 Welcome to the wiki tree challenge. Hello, I'm Mindy Silva. Welcome to the wiki tree challenge highlights reel. Today I have Anne Johnston from the north of Ireland family history society. I was also hoping to have Donna Bowman who is the challenge captain but she's traveling. Donna is also a project coordinator within the disastrous project and she's involved in the one place study project and the cemeteries project. So welcome Anne. Thank you very much indeed. I'm going to talk a little bit about wiki tree. First for those viewers that don't know who we are for those people our mission is to grow one accurate shared tree that connects us all and is accessible to everyone free forever. It's all about collaboration. There's one profile for a person. If you and I share an ancestor we work on that profile together. It's not that you have your tree and I have my tree it's all one big tree and did I mention it's all free. We just passed the 33 million profile milestone with almost 11 million of those having DNA connections attached to them. What really makes wiki tree work is its community and a cornerstone of the community is our honor code. Anyone can view profiles on wiki tree but to edit more than close family member profiles you have to sign the honor code. It emphasizes sourcing giving credit courtesy understanding accessibility accuracy and respecting privacy. Privacy is another aspect of wiki tree that makes it special even though we're growing a one world tree and we all collaborate only close family members collaborate on modern family profiles. As you go back in time the profile privacy controls open up. Collaboration on deep ancestors is between distant cousins who are serious about genealogical research careful about sources and willing to see their research validated or invalidated with DNA. So if you aren't a member yet come and join us it just takes a minute to register as a guest member and you can delete a guest account at any time. Now for this challenge we have partnered with the north of ireland family history center of society and boy did we have a lot of fun with it. They gave us seven names and we had seven days to find everyone we could within seven generations. So seven degrees means seven steps in any direction. On wiki tree we call that count a person cc7. Our starting people were William Miller Boy born in northern ireland and his connections increased 718. Next we had Harry Ferguson his connected 505. We had Seamus Haney his increased 255. John Wilson Kyle we added 302 connections to him. Robert William Moore also known as Gary Moore we added 309. William James Peary we added 865. There was a lot of activity on his branches and then Ruby Florence Murray known as Ruby Lamar we added 366. Now and I'm going to go ahead and ask you how you chose your seven starting people and to tell us a little bit about your organisation. Right well we we had a look across the board at what might be regarded as famous people or notables that were kind of born or had very strong connections with northern ireland and we also wanted to get a little bit of diversity so we wanted to kind of get males female from different classes and so on. So we looked we had started off with a list of about 20 people and then we kind of came down to the to the seven that we selected and we thought that they would give a kind of good challenge to the participants. I think probably most of us know that Irish research can definitely be challenging but we also felt that there would be knowing the northern Irish and their Irish in general. They travel all over the world and we knew that that probably at varying degrees from these people there would be relatives that had travelled to the states, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, wherever and would provide a good sources for people that are researching in wherever they may be and that certainly I think proved the case. The the north of Ireland family history society we as the name implies we promote research of northern Irish families and we but also recognising that we support people locally that are researching no matter where they where they're located. We have a research centre just outside of Belfast and we've a really good library there that provides really good probably in many cases more obscure resources that might be that might be available online that allow people to research their family history. We're very much into training and we run a whole series of courses right throughout the year. We also have a strong focus on DNA and we run an overarching project for the north of Ireland but then more recently we've been getting into very local projects and the main ones that we started with were the Balecari DNA project and the Ireland McGee DNA project and both of those we are using Wikitree to record our findings all of the participants in those projects. We put their family histories onto Wikitree and it's an ideal platform to show all of the connections between the various families and therefore help the participants in the analysis of their DNA. We have 10 branches right across the north of Ireland and they will run physical meetings but through COVID they really got into online meetings and so we ended up with a lot of new members right across the world and that has really rejuvenated the society I would say. It's been really great to see the number of participants so at the moment we're kind of all of us are kind of trying to ensure that our members no matter where they may be located can easily participate in the work of the society and so we're having hybrid meetings or online meetings and I think that is working really well. Yeah and I know you and I have had a chance to chat quite a bit since we started working together and you know the activities and the outreach of you and your group are just really impressive and really inspiring and so