A new year begins. What will it bring?
Welcome to 2004.
Isn't that period between Christmas and the New Year a bit like being in suspended animation? Sometimes it feels good to get back into familiar routines. At least when you wake up in the morning you know you have to go to work instead of half-dreaming that this may be another day off, then the sudden realisation that it isn't.
Yesterday, at 5 pm, I was with Alan and Howard at Teleradio as they closed the doors for the last time in 57 years. I came home feeling very melancholy about the future of the town's shopping centre. Out-of-town stores are useful, but it feels to me that the heart of the town is slowly moving from the centre to the car park of a supermarket on the border of Whitstable. I wonder what our ancestors would have thought of this.
Still, nothing changes very quickly around here. I read the report of a council meeting in 1947 deciding whether to implement a one-way traffic system in the town because of the increase in vehicular traffic. After much debate the town councillors decided against this because it might affect traders in Harbour Street, take traffic past a primary school, and cause problems for bus passengers. As this seemed a little familiar I looked through the local papers from the last few weeks. There I found a report of a meeting of Canterbury City Council discussing the very same subject and reaching the same conclusions. If this same attitude of 'we're frightened of change' had been taken by the founders of our town, then Whitstable would not exist today, except as a marshy bog full of sheep.
Talking of 1947, the E.B. articles on the site now total 4. The index for these can be found at:
http://www.oystertown.net/ebindex.html
The two latest additions are:
4,262 Herbert Rigden, aged 79, tells of his memories of the Whitstable divers. Names mentioned; Captain John Pierce, Fred Hubbard, Tom Rigden, Donkey Whorlow, Sam Edwards, Joe Beale, Bonny Foreman, Harry and Tom Bartlett, Viva Walker, Jack Walker.
4,271 Edmond Thomas Gann O.B.E. remembers how Whitstable was as he tends his roses. Names mentioned; Weller, Smuggling, Cricket, Jack Perry.
Meanwhile the work is still going forward, but slowly, on the 1891 Whitstable born people on ships page. I'm about 70% through the transcriptions from original census images and hope to complete by the end of this month, depending on work commitments.
Everytime something new goes on the site, it contains new names. I always hope that these will be found by someone searching for them who in turn can feed more us more information about that family. Like all of you I have many pieces of such information but until I can link it to some context it remains unused. Additionally, I am aware, that on the site already the same person may be mentioned in more than one place, but I do not yet have the proof that they are the same person. It may well turn out that the site will have to change to an ASP driven one so that people can search out individual items and in this case disjointed information could be used. HTML, DHTML, Javascript, FTP'ing etc I can cope with, but ASP and on-line databases are a step beyond that may well have to wait a while.
In the meantime we'd better all get off to work!
What started off as a quiet week on the site turned into a crescendo.
Firstly Brenda Lawrance found the message board and got a tad excited. We love enthusiam, Brenda. I've been in touch briefly with her and will see what she has got, and in what format, soon. I know some of you may already have done so.
Then Mike Gann sent in his Gann file in .gft format. Thank's Mike. I've discovered this was produced in Family Tree 2 but am still looking for a converter to access the data.
Then Frank Miles, who is researching his Maternal grandmother's family - the Rigdens, sent in some information which seems to imply that our original on the Gedcom, George Shingleston, had a sister name of Carolyn who married into the Rigdens. I'm still trying to confirm the link from my end Frank, I'll be in touch soon.
I also had an email from some-one who wanted me to value a Dan Sherrin print he has. Considering how prolific Dan was as an artist, and how many of his pictures were printed, I've suggested that he just enjoys it and learns more about Dan which will give his print much more than just monetary value.
It seems you are enjoying the E.B. series as much as I am. I've been trying to find out more about this man. So far, but not definite, it appears that he was a War-reporter based in China before he came (back?) to Whitstable. Previously the Whitstable Times only had reporters, so his articles seem to be the first time a local was allowed to be a journalist, as one can see by reading them.
