Richard Sears (1610-1676) is my "start" for the #52ancestors challenge. He is my 7th Great-Grandfather and was probably born in England and shows up in Marblehead, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633 - maybe he was a fisherman who came over on one of those early boats and decided this was the place for him. From Samuel P May's book we read: "The name of Richard Seer is first found upon the records of Plymouth Colony, in the tax-list of March 25, 1633, when he was one of fourty-four, in a list of eighty-six persons, who were assessed nine shillings in corn, at six shillings per bushel, upon one poll. His name is not in tax list of 1634 or in list of freemen 1633."
He soon after crossed over to Marblehead, in Massachusetts Colony, where Richard Seers was taxed as a resident in the Salem rate-list for January 1, 1637-8, and on October 14, 1638, was granted four acres of land "where he had formerly planted." [This would seem to indicate that he had then some family.]
What his reasons were for removing can now only be conjectured. It has been suggested that he sympathized with Roger Williams and followed him in his removal, but this is improbable. It may be that he wished to be near friends, former townsmen, or perhaps relatives.
Antony Thacher, and his wife who was sister to Richard Sares wife, was then living in Marblehead, and this fact probably influenced his removal to that place
The early settlers of Marblehead were many of them from the channel islands, Guernsey and Jersey, and in these places the family of Sarres has been established for several centuries, and is still represented in Guernsey under the names of Sarres and Serres.
He took up residence on Quivet Neck between Quivet and Sesuit creeks [in what became East precinct of Yarmouth now Dennis], where in September of the same year their daughter Deborah was born, perhaps the second white child, and the first girl born in Yarmouth; Zachary Rider being supposed to have been the first boy.
In 1643, the name of Richard Seeres is in the list of those between the age of 16 and 60 able to bear arms. (In Williamsburg we learned that the requirements were, male, able bodied and with at least two teeth, one top and one bottom to pull the cap off the powder horn)
Oct 26, 1647, the commissioners on Indian affairs were appointed to meet at the house of Richard Sares at Yarmouth, when he entered a complaint against Nepoytam Sachumus, and Felix, Indians.
I have recorded over 22,000 of Richard's grand-kids in my Ancestry tree and have been researching the Sears Family since 1976. One of those grand-kids was Honorable David Sears, of Boston, who commissioned a Sears genealogy ( https://archive.org/details/descendantsofric00mays) and that's where I picked up the ball. The first comprehensive Sears genealogy came out in 1890 and I published the updated Sears Genealogical Catalogue in 1992. You can see the Catalogue here- https://archive.org/stream/searsgenealogica00sear#page/n3/mode/2up
I hope you will also participate in #52ancestors! Ray Sears LRSears@gmail.com
Friday, January 5, 2018
#52Ancestors and Preserving Data
I have been sharing genealogy projects that I am working on and today my sisters and I decided to take on https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/52-ancestors-in-52-weeks/
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Family history is better when it's shared! 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of prompts to help you share the discoveries you've made in your genealogy.
Just sign up on Amy's site and each Monday, you'll receive the prompt for that week, plus an email on the 1st of each month with a look ahead.
Use the hashtag #52ancestors if you share your work as well as get inspired by others in the project! That brought up the idea of using hashtags more often. So for example this blog would be #CapeCodFolks
In the Ancestry Searsv5 tree that I have been building (https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/75385093/family) I have recorded over 22,000 of the descendants of Richard Sears so this should give me quite a wealth of information to choose from in the #52ancestors challenge. I have used a plug-in called Family Book Creator which extracts the information from the database in "Register" format. This format is probably familiar to everyone here but one of the problems is that each time you extract the data, people receive a different number in the book. Individuals who are not carried forward to the next generation are not given any number. For many years I used Personal Ancestral File (PAF) as my genealogy database and I loved the Record Identification Number (RIN) that was assigned to each person as you added their data. This number stayed constant and I used the number to index photos and other information.
Now with FamilyTreeMaker there is a reference number and I can even add the RINs as a piece of data from my earlier PAF database. In Ancestry each individual is also assigned a unique number. You can see it in the URL- for example my Dad is https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/75385093/person/36319725598/ About the only other way to uniquely describe someone is to include full name with birth and death years.
