Saturday, November 30, 2019

Joseph Gardner

Joseph (WikiTree) was the youngest son. He was born in New England.

Joseph married Ann Downing who was the niece of John Winthrop. They did not have children.

Joseph was a lawyer as was his wife. Joseph was killed in the King Philip War. Ann married Simon Bradstreet. She drew up a pre-nup for him prior to their marriage.
  • King Philip, Joseph and Ann - John Goff looks at the time of the war. 
  • Aunts, uncles, cousins - we will take a special effort to remember this couple. 
  • Gardner's Beacon, Vol. II, No 1. - featured this couple and their house which was given to them by Ann's mother. They lived there for years. After Joseph died and Ann remarried, the house was known as the Bradstreet house. It was Ann's house. She left it to a nephew, son of her brother-in-law (Samuel, line of Dr. Frank). 
  • Houses, again - we have done several posts on houses. This one was motivated by a post in the Streets of Salem blog: First-period Fantasy. Many call this house the 'Bradstreet House.' Streets of Salem used 'Downing-Bradstreet' which is more correct. See image. 
  • Chronicles of old Salem - the book mentions Joseph ( 1675) being killed. We are using it to fill in our text scroll (see the portal to truth). 
---

Children (according to the NEHGS and the Great Migration Project - as represented by WikiTree): ThomasGeorgeRichardJohnSarahSamuelJosephMiriamSeeth.

Remarks: Modified: 04/02/2022

12/01/2019 -- Added the image of the house of Ann and Joseph. Plus more links. We'll be updating these posts of the kids through time.

01/07/2020 -- Streets of Salem, on the house. Our comment. While searching, today, for more information about Joseph and Ann, we ran into two cases that prompted a look at the need for a Gardner's Gate. More on that (Gardner's Gate). Also, we found an interesting paper on JSTOR on the Downing family by George Crutcher Downing (dated 1908).

04/02/2022 -- Two references to Joseph and Ann: The Downings, Lorenzo and Peggy.

John Gardner

John (WikiTree) was the third son; he was born in England or in New England. There was been some controversy on that.

These posts of the children will pull together recent research as well as provide links to former work.
  • John and the Merrimack survey - John was out as a young man with a crew that went to survey the Merrimack. No doubt, he was the muscle, however he would have learned a lot from the experience. 
  • Mary (Gardner) Coffin - John's daughter married Jethro Coffin. Some say that this helped solve a long problem between two groups on Nantucket, namely the first settlers and the late-comers. 
  • Sherborne - it was the brothers on Nantucket who kept the information about Sherborne as the place of origins alive. 
  • Stories and unwindings - the Gardners had a good reputation on Nantucket. They were noted to have been educated which did not come from Harvard. The best guess? Their parents, especially Margaret. 
Children (according to the NEHGS and the Great Migration Project - as represented by WikiTree): ThomasGeorgeRichardJohnSarahSamuelJosephMiriamSeeth.

List of descendants of John

Remarks: Modified: 10/31/2020 

12/09/2019 -- John and siblings was featured at our portal to truth (see Roll).

10/31/2020 -- Descendants of John. Friend of John: Giles Corey.

George Gardner

George (WikiTree) was the second son and was born in England.

 After he wrote his 1907 book on Thomas Gardner, Dr. Frank worked on the Gardner Memorial book (1933) which looked at the descendants of George Gardner.

These posts of the children will pull together recent research as well as provide links to former work.
  • Gardner-Wyman-Peabody - this mill was owned by a descendant of George. 
  • Gardner-Pingree - this house was owned by a descendant of George (and his brother, Samuel) and was lost by the family during the turmoils of the War of 1812 with its blockades that interrupted commercial naval activity. 
  • Ruth Gardner - George's daughter married John Hathorne. 

Children (according to the NEHGS and the Great Migration Project - as represented by WikiTree): ThomasGeorgeRichardJohnSarahSamuelJosephMiriamSeeth.

Remarks: Modified: 12/12/2020

12/09/2019 -- George and his siblings have been (are being) featured at our portal to truth.

12/13/2020 -- Added link to a list of descendants of George. 

Friday, November 29, 2019

Thomas Gardner

Thomas (WikiTree) was the eldest son, born in England. His parents (Thomas Gardner and Margaret Fryer) look to have been married in Sherborne, Dorset in 1617. There were baptism records in that area and time for Thomas, George, and Richard.

