User talk:Donjgen

Suffolk CDs
Hi Don, It sounds like you've come up with a good project for you and your friends to do. The structure of a parish register online records table has been well defined in the FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject English parishes project. You should not deviate from it, as it is being implemented nationwide in England and has been agreed upon by those involved in the English parishes project.

If you wish to create a separate section for the more difficult to obtain CD editions of the parish register indexes, that would be appropriate. Murphynw 17:44, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Suffolk Navigation
Navigation boxes at the bottom of Wiki pages is a standard feature of Wikipedia and the United States portion of FamilySearch Wiki. It is also a joint decision by Family History Library staff. The navigation boxes are being added by a team of missionaries from the Family History Library. I do not understand how that adding navigation boxes to Suffolk parish pages is disrespectful to your welcome contributions; however, if you would like to raise this complaint to the Wiki Community Council, here is the link: Wiki Community Council. Murphynw 23:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm getting ready to do a Suffolk project. If you'd like to participate just, let me know. Murphynw 10:08, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Please see example of suggested way forward at FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject England/Navboxes --Steve 18:31, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

TOC and NOTOC
I have started to use the TOC and NOTOC on the webpages mentioned above. Those tags move and remove the contents box that is automatically generated when four or more headings appear on a page. Most of the pages are quite short right now so I am using NOTOC on the parish pages. The content box that is automatically generated often appears out of place. I have put comment tags next to it so if someone edits the page they will know what the tags are for

Area Conversion from Acres
Many of the areas noted in gazetteers and histories of parishes and other places are in acres. I have found a website that converts acres to square miles or square kilometers at metric conversions.org Most people are more familar with how large a square mile or kilometer is than an acre. Such as 3592 acres = 5.6 square miles or 14.5 square kilometers

Huntingfield page
You've added a delete template to this page and I'll be happy to do that, but there are a couple pages linked to it and I'd appreciate if you would fix those and get them where you want them first.averyld 17:36, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Swiss pages
Thanks for your note about the Swiss pages.

I struggled with how to label the pages to determine Kirchgemeinde vs. politische Gemeinde, and I followed Denmark/Norway's example and put the word 'parish' to distinguish between a parish and a municipality. Whether or not it's the best way to do it is at this point is really beside the point, as I've created 500+ pages of these for 4 cantons in Switzerland, and I'd prefer the country to be the same across the board for continuity's sake, and I'm not recreating all the pages, and links, and etc. etc. etc. My concern is more about getting the information onto the Wiki first.

The map seems to work; I haven't checked but my only concern would be that the parishes you list actually touch Aarwangen, and to include links to the parish pages on the map. If you want to check out a page I've done more fully in Bern, check out Vechigen. I'd like to create a clickable map like they have on the Norway page, maybe at the Bern level, maybe divide Bern into Bezirks (if only the canton would leave political boundaries alone!).

Let me know if you have any other questions or would like to talk about it further -- gublerjones 12:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

In terms of organization by Bezirk, I think the 1875 would probably be the best way to do it, though I don't know how extensive the use of Bezirk was back then. I wouldn't want people to include the Bezirk in the location of the records they type in --- meaning, I'd hate for them to type in something like "Vechigen, Bern-Mittelland, Bern, Switzerland" - that seems highly redundant and potentially very confusing, as most Bezirke were simply the name of the town that was the headquarters of the Bezirk.

For your map references, I think I'd prefer to use 1875 church parish divisions, to prevent extra steps of identifying the parish for a particular spot. Meaning, the map for Aarwangen wouldn't just include the municipality of Aarwangen, and point to Bannwil as a neighboring gemeinde, but would indicate the surrounding *parishes* rather than gemeinden. I want to include the vast majority of the information for the Gemeinden under the *Parish* as that's where you're going to find the records. Meaning, any particular information for Bannwil would be listed under Aarwangen. I've done stuff like that for Zürich, if you'd like to take a look, see my pages for, say, Kilchberg you'd get an idea of how I've set that up.