The latest edition is:
4,369 THEY ALL HAD "NICKNAMES". Four Williams on one ship. What would you call them? Too many names to list, just enjoy reading it, and then learn why.
You can find this at www.oystertown.net/eb4369.html (I have made an error on the ebindex page and called it 4303, but the link works).
I had quite a chuckle as I transribed this one but there is some useful information in it.
The OysterGedcom has been much on my mind this week. The placing of it on Rootsweb has given it a starting place on the web but only for those people who know to go to Rootsweb or Ancestry.com in the first place.
The intention was that it would attract people who weren't neccessarily family historians and that this would help provide previously unknown information.
To achieve this I've now decided, as well as keeping it updated on Rootsweb, to publish it as a site that can be directly searchable by the internet's search engine spiders. I considered putting it directly on the Oystertown site, but if I then had to move it at a later date when I needed the space back this would cause a lot of "File not found" errors.
The answer I've come up with is to host it as a sub-domain of the main site, where it gets it's own space. This means I can edit individual pages directly and have more control in general. I have programs which can bulk convert gedcom data to html pages but these don't give me enough styling options to match it and cross link it to the main site. I'm looking at some batch 'find-and-replace' utilities to enable me to do this.
If all of this leaves you a little confused then this is the intended outcome:
An internet traceable and searchable Whitstable family history database that contains all of the original notes and sources. This means that the names in the data should be found by someone entering them in Google for instance.
Family and person pages to include pictures of the people where available, or perhaps a picture of the house they lived in. Cross links between pages of the main site where these people are mentioned in listings or newspaper reports.
Links to other resources relevant to these people. For instance, died on board the Cressy in WW1 - Find about more about the Cressy.
Contact details (when requested) for people researching this person or family.
The URL will be www.ancestors.oystertown.net, but the world (except you) will not know about it until I'm ready. If you do have a look in the meantime don't expect much to work at present, it's still an experimental playground.
Have a good week.
Another week's gone by and we're all seven days older, except me it seems. Chris, my ever suffering wife, caught me looking at a cruise ship holiday brochure with interest. Apparently I've aged fifteen years and she's just going to have to find herself someone younger. What's the name of that stuff that hides grey hair?
On the Site this week.
No new pages on the site this week. Have I been having a rest? No, I've stood back from it and had a look at the cracks. As a result there are a few subtle changes in the menu. This is to prevent any "404's" and improve consistency.
The "archives" option which was unused is now to hold backups from the message board. Of late this has been getting increasingly busy and I don't want any of the useful information on it to be lost. Questions that are answered today for one person may be the same questions new visitors may have in the future.
The direct link to the "1881 ships" has gone, (the page is still there: from the 1880 index), and is now the "OysterGed" link.
These newsletters now have a direct link, but I am a bit behind with updating them on the site.
The most important change is the OysterGed. As I explained last week this is now in a sub-domain of the main site, but for all intents and purposes it is part of the main site. When I wrote above "No new pages on the site this week" I didn't mention the 1,843 pages that now make up the Oyster Gedcom.
This has been quite a task. My genealogy program can knock up the pages in a minute, but I had no control over the look of them, plus they were plastered over with the name of the program. I've now set up a sequence of text filters to pass them through which 'Oystercises' them and converts them to a similar style to the main site. There's still a bit of fine-tuning to do to the presentation and I've still got to sort out the gaps in the text on the Kemp pages but overall I'm pleased with the results.
The file now consists of 1,039 people with 790 families. Now at last I have somewhere to put all of those snippets of information about people that have been sent in, and I have the control to do many more exciting things. For instance: When I build new pages on the main site I will be able to put special links to the gedcom page that contains details of that person, and visa versa.
