 for our Wednesday wiki tree live cast reveal. And with me is Irene Cornish here. Hi. We're excited to hear what all you guys have found for her. Okay, before we do that, I'm gonna tell people that don't know a little bit about wiki tree real quick. Wiki tree is a community of genealogists who are working together on a single family tree. In other words, we collaborate, grow an accurate global tree that connects us all and it's free. The wiki tree challenge is our year long event where we take a new guest each week and we work on their tree to make it more accurate and complete than it is anywhere else. Our goal is to improve the accuracy on wiki tree, add more family connections and make more friends and that we have definitely done. And so once again, we have Irene here and she's going to be finding out what we got for her. Well, first, Irene, did you wanna go ahead and share the cool find that you had? Oh, yeah. So I learned that there is a relative on the shimp side. He's an in-law, but he has a patent for one of the first dart boards in the United States that if you go to dart playing a Fissionado website, you'll see reference to this Charles. I'll probably misprounce it. Wiedemeyer or Wiedemeyer dart board design and they actually sell prints of his patent design. So I thought that was really cool. Yeah, and that stuff is really just fun to find just a little interesting tidbits. Okay, so let's go ahead and bring this information in. Get by slides. I know we're so excited for you, Irene. I think you're gonna be really pleased. Good. Okay, now this one, of course, we're starting with James Brogan's line and the parents of Catherine Brogan were tough to locate and prove. Now it turns out that Catherine was born in 1856 or 57, most likely in Dramagric and County, Donegal, Ireland. Her parents were found to be James Brogan and Mary McGrawarty Brogan. And I know that was a difficult line for them. They weren't tired on that one. Awesome. Now Catherine's sister Rose Brogan was still living in Dramagra when Catherine died. And they actually found probate, which was amazing because most of the siblings were mentioned in there. Aunt Bridget Brogan's probate as was her sister, Catherine Brogan, who of course is your direct ancestor. So that was a really key document that opened up a lot of proof for different ancestors attached to her. Oh, that's wonderful. And I have a lot of Brogan relatives that will be very interested. Yes, and I know when James Brogan, they tried, but of course, you know, as you know, that is such a common name. Yes. I mean, that's probably gonna take some really nice DNA triangulation or something to start sorting that out because that one's just really difficult. I was so proud of them that they found Catherine's even. It was great. Now, this was something though, and talk about ancestors that are not necessarily direct ancestors. You know, I always say that sometimes they have to be notable or naughty to give. Yeah. To give you those records. And so one of our researchers found an article about Michael Brogan. Now, he's your first cousin, twice removed, but it appears that indecent words may have been thrown about while the good old boys were sitting there drinking some alcohol. And Mr. Brogan claimed that Mrs. O'Neill said, unspeakable words about his sister and her activities. She claimed she didn't know such thing and that he just grabbed her up for no reason and slammed her head into the wall. So, you know, I'm thinking that, yeah, that Mr. Brogan was at least telling some amount of truth, but whatever the truth of it was, Mr. Brogan spent 30 days in jail and when he was fine, 10 shillings and a six pence for being drunk and disorderly, and then for assaulting the constable when they came to arrest him. So, now he's- I'm not surprised. Yeah, and now the case that he had countersued for her indecent words, that one was dropped. Yeah, it's just kind of a fun little bit of flavor. And then here we have on the Gardner line. Now, Irene's paternal grandparents, James Joseph Brogan and Isabella Veronica Gardner were both born in New York and they both had roots in Inver Parish in County Donegal. Now, her grandfather's mother, Catherine Brogan, had immigrated from the town of Drum and Graw and that's who we just talked about. And her grandmother's mother, Mary Elizabeth Meehan emigrated with her parents and siblings from an area they called Salt Hill, which was still in Inver Parish. Now, this was really cold. They had found articles that said that in Manhattan, these different people that had migrated or fled or been persecuted were still having reunions as late as 1920, where they would get all the people together there in the area of New York or in the United States and say, hey, all of us that were from Inver, let's get together. And so there's a whole list of names and they're sure that some of those have got to be you, but they've actually, it's linked on the profile, their report about that is shared on Facebook publicly. So that was kind of exciting. It's not that often that you've, I was just gonna say it's just not that often that you see them all getting together later. Right, right. And it's interesting that County, Donegal connections because my DNA suggests that county. So this is backing it up, at least on this side of the family. Yeah, it's good when you're already starting to follow a certain direction and