Your question about the Swiss Reformed records for the towns you mentioned in Solothurn: That part of Solothurn had few if any Catholics. Each specific gemeinde within Solothurn (and other areas in Switzerland) basically voted to determine what religion they were going to be, during the Reformation, and then the whole town either stayed or switched to that religion. You get very very little religious overlap for most of Switzerland (there are a few exceptions, like Thurgau, for example). So those parishes in Solothurn are going to be *catholic* parishes. If there is any indication that any residents of those Catholic parishes in Solothurn were Reformed, I'd include a note in the parish pages of what church to look in. I'm still working on how I'd end up showing that, which is why I haven't done any pages for Thurgau yet.

Hope this answers your questions and comments. I'd appreciate any further feedback. I appreciate your interest in the Wiki project though -- I want it to be a standardized place to come for a comprehensive look at what is known and available for each parish in Switzerland. gublerjones 11:27, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Swiss pages
I see little need to create a geographic map for the political municipalities, but feel free to create them if you'd like. The main purpose of the wiki is to assist in family history research. Because there are no records available for Switzerland after 1875, by far the main record set to be used are church parish registers. That's why all I've done is create municipal pages with the purpose of directing them to the appropriate church parish. My big problem with giving more than a 'see this parish page' information on the municipality pages is I feel like it'll give the impression that the researcher should look for records specific to that municipality, they'll look, not find them, and make (incorrect) guesses as to why they don't exist. I don't want to distract them from going to the primary source of information: the parish records (and the parish pages). I see no need in creating a municipality page in addition to the parish pages for towns. I've included all pertinent 'municipal' information (i.e. website, civil registration district and address, etc.) on the parish page. Why create duplicates when they're not needed? Again, to me the wiki's purpose is to give information that will help do genealogical information, so that's why my major focus is on the parish page. gublerjones 10:40, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

I saw your note about Gemeinde vs. Municipality. Honestly I'd rather have a page that describes researching in records that can further give clarification about this difference --- if you notice, I've linked an article about researching in Bern records to *every* parish page. I'd prefer to include a discussion about the Swiss concept of research there, rather than use words like Gemeinde, which any non-German-speaking person would have no idea what it was and therefore miss the meaning of the information. Does that make sense? You're right in that municipality is not an accurate translation for Gemeinde, but I can't think of another English word that adequately expresses that context. Again, I'd rather explain it on an article linked to every page, rather than use terms that researchers will not be familiar with. The problem with your 'hover' is that it does not accurately describe what a Gemeinde is either -- you call it an "ancestral home or Heimat" (again using a German word that the beginner or even intermediate may not know), and "home" itself is ambiguous -- is it a building? a farm? a village? a political parish? a church parish? See the problem with this? Municipality communicates demarcated boundaries that include everyone within the boundaries, that's why I chose to use the word municipality. I make sure to call it a political municipality when it does not include its own church.

Your assertion: " Thats the downfall of Swiss research of the past is that everyone is born and or married in their heimat regardless of where they lived. A person hasn't been to there gemeinde for generations yet the genealogical records say they were born there and lived there and never left." is actually incorrect. Every record that has been entered for citizens who didn't live in the parish will state the parish from whence it came. Additionally, in the 1800s, when marriage banns were recorded in Bern, the parish of actual marriage was recorded, when the marriage itself was recorded. I can't think of a single instance where these documents "say they were born there and lived there and never left" when this wasn't the case. This is no downfall, but actually a huge help for researching, as it means that you can identify where a family is living based on the records of their parish of citizenship. gublerjones 10:50, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I've been thinking about your maps. I like them... what do you think about linking to an already-created map image? For example, the map for Busswil bei Melchnau could link to here...? gublerjones 11:07, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Swiss research of the past
I didn't read your statement as closely as I should have --- and I agree with your statement about past Swiss research having that particularly difficult pitfall -- those previously researched families usually only listed place of citizenship in the event fields as opposed to actual location of the event that took place. Billeter's research is particularly noteworthy for this problem, as was his tendency to guess at generational connections. I have attached a link to an article describing the problems of Billeter's research to every parish page, as I think it's extremely important to know the massive problems his stuff has caused for accurate research.