I have 77,000 people in my Ancestry tree and they are linked to FamilyTreeMaker which is a great feature. Make a change in either location and it is reflected in the other place. I don't trust that the FamilyTreeMaker file on my computer will outlive me so having the data duplicated on Ancestry is some comfort. The same issue with my website http://www.SearsR.com It requires maintenance and will die when I am gone. I did mention that Sears Archives and I plan to copy that all to DVDs and take the scanned papers to Boston this summer- Lord Willing and The Creek Don't Rise. Paper and DVD currently seem to be the only way to really preserve information for the future.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Family history is better when it's shared! 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of prompts to help you share the discoveries you've made in your genealogy.
Just sign up on Amy's site and each Monday, you'll receive the prompt for that week, plus an email on the 1st of each month with a look ahead.
Use the hashtag #52ancestors if you share your work as well as get inspired by others in the project! That brought up the idea of using hashtags more often. So for example this blog would be #CapeCodFolks
In the Ancestry Searsv5 tree that I have been building (https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/75385093/family) I have recorded over 22,000 of the descendants of Richard Sears so this should give me quite a wealth of information to choose from in the #52ancestors challenge. I have used a plug-in called Family Book Creator which extracts the information from the database in "Register" format. This format is probably familiar to everyone here but one of the problems is that each time you extract the data, people receive a different number in the book. Individuals who are not carried forward to the next generation are not given any number. For many years I used Personal Ancestral File (PAF) as my genealogy database and I loved the Record Identification Number (RIN) that was assigned to each person as you added their data. This number stayed constant and I used the number to index photos and other information.
Now with FamilyTreeMaker there is a reference number and I can even add the RINs as a piece of data from my earlier PAF database. In Ancestry each individual is also assigned a unique number. You can see it in the URL- for example my Dad is https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/75385093/person/36319725598/ About the only other way to uniquely describe someone is to include full name with birth and death years.
I have 77,000 people in my Ancestry tree and they are linked to FamilyTreeMaker which is a great feature. Make a change in either location and it is reflected in the other place. I don't trust that the FamilyTreeMaker file on my computer will outlive me so having the data duplicated on Ancestry is some comfort. The same issue with my website http://www.SearsR.com It requires maintenance and will die when I am gone. I did mention that Sears Archives and I plan to copy that all to DVDs and take the scanned papers to Boston this summer- Lord Willing and The Creek Don't Rise. Paper and DVD currently seem to be the only way to really preserve information for the future.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Quivet Neck Cemetery
I have been writing about various genealogy projects that i am working on. One is Quivet Neck Cemetery, on South St in East Dennis. There are over 800 memorials in this cemetery including my grandmother, grandfather, his daughter, her husband and 100s of other members of the Sears family. This area was sometimes called Searsville due to the number of Sears famlies living on the neck.
Burt Derick listed all the tombstones in the cemetery in his 1993 Cemetery Inscriptions of Dennis, Massachusetts, Heritage Books but there are many additions since then. Since he walked the cemetery and listed the tombstones in order it is much easier to find them. Find-A-Grave has a great deal of information about the memorials but does not tell you exactly where individual stones are located. That site -( https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/91406/quivet-neck-cemetery )- has recently added a lat-long feature that would help pinpoint the locations. I may go there and right down 900 locations on my next visit. Might as well take pictures of every stone (I already have photos of the Sears stones) while i am there. Maybe a camera with GPS could pinpoint the location with each tombstone photo??
I am writing the names down on a piece of paper so when I am done it will look like the work I did on the ancient Sears Cemetery just south of this location. (http://www.searsr.com/searscem/searscemetery.htm)
I missed blogging yesterday what with going back to work after a long break and having some other family issues arise. Let's see how I do from here on? It looks like a quiet morning is the best time to get some words out on the blogosphere.
You can see in this photo the cemetery is on the south side of South St, divided into about four sections and Quivet Creek (the border between Dennis and Brewster) meanders its way across the south side of the cemetery. To the east of here is Crowes Pasture, a beautiful Dennis Conservation Land where my ancestors used to maintain salt works.
Burt Derick listed all the tombstones in the cemetery in his 1993 Cemetery Inscriptions of Dennis, Massachusetts, Heritage Books but there are many additions since then. Since he walked the cemetery and listed the tombstones in order it is much easier to find them. Find-A-Grave has a great deal of information about the memorials but does not tell you exactly where individual stones are located. That site -( https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/91406/quivet-neck-cemetery )- has recently added a lat-long feature that would help pinpoint the locations. I may go there and right down 900 locations on my next visit. Might as well take pictures of every stone (I already have photos of the Sears stones) while i am there. Maybe a camera with GPS could pinpoint the location with each tombstone photo??