we love to work with people like you that are just getting out there in the community and you know helping people to realize that this is important you know documenting us and our ancestors and finding out for sure where we all came from. Yes no I think we've got we have as a say of you know a very active membership and it's great to see you know how they can they can work together and it's Ireland it's the north of Ireland it's kind of quite a small place but in many ways that has advantages because there's an element of you know people knowing each other and we find often particularly in our we were on a DNA interest group and what we find is that many of our members are find that they are DNA matches with each other and that's kind of great to see and then they can literally collaborate and to see where the connection is so it really adds to the whole area of analyzing your DNA. Here we have a few of our top people during the Challenge Week. Martin McDowell who was our most valuable participant or MVP. Maureen Ahern of New Zealand was our top bounty hunter and Donna the team captain for this week did just a fantastic job. So yeah I was looking at the beginning numbers and at the beginning we only had 611 people in the CC7 for these starting profiles. At the end we had almost 4000 so we created we added 3400 to the CC7s. 2000 of those were manual one by ones we weren't we made quite a few connections but two-thirds of the profiles that were added in the CC7 were us adding one profile by profile and about 1100 were added for connecting to other profiles. But it takes an entire team to collaborate and come up with outstanding results. We had more than 72 people participate in an incredible show of collaboration. We took a look at all of our starting ancestors. We didn't find a blood relation but we did find some cousin connections. Steven Boyd and Gary Moore were connected within 21 degrees. Next was William Peary to Harry Ferguson which was 22 degrees and finally William is also 24 degrees from John Kyle. We have a lot of fun using the connection finder during the week to see who we're closest to. So this is Donna's connection to Henry George Ferguson. It shows you the path used to reach him with five different connections being by marriage now sometimes that's less sometimes that's more. Here we have another connection. Shamus Haney was a Nobel Prize Laureate poet. He's widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. Now 16 degrees from him is Jordy Barnett who was an Irish historian, archaeologist, botanist, geologist, folklorist but also a poet. He's best known for his discovery of the Baymore Stone Circles and he developed the theory that they were an ancient lunar observatory. The theory was expressed in his poem The Baymore Stone Circles. While looking at the connections we checked into Wright Reverend Dr. Simon Digby an Irish bishop. Now he was a gentleman of the Bristol family and his father was a Bishop of Dromor. He was a great master of painting in little watercolors. Here are his connections to our starting people. Stephen Boyd at 14 degrees, Jack Kyle and William Peary at 17 degrees, Harry Ferguson at 20 degrees, Gary Moore at 23 degrees, Ruby Lamar at 24 degrees and the furthest out was Shamus Haney at 26. We also looked at Abraham Lincoln and you'll find out why shortly and you know they say his greatest achievement was his ability to energize and mobilize the nation by appealing to its best ideals while acting with malice towards none in the pursuit of a more perfect more just and more enduring nation. No president in American history has ever faced a greater crisis and no president has ever accomplished as much. His closest connection is William Peary at 12 degrees. Well now let's go ahead and take a look at some other interesting finds and connections and we'll start with William Miller known as Stephen Boyd. He of course was an Irish actor who came to the acting stages as an adult. He appeared in about 60 films mostly notably as Missala and Ben Herr which earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Now sometimes we just find interesting people along the way. Here was John Kenneth Tomlinson and he may not have achieved what someone called a notable status but his local newspapers found his family interesting enough. He was born in Wyoming in the United States, the middle of three children born to Herbert Tomlinson of Derby Shire, England and his wife Caroline Kerry-Den. John was born in Rock Springs Wyoming as a boy he was thrown from a horse breaking his collar bow. He later worked as a maintenance foreman in Arabia for the Trans-Arabian Oil Company. He and his wife had three children two of which lived to adulthood. His son Kenneth John or John Kenneth Jr. went into the military and while he traveled extensively he often returned home to visit his parents and this was documented frequently. John Silva or sorry John Sr. had also been in the military handling ordinance. His daughter worked as a hairstylist and their family but really was in the newspapers a lot. So you know and it was interesting to see that there wasn't a whole lot. There was a lot about his son's military career but not as much about the elder John's military career. Now he was honorably discharged just short of his two-year mark with an unstated disability so there was something that occurred before he finished. His only brother Herbert who was also in the army sustained more than one injury and after re-enlisting when World War II was in full swing Herbert received a bronze star for meritorious achievement and then a purple heart for his injuries and service and you know he was in the paratroopers infantry. So really a strong military family but it was fun to see all the clippings and stuff that popped up you know for people going and visiting grandma or you know which ones were seeing the sister