then you find these connections and you're like, oh yes, I was going the right way. Now there are extensive notes written on John Meehan's profile. He was the husband of Margaret Griffin. There were actually two distinct John and Margaret couples in that parish at the same time. So it was a lot of work trying to sort them out and the husband and the wife's had the same name. So there was the John Meehan's and then there was the Margaret's, their wife and then some of the kids were similar. And so they were trying to very carefully sort those out and look for later records, possibly marriage records and whatnot that would help determine which family they came from. But all that makes it so difficult. Oh yeah. Now here, yeah, she says, oh, I recognize that difficult line. Here we have of course the debtors and you've got the Harleys and Coplins. Do we have Harleys or Haley's on this one? Looks like Harleys. It looks like we have the Harleys on this one. Multiple brick walls actually came down on these lines and there are 24 new direct ancestors, Irene. Yeah, they went crazy on this. Now they also found two distinct, of course, the debtors can be debtors or daughters or sometimes they really did not get those right at all. There was actually two distinct lines though. So you had one up on the paternal side there and then you had another one down on the maternal side, way off and that almost definitely was spelt more of daughter and was actually an easier connection to the German ancestry that lay behind it. So that was really cool to see and Dieter just did some, you'll see it, he did some incredible work branching out these families and finding the German records for them. But I think if you keep looking and we try to course, you know, before we'd go so fast, we tried to see what that connection might have been later on back down the line. And there were some possibilities, but of course they're all using the same name. So, you know, there's like three brothers and they all have a son, Conrad and they all have a son that's named Michael. Yeah, so really are. They follow up on that. I've always wondered when I see the daughterer, I've always thought that it might be the same family just that they switch that one letter. And Patty's correcting, one was a John, one was a James, so still close, but you'll see the children on the profile are, yeah, it's interesting to look at. Now the Markle wine, which was Markle, Markle depending on where you saw it, that actually went back to 1561 by the time they connected to profiles that were existing on here. So they found George's Markle, born in Germany. And there's actually a lot of really interesting information on the 30 year war, which of course was just so long and destructive, definitely an important and core part of European history, but a lot of really good information. And it's, that's where you see a lot of the ongoing collaboration where different people have all gone in and added to that and tried to make it a little bit better. Now for William Detter, still on this Detter line. This was just an interesting bit of information also, Edward Detter and his son Richard were both buried in the Monument Cemetery in Philadelphia. And I don't know if you knew this, but the bodies were moved when the cemetery was sold to Temple University. And so they actually, yeah, they had like 28,000 burial plots. This big building that looks like a church or something, that's just the gateway. It was a huge cemetery. But yeah, but it kind of went by the wayside. And by the 1950s, it was just everything was crumbling and nobody wanted to own the land. So about 8,000 bodies were closed by family members. Out of 28,000, that's not a lot. So luckily your ancestors were claimed. And the rest of them, they just relocated them to an unmarked mass grave. Oh my. So now that is partly a university and partly a high school on that property. And do we know where their bodies were moved to? Yes. Okay, great. Yes. Cause I've been to Philadelphia to see other relatives in the debtor line at Holy Redeemer Cemetery. Okay. So, but I didn't know about these two people. Yeah, I'm just really amazed that they were in that small collection of them that were saved. Cause how horrible is that to track that down and then find out, you know, they're not even, they're not even there. Right. Now this is Anna Elizabeth Shimp's line, of course. And Margarita Adolph's line was really opened up. After Deeter, I was talking about earlier, one of our German experts found her baptismal record. Oh, and those records are fun to look at. Even if you don't, you know, read the German, really fun to look at. Now she was born in 1830 in Mectorsheim. She married Valentin Shimp, of course, and had eight children with him. But she now has 16 new direct ancestors behind her. Oh, excellent. And it's something until my mother found, oh, I forget, she found, somehow got a copy of my grandfather's baptismal certificate and saw that Margaret Adolph, as they called her then, and Valentin Shimp were his sponsors. And it was only later that she realized they were his grandparents. And that made sense why his mother named him Valentine. It was after her father. So this is wonderful to have more of their history this way. And I saw that note about some of the gravestones that grow gravestones from that cemetery being used for rip-rap for a bridge. That's