JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — The Graham/Anflick Family Tree's GEDCOM file has received two updates since last November. The first update took place earlier this spring and included the addition of over 1000 names from the Mumma.org database. These names represent all descendants of Peter Mumma (1771‒1850) that had been entered in the database as of around May 2023, as well as some descendants of Johannes Mumma (1763-1829). The second update took place earlier today. It included additional information on the Lancaster descendants of Elizabeth Kline Resh (1871‒1954) and Margaret Kline Marley (1874‒1942), and on the Philadelphia descendants of Thomas A. Graham (1905‒1967).
In other news, Genealogy By Tim G.'s webserver received a hardware upgrade earlier this spring.The new server includes a modern 64-bit Intel i7 processor and 2 terabytes of storage. The email server software on the old server was not transferred over to the new server, however. Email service to and from the genealogybytim.com domain is now being provided by Zoho. Genealogybytim.com is configured to send automatic emails from tim@genealogybytim, and I can both send and receive manual emails from that address. It is my intention eventually to self-host as many of the site's features as possible, but self-hosting email is a challenge for another time.
Suubscribing to a third-party email service has since enabled me to close my old Wordpress-hosted site at RestorationsByTim.com. That domain now redirects to my self-hosted Wordpress instance at blog.genealogybytim.com. Emails sent to tim@restorationsbytim.com will be directed to tim@genealogybytim for at least the next year.
Lastly, the server now runs an instance of YOURLS at y.genealogybytim.com. This software enables me to shorten URLs using my own domain, rather than an outside domain such as tinyurl or bit.ly. The profile of Margaret Mary Graham (1934-1936) contains an example of the shortlink in action; it links to a low-res copy of her death certificate at Ancestry.com. More such shortlinks will surely follow. ⬮
JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — The Graham/Anflick Family Tree's GEDCOM file was updated on Sunday, November 20, 2022. The Boland family and the Berry family have both received updates.
Email service has also been temporarily enabled on the Genealogy By Tim G. webserver. As of this morning, the server can send emails, but it can not yet receive them. Email service from the site may be intermittent as some final kinks are worked out.
With email service enabled, users who request member accounts will now receive email confirmation links at the email addresses provided. Remember, however, that email confirmation is not sufficient to receive a member account. All requests for member accounts must still be manually approved, and they are offered only to close family members and research collaborators.
The contact form is now fully functional, and should now send email notifications to the webmaster's personal email account. This should expedite the reply process. ⬮
JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — The Graham/Anflick Family Tree has moved from the subfolder "genealogybytim.com/grahamtree" to the subdomain "webtrees.genealogybytim.com", effective Sunday afternoon, November 6.
The change was inspired during the course of attempting, once again, to add a functioning email server to GenealogyByTim.com. This time, an online tutorial actually guided webmasters to create subdomains for their email administration tools. I wasn't sure if this was possible using my server's setup, but it was easier than anticipated after following the tutorial. It was so easy, in fact, that I went ahead and created subdomains for my intended future webmail interface, my legacy blog, and my webtrees family tree, the latter of which you are now viewing.
I abandoned the "grahamtree" subfolder name when creating the new subdomain, and instead named the subdomain "webtrees", taking the name from the software that powers the online family tree portion of the website. The webtrees software allows for the publication of multiple family trees, and I didn't want the name of the subdomain to suggest limits on how I might use the software in the future. I may choose, in the future, to publish trees of collateral families, trees of historical figures, trees of Civil War regiments, trees for friends, or trees for paying clients. Several of these trees could be managed by the single instance of webtrees installed on the webtrees subdomain.
The subdomain change is more aesthetic than functional. Subfolders of the drupal-powered "genealogybytim.com" landing page, in my opinion, ought to have the same look and feel as their parent sites. Portions of the site powered by different software, likewise, should reside on different subdomains. Besides those aesthetics, the basic usage of The Graham/Anflick Family Tree should remain largely the same. Automatic redirection from "genealogybytim.com/grahamtree" has been implemented, so all visitor-created bookmarks and links should still work and properly redirect to the new subdomain. Lingering bugs and errors may be reported through the contact form. ⬮
JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — The online Graham Family Tree was updated today, January 3, 2022. Changes include further developments on the Snyder and Cohen lines, including information about the death and burial of Eva Cohen Snyder Musikant (1871–1924), maternal grandmother of Morris Anflick, and for signed-in members, new portaits of my Graham cousins who visited from Ohio last week.
Media galleries for surnames beginning with the letters A and B have been optimized for web display.
Lastly, an oversight that caused the exclusion of the siblings of Joseph A. Graham, Sr. (1901-1948) has been corrected. In the early days of genealogical web-sharing, I was skeptical of uploading the private data of living and recently deceased people to such online public databases as WeRelate.org and Ancestry.com Public Member Trees. I therefore scrubbed my GEDCOM files of not only living people but also parents, aunts, and uncles of living people, including those of my then-living grandfather, Joseph A. Graham (1931-2016), before uploading them to public databases.
