What's New

I add names to the Family Tree Maker database almost daily. The database, converted to GEDCOM format, gets updated to this website using GEDsite.
I am slow... because its not just about collecting names, I am after connections and stories. The 'Living' are excluded from this website, the total viewable in website can be seen in footer at the very bottom of the page.  

25 March 2025:- Total 51,897 including living.  Some Pennsylvania census entries with a puzzle that may link to an image.

24 March 2025:- Total 51,883 including living.  Small tweak of DNA haplogroup entries.

23 March 2025:- Total 51,883 including living.  Sunday Single Back Up. A couple of tweaks but mostly other things today.

22 March 2025:- Total 51,882 including living.  More in Indiana using frameworks in Find a Grave and augmenting them with census records.

21 March 2025:- Total 51,868 including living.  Lots of Census sources for an Indiana branch with some children added.

20 March 2025:- Total 51,853 including living. More from Indiana and a couple of source refurbs.

19 March 2025:- Total 51,819 including living. Still on an Indiana trail.  A few English source refurbishments to tidy things up for my retirement from genealogy.

18 March 2025:- Total 51,810 including living.  Added another line in Indiana that have some offspring who are coincidentally in the same cemetery as another branch.  A couple of refurbished sources.  Busy, busy.

17 March 2025:- Total 51,789 including living.  Some work on an existing branch in Ohio and Indiana, seems like a tragedy during the Civil War.  The new correspondent seems up for the local hunting.

16 March 2025:- Total 51,777 including living.  Sunday Single Back Up.  Busy with current relatives, I do like to get a visit from my sister.

15 March 2025:- Total 51,777 including living.  Setting of an ORA (Online Repository Assistant Template) which takes me a while but hopefully it will take some drudgery out of scalping data of one source and increase consistency. Just Sources for existing people added really and non-genealogy stuff... yes there is something in life other than family history!

13 March 2025:- Total 51,777 including living.  It took me most of the day but I think I cracked the Irish connection from New York.  It is always a trial when there are records missing that would support a hypothesis, so still working on it.

12 March 2025:- Total 51,768 including living. Busy day... revisited some old 1998 queries taken off the now defunct Rootsweb just as a note.  I reviewed them and merged two duplicates from a different source (the correspondent was fishing for any information on many sites).  I then found the reason I had come to a halt years ago was an error in the original post and I found the New York census entries... more to do tomorrow and may get them back to Ireland.

11 March 2025:- Total 51,755 including living. More sources for existing Dowlings from Michigan born in England, with their offspring.

10 March 2025:- Total 51,745 including living. More Dowlings from Michigan born in England.

9 March 2025:- Total 51,736 including living. Sunday Single Back Up.  E-mails today.

8 March 2025:- Total 51,736 including living. More Michigan USA, including on who married his nephew's widow 30 years his junior.  That could have been dismissed as unlikely.

7 March 2025:- Total 51,728 including living.  Off from Frome in England to Michigan USA for some sources mostly for existing people.

6 March 2025:- Total 51,718 including living.  More complicated sorting in Somerset today.  Some great merges which ended up posing more puzzles.  Good work simplifying this Frome area and putting a name to a place holder where a child's school record revealed the birth was out of wedlock.

5 March 2025:- Total 51,715 including living.  Quite a complicated day refreshing some sources for some old entries into the database as well as trying to improve on the original work.  Managed a merge of two individuals in Wales but it took some doing.

4 March 2025:- Total 51,713 including living.  More sorting out in Ewell, Surrey.  Another brother that lived through Waterloo.

3 March 2025:- Total 51,702 including living.  Some parish records for Ewell in Surrey following what I believe is an error in a correspondent's tree.  Cool though, as it has turned up a Dowling who died at Waterloo.

2 March 2025:- Total 51,689 including living. Sunday Single Back Up.

1 March 2025:- Total 51,689 including living. Monthly Double Back Up.  Away from computer at the moment.

28 February 2025:- Total 51,689 including living.  More work on the framework below... found a few relative entries but by no means enough English baptisms to cover the family... it seems like a whole parish is missing over the 1700's.  Oh well, onwards and upwards.

Legend:

 

Sunday Single Back-up: On Sunday of each week my computer gets backed up to a separate hard drive on my network (NAS).
Monthly Double Back-up: On the 1st of every month my computer gets backed-up to a separate hard drive on my network (NAS). The NAS, which also has other files not on the computer then gets backed-up again to another separate hard drive on the network that is normally off-line for the rest of the month, disconnected from the internet and powered-off.
Merge: A merge is where evidence has emerged to allow two separate people on the database to be merged into one individual.  For example, there may be two people called Michael Dowling, one as a son of John Dowling and the second as a census entry.  The two initially start off from records as separate entries but a marriage of Michael to Mary Phelan showing a father of John and matching other factors allows me to say with some confidence that they are one and the same person.  This can be quite complicated with much playing around with probabilities and numbers of candidates for merging or occasionally very simple.  The number of people in the database drops by one and it is a major cause for celebration as it increases accuracy and future confusion.
Join: A join is where evidence emerged to allow one person to be connected to another.  For example, a daughter to be added to a father.  A cause for celebration as it reduces the number of separate families in the database and increases accuracy and future confusion.

 

Projects

There are a huge number of entries in my database form a variety of sources. So, even though there is no project that covers a particular source or region does not mean there are no entries for that source or region. The projects cover where I systematically extract entries from a source to make sure the source has been 'milked' for all it's worth. The What's New page also shows when I have worked on a particular project.

Activity


Activity follows the Guild of One-Name Studies "Seven Pillars of Wisdom":

  1. Data Collection - from correspondents, projects (see below) and serendipity! I include maintenance in here as, with a large study over 30 years, a significant number of flaws creep in that need correcting.

  2. Analysis - researching, investigating, linking, etc. Also constant review for corrections;

  3. Synthesis - drawing conclusions about the Dowlings, making sense of it all!

  4. Publicising the Study - This website... I am not particularly technical so this is a challenge, I also promote the study on some DNA sites;

  5. Responding to enquiries - helping where I can, adding their families to the database or trying to make sense of DNA matches. I will reply, maybe not immediately, but I will always respond.;

  6. Publication of results - again this website, as much as possible is available as I believe widespread sharing is the basis of its permanent legacy;

  7. Preserving the study - A more significant challenge than it sounds, some arrangements have been made through the Guild for the study to be available when I am dead and gone!


 
I use Family Tree MakerFind My Past
I use FamilyTree DNA for my DNA testsI use GedMatch for Autosomal DNAI am a member of the Guild of One-Name Studies
NOT on Facebook! as wastes more time than it savesNOT on Twitter! it becomes a distractionNOT with Ancestry!NOT on MyHeritage as they took their subscription without notice!
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Compiler: Brian Thomas Dowling (1955-)
Site updated on 25 March 2025 at 19:46; 45,445 people (this number does not include 'Living' people excluded automatically for data protection purposes)
Page created by John Cardinal's GedSite v5.03  |  Much altered from a design by Contented Designs