bizarre, but. Yeah. Wow. Okay, here, Patty's given us the information. They're in lawn view. Okay, great. So that's in Montgomery County. And that'll be on the profile. Okay, great. Yeah, so you can look into it. They're pretty good about linking it to find a graver. Whoever has the tombstone for them. So now here we have on, still on this line, we have Johann Jacob Adolph though, and his wife, Maria Filipina, Geisser Adolph, were two of those new direct ancestors I was just talking about. Now Jacob was born in 1777 and he was the son of a shoemaker. I love it when they put that, you know, like shoemaker or cabinet tree or whatever their occupation was. You kind of imagine them doing that back in the day. And then Maria was the daughter of Johann George Geisser of Hockenheim. And Jacob and Maria had six known children. So more fun new ancestors to look at. Somebody's asking, oh, Chris F is asking what was that? They broke, Chris, they broke the remaining tombstones down into little pieces like gravel. You know, like when they redo the roads and they have gravel. That's what they did with it. It kind of seems disrespectful to me, but I mean, I guess if they're not legible, I don't know, what else do you do with them? Now we have this one and this was on the Dwarf line. And you'll see that a lot of the movement in your tree was in specific areas, you know, just like when you research on your own and sometimes a line takes off, you know, that's just how it happens. I've actually seen this map before. Oh, cool. Yes, it's a fire. I think it's a fire insurance map. Right. Yes, yeah, but, oh, this is great. And you know, this was just one of the fun things which you already know now, you know, you can find, this is where William Dwarf and his family lived in 1885. So that street that he was, or alleyway is what they called it, that he lived on was only a block long, so he was right in there. And I know on the profile, she also put up the more recent map so you can see the growth in the area and see how much changed. Now, more traditional research determined that the father of George Johannes Petrus Dwarf, so that's your Peter Dwarf. His father was a Georgie, so George Peter Dwarf also. Now, the older George was born about 1750 and possibly in Heidelberg, Germany, and he was living in, and I know I'm not gonna say this right, Dieter, sorry, Heiled Krustenot when the younger George was christened, so. That's a mouthful. Yes. I don't even think I could type that one without making a mistake, so. And okay, so now we're moving on to Catherine, Katie Havy's line. And here, once again, they were talking about just getting people together later on. And so this was on a space page, and we have our space pages that we do anything from census evaluations. If we have a really lengthy will, we'll put them there on a space page so it's not on the profile cluttering it up, or making it hard to read. And so one of the things that was focused on was this reunion in New York. And once again, listing the different people that came out of that parish. And I just thought it was interesting, and they're putting the old home songs were sung, and the old home dances danced, and the old home stories were told, getting together and still passing down that important history. So now here was another one, and of course, once again, our space pages to us, we get used to them on WikiTree, and we're spoiled, we'll do anything on the space page. And sometimes they are just so valuable, not only to our research, but to yours and other people. Because we can put things like this, a little mini one-name study and go, okay, what are all the heavies or heavies that were found in this area from 1800 to 1900? I mean, they can just keep on going. And then later on, when you go, oh wait, but I've got a John Havy there, you can just go look on that page and go, oh, that's when he married and had kids. Yeah, so you don't have to relook that back up. And it says, unfortunately, did not make a breakthrough on the Havy line itself this week. I know a lot of people spent a lot of time on this hoping to get through those brick walls. It's a good solid brick wall. Yes, Patty, I agree with you. It's been one of my biggest frustrations. Yeah, and that once again is gonna be one of those that DNA is probably gonna play a factor in the future, trying to get through that because that one is just, I don't know, it just was that wall was not coming down and they were trying, man, they were out there with their little genealogy sledgehammers. Now for late breaking news, and I'll tell you what, we had Robin Baker that found two sets of parents, late today, so talk about last minute, we're all going, yay. And then like at the very last second, Nicole Font gets the marriage record for John Gardner and Mary Meehan. Of course, that was a really close brick wall for you. Yes, oh, that's amazing. Especially thinking I have my great grandparents on the divorce side, their marriage certificate to have this on the broken side. This is great. So his parents were found to be, his father was also a John Gardner, but his mother was a Bessie Lindsey Gardner. So this will open up a whole new bunch of ancestors for you. And I know they were hoping to have added, their parents by the time he went live, but I didn't get a chance to check and see if they had found those yet. Oh, this is great. Now here we have the brick wall chart and this