Wikitree

What am I doing this year?

Miss W. Wikitree , , ,
Nikin / Pixabay

I will be doing a lot of things during 2024 as I have started a challenge created by WikiTree.  It is called 16 for 16 and relates to the fact that WikiTree (WT) is 16 years old in 2024.

I am on WT more often these days adding to their global tree. Why? Well before you add a profile to the tree you have to include at least one source for that person. Hopefully this makes the tree more accurate and it also allows collaboration with other members on WT.

There are lots of missions to choose from in the 16 for 16 challenge and I have already completed 9 of them during the month of January.

  1. Create a page to keep a track of what I have completed
  2. Improve my biography on my profile
  3. Add 16 profiles to a cemetery category
  4. Add another 16 making 32 profiles to a cemetery category
  5. Connect 8 unconnected profiles – Montevideo Maru POWs, North Mt Lyell miners
  6. Add at least one source to 16 unsourced profiles – Tasmanian
  7. Resolve 16 profiles in the Needs Birth Record
  8. Upload 16 photos of a person or a headstone to the relevant profile(s) – Montevideo Maru POWs
  9. Improve 16 profiles of individuals who died young

I am trying to do profiles relating to my family or the miners who died or survived North Mt Lyell mining disaster in 1912. I am also taking part in a monthly challenge related to Montevideo Maru POWs so some of that work helps count in the 16 for 16.

But there is one mission where you my followers can also take part.

  • Share 16 of the Question of the Week images on your social media

So each week I will be writing a post on my blog with one of the images. Please feel free to leave a comment on the post. I will probably also mention this on Facebook especially in the alumni Diploma of Family History student group.

My recent research

Miss W. Wikitree

Untitled

A few weeks ago, I was on Wikitree when I saw in their chat feed called G2G (Genealogist to genealogist) a post about researching disasters in Australia as part of the Disaster Project worldwide.  A couple of mining disasters were mentioned relating to Tasmania – the Breisis tin mine at Derby on the north east coast and the North Mount Lyell mining disaster at Gormanston on the west coast.

I replied back that I would start researching the Mount Lyell disaster as a few of my dad’s relatives were survivors back on 12 October 1912 – the Dawson brothers Albert, Henry and Alexander (dad’s actual grandfather on his maternal line).

The person organizing the Australian disasters set up the template for the page including a brief summary of the disaster and a table already  including those who perished and known info about their family – this meant 42 new profiles to create and research. A couple of profiles had already been created by other people and they had started writing their biographies so I left them alone.

After creating the profiles, it was time to research each person and add sources onto their profile. I created the Research Notes section to add all the sources in. That meant other people could also use them to write their biographies if they wanted or were related. I already had some information about where the men might have been born, married or had children so I checked the BDMs in mainly Tasmania and Victoria where the majority of men were from. I added this information in the Research Notes area under a bold heading of Family information to be added then I started checking Trove for newspaper reports about the disaster and adding those sources to each man who was mentioned. Some newspaper articles mentioned lots of people so I added them just on the North Mount Lyell main page.

It was about this time that Wikitree was running a Connect-a-thon where we try to connect lots of new people to the worldwide tree and adding sources for the new information. Now was the time to add in the family members I had found and use the BDMs or newspaper reports as the official sources. I only got to add info for 10 of the men and their families.

The future

I can see this project will keep me going for a long time, as I also want to add in the survivors and their families (second table created by me after following the coding from the first table). The Humane Society also gave awards to those who went back in to save trapped miners and bring up the bodies of those who perished. I have created a table for that and will add to these two tables as I find more information from newspaper reports.

Doing this project gives me the chance to head back to the west coast and re-visit the museum at Queenstown which is full of information about the disaster. Maybe when the weather gets warmer!

Readers: Did you have a relative who died in a mining disaster anywhere in the world?

PS: If you are a Wikitree member and had a relative die at Mount Lyell please feel free to take over as manager for their profile page.

Helping a challenge

Miss W. Wikitree , , , , ,
stevepb / Pixabay

As most of my readers know, I am adding my family onto Wikitree. This is a website trying to connect one big global tree. But you must include sources to prove connections on the tree.

I have 287 profiles that I have added to the tree that relate to my family ancestors and descendants. I am manager of each of these profiles but will willingly hand over managership to a person more closely related than I am. I actually have 549 people connected to me, so nearly 300 profiles have been added by other cousins.

Here is how many steps they are away from me:

24 Jan 2023 3 13 51 86 145 74 177 549

I am degree 0, my parents and brother are degree 1 so they are the 3 in the chart. Degree 2 I have 13 people – these are my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. So I have a total of 549 people who are 7 or less steps away from me on the global Wikitree.

During this last week the Society of Australian Genealogists have been running a challenge on Wikitree. We started with 7 Australians that needed their trees built out further.

I was asked if I would look at some documents related to Oliver “Otto” Peters Heggie, his siblings and parents.

Oliver was a famous actor who got his start in Angaston, South Australia where he was born and passed away in Los Angeles.

During the week, I added 58 new profiles from the information in the Heggie memoirs. I started in Scotland with birth of James Heggie, father of Oliver. There was a lot of detail in the memoirs but I needed to find a source to add to each new profile – so looking for births in Scotland, then arrival in Australia, marriage in Australia and then birth of all the children including “Otto” in South Australia. I also found articles on Trove proving some of the information in the memoirs that I could then add to the biography of the profile person.

The idea of the challenge was to create at least seven connections going forward (children), backward (parents) or sideways (spouse and siblings)

There were 65 participants in the challenge. These were wikitreers from all around the world but quite a few from Australia. By the end of the challenge I was 16th on the list – I had added 58 profiles and won 10 bounty points for being the first person to connect a new Heggie profile to a profile already on the wikitree. I edited 74 profiles altogether and made 253 total edits.

I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the challenge and have put my name down to help on the next one which relates to One Place Studies. I am interested in this as I also have a blog about the Sorell Municipality which is counted as a One Place Study (OPS).

Readers: Have you collaborated with other people to improve your family history?