Sea Genes

The John Bent family sketch (John¹ Bent Descendents) is something I put together last year, so it might be a bit out of date. It’s an example of the NEHGS Register style, and has one unique feature. The footnotes in this style are bracketed. Making the line breaks work with this style, so that the footnotes stay where they belong, can be tricky.

In my favorite word-processor, OpenOffice.org Writer, I need to put a non-breaking space between the text and the footnote, select it, and open the character formatting dialog to hide the hard space character.

With Microsoft Word (2010), you’d use the Font dialog and choose Hidden from the Effects section.

The sketch is also set up in the NEHGS Register style, a bit different from, and IMHO, better than the one available from their website. I’ll e-mail a copy of this sketch in Word 97-2000 format or OOo ODT format on request. The e-mail address is at the end of the sketch.

This sketch is set up as a 6ʺ × 9ʺ page, designed for printing front-to-back so we can save paper.

Reading a family sketch in the styles provided by most genealogy software is pretty boring. One way to liven up the reading is to transform it into another, less often seen form. One such style is that used by the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s Western Massachusetts Families in 1790 project. Other, similar styles are those of the Maine Families in 1790, the New Hampshire Families in 1790, and the Vermont Families in 1790.  

The Families in 1790 styles are primarily summary presentations of data about families, not unlike genealogy software reports. They are internally quite different, in that they are written by you, and are not simply a string of data statements with (hopefully) excellent citations. They also go farther than most available genealogy reports can, by including information about the family’s neighbors and associates, witnesses to their family happenings, and who in the family knew who else, wherever they were. 

The projects have different citation styles, based on what the sponsoring organization feels is appropriate to their group. The citations all have one thing in common, though, and that is a focus on primary rather than secondary sources. NEHGS has a guide to it’s citation style online next to the information about it’s Families project. 

These four projects, as examples, can give a framework for organizing publications about smaller areas, such as a county or community. One such project might focus on a town in the Mid-West or a southern states county. 

An example of a New Hampshire Families in 1790 sketch is of the Samuel Chamberlain family (Samuel Chamberlain family sketch). Samuel was born in Massachusetts in 1724, and died in Vermont in 1802.

© 2011 N. P. Maling

Sea Genes Family History & Genealogy Research

As an adjunct to my earlier Mellen family post, “Richard Mellen of Massachusetts – Genealogy Available,” I’m adding two versions of earlier genealogies of the family. The first one is a reprint of William Barry’s sketch in A History of Framingham, 1847, Barry’s Framingham Mellen reprint. The second one is a reprint of J. H. Temple’s sketch in History of Framingham, 1887, Temple’s Framingham Mellen reprint.

The two reprints are set up as 6″ × 9″ pages and are designed for front-to-back printing.

Enjoy.
NPM

Family register page by Daniel Gorton, born Charlton, Massachusetts, 4 April 1790. There are three other pages, two sheets front and back, in this document, which will not be posted.


Citation: Gorton Family Papers, 1790–. Privately held by N. P. Maling, [address for private use,] Seattle, Washington.

I’ve just discovered that some sites are still linking to the long-gone geocities.com site. geocities was closed by Yahoo in the summer/fall of 2009, so all of the links from other sites to that domain are broken.

My site in particular should be considered obsolete and inaccurate. Please contact me if you desire to know whether anything you use from that site is still correct. Please also remember that the material on that site is copyrighted.

As an update, I’ve edited and updated the ‘introduction’ from that site, and made it into an article for your reference. It is a PDF document, designed to be printed front-to-back, or double-sided, to save paper. Here is A Brief Genealogy of the Maling Family.