I expect this gedcom file to be updated on line on a monthly basis with all the new discoveries and contributions from whatever sources become available in that month. At the same time I will continue to update the mirror gedcom on the Rootsweb site to catch a wider audience. I have already submitted the on-site gedcom pages to search engines and we will see what happens when their spiders come along.
Other bits and pieces.
No-body told me that on Ancestry.com they now have some BMD data on the UK for the periods 1984-1992 and 1993-2002. This came as a surprise to me when I checked to see if any more SHINGLESTON's had been listed. For most of you this information might not be relevant for you know first-hand of events in this period, but if, like me you are searching for people you never knew, or relatives from a distant line, then this could be very useful. The other thing I learned from this was that the PUTWAIN's all seemed to have moved everywhere but where they were in the 19th century.
The Whitstable born people on ships 1891 work is nearly finished, just a dozen ships left to do. It's getting tough now, some of the images have been corrupted and some are just so illegible that I'm having to use a few '?' in places. When completed this will go on the site as two pages: the first showing name, married status, name of vessel and where logged.: the second will be for the ship buffs,with name of vessel, weight, registration number, registered port, name of master (or person in charge), type, trade, total crew on board and not. I feel this will be useful information so that people get a better idea of the working environment of their ancestor. I think I can safely say that all of you who receive this newsletter will find at least one connection, and I can guarantee this will be a much more accurate transcription than will be found elsewhere.
Help needed.
I still can't use the Gann file. If anyone uses 'Family Maker' software and thinks they might be able to import it (.gft file), then export it as a gedcom (.ged file) can they let me know. The Gann's link in to all of the families one way or another.
Other things I've remembered.
I forgot to say that I've made the current OysterGedcom into a self-executable zip file (100K). If you want me to send you a copy so you can import it into a blank file on your Genealogy program just let me know.
I've remembered what the hair dye is called. I just can't decide between the options: Black hair and a warm bed or 10 days cruising the oceans on my own chatting up similar aged octogenerians. Hmm, difficult decision........
Busy week!
OysterGedcom
Congratulations to Suzannah Foad who successfully exported her data as a gedcom file. It is massive by anyone's standards and we have a few matching problems to integrate it with the Oyster Gedcom, but when we do it will give everyone something to get their teeth into.
Thanks to Frank Miles for the further Shingleston/Rigden/Whorlow connections. They will be on the next upload.
BROWN LINKS & SEARCH-BOX
Soon, in your meanderings around the site, you will come across people's names in upper-case bold brown letters. Clicking on one of these will take you to that person's page on the Oyster Gedcom. Simply and effective eh? Except I don't know all of the connections yet, so if you come across one just let me know who and their number on the Gedcom so I can put in a link. Thank-you.
The Search box on the site now scans the OysterTown pages, the Message Board, and the new Gedcom pages. Don't be surprised if you start to get tens of pages found with the name you enter. This is to encourage new viewers to explore the site and maybe give us some input. In addition, next month, it will be place at the top of the menu (so you don't have to keep chasing it down a long page!)
WHO'S THE CHEAT, HANDS UP.
As time is a bit short I'm going to cheat by pasting in a bit of the work in progress for the site. The following, admittedly a bit scrambled in this email format, is a sneak preview of the type of information we are indexing from the Whitstable Times.
To start with, and to get the names on-line, the indexes will appear. You will then be able to request further information on the pieces you are interested in. These requests will then form the order in which the complete articles, reports, or notices are transcribed onto the site. You, the receivers of this newsletter, will get first choice.
The examples that followed can now be found here: WTIN1946
You want Oysters?
I received an email today from someone in Scotland asking if I could arrange to send some oysters as a gift to someone in St.Albans. I directed them to the following site. Sounds like a great idea, but I doubt they'd make it overseas.
As you may have realised, I didn't go off on a cruise, and Chris is still here. As a reward for both our sacrifices I might treat her to a day out at a cemetery! (All spouses of family historians now shake their heads sadly.)
Until next week...
2004 - February.
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