Thomas has several mentions in Salem records. Along with George, Samuel and Joseph (his brothers) he was "ordered to survey and measure from the meeting house to a meadow along the river Westerly from Salem." As well as being a cordwinder, Thomas kept a "merchandise store" with "10 pages of inventory" which was recorded at his death.

Thomas married 1) Hannah  in 1641 and 2) Elizabeth Horne in 1665. He had ten children.

Children (according to the NEHGS and the Great Migration Project - as represented by WikiTree): Thomas, GeorgeRichard, JohnSarahSamuel, JosephMiriamSeeth.

We are looking at the descendants of each child

Remarks: Modified: 12/13/2020

12/13/2020 -- Added link to the descendants of Thomas. 

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Richard Gardner

We have a page for some of the children and will have one per. Why? There is open research being done, and post are a good way to collect material and comments.

There was an earlier one in which Richard and John featured. That dealt with Nantucket issues. Some of Richard's descendants were mentioned, such as Folger (coffee company) and Macy (store with the red star). we got to looking at Richard while tracking down the ancestry of the namesake of Fort Worth, TX: William Jenkins Worth who was a pre-Civil-War officer in the U.S. Army. One of his forebears married a descendant of Richard; however, she had died, and a new wife was involved. Those close-calls are interesting.

As we were collecting Thomas descendants (Wikipedia page), Richard's (WikiTree) descendant line was touched upon more often than it was for others. For instance, look at the category of "Academic/science/arts" for an example of this.

Richard named one of his daughters Miriam. He had a sister, Miriam (Gardner) Hill, so we just added some information about the niece.

One open issue is where was Richard born? It might have been England, however some claim that he was born here, in New England. This is an example, like that of Margaret Fryer, of work to be done by the family rather than from researchers looking at the wider scope. There are more which we will itemize.

Children (according to the NEHGS and the Great Migration Project - as represented by WikiTree): ThomasGeorgeRichardJohnSarahSamuelJosephMiriamSeeth.

List of descendants of Richard

Remarks: Modified: 12/13/2020 

11/27/2019 -- The kids (each will have link): ThomasGeorgeRichardJohnSarahSamuelJosephMiriamSeeth.

12/13/2020 -- Added link to a list of descendants of Richard. 

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

The blog and the metrical

Remember when blogs were new? It was not that long ago. Nowadays, this means of information conveyance seems to be part of the structure of material on the internet. Start a new website, and a blog is included (albeit, optionally).

To us, our blog is like a huge, annotated outline of future material plus an evolving index. We are at a point where we'll look back on a regular basis as we have 10 years coming up from the first post (Welcome - 25 Sep 2010). As with many genealogy bloggers, for example Nutfield Genealogy (Heather Wilkinson Rojo' genealogy site), we have collected and provided some numbers over the years. Example: Summary, 2018. These were overview types. However, if you look deep, you will see that all of the ISP-level activity is logged to excruciating levels.

So, there will continue to be metrics shown and discussed. For starters, there is now a page related to things metrical. Why pages? They allow additional structure; one can get lost in the sea of posts; even keywords don't help that much.

Another aspect to look at is size of the post. As well as writing the post, we have been adding Remarks over the years. Some of the posts have increased in size. An example is the one that has collected material with respect to a shipwreck, The Gardiner that was, which is about 2,500 words which includes a lot of links. This is an area of open research.

BTW, we have a couple other blogs going and will report on those, too.

Remarks: Modified: 11/26/2019

11/26/2019 --

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Salem's start

Next year is the start of a whole lot of 400th commemorations; in 2020, we'll be looking at the Mayflower's arrival. Coming up will be other locations, such as Gloucester. There is a emphasis with a larger view: Massachusetts 400.

Recently, we see that the 1st occurrence of Salem Ancestry Week which is planned to be an annual affair has been announced (May 1-4, 2020). For details, see SalemAncestry.org. This is a collaborative effort by several groups including the City of Salem: Peabody Essex Museum, Essex National Heritage Commission, and American Ancestors and New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Theme: celebrate genealogy and ancestral connections to Salem, Massachusetts, during a weekend of lectures, tours, and research.

At a recent Board meeting of the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc., we talked about having a meeting in that area next year. Stay tuned for details on that event.

The Salem announcement mentioned two Nathaniels, Hathorne and Bowditch. We will add to that list. But, Sidney Perley is definitely worthy of recognition.