and whatnot. And John Thomas and Sr. and Stephen Boyd are six degrees apart and I want to take just a moment to thank Cheryl Hess for working on this profile. She did a beautiful job on it. You know we have some people that like to come in after the fact and build these biographies off of the sources and she just did a really beautiful job on that one. And there's many others of course. Now next we'll go to Harry Ferguson. He was born in County Down Ireland. He became a mechanic and developed a three-point linkage system for the modern day tractor. He was also the first person to build with his brother Joe and fly his own airplane in Ireland. So here we have an adventurous fella in his branches. On the 29th of May 1953 Sir Edmund Percival Hillary and Sherpa Mountaineer Tenzing Norge became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Edmund Derek Wright and Murray Ellis arrived at the South Pole later on in their on their Ferguson tractors. That was in 1958. They were the first to do so over land since 1912 and they were the first ones to reach it in motor vehicles. So it was really fun to see the interesting people that pop up when you start this research. Now Edmund Hillary and Harry Ferguson are 19 degrees apart and so that chart shows the path from one to the other. Next we have Seamus Haney who is a Nobel Prize laureate poet. He's widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. Born the first of nine children his father was a farmer and raised cattle. In 1957 he studied the English language and literature at the Queen's University in Belfast. During his time there he found a copy of Ted Hughes Lupercal which inspired him to write poetry. And this took us to another one sometimes we just find unusual occupations as we delve into the branches. So here was Henry Doherty and he was born in 1839 in county London Derry Ireland. He married Mary Fisher Doherty in 1862. In the 1911 census aged 72 he was a nailer which was a maker of nails and a widower. His son Charles a railway porter married Susanna Haney which was Seamus Haney's granddad. So you know and I don't know if some people get as amused as me and some of the others do about finding occupations and stuff but I had to go look this up and read about it and you know they're talking about how sometimes it would be like three or four of these nail makers these nailers that would get together but a lot of times it was families and so they would make this room they would designate this room or rent a little small place to do this you know where they could have the the foundry there and they could put up to six anvils around it around the hot fire so that they could you know each pound and totally lost my train of thought there oh and you know and so it was a family event they just all gather the kids and everything and gather around here now each one of those nails they'd have to draw it out clip it off it took about 35 hits for a really super nice nail like for a horseshoe and then only about 25 blows to the hammer for a regular nail and you know I mean they'd say these people would just make thousands and thousands of nails though so you can imagine how you know difficult that must have been they've had some strong arms I know they had strong arms and of course this occupation was lost to automated processes or superseded by new interventions but I just found it interesting you know reading about these people we had another person that was a raker and we had a great discussion on it over the weekend and we couldn't decide if you know it meant like a traditional rake or somebody that raked flax or exactly what it was so I didn't get to put them in here but it was a fun discussion talking about the the occupations and so Henry Delory and Seamus Haney are five degrees apart apart and you can see it's just that one connection switches for marriage here we have John Kyle another one of your starting people he was an international rugby player and a surgeon all of his siblings apart from his younger sister Beatrice were talented sports people his sister Betty kept in the Ireland women's hockey team to triple crown success in 1950 his sister Brenda played hockey to the provincial level and his brother Eric played rugby for Ulster and was an Ireland trialist that's quite a quite a sports family there now we often come across spelling variations while researching and it's often hard to tell if the census taker you know uses spelling he as he thought it should be or if maybe there was an accent that was present that caused variances but in the case of Alexander Warren he was a Warren by birth on the records for their first four daughters however the spelling had changed to wearing for the fifth child they wrote wearing and then crusted out and said Warren so we're not sure if the family was trying to change it or if they just finally realized that it was being said wrong all that time I'm not sure and then of course by the last two children they had the correct spelling of Warren again again as did all of the other records so you know one can only speculate why those changes occurred but really interesting to see the changes tracked through the records and Alexander Warren of course was the grandfather of John Kyle so the next starting person we had was Robert William Gary Moore who was a Northern Irish musician over the course of his career he performed a range of music including blues blues rock hard rock heavy metal and jazz fusion he was often described as a virtuoso and has been cited as an influence by many other guitar players in his branches we found John Lowry he was born about 1834 in County Antrim he was the son of Hugh Lowry a mariner like his father John worked as a mariner or a sailor he married Elizabeth Snotty at the age of 25 and they had at least six children all but one being boys Elizabeth's sister Mary also married a mariner who