Getting Started

About the Administrator: Larry started researching his family history in early 1980 and quickly inherited what one of his great grandmothers had started decades earlier. Over the next twenty years he self-published a series of slowly growing-in-size books. Copies are in over one hundred libraries where the ancestors lived. In 1985, Larry, a software developer by profession, created a set of 'flat files' (i.e. just plain text) data files and wrote software to read those files to generate the books he self-published. In 2001, after the books had grown too large to publish, Larry learned how to build a website for the family history information. That got lightly updated a few times over the next twenty five years. The website was built using those old text files. The updates included things such as abandoning the old-style Person ID (combination of Family Line and Generation # and Birth Order) to an assigned sequential number. And, once the data became to be normalized in database tables, some things no longer made sense. Also, many versions of code were used to process the data that basically created a 'snapshot' of the data that became one HTML page per person (actually, the first version was one long scrollable HTML file per family group). Many ways were attempted over time to assist with research needs reporting. But the biggest gap was that there was no one good way of adding new people -- it was all manually done using a text editor on the 1980's flat files. Many software applications likely evolve like this one has for nearly half a century.
Now, in 2026, Larry, in collaboration with several AI websites (that shortened both the learning curve and the development curve), has totally rewritten the old 'legacy' files and website into this: a more modern looking website that has a database behind it. That database is designed to easily and quickly search and show the deceased family members (living family members merely appear with the word '(private)' to protect their identities) in a variety of ways. Several reports and files can be generated from the database information. Now Larry wants to go back to actually researching the family history to prepare it to turn over to some other to-be-determined family member who will continue the research.

Administrator's Genealogical Goals:

1. All genealogical information gathered since 1980 remains available to people born one and even two centuries from now
2. Thoroughly document, via sources, all ancestors born between 1700 and 1950 (basically, the ancestors of the seven generations before the administrator. As of early 2026 there are 94 ancestors to find, they are the family lines of: (father's side) Wilson, Meredith, Melvin, Halstead, Jameson, and, (mother's side) Mays, Spencer, Carey, Dowling, Compton, Ryan and Byrne. These are referred to in this system as "Big 8" family lines meaning they are the remaining family lines to find the first eight generations.
3. Find the immigrant for all of the family lines that lived in the U.S.A. As of early 2026 that means the family lines of: Carey, Carter, Coad, Compton, Cutler-3, Dowling, Goss, Halstead, Jameson, Mays, Melvin, Meredith, Riggs, Runnels, Spencer, Walker-1 and Wilson. These are referred to in this system as "Toughies" because they are tough to find the information to get to the immigrant ancestor per family line. The family lines that are in both the Toughies and the Big-8 are referred to as "Both".