How do different kinship systems affect genealogy?

Some of the questions I have been asked lately at the Mesa FamilySearch Center reminded me of the issue of the differences between cultural kinship systems. Our perspective as genealogists in a pervasive Western European environment almost forces us to exist within the rigid structure of the "standard" pedigree and/or fan chart environment. 

What is seldom discussed and even less often realized is that this "standard" chart fails to represent the "real" relationships between family members are even worse, obscures those relationships. I have discussed this issue somewhat before, but the recent questions directly raised these issues. Let me list some of the relationships in our own U.S. based culture that are obscured by this type of approach:

• Adoptions
• Foster Parent/Child relationships
• Grandparent raising grandchild who is the out-of-wedlock child of one of the Grandparent's daughters
• Multiple marriages of both husband and wife with children from each of the marriages
• Marriages between cousins

We sometimes lump all of the "outside the pedigree" relatives into a category of "unrelated." Does that convenient category answer the questions raised? For example, if you had a daughter that got married, had a child and then got divorced, do you have any relationship to your grandchild/s other grandparents through his or her father? 

OK, so let me ask some questions about this scenario. What if there were a custody battle between the daughter and the husband and the father was given custody of the child. You are the daughter's parent and you think that neither your daughter nor the father of the child should have custody. The parents of the father of the child also have the same opinion. What is your relationship to the other grandparents? Who should get custody? Let's say that ultimately, custody of the child is given to the other grandparents. You and the other grandparents get along very well and you both help raise the child. Neither the daughter nor her former husband ever have anything to do with the child the rest of its life and the child is raised with two sets of parents, both of whom are grandparents. Show me how you diagram that relationship on a standard pedigree chart and explain that so that someone can understand what happened in your standard genealogical database program.

Of course you realize that I could have created a very much more complex relationship system. Suppose both grandparents were polygamists and had several families. Suppose both sets of grandparents were divorced and remarried and the daughter was only the natural child of one of her parents and the son was only the natural child of one of his parents? Now let's suppose you are trying to reconstruct this arrangement from a U.S. Census record.

We face this situation all the time with totally inadequate tools to handle all of the various relationships in a way that accounts for what really happened. Focusing on a strictly biological pedigree relationship may make this situation impossible to understand. What if the grandparent with custody was the mother of the son-in-law and she did not have the same married name as her son and the child changed his or her name to the that of the grandparents who raised the child?

A kinship systems in anthropology is defined as the system of social relationships that constitute kinship in a particular culture, including the terminology that is used and the reciprocal obligations that are entailed. Here is a more expansive definition from Answers.com citing the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

System of social organization between people who are or are held to be biologically related or who are given the status of relatives by marriage, adoption, or other ritual. Kinship is the broad term for all the relationships that people are born into or create later in life that are considered binding in the eyes of society. Every person belongs to a family of orientation (e.g., mother, father, brothers, and sisters), and many adults also belong to a family of procreation (which includes a spouse or spouses and children). Familial bonds of descent and marriage may be traced through a genealogy, a written or oral statement of the names of individuals and their kin relations to one another. Inheritance and succession (the transmission of power and position in society) usually follow kinship lines.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/kinship#ixzz2nGpbOw23

As genealogists, even in families where the complex challenges I outline above do not occur, we have a very difficult time representing those relationships because the limitations of our standard tools.

If we are to "internationalize" genealogy and further, if we are to really document all of the possible circumstances that occur in various cultures across the world, I suggest we need to start thinking about how we are going to do this in a way that preserves and does not obscure all of these relationships.

Analyzing Mistakes in Family Trees - Part Three

Continuing this series of posts about the issues of duplicated misinformation and errors in online family trees. The question posed is whether or not the causes of the deficiencies can be quantified and if there are some corrective measures that can be implemented either from a programming standpoint or from efforts by the genealogical community. In this third part I propose to discuss the issue of genealogical validation through extensive repetition. In other words, if you say something long enough, does it become true. This is, of course, the Big Lie technique of propaganda.

It may seem excessive to compare online public family trees to propaganda, but some of the same mechanisms are in effect. For example, a certain daguerrotype that surfaced some time ago was claimed to be an image of my 3rd Great-grandfather, John Tanner. No other photograph is known to exist of John Tanner. When the daguerrotype image surfaced with the claim, my daughter, Amy Thiriot, and I had an extensive discussion as to whether or not the offending photo could possibly, historically be considered as a photo of John Tanner. The image is unmistakably a daguerrotype. The first know such image in the United States was in 1839. John Tanner was born in Rhode Island in 1878. So he would have been 61 years old by the time the first such image was even physically possible. I will not risk spreading the image further by including it in this post. But you can see it on Amy's Blog, TheAncestorFiles, if you wish to do so. The point here is that despite our extensive analysis, Amy's historical research and writing about our conclusions which are unassailable, the image of the daguerrotype continues to be posted online as an image of John Tanner. One of the many reasons why this is not possible is that none of the males in the daguerrotype are over 60 years of age, John Tanner's age at the time of the first daguerrotype in the U.S.

