WikiTree: Poking About with a Purpose

 I've had an account at Ancestry.com for years.  I have also had a tree on FamilySearch.  But I recently got curious about WikiTree and decided to poke about in it.

Yeah, that poking about got me hooked.

I find a lot to like about Ancestry.com.  My tree there is MY tree there.  I decide what gets posted to it.  I demand and exercise the use of reliable sources.  I've had a good deal of training in genealogy, a lot of it emphasizing the need for good source citations.  I don't have to worry about someone lacking any training in genealogy putting misinformation on my Ancestry tree.

I love FamilySearch for its documents and records and its research information and instructive articles.  I don't love constantly having to correct misinformation, usually unsourced, again and again and again, concerning my ancestors.  So I will use the immense number and variety of original and derivative sources on FamilySearch.  I will take advantage of their marvelous research guides and their wonderful wiki.  But I'm not wasting my time anymore on that tree.

Enter WikiTree.  It is also a collaborative tree.  However, it is a lot more likely to be accurate.  For one thing, to use WikiTree, one must sign their Honor Pledge, which states that we will back up every fact with a reliable source or sources.  For another, WikiTree is mainly by genealogists for genealogists, people who have had some training in the field and who understand its requirements.  And finally, the idea behind WikiTree is that we all help grow the best, most reliable, and most accurate tree we can make, so people in the future have a highly useful body of information about their ancestors there on the Web. 

I've wondered how I was going to preserve and pass on my family history.  My daughters and grandson don't have the passion, though my grandson does enjoy hearing family stories.  But they have other concerns taking their attention.  I do plan to leave a lot of documents and research to a genealogy society or societies.  WikiTree now also figures into my plan of how to preserve and pass on my family history.

WikiTree also has a great deal of mentoring.  One of these mentorships is their Profile Improvement Project (PIP).  The profile is the individual entry of information (well-sourced, of course) about an ancestor.  A good profile has as much information as one can gather, representing a "reasonably exhaustive" body of research, and analysis of what it all means.  To show you the results my participation in the Profile Improvement Project has rendered, you are invited to see my profile of my granduncle and adoptive grandfather, Perry W. Reed.  WikiTree has a hugely long learning curve, and the PIP helps a lot in getting through it.

Another handy learning tool is their G2G (Genealogist to Genealogist) communication facility.  There, a user can ask questions about genealogy, about the technology of WikiTree, and about WikiTree's policies.  The policies are set by various functions in WikiTree, and those functions are staffed by members of WikiTree.  WikiTree is very FUBU (For Us, By Us). 

Who was the disruptive ancestor in your family?

Somewhere in the blogosphere, I came across a prompt:  Who was your disruptive ancestor?  I forget where I found this, because I . . .  well, read on and I'll explain. 

I'm using the term "disruptive" to indicate the child in your family who might have been the one bouncing off the walls or the one who was often off in his or her own world; the one who struggled with school, with getting projects done; the one with the explosive temper.  Who was that person in your family?

I want to let my descendants know:  I was your "disruptive" ancestor.

I lost my temper; I felt things deeply, whether that was things that made me mad or things that made me happy.  I struggled to get things done.  Often I did get them done, but at a psychic price, because managing a project is difficult for me.  I was impulsive; I would blurt out comments without thinking first.  Often, I embarrassed myself by doing so, and felt shame.  I had memory problems and difficulty with time management.  If an object fell out of my immediate field of vision, it was instantly forgotten.  My room was a mess.  I was criticized and judged, and elders in my family tried to "fix" what they perceived as my flaws, emotional and physical.  Therefore I developed a flawed and negative self-image.  Despite all these challenges, I excelled in academics because that was all I had on which to build my childhood and teenage identity.  I wasn't pretty; I wasn't popular; I wasn't your typical girl.  I was a tomboy; I'd rather have climbed trees than gone to a dance, where I felt terribly awkward.  I was what was called at the time a "late bloomer."  That academic success did not come easy; there was a psychic price.  Accomplishing anything -- doing homework, doing science projects, writing papers, taking tests -- required an expenditure of energy and effort that was three times that required for most other kids to get done.

The 1950s were not a great time to be a nonconformist.  It wasn't a great time to, by my nature, go against the established norms for behavior of a highly patriarchal society.  It wasn't a good time to be an oddball in a traditional family.  It didn't help that, having read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique at 14, I became a feminist in a family that bought into the patriarchy lock, stock, and barrel.

I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  I have only recently found this out.  I'm 78.  I've had this condition all my life.  Learning about ADHD through online forums and support groups (such as  Attention Deficit Disorder Association), I have found that my life finally makes sense!  

I've read that there's considerable evidence that it runs in families.  I think my father, who died when I had just turned 7, was my ADHD parent.  Mom told me that he had "flunked sandbox."  That is to say, he got kicked out of kindergarten.  That would have been somewhere around 1915.  That was another time when being different was not exactly acceptable.  He probably had no choice but to buckle down and behave as he was expected to; certainly he didn't have a choice during his college experience at the United States Naval Academy.  Discipline in those days was often physical.   