I have found that I basically have to start from scratch on all my Swiss lines, and verify every generation to make sure that Billeter and others' research was (or in a huge number of cases, wasn't) correct. And you're right -- Swiss family group sheets don't provide that essential bit of information. However, my source citations, which I copy out the entries when I find them into the source citation, will indicate the place of citizenship, even when baptized, married, etc. outside of the parish -- if they were baptized elsewhere, for example, I will find all copies of the event. For marriages in the 1800s, as many as 5 copies existed -- parish of citizenship for groom and bride, parish of residence for groom and bride, and actual location of marriage (if all 5 of those locations are different).

I'm not sure what you mean by your last sentence: "As the record keeping of the past I would but the place of citizenship as the birthplace and the section, 'other information' I would put the birthplace." Are you saying you put in the birthplace field - place of citizenship - and in 'other information' you put the actual birthplace? If this is the case, it seems counter-intuitive to your stated belief that in the future, it would be best to put everyone in their actual place and time. I think that would be best as well -- with accurate sourcing for where the information came from.

Do you use Family Tree as your primary database? I strongly discourage anyone from using Family Tree as the primary copy of their researched family tree, as any changes you correct, people can go and 'undo' them later. I continually fight against assorted relatives undoing the changes I make in Family Tree on the ancestors I've proven Billeter wrong on. One in particular I have to change about once every month. Iuse a third-party software for my primary research tool, so I know what I've done, and what's correct. gublerjones 13:04, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Switzerland Research
Its 2020; I have been working on my Switzerland lines since 2014. In 2014 I started working on my Swiss ancestry. My focus was on Bern Canton, more specifically the areas in and surrounding Melchnau and Bolligen. Much of the ancestry was on the family tree, but it was put there based on the old family group sheet records which were based on Julius Billeters research pre 1950. This meant that a lot of merging was required to bring all the submissions over the past 100 years into one coherent family tree. As I was linking images (births, deaths, and marriage) I realized that I needed an easier way to locate the records, so I started to develop the wiki pages so I could easily and quickly navigate to the records. When I finished in 2018 I had developed 20 parish pages in Bern Canton and linked 100's of images to my ancestors. About this time I developed my first parish in Solothurn Canton as those records were now online. My surname came from Recherswil gemeinde which was in Kriegstetten parish. Kriegstetten is about 15 miles west of Melchnau. The big difference being that Bern was a Protestant canton and much of Solothurn was a Catholic canton. The record content is much richer in Solothurn than Bern. The writing style is different and more Latin is found in the records. In the past 3 years I have developed about 15 parishes in Solothurn Canton. I may develop a page for every parish in Solothurn.

Linking to non-existent pages
Hi User Donjgen...

Our policy in the FamilySearch Wiki is to remove broken and non-existent links. This practice avoids the frustration Wiki users experience when they discover a missing or bad link.

You have added a non-existent link to page "Welschenrohr Parish, Solothurn, Switzerland Genealogy" named: Seehof

Please remove the link and use a "text value" as a place holder, in this case, the name "Seehof".

Once the page "Seehof, Bern, Switzerland Genealogy" is found or created, then you can replace the place holder with the link.

Thank you... Henny K. Wong (Wiki Support Team)

Swiss parishes (particularly Solothurn)
Hey Don- Not sure what you are referencing with the Solothurn pages. I've been assigned to complete the Switzerland parish pages in a standardized format so I moved those Solothurn pages to the standard format. I will be adding additional content to those in upcoming months. Please be aware that the content on those pages, as well as the content on the Bern pages, may change. Because of the drive for a standard user experience, when those changes occur, please talk to me before you make any additional changes. If you have any questions, feel free to chat with me here or you can email me at jones danielfamilysearch org.