Fuzzy Photo Forensics

Not to be outdone by our American horse-sitting mystery, RootsChatters are trying to figure out where the hotel in this photograph stood. After sixteen pages of posts, they have established with near certainty that it is in fact a photograph.

More Movies for Genealogists

Paul "CensusWhacker" Etherington has asked his RootsChat cohorts for additions to my list of Top Ten Movies for Genealogists. Moderator Boongie Pam's "Lost in Transcription," alcrighton's "Census Sensibility," and Paul's own "Look Back in Ancestry" are early favorites.

I would probably amend Pam's "Kill Bill" entry to read "Kill Bill, then Jot Down the Date and Place of His Death."

Censuswhacking and Other British Diversions

From the BBC News of June 13, 2005:

The kinship of strangers
By Rob Liddle
BBC News website

What do family historians do when the trails for their own kin go cold? They join forces to uncover the life history of a randomly chosen individual from the past.

Pursuing one's ancestry used to be a labour-intensive affair - all packed lunches, trips to dusty records offices and unseemly fights over tomes with other frazzled researchers.

[snip]

Now, with a wealth of genealogical information available online and an explosion in the number of people eager to research their roots, family history can be a completely different experience.

You can access birth, marriage and death indexes and census details instantaneously and quickly link up with people who have other useful resources at their disposal or specialist knowledge.

Random number

And with these developments a new breed of genealogist has emerged - ready to root at will and for whom the process of recreating people's lives and times is an end in itself.

Members of the 16,000-strong Rootschat forum now take part in a monthly challenge, in which an individual with whom none of them has any known connection is randomly selected from the 1881 census.

The job is to find out as much as possible about the mystery person within the next four weeks. It's pot luck - the person could have died a week later - but there's always something interesting to discover about them.

"I suppose it's almost like getting a bit of a hit," explains Sarah Mackay, who with partner Trystan Davies set up Rootschat, which attracts up to 140 new members every day.

"People doing their own family may get stuck for years, but it's very addictive and when you can't get any further yourself, you're still quite desperate for the same hit.

[snip]

Censuswhacking

There is a serious side to the project, and the hope is that the randomly chosen person will fit into another researcher's family tree - something which has actually happened on each occasion so far.

Researcher Paul Etherington, who initiated the challenges, sees the site as a "truly altruistic experience".

[snip]

Paul also came up with the idea of censuswhacking - searching for a first name, surname or occupation that appears only once in a given census (as transcribed) - which has proved a big hit on the site.

Where else would the lives of Ginnie Pig, Spud Murphey and Alfred Goold - 1901 occupation "living on condensed milk" - be recorded for posterity?

[Read the whole story]

The thread from Rootschat may be viewed here.

UK Genealogists Close the Case

From BBC News of June 10, 2005:

Genealogists help police inquiry

Police have turned to amateur internet genealogists for help with an inquiry into a girl's death 50 years ago.

A West Mercia detective constable was trying to find out what had happened to the four-year-old in Bromsgrove.

But with the coroner unable to find any details for the name given, the officer asked Rootschat forum members for help.

They scoured the records and eventually found the relevant death certificate. Police said that thanks to their input, the investigation was now closed.

Close matches

Bromsgrove police were attempting to establish whether the girl was killed in an old woodyard in the town some time in the 1950s.

They had an idea of the girl's first name and a surname was suggested, but they did not match any of the existing records.

The officer posted an online query, saying he would welcome any contributions Rootschat members could offer and admitting he had no expertise in historical research.

They got to work, suggesting lines of inquiry and searching for documents online with matches or close matches with the name and submitted information.

Within three days, they had uncovered details for the likeliest candidate, a girl with a similar name to that suggested, who was run over by a lorry in Bromsgrove in 1956.

Police said that this was the record they wanted, and thanked forum members for their "invaluable" help.

Co-founder of the 16,000-strong Rootschat forum Sarah Mackay said: "We are very proud of being able to help the police in this matter.

"It's amazing that people from all over the world can contribute to what is a local police inquiry."

RootsChat.com is a message board for UK and Irish researchers. You can read the constable's initial posting and the responses he received here.