Remarks: Modified: 11/26/2019

11/26/2019 -- Added image from the Salem blog so as to enter it into our index by images (portal to truth).

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Inflow and then ebb

That was the pattern according to an article by The New England Historical Society: In 1640, More Puritans Left New England Than Arrived. We liked this article for several reasons. One is the format where they link to prior articles. We have been trying to do that, except a post can become full of links. Another is that the subject relates to the focus of TGS, Inc. in a general and personal sense. In terms of the latter, there is mention of George Downing. His sister married Joseph Gardner. The couple was childless and deserves attention. Too, Elihu Yale was a returnee as a child; his grandmother married Theophilus Eaton, brother of Nathaniel who is a forebear of Dr. Frank. We could pull more out of the article.

According to the NEHS, the inflow was due to the policies of Charles I. We know many came over as indicated by the size of the publications by the NEHGS on the Great Migration (note, NEHS is not NEGHS).

Then, there was the English Civil War and the ebb. Lots of questions could be asked and answered: What happened in the British North American colonies during the English Civil War? One thing that we can note is that for a period, there was a lot of intermarrying of families in New England as the influx of new people went to almost nil. When it did pick up later, the rate was much smaller.

The NEHS article provided a few numbers. One can say that 21,000 immigrants came to New England before 1640. The majority of these were after Winthrop's 1630 arrival. Between 1640 and 1650, the number of people in the area would have been between 13K and 17.6K. By 1650, the number was over 22.8K. Some of the increase came through large families; there is a case of one couple having 25 kids. As the NEHS article mentions, some of the 'baby boomers' lived to be quite old with a huge amount of kids themselves.

In regard to this in-breeding, the article ends by noting that the immigration between 1640 and 1845 was only 1% which a very slight inflow.

Remarks: Modified: 11/21/2019

11/21/2019 -- Need to add in some information about the southerners: Stephen Tempest, graduated Oxford.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Winter Island

Part of our work will be a deep review of things related to Salem. We have lots of examples of this type of work since 2010 and will go back to organize the material. However, it will be good to have some type of focus. Fortunately, Sidney Perley's work is there for us to use. He deserves a whole lot more credit than we have seen given to him during my own diggings into Salem. More on that later.

Earlier this year, we were trying to understand just where Gardner Brook was. It had a bridge over it that allowed people to go from Salem to the north fields. There were several paintings. Example: Gardner's Bridge. Dr. Frank's 1907 book showed this area. Turns out that we're talking the upper part of North River where it was more of a brook. And, the water way had several names over the years. Of course, Sidney had mapped this area.

Then, we saw where Sidney had mapped part of Salem Common along North River. Per usual, Sidney showed plots which he determined from his walk abouts plus his reading of records. This is being mentioned at that is the area where Roger Conant and crew spent their first winter: Massey's Cove. At the time, we took notice of one of the lots that had been in Gardner hands at one point. This area was bounded by North River and Collins Cove. Also it ends at Danvers River.

Across North River are the fields that will be of interest, too. In particular, Greenlawn Cemetery is where Dr. Frank's remains are interned.

Today, while reading on Samuel in order to get three more of the children covered at the portal to truth, there was a mention that in 1864, he was "granted permission to erect wharves at Winter Island" along with his brother, Thomas, and his nephew, Samuel son of his brother George. Interesting. Others being granted the right are: Gedney, Price, Hathorne, Higginson, Hirst, English and Pilgrim. We'll look at each of those. Hathorne and Higginson have been looked at due to family ties.

Where was that location? Ah, research required. This bit of land is off of Salem Neck. We found that Sidney had mapped this area, as well. There is a lot more to look at but here are some references to note.
In looking at this subject, we can see that Sidney published Thomas' descendant, no doubt in collaboration with Dr. Frank. See Old Planters Society, Remarks 11/20/2019.

Remarks: Modified: 11/26/2019

11/26/2019 -- Added image for index to be used at our portal to truth

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Dr. Frank, Veteran's Day

Earlier, we pointed in a post (FindAGrave record) to Dr. Frank's profile (Dr. Frank at WikiTree). Our post, and the profile, referred to Harmony Grove Cemetery as the location of the Gardner plot.
Mark Stevens photo
November 10, 2019

Mark Stevens of Salem, MA brought to our attention that the reference was wrong.

Today, we started to change all of the references that we have made to Greenlawn. Actually, we were there as well as at Harmony Grove. How we got this mixup is a long story; we actually took photos. These allow us a comparison of the current state with 2010.

