts in the notes too

A couple things should then ID problems that need investigation. Which would show potential problems in relationship assignments
1. Conflicts internal to the DFS or BFS
2. Conflicts between the DFS and BFS
3. Islands (people that cannot be reached from the span). This identifies a broken relation or circular relation
(SIde note. Hopefully any circular relations are a mistake in data entry (or we just will sweep that under the rug and not mention it). Doing this with animal breeding, it took me a while to realize it was not a mistake in my code and that is just what goes on.)
I am not certain if you even need to log conflicts internal to the searches. I think initially I would just look at conflicts between DFS and BFS

Doing a DFS or BFS to log the generations should not take 28k iterations. Should be more like order O(V*N ). So if 1000 people and on average 4 direct relations then 4k. For speed I would not use a recordset because they are super slow to traverse. I would offload into a "graph" and use that. It would be orders of magnitude faster.

If you are interested in a demo just to see if the spans can be done could you build an extremely simple db.

1. Only need the tables directly involved in the "family relations" and probably only the PKs and FKs.
2. Need some understanding of how you form family relations. I assume you do not do any self referencing table but have at least one Junction table storing the FKs and type of relation.
3. Obviously not everyone could be reached from your node. So would need the Top PKs (if every node can be reached from a single common ancestor). If you have multiple branches would need each top nodes. If there is a single Top PK and it can be reached spanning up from you then do not need the top PK and can find it.

Hit me up if interested and you think this is doable. I know this has a pretty complicated table structure since you account for all the indirect types of relations (steps, direct adoptions, adoptions by family members, etc.). However if these nodes are connected/ related in some way it can be done.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

If you are interested, I could try to build an Admin table that could identify potential discrepancies/conflicts in generations and relationships.

Actually, between some new tools on the Ancestry site and my on-again, off-again work in defining discrepancies, I'm able to find most of the problems but thanks for the kind offer. My problem is more likely that I've made an assumption I shouldn't have made, but I am working on it. Thanks for the list of possible optimization methods. I might use that.

This most recent problem is simple. It was the first time that I discovered and recognized a case of a common member appearing in both a patrilineal and matrilineal tree - and I wouldn't have spotted it if it hadn't been that the "depth" of the linkage differed on the two sides. My method involves assigning a "generation number" by linking parent-to-child (generation difference of +1 or -1) or sibling-to-sibling (generation difference of 0) and storing a computed number to whichever of the two links didn't have a generation yet. As a sanity check, if I came across a pair who both had generation numbers, I tested them - and in this particular case, that sanity check revealed two sisters to have different generation numbers based on previous parent/child depth assignments. I am NOT using recursive assignments because that blew out my program stack when I hit a loop caused by bad data. This is just a linear scan looking for immediate relationships and if I have to rescan because not everyone has assigned generations yet, no biggie.

In essence, the blow-up occurred because my father-in-law was either "7th or 9th cousin once removed" from my mother-in-law. That "once removed" annotation represents the depth difference. Given that neither of my in-laws showed much interest in genealogy and the two families had diverged (geographically), I doubt they had the slightest clue of that circumstance. Since the first generation of that divergence was through sisters, their family names didn't persist, so there was no obvious case of two folks with the same last name getting married. Most countries allow cousins to marry if they are more distant than third cousins so there are no consanguinuity issues either.

What I really need to do is determine whether that makes any difference in the way I'm generating family tree diagrams, and I don't think it should, but apparently I'm wrong there, too. I just have to figure out why my tree generator hiccups later when I'm actually trying to "draw" the tree via Excel and I am working on a set of people who seem to be "floating" in an area where the above generation assignment algorithm fails to find them - some sort of disjoint segment within the list of tree members. If I can figure out what is wrong there, I'll be able to clean it up. I think you called them "islands." As good a name as any. I know who they are because I keep some status info in each record and I am finding the oddities by testing the statuses.