is what, you know, me and the captain and whoever work off of some of our experts like to use them for all the available brick walls that you have. And you can see those yellow spots, some of yours were really close in there. But if you look at like the pop out box on the upper right, that's where all those little spots of B's and numbers is where all your brick walls were. And you had a lot. Let me tell you, they actually, for all the ones we said, oh, it was so hard and we couldn't knock that wall down. They took a lot of brick walls down for you. I was just, they always amazed me how much they can do. And although I titled this final fan chart, Irene, it's really not because like I said, they were finding stuff right up until the end. They're like, wait, I got something else. And so I'll make sure I send you an updated one after all of this. Yeah, I've had these commenting again. The gardeners and Lindsay's look like they'll be almost as difficult as the Havies, but it still gives you a new place to look. It does, it does. You know, I often wonder sometimes if there isn't, if there are reasons maybe, if you really have all the right information or did people conceal information because of issues in the past, it's hard to know. Well, and sometimes with record destruction or just things like, I mean, natural disasters, you have a fire in the church and think about how many people's marriage records and baptisms are just gone. And I know we found some probate this week that definitely short up what we were thinking, but last week with our guests, of course, we had a lot of them that that's all that was left. You know, there weren't any birth records weren't required at some of those times. The marriage records, things that happened to them or they just weren't online yet. And then, you know, probate is kind of what we were left looking for, you know, what you're looking for some unknown person and going, okay, what do I think his dad's name was? Let's look at all these men with this, with his last name that died at this time. And hopefully the probate's gonna pop up, you know, and show you who their family is. But you did have a few this week and you'll see. And of course, we have Steven, who does such a great job transcribing those for us and putting them on the profiles. I really appreciate it. John says he has some gardeners. Okay. You know, it's interesting, maybe this isn't the right time to ask, but maybe your group will understand this. So when we're looking at this, right, there's all this German in there, right? And there's a lot of Irish. But my DNA, and I, when I do my DNA, I am related to people on my father's side and people on my mother's side. So I know my parents are my parents, right? But my DNA comes up on some of this site as a high amount of Scottish. And none of them show me as having much German at all, which I don't really understand with so much German in my family history. You know, and part of that, I mean, there's a lot of reasons Irene that that could happen, but I will tell you that part of that is just the sampling at the time and what their algorithms are. I have a cousin and all four of her grandparents came from Portugal, all four of them. So I mean her, she's Portuguese. And it said, when she first did her DNA test, it said she had like 27% or 20% or something like that, Portuguese. And she's like, wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. I know, I've met all my grandparents, trust me, they're all from Portugal. And there were no, you know, non-parental events, no surprise grandparents. It was just because of the sampling, there wasn't a lot of Portuguese people sampled at that time. And so they had nothing to compare it to. So if you don't have a lot of German people testing theirs, it may just wind up showing that you really don't have that much when you do. Okay. Yeah. And thank you for that. That's what I've been starting to think is that the Scottish is really Scott Irish, not Scottish per se. Okay, and I'm gonna go just a little bit into our collaboration and how we do things here now, Irene. Collaboration, of course, is key during the challenge and that is what Wickey Tree is all about. So one of the ways that we collaborate is to use the spreadsheet as you see on the left. When you get to 25 or even upwards of 50 people working on one set of branches, it's really easy to step on somebody's work. And so this way we can list the profile we're working on and let other people know. And, you know, for those of you that are participating that haven't figured out how to use this sheet yet, if you need help understanding it, definitely you can just private message your captain because this is really important to us. This way, you know, and you're not losing work or researching the same exact thing somebody else is. So one of the other ways we collaborate is our G2G, which is our genealogist to genealogist forum. And that's what you see on the right. We do have some people that will put interesting finds or ask questions there. Since we have live chat, we don't use that as much. We mostly post our bounty walls, our, you know, brick wall ancestors that have been found. But you never know. And you'll get a link to that Irene. And now of course, yeah, here's what I was talking about with our live chat. And this has definitely just been a lifesaver. This is our live chat that goes on during the