But now, the Internet has created its own reality. The daguerrotype has been identified as John Tanner so many times that the truth has been lost in the noise of the repetitions. This is exactly what happens to other misinformation as it is spread across the world by the Internet. A quick look at FamilySearch.org's Family Tree Photos shows that the image is there identified without qualification, as an photo of John Tanner. Interestingly, the Photos program does not even recognize me as being John Tanner's descendant. Some of the images of the daguerrotype have three conflicting tags and so the images do not show up as in my pedigree.

Why do situations such as these persist? Because of carelessness? I think it is mainly because people want to believe. They have no desire to be dissuaded from their mistakes. If every single fact asserted in an online family tree is subject to suspicion, how can such a system endure? Why don't all of these falsified family trees just collapse of their own weight? They are suspended by belief and by the special interests of those sponsoring the family trees.

We already have a very good online system of establishing value. It is the rating system used by online sellers and reviewers of all types. A good example is Amazon.com. Each product listed has to face a litany of reviewers who rank the products according to their ultimate usefulness and adherence to the product claims. What we need online is a way of rating the information, perhaps with one to five stars. All of the reviews of the information should then be visible, just as they are on Amazon.com, with the ranking clearly visible. There should be some kind of warning system when an entry got very low reviews that indicates that the entry is unacceptable for the reasons shown in the ratings reviews. Maybe if people were subject to some sort of review, they just might stop adding junk to the family trees.

One thing that comes out in Amazon's reviews is when one or more disgruntled users have clearly misunderstood the use of the product or purchased the wrong product, their reviews are transparent on that subject.

Don't take me wrong, I do not seriously believe that the companies hosting family trees online would risk the ire of their paying customers to produce believable family trees, but I can always dream. By the way comments made on the Photos website on the mis-identified daguerrotype have no effect whatsoever. It is unlikely that the people who put the photos online have ever looked at the site since uploading the photos.

MyHeritage adds millions of Nordic records

Both my wife and I have Scandinavian ancestors so the notice that MyHeritage.com has added millions of Nordic records is really good news. Their announcement states that they have added records from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland from as early as the 1600s. The announcement goes on to state:

The collections contain over 90 million names and include birth, death, marriage and baptism records, as well as census and many more records. This is in addition to 70 million profiles in 730,000 family trees already created by MyHeritage users with ancestors in this region. This is a treasure trove of records, not only for people living today in these countries but for all whose families originated in the region.

In addition to significant content added today, MyHeritage is investing in digitizing more Nordic historical content and has signed new agreements which will result in a wealth of regional historical records to be added over the next few years.

MyHeritage has also launched social media channels for Norway, Denmark and Finland – including local blogs and Facebook and Twitter accounts. The social media channels are in the languages of the countries. Follow orders will be the first to hear about the new record collections as they become available. As the announcement further says:

This newly digitized content is already available for searching in SuperSearch, our global search engine for historical records. Record Matching technology will be unleashed on these records to automatically find relevant historical records for people in your tree.

I am very interested in this new development will look forward to expanding my research and the Scandinavian countries.

Does Genealogy need to be Internationalized?

From reading books written about doing genealogical research and attending conferences around the country, I have been constantly reminded that the overall emphasis of genealogy and genealogical instruction in the United States and in most English speaking countries focuses, and properly so, on the participants local and national records. However, the upcoming RootsTech 2014 Conference points up an important and often neglected aspect of genealogy: the entire study of family history is international in scope.

Yesterday I presented at a genealogy club meeting for a large retirement community outside of Tucson, Arizona. Their interest and enthusiasm for genealogy was highly evident. The one theme that came through again and again from questions and comments made was the need to do research in languages other than English. For some, finding information about the country of their ancestors's origin was an almost insurmountable obstacle. There was no doubt that at some point in their research, every single one of the researchers would encounter a non-English language and culture.

How well prepared are we, as genealogists, to move across international boundaries in our research? I suggest that we need far more than word lists and Google Translate, to assist us in understanding enough of the culture to find our ancestors. This need extends to every aspect of the countries of origin including social, cultural and political issues that lie at the heart of doing competent research in another country. This is particularly true when our research takes us outside of the main area of focus in Western Europe.

