WorldConnect - BDM data

The next of my updates to my assorted online sites was to be to my WorldConnect database LornaPotential, ie those people I've researched as possibly related.
BUT using  my normal link, that on my web pages sidebar, in Firefox, I was taken to a general ancestry search form for the public member trees.
A bit of digging in the ancestry forums led to this thread which explains that there is a problem, that is browser dependent.
For me, FireFox doesn't work to access http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ but chrome does (I don't have Internet Explorer loaded, so haven't checked that).

I'm guessing that this is related to the browser issues that stopped many of us from accessing the source images - the images being covered by big orange bordered boxes with assorted messages that stopped you seeing the actual image.
Switching browsers sometimes worked, sometimes not, as did a forced refresh of the page (Firefox hold shift and hit F5). That has now been resolved, at least for me.

All that aside, LornaPotential has now been refreshed.
Many that were in this database have now been transferred into my main database LornaHenderson (to be updated next).
LornaHenderson database contains basic BDM data on all my researched relations AND their connections. Everyone in there, with about 50 exceptions, can be navigated to/from someone who is related to me and mine.
LornaPotential database contains those I've researched because of potential connections.
Increasingly this latter category includes the lines of dna matches that look most likely to be where the connection lies.
If you are a descendant of anyone in either database I'd love to hear from you, particularly if you have the missing links, or further information AND/OR would be willing to explore potential connections by using an appropriate genetic genealogy test, such as FamilyFinder.
Some of the people mentioned will have a personal page on my webpages with further information.

When is a son not a son?

No, not an existential question, just a comment on the sometimes idiosyncratic indexing of census "families" on ancestry.

The 1881 census for Maryhill, Lanarkshire includes the military Barracks there.
In residence were William PAXTON, wife Mary PAXTON (formerly RUNCIMAN, nee DOUGAN/DUGGAN), John, Frances and Norman, her children from her previous marriage to George RUNCIMAN, and Mary, her daughter with William.

How do (John,) Frances and Norman appear on ancestry?

As children of William and  Bridget REYNOLDS:
William Reynolds 36 Head Soldier b(orn) East Indies
Bridget Reynolds 33 Wife b. Ireland
John Runciman 15 Soldier b. Ireland
Francis Runciman 8 Daughter Scholar b. Gibraltar
Norman Runciman 4 Son b. Malta

FindMyPast shows each of the family members individually (ie not listed as a family, but reported as head, wife, son..., my regrouping):
PAXTON, William Head Married M(ale) 34 1847 Soldier (born) England
PAXTON, Mary Wife Married F 31 1850 Lemerick
RUNCIMAN, John M 15 1866 Soldier Ireland
RUNCIMAN, Francis Daughter F 8 1873 Scholar Malta
RUNCIMAN, Norman Son M 4 1877 Malta
PAXTON, Mary Daughter F 2 1879 Hongkong

I confess to not having checked the original record, but do have sufficient evidence from other records for my conclusions.
A number of family trees on ancestry have come to a dead end on their ancestors as a result of not checking further, and assuming William & Bridget REYNOLDS are their ancestors.

For those interested, this family is included in the RUNCIMAN One Name Study.

Sources & Lost Cousins

Thought I was quite good at noting my sources, but somehow I always miss inputting something.
Lost Cousins is completely free* this weekend (and ancestry's UK census records - registration required) so it's a good opportunity to add a few more relations, and some of the Runciman and Fairbairn families from the One Name Study and DNA project that we don't yet know where they "fit".
The very first one I went to enter from my data, I had to re-check the census entry concerned as I'd not noted all of the information necessary to enter them on Lost Cousins. At least one of the objectives of citing your sources was met, being able to find the entry again easily.

* the basic site has always been free, it is the additional contacting of relations found via the census records you have input that is also free this weekend.

7th: Ancestry.com exceeding their brief

I'm getting rather annoyed with Ancestry.com at the moment.
Some years ago now I finally succumbed to keeping several trees on ancestry, liking in particular the wonderful hints for sources that may be for the people in the trees.
As I research and find someone/something, I generally now pop the results of those searches into whichever tree is appropriate - keeping my master copy of all data on my own pc still, in TMG.
Of late I've noticed that something seems to have changed with how they treat the input suggestions for the data from a source you've just examined and chosen to attach to someone in your tree.
Instead of limiting the information supplied on the lhs of the add screen to what is available from that source, they seem to now also scoop up whatever other information they seem to have for what looks to them like the same person, and present it in the same add screen, with no indication that it has come from some other source, ie one that you may or may not have viewed, and certainly isn't the one currently being used to add data to your tree.
I think this is grossly misleading, and likely to lead to all sorts of stupid errors in already error-prone trees.
Admit to not having selected the death information I was presented with to see what source it would have attached (I was adding data from some Canadian WWI attestation papers and was presented with death information for the spouse, and a string of children, the only connection any of this had to the source document being the spouse's name as next of kin).

11th: Foulden, Berwickshire

Gave up on trying to find an Andrew RUNCIMAN on ancestry's 1841 census transcripts the other day.
He had to be somewhere, but I could NOT find him.
Went to Scotlands People, and yes, there was a chap of the right age in Foulden, Berwickshire in the search results.
Even armed with this new info, I still couldn't find him on ancestry, so paid out my shillings for the SPeople copy.
Out of curiousity and armed with all the people on the page, back to ancestry.
Spot checks, nary a one of them anywhere, and Foulden didn't appear in the list of parishes available.
So I logged it with ancestry.
Some year, it may arrive, their response:
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Thank you for bringing this to our attention. This databases should be complete, so it appears that this parish may be missing from our records. I have reported this to our content team to look into and correct when possible. Feedback from you, our valued customer, helps us correct errors and improve the website. Your patience and efforts to assist us in this matter are appreciated.

Please understand that fixes to errors on Ancestry are posted firstly in the order of those which affect the greatest number of users, and thereafter in the order in which they are reported. For this reason, fixes for some errors may take longer than others to be posted. We appreciate your patience.
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4th: When is an exact search not an exact search?

A friend was trying to direct me to something she had found on ancestry, and I simply could not see what she was seeing.
Given I believed she wasn't telling me porkies, we went through our respective settings.
I nearly always use the "exact matches only" setting, with wild cards if need be, she didn't.
I don't see that it should have mattered as I had typed, accurately, and later rechecked by doing a copy/paste of the exact name from the results, but still, the chap only came up when "exact matches only" was unticked!

Jun 13, 2008: OneWorldTree

I continue to be amazed, or more accurately, incredulous, at Ancestry's OneWorldTree. I just hate the way it automatically combines data, presents it as fact, and makes it look I've contributed rubbish data! I've tried getting them to remove the original gedcom they used way back for my data, but all I've succeeded in doing is that they've changed the last update date from the really old ?1995? date, to a more modern one, which makes it even worse.
So, if you are looking at OneWorldTree and follow links back to the sources that show data supposedly contributed by me, don't necessarily believe what you see there, jump out to the web pages (at least that link is accurate) and look at the current data on WorldConnect.