week. And since we are a global site, we have people chatting in the rooms almost around the clock or definitely around the clock. So, you know, there's some, it's morning in some country somewhere. So we can go in there, we can ask for translation help, we can get a second set of eyes, you know, we can say, hey, these records just don't look right. I don't understand, you know, can somebody look and five people will stop and go, oh, hey, let's look at it. What's the issue? You know, which I mean, normally if you're working on another site, you can't do that. You're just working on your tree, you know, you can't just pull up people and go, hey, can you guys all tell me where you think this marriage record might be? You know, we have people that are just excellent at looking at newspaper articles. I'm only so-so at that, so I love it that you can go, hey, I need an O-bit for, you know, so-and-so. Can somebody find that? And there are people that do that. And sometimes we just cheer each other on, you know. So I've had people tell me that, oh, I'm not experienced enough. I don't think I can participate, you know, down to the very last person that motivates us and goes, yay, you know, Cheryl, woohoo. That person's important and it means a lot for our team. And so, you know, anybody that's participating and helping whether they're getting points or not is just as important, but... Can we flip back to that? I was reading that little message there from Liz and that's interesting. I have been to Joseph and Mary's grave because they're buried in Bordentown, the same cemetery as my great-grandparents. And I recently found out that George's wife, Ellen, is buried in the plot next to them and I'm marked great. Oh, wow. Yeah. So this is interesting to read this about Joseph DeWerth, his will. And that's great. I'm anxious to read more about that. Now here's where we have our point system and of course, once again, it's definitely not about the points, but it's not only a good motivator, it kind of gives us a feel of how our progress is. You know, if you're just researching and there's no kind of a point system, you don't really know if you're doing good that week or not. And this way, you know, we kind of know what's going on and who's found a lot of stuff or, you know, if we haven't broken any brick walls. So, and these points can totally, totally add up. Now, at the end of the week, we look at the top scores. Our most valuable players are MVP of the week and we also like to acknowledge the top five participants. So this week, of course, we have Dieter, who is our dormant expert. Cheryl Hess, we had Robin Baker, Anonymous Sharkey and Kathy Ravenstein. And then I have to give an additional shout out to Eileen Robinson because she was in fifth place until like last minute and I had to swap it out and put Kathy's name. So good job, Kathy, but also good job Eileen. And then, excuse me, just to talk a little bit about how those points are determined, we have two ways that these guys can get points. They can either break a brick wall down, which is the big one, you get 10 points for. But, you know, when you start adding those nuclear family members, really it's incredible how fast it can add up if you have large families. And some of your ancestors definitely did. So, you know, at the end of the week, we keep track of all of this. And I'm gonna go ahead and pop up the score sheet so you can see how they did. And we didn't actually have a huge amount of people participating, but it's more than 25, it looks like. So, definitely good. Now, total points is the total points that they receive for whatever reason. The created ancestors, those are only direct ancestors, Irene. So, you know, there were 57 direct ancestors, which is a lot. Yes, wow. And then, there were 131 of what we call the nuclear relative. So, within one step, a child or a sibling. 131 additional people added that way. Now, here was their big impressive number. And actually, this is not accurately reflected. It needs to update. Let me see if it'll pull it in, because I know the points are actually 190. Okay, so it's got all but 20 of them. It's working on it. There were actually 190 points this week. And these people just did awesome. So, we had Cheryl Hess and Robin tied for our top bounty hunters. And Dieter, of course, with those top bounty points, our top total points. Now, he actually added 48 of those nuclear relatives. So, that was all, you know, children of your ancestors. And that'll be a lot of fun for you to look through. And let's see, we still had profiles edited. Now, of course, every time we go in and we edit a profile and we add a source, we add a date, we make some sort of a contribution. It gives, you know, it's not a, they don't get points for it, but it keeps track of how many times they did it. So, for profiles edited, actually 400 on the nose unique profiles edited in one week's time by this group, which is amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. And then for total edits, so that's every one of those edits, 1,446. I mean, these guys are just, they rock. They just rock every week. And, you know, and like I said before, there's things they do that don't earn points. So, like the ones that are out there transcribing or looking up obituaries and stuff like that, they aren't getting points, but you know what, we sure appreciate them. And we know how hard they work