Let me illustrate one aspect of the problem. It is widely believed that Ancestry.com is the "largest online database" for doing genealogical research. This may be true, but let's look at the composition of the records on Ancestry.com. If you look at the World Edition of the program you will find the following by filtering the Card Catalog and noting the number of records in different categories out of the 31,458 Collections listed:

• North America: 26,953 Collections
• Europe: 4,662 Collections
• Canada: 1,965 Collections
• USA: 25,163 Collections
• South America: 12 Collections
• Africa: 15 Collections
• Asia: 57 Collections
• Mexico: 22 Collections

You might note that North America includes the USA and Canada and Mexico. Now let's do the same thing with some of the other large online databases, such as MyHeritage.com and FamilySearch.org.
FamilySearch.org has 1673 Collections listed. You might note, as I have observed before, that the number of collections bears only a limited relationship to the actual number of records. You might also discover that both Ancestry.com and WorldVitalRecords.com list books as "collections." Whereas FamilySearch.org has an entirely separate category for books and has over 100,000 digitized books. Any comparisons between the three are almost impossible to make. My point here is not to compare the three, but to point out the composition of the records. Here is the breakdown:

• United States: 749 Collections
• Continental Europe: 444 Collections
• United Kingdom and Ireland: 104 Collections
• Caribbean, Central and South America: 153 Collections
• Mexico: 65 Collections
• Africa: 20 Collections
• Asia and Middle East: 33 Collections

There are other areas listed, of course. But you can easily see that the bulk of the records come from the same places as those in Ancestry.com. Now what about MyHeritage.com's Collections? MyHeritage.com owns WorldVitalRecords.com but has additional records available not directly listed on that website. So the count comes from WorldVitalRecords.com's Card Catalog and a total of 23,209 records:

• USA: 11,024 Collections
• Canada: 1,104 Collections
• United Kingdom: 2,399 Collections
• Mexico: 6 Collections (none of which are actually source records from Mexico)
• Germany: 138 Collections (almost all from the United States)

As you can see, the number of records online in these large online databases is markedly shifted towards English language records. Another example, FamilySearch.org is the only site with records from Iceland with 2 Collections.

Now, my point here is that to be successful in genealogical research, we need access to records. It is very likely that the emphasis in providing records for research has historically followed the ethnic composition of the United States and Western Europe. If we want genealogy to grow, we need to become involved in moving the records of all of the rest of the world into a position where they can also be accessed online. I certainly realize the political and cultural implications of my statements. But if your family came from Estonia or Lebanon or Israel or China, you should also be able to research your family online.

Google Translate now in 80 languages

You may not have relatives that speak the new languages added to Google Translate, but there is obviously someone who does. Google Translate now works in 80 different languages. Some of the languages added include the following:

• Hausa (Harshen Hausa), spoken in Nigeria and neighboring countries with 35 million native speakers
• Igbo (Asụsụ Igbo) spoken in Nigeria with 25 million native speakers
• Yoruba (èdè Yorùbá) spoken in Nigeria and neighboring countries with 28 million native speakers
• Somali (Af-Soomaali) spoken in Somalia and other countries around the Horn of Africa with 17 million native speakers
• Zulu (isiZulu) spoken in South Africa and other south-western African countries with 10 million native speakers
• Mongolian (Монгол хэл), official language in Mongolia and also spoken in parts of China with 6 million native speakers
• Nepali (नेपाली), spoken in Nepal and India with 17 million native speakers
• Punjabi language (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) (Gurmukhi script), spoken in India and Pakistan with 100 million native speakers
• Maori (Te Reo Māori), spoken in New Zealand with 160 thousand speakers

I have friends that can benefit from some of these languages being translated. I had an introduction to Zulu when I was in graduate school. 

Died in the House -- a useful tool?

Thomas Milton Tinney, Sr. made a comment to one of my recent posts and suggested an interesting website, Died In House – Has Someone Died in Your House? Is this a new tool for genealogical research? Thomas' comment was as follows:

It is not promoted as a genealogy tool; however, it seems to me that anyone having any residential location in the United States, could clearly benefit, by obtaining a home history; relatives and occupants. The Died in House service is the first of its kind; it provides users with death records associated to a specific address. This seems to have tremendous potential, for the genealogy and family history community, especially for close knit neighborhoods, considering data obtained from obituary notices and death certificates.

Subsequently, Tony Proctor made the following comment about the UK:

I'd like to suggest a generalisation of this topic James. There is a homes-based collaborative site in UK too called MyHomesPast.