I am writing the names down on a piece of paper so when I am done it will look like the work I did on the ancient Sears Cemetery just south of this location. (http://www.searsr.com/searscem/searscemetery.htm)
I missed blogging yesterday what with going back to work after a long break and having some other family issues arise. Let's see how I do from here on? It looks like a quiet morning is the best time to get some words out on the blogosphere.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Geography
One of the reasons I love genealogy is geography. Maps. I love maps. I have hundreds of them, mostly rolled up but every once in a while I unroll the bundle just to marvel at the work of thousands of cartographers. I used to subscribe to National Geographic and I have every insert map they printed over a period of many years. NatGeo probably has the best map makers in the world.
Back in April I did additional work on a list of places with the name Sears in them. You can make your own maps with map pins in google and so I saved those places
here. https://tinyurl.com/y82dynl3
I am sure there are more. Those were just some I discovered at the geographical map server online and other Sears places i have come across in history. I would like to augment that list of Sears cemeteries, villages, geological places with Sears in the name to include historic landmarks and houses that were owned by Searses.
I have a good list of "Sears" houses on Quivet Neck, East Dennis, Cape Cod from Mary Kuhrtz and I think I will mark those on the map next. Just knowing which houses your ancestors lived in adds so much to a genealogy work. I know the house where my grandfather was born. I know the house that my Dad built in East Dennis with Johnny Burt. I know of an ancient Benjamin Sears house in Brewster, NY, with friendly ghosts. The Community of the Holy Spirit invited me to stay there when I was passing through and gave me a wealth of genealogical information about Benjamin (1703-1796) (you can read more at http://searsr.com/member/news13.pdf).
In my FamilyTreeMaker database I have over 12,000 geographical locations. As part of genealogy do-over it would have been nice if every location was formatted properly, e.g. Benjamin Sears House, Southeast, Putnam, New York, USA or Ancient Sears Cemetery, West Brewster, Barnstable, Massachusetts, USA but that is one of my ongoing projects since there are probably a hundred ways to format and store those locations - adding the word county after Putnam or Barnstable, abbreviating NY, spelling out USA, leaving the county out altogether- spelling South East incorrectly - (there is also a Northeast, Dutchess, New York, USA) and of course the county boundaries changed over time.
One of the dilemmas I am trying to address is the changing political affiliations over time- for example Dennis, Massachusetts didn't exist until 1793 so you cannot be born in Dennis before that- you were born in the East Precinct of Yarmouth before 1793. Barnstable county didn't exist until 2 June 1685 when Plymouth Colony was divided into three counties to make governmental administration easier. So you can't be born in Barnstable county before 1685. USA didn't exist until 1776 so before that you were born in Plymouth Colony, England or Massachusetts Bay Colony, England. And Plymouth Colony was absorbed with the Bay Colony in 1691 to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay. So from 1691 to 1776 you were born in that Province?
Do you make these political distinctions in your genealogy geographical place names? I think it helps when we are dealing with colonial history to remember that our Cape Cod ancestors were English subjects from 1621-1776 - 155 years. They used the English pound, they had an English governor.
Well maybe you have a glimpse of my fascination with geography. Going back to school today I might even major in geography? There is a nifty application called Map My Family Tree. I used this program to "map" the locations of Sears folks through time. You can check some maps out at http://www.Searsr.com/mmft. Sometimes it helps to see the concentrations of family by county. Enjoy! and Happy New Year.
Back in April I did additional work on a list of places with the name Sears in them. You can make your own maps with map pins in google and so I saved those places
here. https://tinyurl.com/y82dynl3
I am sure there are more. Those were just some I discovered at the geographical map server online and other Sears places i have come across in history. I would like to augment that list of Sears cemeteries, villages, geological places with Sears in the name to include historic landmarks and houses that were owned by Searses.
I have a good list of "Sears" houses on Quivet Neck, East Dennis, Cape Cod from Mary Kuhrtz and I think I will mark those on the map next. Just knowing which houses your ancestors lived in adds so much to a genealogy work. I know the house where my grandfather was born. I know the house that my Dad built in East Dennis with Johnny Burt. I know of an ancient Benjamin Sears house in Brewster, NY, with friendly ghosts. The Community of the Holy Spirit invited me to stay there when I was passing through and gave me a wealth of genealogical information about Benjamin (1703-1796) (you can read more at http://searsr.com/member/news13.pdf).