Other nuclear family members either have been diagnosed with ADHD or suspect they may have it.

 ADHD has definite physical elements:  Our brains are wired differently from most folks, referred to as neurotypicals.  Those with ADHD, and others whose brains work differently, are termed "neurodivergent."  We do not see the world as most people see it.  We do not relate to the world as most people do.  We have lower levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine.  These chemicals are vital to what are called the executive functions of organization and planning.  This means those of us with ADHD aren't good at project management.  

ADHD is all-pervasive, influencing nearly every aspect of our existence.  October has been ADHD Awareness Month.  Please become aware; and do a little learning to see if perhaps that "disruptive" relative of yours might have ADHD and might be in need of diagnosis and treatment in order to live their best life.

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Baseball

 My husband and I, on a whim, watched the greater part of a baseball game today.  It was the Baltimore Orioles at the New York Yankees.  As a lifelong Dodgers fan dating from their time in Brooklyn (yes, I'm that old), I don't like the Yankees, so I had to cheer on the Orioles.  It was a futile endeavor, I fear, as the score when we left the game was 9-0 Yankees.  Sigh.

Yes, I've been fond of baseball since my childhood in the 1950s.  I was a tomboy; the usual girlish pursuits did not attract me.  I collected baseball cards.  I played "flyers & grounders" with a neighbor boy.  I watched baseball games on TV with my grandma, and I was thrilled when my mother kept me out of school one day and took me to the baseball stadium in our home town of Jacksonville, Florida, where we watched the then-Brooklyn Dodgers play an exhibition game.  I almost caught a fouled baseball, but I was carrying soft drinks back to our seats, and didn't want to drop them.  

And just in the early years of this century, the Dodgers played again at our local stadium, and I got Tommy LaSorda's autograph! That was a big thing for me.

My one regret in my affection for baseball has been that my eyes are not aligned due to a childhood operation to correct severe cross-eye.  I have no depth perception within three feet.  I can't hit a baseball worth beans.

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Charles Reed's Timeline

 Charles Reed (1840-1920) was my great-great grandfather on my mother's side.  He was born in Gallia County, Ohio, 28 August 1840.[1]  He died 26 January 1920 in Portland, Jay County, Indiana.[2]  In the year in which he was born, "horsepower" meant the ability of a horse to pull the family buggy.  In the year in which he died, "horsepower" was the power rating of the automobiles coming off Henry Ford's production line.  Charles Reed had served in the Civil War, Company F, 140th Indiana Infantry.[3]  When he died, the world had not long before engaged in a terrible war "to end all wars," which, of course, it did not.  

And when he died, importing, manufacturing, or drinking alcoholic beverages was illegal.

In the year in which he was born, Victoria, Queen of England, married Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Germany.  James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder was a nationwide best-seller.  Born in 1840: Emile Zola, Claude Monet, Thomas Nast, Pierre Auguste Renoir, August Rodin, Peter Ilich Tchiakovsky, and Father Damien, the "leper priest" of Hawaii.[4]

 In the year before Charles Reed died in January of 1920, Theodore Roosevelt died.  Woodrow Wilson presided over the first meeting of the League of Nations.  There was racial strife in Chicago, and the American Steel strike began, ending in January of 1920.  The International Labor Conference endorsed the eight-hour workday.  Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio was published, as was Hugh Lofting's first Dr. Doolittle book, H. L. Mencken's The American Language. and Robert H. Goddard's A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, a seminal work at the beginning of the age of rocketry.[5]  

 All of this information, and the citations below, are in an extensive timeline I did in 2003 on Charles Reed.  It spans 88 pages, with endnotes.  I had read an article extolling the virtues of timelines as a way of placing our ancestors in context.  I used Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History, which is arranged in chronological order, and lists events of political, historical, scientific, and social importance.  I also used various censuses, Charles Reed's Civil War pension file, and other references, to create the timeline.

Not only did I enter the events of national and world importance, I also entered the family events, such as births and deaths of the descendants of Charles Reed and of members of collateral families, mainly the spouses and children of his descendants. 

I am a convinced advocate of timelines. 

[1]  John Robinson Reed (son of Charles Reed), et. al., "Births and Deaths in the Reed Family to April 1st, 1913."  List of the birth and death dates of Charles and Clarissa Reed and their children with additional death dates entered by persons unknown, no date.  Copy of typescript, initialed "J.R.R." (presumably John Robinson Reed).

[2] Charles Reed, Civil War Pension Application File, SO 816,345; SC 697,707: Records of the Veteran's Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Bernard Grun, The Timetables of History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).  The book is arranged by year; I have not given page numbers because the arrangement by year makes it easy to find the items cited.

 [5] Ibid.