General

In January 2000, Jill and I decided to make tracing our family tree's a personal Millennium project.

What you see here, is the result of our investigations so far.

Improving what you see here

Although I've attempted to provide accurate information on these web-pages, experience teaches me that there are bound to be numerous errors. If you spot any of them, please let me know.

If you have a related line to mine, I would love to include it. Click here to find out how to contact me.

Policy on Privacy.

I aim to be a good and responsible custodian of data on the history of our families. I have even tried to read through the relevant sections of data protection act (well, if you try, you'll understand why I didn't manage every paragraph), and believe that everything I have conforms with the intention, if not the letter of it.

I have removed from this internet version of my family tree, all living individuals, and any spouse, or offspring, of any living individual. In the absence of any other data, I have assumed that anybody more than 100 years old is no longer living. If you discover that I have failed to removed somebody that is in one of these categories, please inform me, and I'll remove the offending data as soon as possible. Click here to find out how to contact me.

Listing Sources of information

I have decided not to include information on the sources of my information on the internet version of this tree. The reason for this is that if there is an error, it can easily propagate, and the error be attributed incorrectly. Also, I would expect that anybody with a sufficient interest in our research to be concerned about sources, to contact me directly.

Other researchers with connections to this tree.

Other people carrying out associated research include:-

Garry Allsopp is my third cousin on my mothers side of the family. Gary has helped me find much of the information that I was struggling with on my mothers mother side of family. click link to http://www.28hallsrd.com/familytree for more information.

Ian Priestley is my sixth cousin once removed. Ian's father married a Squires. Ian has helped me find much of the information that I was struggling with on some of my more remote Squires relatives.

Andrew Thraves. My 3rd Great Grandfather married Sarah Thraves. Andrew has provided information on some 200 Thraves relations. He has carried out a one-name study into the name. Details from the Thraves tree covering over 1700 Thraves names can be obtained by contacting him at andrew dot thraves at ntlworld.com.

Alan Walker is my second cousin, his father married a Squires. Alan has built on the work originally started by his sister, Maureen, and has provided a great deal of the information which kick-started my research into the Squires side of the family.

Unless specifically requested I do not publish e-mail addresses of other researchers. I don't want to be responsible for even more spam e-mails clogging up the internet. If you want to contact any of these, then please Click here to find out how to contact me, and I'll be delighted to pass on the message.

Terminology

The database uses the term "spouse" when any relationship has ...err.. produced a child, irrespective of whether the parents are married or not!

Tools used for Genealogy

There are many tools in existance to help with family history research and maintaining the web pages. I use the following:

• Legacy - for data entry
• Gedstar - for Palm Pilot
• Perl - programming language
• Homesite - HTML editor
• Gvim - general purpose editor
• Ghoti - GedCom to HTML translator.

Legacy 6.0 is the main genealogy program that I use to organize my data. The basic program is free although I use the Deluxe version for it's slightly improved features. Legacy's merge capabilities and it's "IntelliShare" feature makes it easy for groups researchers to coordinate their works. I use Legacy to export the data to a standard GEDCOM files for generating my Web pages. However, Legacy does have its own excellent web page generation capabilities.

Conventions used in Legacy

There are a number of conventions that I have developed to ensure consistency in my data and for use by my Ghoti HTML generator.

• The notes contain HTML. This includes links to pictures and other documents.


• Generally, notes are limited a few lines. Larger notes are included via a link.


• All links are relative, so that the HTML may be relocated to a web-server without having to change all the directory paths.


• Where a wife's maiden name is unknown, her given name includes the prefix "Mrs", and she is given her earliest surname that I have found to-date.


• A child baptism is referred to as a Christening. This is to differentiate between child and adult baptisms, and for consistency of terminology.


• Census entries are handled with the Description field containing the relationship to the head of the household, and the Place field being filled in.


• The census event for a married couple is recorded as a marriage event, rather than two events, one against each individual. Any other individual at the same address are entered as individual events, as are occupations.


• For information provided on snapshot dates (IE not a specific event marking a change in status for an individual), I only provide the month. So for example, an occupation recorded on the 1881 census is recorded as being "apr 1881".

I use this registered shareware program to put my genealogy data onto my Palm T3 hand-held computer. This allows me keep an outline of my research with me at all times, just in case I happen to be near a library or other source of genealogical data. It allows me to view (but not edit) the status of my research. http://www.ghcssoftware.com/

Luddite that I am, I still prefer to use an old fashioned log book for collecting data and later on transfer the data to a computer.

Perl is a open-source language, which is designed to read and process text files http://www.perl.com. On Windows XP, I use Active Perl

For my family history research I use Perl to generate the web pages from the Gedcom file produced by Legacy. I prefer to do this rather than rely on the Legacy generated pages for a couple of reasons:

• I have total control over the format of the pages. The starting point for the layout was similar to the pages produced by Generations, but with significant improvements.
• I can perform operations on the data, such as filtering, text formatting without waiting for a third party (such as Legacy) to implement it.
• If Legacy sells out (as Generations did), I can still generate web pages with an identical format. This will not happen with the Perl language itself, as it is an open source standard and is available for many operating systems.

Homesite

This is my chosen HTML editor. The main attraction of Homesite is the link and strict syntax checking. For developing the HTML generator, I use this program to check the generated HTML meets the strictest requirements of the language. I also use this program to write other linked HTML pages (such as this one).

I also prefer to write the raw HTML, rather than use a WYSIWYG type editor. WYSIWYG editors produce inefficient and verbose code, and if there is a problem with the HTML that they produce, it is very difficult to find the problem, and impossible to fix it, without editing the HTML directly anyway.

I also write the HTML to reference a single standard Style Sheet. So my entire site has the same look and feel to it, and that look can be changed by modifying one configuration file. http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite

This is a graphical version of the popular vi text editor. For my family history research I have found it to be especially suited for viewing Gedcom files and editing Perl programs with text colouring controlled by the syntax of the file being edited. It is also able to perform code folding, which I use extensively. http://www.vim.org/

ghoti.pl

This is the Perl program that I am developing which generates the HTML pages for my "Family history", and "Borsetshire history" web pages. I am making this program available on an open source basis. Click here to read more.

Features of Generated HTML

• Half siblings are included in each family group.
• The file names for families are based on the surnames of the husband and wife. Hence making it easier to find, update and upload individual family pages, rather than having to update several hundred pages every time.
• The style uses a html style-sheet.
• The generated HTML is optimised for file size/speed.
• All links are relative, so that the HTML may be relocated to a web-server without having to change all the directory paths.
• Automated searching and checking of all links to check for broken links in any HTML which is included in the individual/marriage notes.

Data filtering algorithm

• Optimised for pages organised as family groups.
• Privacy filtering algorithm which maximizes what can be published while respecting and protecting information of living individuals.
• Only includes in the reports relatives of a selected person (known as the seed individual).
• The number of boys and girls is listed for each family. Where some of these may be alive, the number of children who are living is shown, but not their names.
• The generator uses to a configuration file, which has all the preferences for the web pages. Changing a single argument causes it to refer to a different configuration file. Hence, generation of the web-pages is repeatable and consistant.