In my FamilyTreeMaker database I have over 12,000 geographical locations. As part of genealogy do-over it would have been nice if every location was formatted properly, e.g. Benjamin Sears House, Southeast, Putnam, New York, USA or Ancient Sears Cemetery, West Brewster, Barnstable, Massachusetts, USA but that is one of my ongoing projects since there are probably a hundred ways to format and store those locations - adding the word county after Putnam or Barnstable, abbreviating NY, spelling out USA, leaving the county out altogether- spelling South East incorrectly - (there is also a Northeast, Dutchess, New York, USA) and of course the county boundaries changed over time.
One of the dilemmas I am trying to address is the changing political affiliations over time- for example Dennis, Massachusetts didn't exist until 1793 so you cannot be born in Dennis before that- you were born in the East Precinct of Yarmouth before 1793. Barnstable county didn't exist until 2 June 1685 when Plymouth Colony was divided into three counties to make governmental administration easier. So you can't be born in Barnstable county before 1685. USA didn't exist until 1776 so before that you were born in Plymouth Colony, England or Massachusetts Bay Colony, England. And Plymouth Colony was absorbed with the Bay Colony in 1691 to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay. So from 1691 to 1776 you were born in that Province?
Do you make these political distinctions in your genealogy geographical place names? I think it helps when we are dealing with colonial history to remember that our Cape Cod ancestors were English subjects from 1621-1776 - 155 years. They used the English pound, they had an English governor.
Well maybe you have a glimpse of my fascination with geography. Going back to school today I might even major in geography? There is a nifty application called Map My Family Tree. I used this program to "map" the locations of Sears folks through time. You can check some maps out at http://www.Searsr.com/mmft. Sometimes it helps to see the concentrations of family by county. Enjoy! and Happy New Year.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
1880 Census- Dennis, Massachusetts
My sister and i have a hypothesis that every person in the Town of Dennis, Cape Cod, in 1880 is related to everyone else in the town. While it has not been proven yet- we have done a lot of work that you can see at: http://www.SearsR.com/1880Dennis where we examine consanguinity, the cousin factor.
We started by making a tree in Ancestry.com which contains the actual list of 3,292 people living in Dennis at the time. Then we started looking for their ancestors. I wrote a computer program that searches for a common ancestor between each person and all the other folks in town. Of course many times there is only one or two degrees of separation as the people are siblings or children but there are more cousin relationships than you can shake a stick at.
So for example, my great-grandfather Elkanah Howes Sears is a cousin to 1,367 people (over 40% of those in town are his cousins!) The "most related" person at our current analyis is Mercy Baker - a baby when the census taker stopped by- daughter of Wilbur Cornelius Baker(1856-1898) and Mercy Ella Baker(1857-?) [yes her Dad was also a Baker] who is related to 2,355 townfolks - 71% - Has she got a few cousins or what?
My Aunt Marie Sabra Sears was also a Howes on both sides of her lineage. She told me it's a wonder that we are not all idiots. In any case this is a project that i plan to continue and if you want to take a look at the tree in Ancestry you can find it at-- https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/32966686/family
Let us know if we have made any ancestral errors or if you have additional information about one of the folks living there in 1880. The "tree" currently has 13,635 people.
Here is a detailed lists of who is related to whom- please let us know if you see errors- http://www.searsr.com/1880Dennis/RelatedSummary.htm
We started by making a tree in Ancestry.com which contains the actual list of 3,292 people living in Dennis at the time. Then we started looking for their ancestors. I wrote a computer program that searches for a common ancestor between each person and all the other folks in town. Of course many times there is only one or two degrees of separation as the people are siblings or children but there are more cousin relationships than you can shake a stick at.
So for example, my great-grandfather Elkanah Howes Sears is a cousin to 1,367 people (over 40% of those in town are his cousins!) The "most related" person at our current analyis is Mercy Baker - a baby when the census taker stopped by- daughter of Wilbur Cornelius Baker(1856-1898) and Mercy Ella Baker(1857-?) [yes her Dad was also a Baker] who is related to 2,355 townfolks - 71% - Has she got a few cousins or what?