worked as a harbour master for many many years John continued to work as a sailor and was recorded as a sea captain on their daughter Ellen's 1872 birth record now the sister Mary's son Edward worked as a ships engineer so the sea muster really run in their blood you know it was like in the family they all wanted to be out on the out on the ocean excuse me unfortunately Edward drowned at the age of 42 now John later worked as a boiler shop laborer and lived to the age of 78 but for the majority of his life he spent his time out on the sea John Lowry was Gary Moore's great great grandfather next we have Canadian born William James Peary first discount period Belfast he was an Irish shipbuilder who was in charge of Harlan and Wall when the passenger liner Titanic was built so I can see why one of your people picked this one and this is anything to do with the Titanic is you know interesting to a lot of people now when asked about whether there were sufficient life rafts on the Titanic prior to its fateful inaugural voyage Peary replied that the oh the ship was unsinkable and that the life rafts were there for us doing others his words would haunt him for the rest of his life co-worker and nephew Edmund Thomas Andrews was one of the many that died on the Titanic Peary was also meant to be on that voyage but took ill just prior to departure now ironically William died aboard the ship Ebro on a business trip to South America cause of death was pneumonia his body was returned to Ireland for burial and Belfast so he didn't sink or anything but you know he did have a delayed fate I suppose of dying on a ship later much later in life and out in the Peary branches the researchers found so many interesting people on the Peary lines it was super super hard to choose there were 19 different notable people out in his branches as well as eight or more people that had unique events in their life that they our researchers noted so since I referenced Abraham Lincoln earlier we'll go ahead and start with Dr. Harlow Barney now he was born in Luzern County Pennsylvania one of 12 children he married Amy Wolf at the age of 20 in 1849 he was involved in a civil suit and it may be the one that we found that was for an HM Barney regarding money lost due to a fire and not being accountable he took on Greenberry Lafayette Fort as a counsel now that was Fort's first briefing as a lawyer nobody really knew who he was but he was able to continue on and win the case and his opposing counsel was Abraham Lincoln so Fort and Lincoln became fast friends over this case and you know Fort continued on to become a politician in Illinois and you know so thank you to Dr. Harlow Barney that was that was out there on Williams branches or who knows you know how they would have meant or if they would have now Harlow Barney and William Peary are a mere six degrees apart with one of the connections being by marriage and then it was fun seeing an Australian well we actually had a few Australian and New Zealand connections in Williams branches this was Sir James Allen who was a prominent New Zealand politician and diplomat he was born in Adelaide Australia he held a number of the most important political offices in the country including Minister of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs he was also New Zealand's Minister of Defense during World War one turns out that he's only seven degrees from William Peary now two more notable connections are William Hugh Montgomery CVBE and William John Alexander Montgomery William Hugh was born in New Zealand and was a politician of the Liberal Party from the Canterbury religion William John was a New Zealand politician from Little Rivers on Banks Peninsula and a merchant in 1884 he became the fourth Minister of Education in New Zealand and both of the Williams were only five degrees from William Peary so that was fun next we have Samuel Cunningham he was born about 1768 in Cricutstone Ireland he was one of the 12 children of Samuel Cunningham senior and Mary Barber Cunningham Samuel represented his family's Belfast baseline of business in the West Indies now in 1796 he was in St. Vincent planning a trip home to Ireland he was only 28 years old but he had a premonition that he was going to die en route so we wrote out his will now in it he left generous generous bequest for each of his parents all of his siblings and the poor and clay parish as well several other named individuals and sure enough Samuel was in a battle at sea when a French privateer attacked the ship he was on the Portland packet which was running under the British flag Samuel is said to have fought bravely with the seamen he tried to fend off the attack and save the cargo but he and the captain were shot and killed now Samuel's buried on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean Sea the ship eventually waited made its way back to Ireland his brother wrote a touching letter to his uncle informing him of the death and it was just kind of cold that those items you know were located I mean that letter was written in 1797 and there's a transcription available to read now this one we didn't find the direct connection between them as the elder Sam Samuel Cunningham represented a brick wall that we did not have time to demolish this week however there's strong evidence that he and Archibald Montgomery are related making the younger Samuel Cunningham and William Peary possible distant cousins so our final starting person was Ruby Murray a Northern Irish singer and one of the most popular singers in the British Isles in the 1950s she had surgery done on her throat as a baby which left her with a very husky voice she made her debut at the tender age of 12 now sometimes we find that the occupations are likely to have been what brought the couples together so here we found another Doherty but this time it was off of Ruby Lamar's branches