to do those other things that make this week possible. And then for news for anybody that hadn't caught this, we have a no guest upcoming for this next week. So everybody can enjoy your family a little bit, take a break, do some personal research, whatever it is. I know a lot of people are getting rain right now. Irene, you said it was beautiful there this afternoon. Yes, for a change. Yeah, we've had some just wild swings. It'll just dump rain on us all morning and then in the afternoon, the sun's out, sky's blue. It's beautiful. Oh, let's see, Cheryl has one. Thanks to Melanie McComb and to Steven, to Mazawitz for transcribing the wills. And both of those things did do, were a big help. Melanie has been awesome. Of course, she was a prior guest and she participates every week now and she brings a lot of skill to the group. And I see Patty's comment about a John Gardner in Brooklyn who was a coachman, who might be my John Gardner. So that'll be fun to look into. Yeah, they're definitely, definitely still looking at that. Like I said, they were really hoping they could bust that line out just a little bit further for you. And then one of the things I wanna ask the audience while we still haven't captive here is now we're looking at next year, of course, doing non-geniologists for our challenge. So I need you guys to start thinking of things you would want to know about them. Do you want to know a special family story they have? I'd kinda like to ask them who the oldest living ancestor was that they personally knew. But I welcome people throwing up other questions and suggestions. So back to Irene and so did we at least meet your expectations for the challenge? Yes, definitely. I'm so excited to look at all this new information and just to know more about the Gardner line because I didn't know that grandmother but have always wanted to know more about her too, not just the Dwarf side. So it sounds like there's a lot I can look at now on that side of the family. And then this debtor or daughter connection. And I will wanna check out this. I'm always calling cemeteries to check on people. So I'll be talking to Longview Cemetery. It looks like I'll be making a trip down Montgomery County, Pennsylvania to check that out. Yeah, it really sounds like you have a lot of history there. You really do. And it's interesting. I'm trying to document military history because there's a lot of people I know were, like there's some in national cemeteries but I've been coming across some that I think are, we're in the Civil War with different contingents from New Jersey. And I'm trying to find out more information about that. Other people have posted it. So I'm trying to find source material though to back it up. Right, and you'll also get a link to the space page. We have a separate space that we start with every week. And so it has resources that we've used. So that may give you some sites that you haven't seen also. We put our interesting finds on there. And then you'll also see links to like the space page but you also see like military. Now we didn't do a military slide this week. I usually do. We like to honor those that have served but you will see them listed. Some of those that were patriots or served their country. So that's always nice. I see Melanie's comment. Yeah, I'll be spending a lot of time. We're getting some windows being replaced tomorrow. So while I'm stuck in the house with that, I'm gonna be online looking at all of this because I'll have plenty of time to cruise some of it. Yeah, I know that's always the hardest things than wanting to stop and just look through all of it. And then where do you look first, right? I mean, you've got all these brick wall ancestors. And Cheryl's pointing out that they also posted the sons of the American Revolution and daughters of the American Revolution, their ancestor numbers. So that allows you to look and see what services already been proven for them. Oh, okay, great, great. And Robin adds a lot of the debtor clans. And yes, they were Mennonite types and didn't necessarily serve in the Revolutionary War, although some of them still did pursue patriotic duty. So, well, I think unless we have any other questions, do you have any other questions, Irene, of our participants? No, no, I just would like to thank everybody for letting me be a guest and thank you for all the research. And I'm just so excited to follow up on all of it. And I'm hoping to get more comfortable working in Wiki Tree. I mean, I did that very basic setup for the show but I really can see there's a lot of value to using that format for research, so. Right, and anyone of us you can reach out to, we all remember what it was like to be new on Wiki Tree and there is a learning curve. So it's not as easy as going in an ancestry and pulling in leaves, but we're all a friendly bunch, so. Great, great. Well, again, I can't thank you enough. This is awesome. I can't wait to look at all of it. Okay, well, I think we're gonna wrap that up now. So I wanna thank everybody that participated this week and improved Irene's branches. You guys, once again, we're just amazing as always. I wanna thank Irene for coming and spending her time with us again this week. And remind everybody you can check us out at wikitree.com and don't forget to like the video, subscribe to receive alerts. And we're out now. Have a great night. Bye, thank you again, everyone.