 

[Cotswold]

My genealogist cousin has commented on the variant spelling problem of family names for years. That, along with records lost in church fires, etc. makes her avocation extremely difficult. One of our ancestors was either Irish or Scottish, or perhaps from a Scotch family who immigrated to Ireland. He ended up in New York at the age or 11 or 12, probably unaccompanied. But beyond that definitively identified event, she's been totally stymied. According to DNA testing, in fact, we have as much Scandinavian DNA as Scottish, and both more than Irish DNA. We were all told we came from England and Ireland, but the DNA says not necessarily so. She's visited cemeteries throughout the east coast of the US, so I know she's serious about the idea.

I'm not entirely convinced about the DNA results from Ancestry, or associate much value to them. Maybe more of a novelty than anything else? Myself, my wife and son in law have references to Iceland which cannot be correct (in my opinion). The only reason I can think is that the Norwegian link caused it but only because the Scandinavians and Danes colonised it to some extent. My mother's line from 1700s on shows various locations in Britain but I'm certain they obtained that with searches in their data from the name and cobble something together. Same with my paternal line, which was actually Yorkshire to Lancashire and they showed that in the DNA results. It claimed DNA data from Preston but the family were passing through and only spent maybe 15 years there. They'll have picked up some births and deaths from their data I reckon.
I though there was too little detail going back 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. We can after all find the recent past ourselves. Overall I felt a bit cheated with the DNA results. There was a tendency for the German Angles and Saxons to populate the South and Midlands (of England) with the Scandinavians and Danes to the North. Then prior to that we had the Roman invasion which brought people and soldiers from all over Europe. The Norman invasion may be looked on as French but they were actually Danes and Scandinavians who took over huge areas in France.

I'd go for the parents of the 11 year old. At that age he may well be on two censuses. From that you'll get his parents and where they were born. There has always been movements between Scotland and Ireland, maybe because they are so close. Sectarianism in Scotland and Ireland goes back centuries. In Glasgow Celtic is the Catholic's football team and Rangers protestant. If you go to Northern Ireland the taxi driver will ask if you support Rangers or Celtic. Then depending on your response he'll know if he likes you! Just say you don't do football. If you can get his forbearers into Scotland, or England it would be easier. My wife has some Irish and it is hard work locating details.

I wouldn't consider wandering through cemeteries. It is a soul destroying task and often pointless. If you know someone was buried in a particular one, you can obtain details from the local authority. Many gravestones are from sandstone and after even 50 years can become impossible to read. On many the surfaces split from rain and frost damage and the wording drops off. Many churches and some organisations have recorded the details that you can search. In my paternal line the church they went to for around 300 years had their cemetery dug up when they created a new road in the 19th century. Many are laid as paving around the church and others are simply stacked upon top of each other. They did a transcript of the graves though but again some of the wording is incomplete.

Take a look at parishchest.com if you know of a church of interest. They have a range of church and other data, most of which you can buy as emailed PDFs. I've picked up a few church records off them and converted the PDFs into Access tables, then done searches in access using several parameters at once. It is then much easier to them. Searching a PDF directly is a mugs game, as you'll know. There are also numerous genealogical societies covering towns and districts. Some larger ones do publications and have regular meetings. Some are online but maybe only of passing interest.

If you know a town where you think the 11 year old came from I may be able to point you in the right direction.

 

[GPGeorge]

I'm not entirely convinced about the DNA results from Ancestry, or associate much value to them. Maybe more of a novelty than anything else? Myself, my wife and son in law have references to Iceland which cannot be correct (in my opinion). The only reason I can think is that the Norwegian link caused it but only because the Scandinavians and Danes colonised it to some extent. My mother's line from 1700s on shows various locations in Britain but I'm certain they obtained that with searches in their data from the name and cobble something together. Same with my paternal line, which was actually Yorkshire to Lancashire and they showed that in the DNA results. It claimed DNA data from Preston but the family were passing through and only spent maybe 15 years there. They'll have picked up some births and deaths from their data I reckon.
I though there was too little detail going back 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. We can after all find the recent past ourselves. Overall I felt a bit cheated with the DNA results. There was a tendency for the German Angles and Saxons to populate the South and Midlands (of England) with the Scandinavians and Danes to the North. Then prior to that we had the Roman invasion which brought people and soldiers from all over Europe. The Norman invasion may be looked on as French but they were actually Danes and Scandinavians who took over huge areas in France.