So, we'll have a list of Gardners for these two cemeteries. At the same time, there are Gardners in all of the Salem cemeteries that we will study.
Google map zoom
from Liberty Street location

This snap from Google shows the location of the plot. It is visible from the Liberty and Appleton Streets in Salem, MA. This is the old "North Fields" area and ought to be quite interesting to study. Thomas owned some of the land; one family's view: Division of North Field - Salem.

This Gardner/Dennett plot had its first burial in 1880. The latest one was a few years ago.

Remarks: Modified: 09/20/2020

11/11/2019 -- With the Veterans Day theme, this list is of Profiles of which we can do more: Nathaniel BowditchRuth GardnerAdolphus Greely and George William Coffin, John Goff and Alfred L. Gardner. At our portal to truth, we are doing little snippets. Today, there is one for three of the kids: John, Sarah, and Joseph.

11/12/2019 -- One of Dr. Frank's grandsons is buried in the plot: Paul Warman.

09/20/2020 -- Added the Category. 

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Cultural heritage

The mission statement in our Corporate documents has this:
    (a) to establish and to maintain a persistent presence in order to honor the accomplishments of the Cape Ann party (1623/24)2 lead by Thomas Gardner; to promote, and to sponsor, scholarly research of a cultural, biographical, historical and genealogical nature, with an emphasis on, but not limited to, the origins and the lives of New England immigrants; to provide means for, and to foster, discussion, and dissemination of, information on those themes; to publish materials periodically and as necessary;
Notice that 'cultural' is first; also, this was written in 2014. That was due to being aware of trends that accelerated with the advent of the mobile devices around 2008. But, of late, we see even more discussion about the computer's impact on us.

In essence, people and computers go together. In the future, we won't have one without the other, despite all of the gloom that we see pertaining to robots taking over. In programming, there is a joke about whether a bug is really an error or whether it is a feature. If it is the former, it may be fixable. Trying to fix might introduce more errors. Finding a feature, though, might be the start of a learning something new.

AI, with its machine learning, is following that path. Right now, we're at a state where solutions, and discoveries, seem opaquely configured. Imponderable.

But, we see that knowing about people is going to help which implies that efforts like history and genealogy will have an impact. That is, more than mere presentation of tools for people to use when modeling the relationships of their ancestors.

Going to the basics, we can look at a couple of academic views: The Ethics of Cultural HeritageEditorial for Inaugural Issue of JOCCH. The first looks at definitions and some issues in a context that is becoming more visible. The latter is an example of an effort to study related matters. They got started one year before our onset.

Speaking of which. We were mainly filling in a hundred-year gap since the work of Dr. Frank. Too, the notion was to use technology. The tie-in to the 'American Dream' didn't take long to determine with the first action of looking at D.A.R. due to its visibility in the matter.

But, the theme of retelling history has really gone viral of late. There are lots of examples, some of which we have linked to from this blog.

Remarks: Modified: 11/07/2019

11/07/2019 --

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Genealogy and Bayes

Let's do a recap to set the basis for the post. We are addressing a case that concerns a descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins; he is buried in a small cemetery in Nebraska. Lyman Porter is his name. He is #37963 in the database offered at alden.org.1 He married Caroline Hopwood. His parents were Noah Porter #20029 and Nabby Cumins. Lyman has a brother, Reuben, with descendants in the Mayflower organization (MF). Lyman has a daughter, Anna, who has descendants in the MF.

As an aside, we are building a reference database for this work on WikiTree using the great-granddaughter of Lyman and Caroline (Gladys Helen (Gill Defibaugh) Long Murray). Gladys gave MF a little problem, too, as did her mother. Chloe and her daughter, Myra, both died young. Chloe's granddaughter (Gladys) was an infant when Myra died; she was raised by her father's (Arthur's) mother, Phylura, until Phylura died; then, Gladys was adopted by friends (Defibaughs - also neighbors) of Phylura; Gladys married twice. But, all of this is documented. It's Chloe generation where care needs to be taken (more below).

In the fall of 2015, we saw a line from Alden to Porter being mentioned in a letter to the editor of a heritage group publication. Someone had noted that they had joined the MF organization via Anna, daughter of Lyman and Caroline. Okay, we matched up Anna's sister, Chloe, and asked the applicant to put in the original query. You know, fill in the form, pay, and then wait. So, we were contacted and assigned a researcher. The interaction and work was all done via email and DropBox.2 There was a flurry of activity in early 2016 as we gathered documents. By summer of 2016, we were essentially done and had a slew (lots and lots) of stuff.

