William S Dean's Blog – October 2009 Archive (2)

I was recently contacted by a distant cousin who had seen the family work I've done at ancestry.com. Now a LOT of my family has been dispersed through early parental deaths, loss of records, etc. etc. So many family members don't know much about the ancestral roots, old family stories and connections, and so forth. My distant cousin has really helped me "collect" a "narrative" by asking about specific family members long passed. Sometimes, you have so much "data" that it seems overwhelming to… Continue

In the most recent GenWise newsletter, Gena Philibert Ortega wrote a column about the challenges confronting researchers whose subjects were institutionalized in asylums. This is more common than many people think, particularly the further back in time one goes. My gr. gr. gr. great grandfather, John Winterbourne (1776-1843), for example, was institutionalized and died at the Lainston House Asylum, Sparsholt, Hampshire, England.



From 1825 until 1846, the large estate and grounds of… Continue