I'd go for the parents of the 11 year old. At that age he may well be on two censuses. From that you'll get his parents and where they were born. There has always been movements between Scotland and Ireland, maybe because they are so close. Sectarianism in Scotland and Ireland goes back centuries. In Glasgow Celtic is the Catholic's football team and Rangers protestant. If you go to Northern Ireland the taxi driver will ask if you support Rangers or Celtic. Then depending on your response he'll know if he likes you! Just say you don't do football. If you can get his forbearers into Scotland, or England it would be easier. My wife has some Irish and it is hard work locating details.

I wouldn't consider wandering through cemeteries. It is a soul destroying task and often pointless. If you know someone was buried in a particular one, you can obtain details from the local authority. Many gravestones are from sandstone and after even 50 years can become impossible to read. On many the surfaces split from rain and frost damage and the wording drops off. Many churches and some organisations have recorded the details that you can search. In my paternal line the church they went to for around 300 years had their cemetery dug up when they created a new road in the 19th century. Many are laid as paving around the church and others are simply stacked upon top of each other. They did a transcript of the graves though but again some of the wording is incomplete.

Take a look at parishchest.com if you know of a church of interest. They have a range of church and other data, most of which you can buy as emailed PDFs. I've picked up a few church records off them and converted the PDFs into Access tables, then done searches in access using several parameters at once. It is then much easier to them. Searching a PDF directly is a mugs game, as you'll know. There are also numerous genealogical societies covering towns and districts. Some larger ones do publications and have regular meetings. Some are online but maybe only of passing interest.

If you know a town where you think the 11 year old came from I may be able to point you in the right direction.

Thanks for the extended overview.

Our problem is that the first and only reference we have to where he came from is the entry to the US through Ellis Island, in which our ancestor indicated he was from Ireland. There is no way to even verify that that much was true. His written history begins on that occasion. No town or even county is recorded. His parents' names are not recorded in that document. We suspect he might have been an orphan.

All we could possibly do is search for similar family names with no guarantee any of them are valid matches. Trust me, Dawn has spent many, many hours over many years looking. There's no path from New York back to follow.

I agree that the Scandinavian DNA aspect derives from the Viking participation in some way.

Dawn loves to visit cemeteries regardless of the immediate value in research.

She probably has used parishchest.com as one of her sources. She has memberships in a number of similar organizations.

However, if you don't mind, I'll ask her and see if she does want to talk to you about some of these issues.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

where he came from is the entry to the US through Ellis Island

Which reminds me of a really bad joke....

A guy goes into a New York City tailor ship where a sign over the door is "Eli Shapiro Tailor Shop." He is greeted by an oriental gentleman who speaks English with a strong oriental accent. In talking, the customer says, "Is Mr. Shapiro here today?" The man behind the desk says, "I am Mr. Shapiro." The customer says, "If you don't mind me saying it, you don't look like someone named Shapiro." The proprietor replies, "After I came through Ellis Island, this is my name. I was in line being checked into the country. The clerk was processing someone ahead of me and asked his name. That man said 'Eli Shapiro' and a few minutes later he had his papers. Then it was my turn. The clerk asked my name and I answered him 'Sam Ting'. I have been Eli Shapiro ever since."

 

[GPGeorge]

Which reminds me of a really bad joke....

A guy goes into a New York City tailor ship where a sign over the door is "Eli Shapiro Tailor Shop." He is greeted by an oriental gentleman who speaks English with a strong oriental accent. In talking, the customer says, "Is Mr. Shapiro here today?" The man behind the desk says, "I am Mr. Shapiro." The customer says, "If you don't mind me saying it, you don't look like someone named Shapiro." The proprietor replies, "After I came through Ellis Island, this is my name. I was in line being checked into the country. The clerk was processing someone ahead of me and asked his name. That man said 'Eli Shapiro' and a few minutes later he had his papers. Then it was my turn. The clerk asked my name and I answered him 'Sam Ting'. I have been Eli Shapiro ever since."

I am sure that's closer to the truth than is comfortable.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

I am sure that's closer to the truth than is comfortable.

Yes, my guess is the New York sense of humor has always been, what should I say, on the earthy side, working man humor. It follows that given the opportunity, some Immigrants would be named in a comical way!!