Well, things bogged down with respect to the MF interfacing. On the suggestion of the MF person, we did further work by doing a probate search. We found out some additional information, but that did not get us off the bottleneck.3 For us, though, it was a learning experience. Too, the Court records actually confirmed up some of the information. So, that is a positive (see below discussion). Some material shows that Chloe's family and that of her husband, Thomas, were quite prominent in the count and state of their residence when she married, had a baby, and died. How did Chloe get forgotten?

We are at 2019 which is three years later after the last bit of work. Things are just sitting in limbo. In 2016, we wrote the first article as this seemed to be a case of problems related to western expansion not being as appreciated as they might be. Some romanticized the whole notion. Others were such as to leave lasting lessons in endurance. In fact, at the time (2016), there were some talking as if history, and especially that of 400 years, was of no consequence. Too, though, my thought was that the MF ought to be looking for descendants of their ancestors rather than playing membership games (do you see me now? more below). The first article was published; a second one provided another look and was published; finally, we will get to the details with another article.4 The articles, to date, are: Flyover Country, Pseudo Wall (not brick at all), and, at least, one more that is in the works.

So, we have our recap with this brief review.

Now we can get to the gist of the issue. What is the hold up? Well, in retrospect, we probably ought to have worked through the Alden group (more below) since they do consider the whole family. But, let's look at some reasoning about this.

Chloe is the daughter in question. She is not documented with respect to birth. Neither was her younger brother, George. But, George died young and is recorded, at death, as the son of Lyman. Chloe died young, too, but as the mother of a young child. Chloe is not even recorded for marriage or death. We have a photo of Chloe's grave stone which names Thomas. We have Chloe and Thomas with the baby, Myra, in the 1870 Census (US). BTW, Chloe (name misspelled) is in the 1850 and 1860 Census (US) with her folks and siblings.

One question is: can we take those people in the Census (US) as related? May we look at the milieu? If we look at the Census (US) of this family, they were consistent in their reporting. Really, as we would expect a citizen to do to help the government. George was in one Census; he died; in the next one, he's not there. Chloe's younger sister, Emmira, was not in the first; she is born and documented as daughter of Lyman and Caroline; she's in the next Census (US) as we expect, birth order.

BTW, the State of Chloe's birth did not record these events until after she was born. Be that as it may, in the 1850 Census (US), when Chloe is an infant, there are some other people in the household. Some we know as her siblings by later census records. But, there was an older woman, Permelia, and five younger people. Who were these folks? Given what we know, they were Chloe's grandmother and Chloe's cousins. The husband of this family (Chloe's grandfather) is recorded as having died. Guess what? We are talking Caroline's siblings (and her mother) in her household with Lyman. One of the sibs was four years old. Permelia was 44; Caroline, herself, was 23.

20th and 21st century genealogists, at their little tubes, have no clue about the reality of these situations. However, one thing to note. The birth order was there. As in, filling in these things, there were ground rules, which the Census (US) taker would have known. That's a strength as it persists across several Census (US) occurrences.

We could itemize other strengths. That is things that confirm, albeit, not overwhelmingly. But, these can be thought of as additive. For instance, Lyman notes that Myra is his granddaughter. In fact, on both her marriage and her death records, Myra is referenced as the daughter of Chloe and Thomas. Court records indicate that Myra is the heir of Thomas. And, Court records indicate that Myra, after her father's death, was living with Lyman and Caroline in Nebraska. Then, there is a Census that names Myra in the household of Lyman and Caroline.

There are many little tidbits, of various types, that add to the notions about Chloe's family. So, let's transition, a little, before looking at those.

Rev. Bayes (his bio at St. Andrews - see footnote for a look at the use of Bayes and its importance to the modern world's complexity)5 has made a great impression on the modern age. Computing? The past decade plus, we have seen systems relying on his approach. In fact, lots of the problem now can be attributed to this being taken too far, however, Bayes will continue to be of importance. What the Rev. argued is that we can improve our view of a probability by considering related information. Take death.  An older person can be said to have a higher probability of dying than a younger one. That is, given a number of other conditions being left out (accident, disease, ...). However, at some point, some older persons actually start to have their probability of 'not dying' (in a particular year) go up. Hence, we have the very old.