Ellen McCormick Doherty was she was 23 years old a spinster and a shirt maker residing on Bennett Street when she married Thomas Doherty he was 25 years old a bachelor and a tailor residing on William Street son of William Doherty their children's names were Mary Thomas George Sarah Elizabeth Thomas Ellen James and two others we couldn't locate but you know pretty pretty common names but just really interesting that you know she was a shirt maker and he was a tailor and they came together so but I don't know that was a lot of William so you know William was residing on William Street the son of William and Ellen Doherty was Ruby Lamar's great grand aunt so that was their connection and then we always give a nod to the military you know whether or for war or not these men gave their lives and were patriotic towards their countries so here we just looked at the great war or world war one and we found the following we have Cyril Gerard Hazelden captain and the royal engineers and the first husband of Jane Lawson Ormrod who died in France James Patterson Ferguson was working in South Africa when he returned to Belfast Ireland to re-enlist for world war one his previous service was with the South Irish horse until 1908 he was 34 years old and a motor engineer in 1915 we have Victor Stanley Ferguson was a motor mechanic who enlisted in Britain's Royal Navy for the duration of world war one Thomas James Cleaver who served as a private with the first battalion New Zealand Rifle Brigade he was deployed overseas on the western front he died from influenza and cerebrospinal meningitis in 1919 in France we have Robert Frederick Cleaver who served as a private with the second battalion Auckland infantry he was deployed overseas on the western front he was diagnosed with TB in 1917 and was transported back to New Zealand a month later Arnold Howard Muniz served at the Coast Artillery Corps during world war one six degrees from Ruby Lamar was SPR Frank Edmonds who died from wounds while serving in Egypt oh so I missed that I would have had to add Egypt to our list of places Samuel Barber Com was killed in action in France he was a lieutenant in the north Irish horse seven degrees from William Peary so a lot of really really brave souls now on wiki tree we're all connected we're all cousins connected by blood or marriage and right now they're 29 million 11,491 cousins on wiki tree alive or not our research this time was primarily focused on northern Ireland but by the end of the week we thought we'd research in the following locations Canada the Caribbean England Germany India Ireland Lebanon New Zealand Scotland South Africa the United States and Wales and of course our one poor gentleman that was in Egypt so you know they kind of wound up traveling all over you know looking all over at least for uh these locations for records if you have any questions about the presentation or wiki tree you can find us on facebook twitter or wiki tree dot com and then while the image credits play here I just want to take a minute to thank all the incredible wiki trees that helped with research this challenge we more than 72 people work on this challenge they found an amazing amount of discoveries and they were really fun work to uh group to work with and I also like to congratulate and thank Donna Bowman for leading such a successful week as a captain as well as you know thank Anne and your group for working with us this week so how do you feel the challenge went um in the end there Anne I thought it was really successful um I would first of all I would like to thank um wiki tree for for hosting us um allowing us to participate but I would particularly as well like to thank the participants um they did an incredible job I knew it was going to be a challenge because um of the difficulties that there are in our research but they really um came to the fore um made really exciting um discoveries and it was really great to see um so I would like to genuinely thank thank all of the participants um for their efforts well we just have so much fun doing this and you know we feel like we get to give at least the gift of our research and what we find um to others but yeah it was so fun to see the collaboration between everybody and communications and you know people that maybe thought they weren't going to be able to contribute a lot and they came in and talked to others and went oh I can find these records you know I can find stuff on people and you know but that's what people have to do they have to be afraid to step outside of their comfort zone you know get out of that box and go out and look in a new area and you'll see what you can find so I'm always excited to see people kind of moving into new arenas like that and hopefully you know this helped a lot of our wiki treers you know learn new resources from you and from the group on how to do irish research in the future so that they can work on their own trees yes no I think think overall it was very successful very enjoyable and very productive yes and you know and you and the group I mean you guys broke several records anyways you know we were worried that you and I when we started were like hmm I wonder how much they'll find uh because we know there's those gaps and you know in time for Ireland where it's kind of hard to find records um but people just did an amazing job and they still got a lot of profiles added uh you know and just did such an incredible job yes and I think I mean it was really obvious to me as well the whole kind of learning experience that there was um you know right throughout both in terms of you know how to research in Ireland but also learning you know um how to make the most of wiki tre and that was really important as well well this has been a lot of fun and thank you again for joining me and I hope you viewers out there will join me in the next wiki tree challenge