Tony also explains his thoughts about the program in another Google+ post:

MyHomesPast is a collaborative site allowing people to create a pictorial history of the homes they've lived in, including details of former residents and timelines for the properties. This is one of the forms of local history that I mentioned as falling outside of traditional genealogy but having a strong overlap with it - hence my use of the preferred term micro-history. The site was only launched in 2012 and so has a few teething troubles, such as requiring a mandatory postal code. This automatically eliminates many of the properties that were demolished during the slum clearance projects of the 1960-70's in England, and leaves people like myself unable to use it. Still, this is the way things are going and I hope the site succeeds. 

This is an interesting avenue of research, but here in Arizona there are some strange obstacles to this type of endeavor. It is currently impermissible for real estate sales people to mention that anyone died in a house to a potential purchaser. In Arizona you are not required to disclose if your home has been the site of a natural death, suicide, homicide or any other crime classified as a felony. So even if the above websites became viable options, where are they going to get their basic information? 

I have been heavily involved in Arizona real estate law and actually had a real estate license for a while and I cannot think of anyway I could find out whether or not someone had died in a house here in Arizona other than by chance. Here is a copy of my Great-grandfather's death certificate. He fell and was injured at his daughter's house in Gilbert, Maricopa, Arizona on 13 March 1935 and died on 21 March 1935. Look carefully and see if you can find the address or the location of where he died? 

Guess what? There is nothing on this death certificate giving the address of either the site of the accident or the place where he died. Of course, this may be entirely different in states other than Arizona, but I am sure that the home occupied by his daughter in 1935 is very likely still being used. Did he die at home or in a hospital? By the way the death certificate says "If death occurred in a hospital or institution give its NAME instead of street number." Neither of these is present on this death certificate. 

Just a thought. 

What is Digital Preservation and why do I care?

From time to time, the online genealogical community produces a wave of posts about backing up files. But we all need to take one further step and that is to be concerned about digital preservation. Simply put, we need to be concerned that the backup files we have on our flash drives, external hard drives and online cloud storage don't become obsolete. There are multiple pathways to the perdition of losing files through changing file formats and operating systems and any one of those paths could render your carefully backed-up files unreadable. This issue is sort-of a background problem that I regularly face, both from my own systems as well as from those of the people I talk to in classes and at conferences.

I believe I have previously told the story of my own challenges in keeping a computer-based journal for the past thirty years. The major part of the challenge happened just a few years ago right around this time of year, when I discovered that my old Microsoft Word files were not recognized by any of the programs I had on my computer. Fortunately, I found Open Office (presently I use Libre Office) was able to read the old files and I spent a week or two converting files and verifying the newly created files were complete and readable. In just the short time since that happened, I have already gone through a major issue in retrieving files from a crashed older iMac.

How many of you have updated any of you have updated your operating system recently? Can you count how many updates there have been since you last opened and verified some of your older files? Are you even aware that this is a problem? Here are some interesting websites in that regard:

• A history of Windows
• Timeline of Microsoft Windows
• Timeline of operating systems

I am not particularly picking on Microsoft, here is the same thing for the Apple OS X systems:

• History of Mac OS
• History of OS X
• Apple OS History

Let me propound another hypothetical situation. Most of us are mature adults and for some of us time passes rather quickly. Let's go back just five short years to about 2008. What computers were we using at that time? What operating system? Without digging into the history and reconstructing events, how many of us can even remember? How about ten years ago in 2003? Remember this event and the year: the first iPad was introduced on 3 April 2010. Now what do you think about computers and operating systems? I am already getting long sad stories from tablet computer users about the inability to retrieve data and failing apps on older tablet computers. 

Now, if for some reason, you can easily answer my two questions above because you are still using the same computer and the same operating system, you are living a much more dangerous data life than I could possibly endure. But think about this, there are a huge number of genealogists who are still depending entirely on a program that was discontinued in 2002! That is Personal Ancestral File or PAF. How many of us still have PAF on our current computer? How long will any computer be able to read those files?

Obviously, I am writing about two separate issues: changing hardware technology (i.e. new computers) and changing operating system and application program changes. Concern about both of these areas is what is being talked about in the digital preservation circles. Leading that effort is the Library of Congress and the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. 

The process of keeping our older files and their formats compatible with present technology is called "file migration." We are coming to the end of another year (2013, assuming I can still read a calendar) and it is time to think about a lot of things, but as genealogists it is time to think about data migration and preservation. Before we run out an buy that next new computer, maybe we should assure outselves that all the work we have done in past years is still readable and secure. Just a thought.