My Aunt Marie Sabra Sears was also a Howes on both sides of her lineage. She told me it's a wonder that we are not all idiots. In any case this is a project that i plan to continue and if you want to take a look at the tree in Ancestry you can find it at-- https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/32966686/family
Let us know if we have made any ancestral errors or if you have additional information about one of the folks living there in 1880. The "tree" currently has 13,635 people.
Here is a detailed lists of who is related to whom- please let us know if you see errors- http://www.searsr.com/1880Dennis/RelatedSummary.htm
Saturday, December 30, 2017
The Sears Archives
I have a lot of different projects going on. In the late 1970s my grandmother, Harriet (Thurston) Sears gave me the 90-year-old family copy of the book titled, The Descendants of Richard Sares (Sears) of Yarmouth, Mass 1638-1888. Samuel Pearce May published this book in 1890 and through the magic of scanning- you can read the whole thing at https://archive.org/details/descendantsofric00mays - or even download it to your Kindle https://archive.org/download/descendantsofric00mays/descendantsofric00mays.mobi
That book was falling apart so i had it rebound in 1980 when we lived in Germany.
As you can imagine, since Richard Sears, the Pilgrim, settled in the East Precinct of Yarmouth, Cape Cod about 1639 the book is chock full of Cape Cod folks. When i started to understand the "Register format" and figure out how the book was laid out i realized my Grandfather, Leslie R. Sears, was not listed. He was not born until 1892. May did not stop with the publication of the first edition. He continued to collect more information about the family which he would write on note paper and insert into his personal copy of the book at the appropriate spot for later updates. As i continued to gather updates to May's book i corresponded with many descendants. Today that correspondence fills fourteen file boxes and i have scanned all the information into PDF documents and sorted them by contributor's last name in a computer folder I call the Sears Archives. Currently in these archives there are almost 1,000 folders containing 124,000 files comprising 189 gigabytes of data. And i still have more to include from old emails that i have received the past 15 years. That archive will be available at the Sears Chapel (Christ Church), Longwood Mass., sometime next summer when i haul all those boxes up there.
In my search for more of Richard's descendants i placed ads trying to contact descendants in Yankee Magazine, and Genealogical Helper. I started using the online genealogy databases like GEnie (GE Network that provided dial-up to our town) and to forums and message boards that you dialed into to exchange data. I haunted many libraries including the great LDS library here in Oklahoma City, visited the mother library at Salt Lake City and the wonderful genealogy repositories on Cape Cod like the Sturgis Library and Snow Library. Whenever i would visit a college to recruit engineers for my company i always found time to visit there library and look in the reference sections for Who's Who and search online catalogs for Sears authors like the WorldCat.
Along the way I corresponded with Corinne Weiss, a descendant who had come across Samuel P May's personal copy of his published book with all of those interleaved hand-written notes. She allowed me to photocopy everything at a local office store in Midland, Texas. Later when she died her husband knew of my interest in the book and gave it to me. At that point i scanned everything and made a CD with the images that i have provided to many researchers. I also tried to make notes in my family copy of the book to make it look like May's personal copy. Since i had all the information i could glean from the book and i was worried about its preservation, i donated the book to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, where both May and I are members! The NEHGS also has a typescript prepared by May which looks very much like the second edition of the book, although it was never published.
I entered all the data from this book into Personal Ancestral File (PAF) with the help of my uncle Bob Sanders. From that i was able to publish my own Sears Genealogical Catalogue in 1992. Just about 100 years after May's publication. Carmen Wendt recently pointed out to me that my book is also scanned and online at https://archive.org/stream/
A few years ago i transferred all the data to FamilyTreeMaker since i was using Ancestry.com extensively at that point. I recently "printed" out the descendants of Richard Sears and they now comprise almost 22,000 folks. Can you imagine 22,000 grand-kids?!
Well i better hit publish so i don't lose this memory.
That book was falling apart so i had it rebound in 1980 when we lived in Germany.