Bayes' ideas were around for a long time. Why their attraction now versus before? Well, I was using his ideas five decades ago. But, it was hard to do this stuff by hand. Typical situation. The evolution of the computer got to where there were easier methods (algorithms improved). Too, the need came up; Bayes fit the need; the modern minds over fit the situation. Another story altogether.

In genealogy, this case is an example. We might say that we're looking at the probability of Chloe's membership in her family. Let's look at the positive side; then, we'll go to the other.

You know, certain minds would take an official document as 100%. Ah, we know of problems there. Transcription errors (even wrong recordings). Illegible mess that is not readable. There is a whole lot more. Essentially, we go from 100% to 99% or less. The thing is that the 'lead feet' syndrome of expecting complete certitude is not realistic (some relaxation might actually be productive).

Given that we do not know when Chloe was born via official views, we can use the accumulation of material to build up some 'belief' in her status. That is why I used positive influences, above. In the last go-around, when dealing with details, this will be more thorough. Actually, having Chloe's grave stone says a lot. it gives her name and middle initial. Also, it names her husband. And, it gives her age. She was 24 years old when she died and left her daughter.

Flyover country
Why might she have been forgotten? A step-mother came into the picture. Then, Thomas died, too. So, that is the story of Guardianship for Myra and the Probate process. This can all be told and taken from the view of Chloe being the daughter of Lyman and Caroline.

As fortune may have it, we were able to get the Probate records for this case. They paint a fairly good picture of the situation. However, we know that the brother of Thomas was named guardian of Chloe's daughter. We know that another brother of Thomas handled (was executor for) the estate in the Probate dealings. As I said, these guys were well known. The step-mother? She fled but got a settlement. Myra came out okay in the deal. She graduated from Monmouth College. She taught music. Ah, but, Myra married a railroad man. Know where this is going? Luckily, this Arthur's mother took Chloe's daughter in. But, Phylura was elderly.

Now, are there other ways that one could think of this case other than that old thing of checking boxes? You bet. Remember, we ranted at the MF people for not respecting the wishes of their elders who would have wanted to know their offspring. Too, I called it dissing. Three generations of women, scoffed at. However, we now know that the family organizations connected with MF have extended the work. Such as, the Alden group has data out to eight generations. And, we can feed them more information.

But, let's just pause a moment. We will put four alternate views here. And, look at them. What will we see, then?
  • Chloe was found in a cabbage patch? Oops. Did we write that? Or, she dropped from the sky? Why this? We're talking a pioneering family. They were not sitting on their fat behinds back on the east coast of Plymouth and surrounds. Chloe was her mother's oldest daughter. Caroline lived long enough to die in LA with her daughter at her side. That is, Chloe's sister. Lyman had died (his lonely grave in the countryside - broken stone). So, Caroline saw early Hollywood. We can tell stories about that. You know, Chloe named her daughter after her sister who is documented, by the way. That is, the sister that Caroline was living with in LA. 
  • Chloe was dropped off by another family? We know of these things. We can talk a case of a woman not knowing her ancestry as her father had dropped her off at a western household (she was an infant; her mother died) saying that he would return. Never did. We can dig deeper into the local history. Oh yes. The MF person says to me: "you're interested in the history (fuller picture); we want so show pedigree" (sure, would be my response, with antiquated thinking - we can write that since the NEHGS has weighed in to help MF. Recent paper where NEHGS did the heavy work of handling the circumstantial information. Oh yes. MF took it. Well, MF, there are other researchers than NEHGS around. Pro-bono, too.). 
  • Chloe was Caroline's sister? You see, Permelia was of child-bearing age. Her husband died in 1849. What was going on? Lots to look at there. But, it does not pertain to the MF stalemate. There were other siblings of Caroline. Perhaps, they were too much for her mother. 
  • Chloe had a father other than Lyman? Bite your tongue. Caroline was the backbone of this family way into the 20th century.   
You see how ridiculous all of this gets? They would have varying probabilities but would weigh on the negative side. Actually, they are too close to zero to consider. The accumulation of the positive material (there is a slew, as said) would push out a fair description of this family unit, of whom one is wrapped already in the MF arms - is that hug worth anything?

John and Priscilla are watching, we might say. How long before they can see the offspring from Chloe added to the 'official' MF roles as if that really meant anything?