Since my grandfather passed away in 2016, and since I now control my family tree data on my own private server, such scrubbing of the GEDCOM file is no longer necessary. Some of the older settings have persisted, however, causing information on my grandfather's aunts and uncles to have been excluded from this online family tree, until now.
Making their debuts on the Graham Family Tree this month are John P. Graham (1897-1983), the priest who married my grandparents, Joseph A. Graham (1931-2016) and Joan B. Harrison (1932-2008) back in 1958, and Reverend Mother Mary Bernard Graham, C.R.M. (1896-1988), of the Sisters of Mercy, among others siblings. ⬮
JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — A recent update to Webtrees, the software that powers the family tree section of the Genealogy By Tim G. website, will allow web administrators to whitelist media files. Whether the ability to whitelist media files existed in previous versions has been unclear, but efforts to do the same on the Graham Family Tree have been unsuccessful until recently. The apparently new functionality will reveal to all website visitors photographs and original documents that have heretofore been visible only to logged-in members.
Early in the development of the Genealogy By Tim G. website, the decision was made to exclude all photographs and scanned documents from web publication. This is because it is a violation of most web publishers' terms of service to repost images obtained from one website onto other websites. Similarly, it is a violation of many private archives' and historical societies' terms of service to re-publish documents obtained there without express permission. Copyright laws still cover many genealogy resources, including newspaper, death notices, and published genealogies. Lastly most photographs in my digital collection were obtained privately though family members who have not expressly granted permission to publish them online. For these reasons, all photographs and scanned documents have been hidden from website visitors. Logged-in website members my view the media files, but membership is currently granted by invitation only and limited to well known family members who have requested access.
Webtrees' whitelist functionality will allow web administrators to block visibility of all media objects by default, and then selectively publish media files once clearance for publication has been obtained. Therefore, a wealth of photographs and documents obtained from now-deceased relatives are eligible for publication a Genealogy By Tim G., as are public domain documents such as those obtained from Archive.org and from public archives. Time permitting, it is hoped that visual artifacts cleared for publication will soon be available to all of Genealogy By Tim G.'s visitors, and not just a select few members. ⬮
JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — The online Graham Family Tree was updated yesterday, January 3, 2022. Updated lines include the Smith and the Snyder/Beechman lines.
Of particular interest over the past month has been the identification of several siblings to Minnie Snyder Anflick, including the elusive Mrs. I. Beechman, who was identified as a sister of Pauline Snyder Miller, while the latter was recovering from consumption at the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society in Denver.
In the Smith line, more vital details of Johanna Smith Harrison's siblings, William Smith, Mary Smith King, and Elizabeth Smith Quinlan were uncovered. Details about potential Smith relatives in Boston were not included in this update, but may be included in the next one.
Photographs of the Smith gravestones, as well as Lillian Snyder Beechman's immigration photo, are visible to approved members. ⬮
JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — The online Graham Family Tree was updated yesterday, ahead of my upcoming summer cycling tour of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This update features the baptism records of the children of John Hougendobler, who is my qualifying ancestor for my admission to the Sons of the American Revolution. The update also features additions to the families of John's grandchildren John and Joseph, which will be the subject of much of my research during this summer's tour. ⬮
JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — Some improvements were made this week to the Webtrees family tree at GenealogyByTim.com/grahamtree. Page loading has substantially improved after circular references were removed. The individual pages of some of our most popular ancestors should no longer time out. Media presentation has also improved. Unsightly "404" error cards have been replaced by attractive silhouette profiles where media files have not yet been approved for publication. Media files will become available to viewers and members as they are gradually approved. If you haven't visited the family tree in a while, stop by and check out the changes! ⬮
JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — GenealogyByTim.com is back online after a week-long outage. The interruption was caused by a buggy upgrade on March 21st. GCC-10.3.0 apparently generates an illegal instruction when it builds MariaDB-10.5.9 on a Pentium-M processor. Downgrading to GCC-9.3.0 and rebuilding MariaDB resolved the issue. Gentoo Forum members were helpful in diagnosing the problem. A bug report might be filed in the near future. ⬮
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- Facts and relationships are included on the tree if there is reasonable articulable suspicion that they are true. Ideally, they include source citations and notes that articluate the suspicion. Although not every fact asserted on the tree has been proven conclusively true, it is hoped that the information provided will be useful. Consult source citations when evaluating the veracity of any asserted fact.
- Dates of residence and occupation are entered only as proven by evidence, despite the high likelihood that the subject lived at the residence or worked at the occupation beyond the dates indicated by the evidence.
- Where a subject is shown by evidence to reside in the same location across different dates, it is presumed until otherwise discovered that the subject remained at that location between the dates shown by the evidence.
- Parents of older generations are entered as married until evidence to the contrary is discovered.