As you can imagine, since Richard Sears, the Pilgrim, settled in the East Precinct of Yarmouth, Cape Cod about 1639 the book is chock full of Cape Cod folks. When i started to understand the "Register format" and figure out how the book was laid out i realized my Grandfather, Leslie R. Sears, was not listed. He was not born until 1892. May did not stop with the publication of the first edition. He continued to collect more information about the family which he would write on note paper and insert into his personal copy of the book at the appropriate spot for later updates. As i continued to gather updates to May's book i corresponded with many descendants. Today that correspondence fills fourteen file boxes and i have scanned all the information into PDF documents and sorted them by contributor's last name in a computer folder I call the Sears Archives. Currently in these archives there are almost 1,000 folders containing 124,000 files comprising 189 gigabytes of data. And i still have more to include from old emails that i have received the past 15 years. That archive will be available at the Sears Chapel (Christ Church), Longwood Mass., sometime next summer when i haul all those boxes up there.
In my search for more of Richard's descendants i placed ads trying to contact descendants in Yankee Magazine, and Genealogical Helper. I started using the online genealogy databases like GEnie (GE Network that provided dial-up to our town) and to forums and message boards that you dialed into to exchange data. I haunted many libraries including the great LDS library here in Oklahoma City, visited the mother library at Salt Lake City and the wonderful genealogy repositories on Cape Cod like the Sturgis Library and Snow Library. Whenever i would visit a college to recruit engineers for my company i always found time to visit there library and look in the reference sections for Who's Who and search online catalogs for Sears authors like the WorldCat.
Along the way I corresponded with Corinne Weiss, a descendant who had come across Samuel P May's personal copy of his published book with all of those interleaved hand-written notes. She allowed me to photocopy everything at a local office store in Midland, Texas. Later when she died her husband knew of my interest in the book and gave it to me. At that point i scanned everything and made a CD with the images that i have provided to many researchers. I also tried to make notes in my family copy of the book to make it look like May's personal copy. Since i had all the information i could glean from the book and i was worried about its preservation, i donated the book to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, where both May and I are members! The NEHGS also has a typescript prepared by May which looks very much like the second edition of the book, although it was never published.
I entered all the data from this book into Personal Ancestral File (PAF) with the help of my uncle Bob Sanders. From that i was able to publish my own Sears Genealogical Catalogue in 1992. Just about 100 years after May's publication. Carmen Wendt recently pointed out to me that my book is also scanned and online at https://archive.org/stream/
A few years ago i transferred all the data to FamilyTreeMaker since i was using Ancestry.com extensively at that point. I recently "printed" out the descendants of Richard Sears and they now comprise almost 22,000 folks. Can you imagine 22,000 grand-kids?!
Well i better hit publish so i don't lose this memory.
Friday, December 29, 2017
Renew a genealogy spirit
One of those New Year things- i had completely forgotten about this blog with so many other activities going on but my sister suggested i join GeneaBloggersTribe.com I figured if i was going to join them i ought to have something new here to look at.
I have been thinking that personal genealogy web sites are not well suited for preserving history because they are dependent on just one person to maintain the site. Someone has to remove dead links, pay for the domain renewal (mine is http://www.SearsR.com) pay the hosting outfit (I have switched to GoDaddy as a little more economical) and add new content if you want return visitors.
So my sister and I have settle on Ancestry.com as a way to preserve our work. Yes it is a paid site but it seems like it has achieved critical mass and will be around for a while. Short of that, i still plan to print a book of the Descendants of Richard Sears of Yarmouth, Plymouth Colony circa 1639 since the book would contain much of the information on the site. My ancestry tree currently has 77,000 people in it because while you are looking for descendants of Richard Sears you find many other Sears families.
Well I think the trick to this blogging might be to just get something out there and then continue the thoughts as we go. We had a Merry Christmas. I hope you have a Happy New Year!
I have been thinking that personal genealogy web sites are not well suited for preserving history because they are dependent on just one person to maintain the site. Someone has to remove dead links, pay for the domain renewal (mine is http://www.SearsR.com) pay the hosting outfit (I have switched to GoDaddy as a little more economical) and add new content if you want return visitors.
So my sister and I have settle on Ancestry.com as a way to preserve our work. Yes it is a paid site but it seems like it has achieved critical mass and will be around for a while. Short of that, i still plan to print a book of the Descendants of Richard Sears of Yarmouth, Plymouth Colony circa 1639 since the book would contain much of the information on the site. My ancestry tree currently has 77,000 people in it because while you are looking for descendants of Richard Sears you find many other Sears families.
Well I think the trick to this blogging might be to just get something out there and then continue the thoughts as we go. We had a Merry Christmas. I hope you have a Happy New Year!
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