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.  

13 July 2025:- Total 53, 097including living. Sunday Single Back Up.  E-mails, sources for existing people and back to writing up a medal purchase for Joseph Davis Dowling who was killed in Action on HMS Queen Mary at the Battle of Jutland, I had paused to deal with an e-mail query a while ago.

12 July 2025:- Total 53, 095 including living.  Mostly more censuses for New York, trying to find another family route back to Kilkenny.  Some tidying up and e-mails... all in 34+ degrees Centigrade!  Phew.

11 July 2025:- Total 53, 066 including living.  More New York census... looking for a pattern that may be found in Ireland.

10 July 2025:- Total 53, 046 including living. Went through some Find a Grave entries for Rochester, Monroe today... there are three sisters that are being very economical with the truth on their ages!!!

9 July 2025:- Total 53, 021 including living. Numbers went down today as I merged several people in Monroe County, New York... almost the whole family chopped and changed their names... they must have know a genealogist would come looking for them!  Added 3 censuses to existing people and some more Timelines for the US.

8 July 2025:- Total 53, 030 including living.  More census work in Monroe County, New York after a clear email from a correspondent.  Hopefully back to Ireland.

7 July 2025:- Total 52,991 including living.  Mostly one family in Rochester, New York with some additional Timelines programmed in for some censuses.

6 July 2025:- Total 52,971 including living. Sunday Single Back Up.  Just some tinkering around the edges on the Carlow to Oneida line today.  I am sure there are more records available relating to this line but they are not coming up on some logical searches, so I may now halt here until I hear more from the correspondent or serendipity turns up a record while I am looking for something else!  As if he was listening a new correspondent sends a message today... also for upstate New York.

5 July 2025:- Total 52,958 including living. Mostly censuses for people who already exist in the study.  Some Ohio additions.  Also busy in garden on the only cool day for weeks.

4 July 2025:- Total 52,945 including living.  More census for Oneida, New York with a surprising merge on 3 people who I hadn't noticed a few days ago as the dates of birth were different in different records. 

3 July 2025:- Total 52,935 including living.  Added baptisms and marriage for Carlow ancestors of the Oneida Dowlings… I am satisfied that the sequence of births is far too coincidental, with added supposed origin being Carlow.

2 July 2025:- Total 52,927 including living.  More Find a Grave entries for Oneida, New York.  Also looking at multiple records in Carlow and I think I have found the sequence of baptisms matching the siblings in Oneida... its compelling and will probably be entered this week.  I fret a little over this as its not exactly explicit, but older records so seldom are - this is the argument I have (if only with myself) about using hypothetical connections that fit the available facts and then trying to disprove the hypothesis.

1 July 2025:- Total 52,910 including living. Monthly Double Back Up. Mostly censuses in New York and source entries for existing people.  Busy day and 34.7 Celsius - hottest July 1 on record here in UK.  I would rather do something to reduce global warming than not, even if its not man-made the effect will probably be beneficial - if I do nothing and it is a man-made disaster in the making then it might be irreversible… I'd rather not take the risk. 

30 June 2025:- Total 52,897 including living.  Considerable number of Find a Grave entries relating to the New York families.  Almost all with graves... I don't exclude those without but Find a Grave is a better source if the grave (or some other corroboration) is showing.

 

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 13 July 2025 at 20:16; 46,564 people (this number does not include 'Living' people excluded automatically for data protection purposes)
Page created by John Cardinal's GedSite v5.04  |  Much altered from a design by Contented Designs