Notes:

1. The group has presented its Caveats about use. Our own caveats: we are not genealogists, but John knows modern research methods including how to program and to solve mathematical/logical problems in a slew of technical domains. We started this work in 2009. This blog is meant as a record of work and findings. It is partially indexed at our portal to truth via images: https://TGSoc.org.
2. This summer, we helped a DAR applicant with her eApp. It was all done at the DAR website and the phone. The approach was fantastic. We finished the application in September and submitted it. By the end of October, it had been verified (there was a wait in the queue). A week later, the person was a member. That was the latest example. We have filled in, successfully, all sorts of applications for many friends for many of the organizations under the Hereditary Society Community. Frankly, we started doing applications to confirm our work (all pro-bono). Some genealogists who reviewed the applications noted how thorough these were.
3. We just had all of the material of this case reviewed by another person who saw no hole in the presentation. In fact, the term 'preponderance of evidence' necessary was used. Our next step is to document this with all of the material shown. The two articles mentioned in the text are overviews. The next will be highly detailed. Why? Gladys and her two prior forebears (Chloe and Myra).
4. These articles were published in The Gardner Annals and are in print form. See "Publications" for how to order.
5. There has been a lot written about Rev. Bayes and the use of his ideas. For a simple introduction, we can look at this example (Remarks 11/08/2019 - common sense and Bayes - flirting) or a better one from D. Joyce (of genealogical fame - his was a site that we visited often as we got into the work in 2009). For a more advanced look, Griffiths of Berkeley and Princeton offers a nice view chosen since it predates the latest trends: Bayesian models in Cognition. We'll get to the more recent (at some point, for now: Manifesto from 2014).

Remarks: Modified: 12/30/2023

11/07/2019 -- Gladys (see above) will be the focus of a major study. She has Alden through Porter. But, she has Brewster through Gill on her father's side. So, that's a merge under the western sky. ... Say "Genealogy and Bayes" quickly (or with the proper tongue) and hear genealogy and bias. This study can be used to weigh in on truth engineering as it pertains to the mischief out of 'silicone' valley.

11/07/2019 -- Added links to material, both introductory and more advanced, on Bayesian ways and means. Leaving aside, for now, the question of how all of this applies: Cultural heritage.

11/08/2019 -- Went looking for a good example and found several. This one stood out: Flirting -  An exercise in Bayesian statistics - at Medium. If you don't want to read the intro to Bayes' thoughts, go down about 1/2 of the page to the "flirting" part. It starts after this: "Every time you change your mind because of new evidence, you’re using Bayes’ Rule." I pulled out this piece (please read the whole post):
    So what does this have to do with flirting? You’ve probably guessed it by now. Flirting is a high-stakes, emotionally-charged manifestation of Bayes’ Rule. There are a couple of ways to think about this.

    First: you want to figure out if your love interest likes you back. You start out with a relatively uninformed prior, just a random guess as to whether or not they like you. Maybe you had a bad first impression, and you set your prior at P(they like me) = 25%. That’s way to uncertain for your taste to go declaring your love. You want more information first.

    So you hang out more, you go on dates, you see each other more often, and in each of those instances you’re collecting data. Maybe they hugged you tightly — the probability of that happening if there was a 25% chance they liked you is pretty low — maybe you underestimated yourself in the beginning and now you update your prior of 25% to a posterior of 27%. Maybe you touched them and they instinctively recoiled in disgust → update that prior and reduce it to maybe 5%. And on and on we go.
What we have is the need to update our priors so that we can have a better posterior. Tricky. Now, in reference to the theme of this post, how many have been dissed?

11/11/2019 -- Changed to using names to reduce the reference stacking.

08/07/2020 -- Cumberland Pass in the west has the same name as that in the east known as the Gap. However, they represent the movement across the country which established the country. So many stories. Too, they created instances like poor Chloe being dissed by Plymouth people squatted in eastern Massachusetts. It's a large country out here, folks. So, I have now seen oodles of families with the same problem from the tip (Canadian border) all the way to the lower part of Texas. Has anyone really awakened to this? Not that I can see, otherwise I would not have the need for this type of post (Genealogy and Bayes).

09/28/2020 -- We have started to look at Chloe, again and her "brick wall" using one generation's huge bucket of data. 

11/01/2021 -- John & Priscilla image disappeared from the MF site. So, now the MF people have a database of those in applications to 1900. And, guess who is there? Lyman and his daughter, Anna. These are the father and sister of Chloe. And, the applicants who were in their 90s? Deceased. 

12/30/2023 -- Changed photo of Alden house to source at Wikipedia.