Shankland One-Name Study

Database Development

2006-12-28T16:32:00.000Z

Oops . . . quite a while since I made my last post . . . Still, I haven't been idle, as there have been quite a few updates to the www.shankland.org.uk website and I've also been adding data to the Shankland database, notably from the Scottish Censuses.

And there have been a few new correspondents as well, to exchange emails with, which is always welcome.

However, shortly before Christmas I decided to lay off the database data updates for a while in favour of doing a bit of development on the underlying database itself. I wrote it about six or seven years ago, and it's showing its age a bit. There are one or two rather irritating bugs which I've been working around rather than fixing, and there are also quite a few things I'd like to add to make the job easier and quicker. So for a while I shall hold off on the data side and concentrate on the development side.

Website updates

2006-09-30T00:43:00.000+01:00

Over the last week or so I've finally managed to update the website with several new articles and the latest DNA results. One of my new articles is about Shankland characteristics, and as I expected I got a bit of feedback on this subject - including the makings of a new article about the Shankland entrepreneurial spirit which I must format and add to the site.

Getting a bit ambitious . . . I've just sent an email proposing my website for next year's Guild of One-Name Studies award . . . !

More data sources

2006-09-30T00:35:00.000+01:00

I finally completed entering the Scottish deaths last month, and then spent quite a few hours trying to analyse the mortality rates for Scotland and England/Wales (mainly Wales since there are very few entries for England). I was convinced that the mortality rate was significantly higher for Scotland, with many more children dying off and many more young women of childbearing age. Unfortunately, although I still get the general impression that this is so, the figures for England/Wales are too sparse to support the hypothesis. So I've reluctantly shelved this for the time being (after spending an amazing amount of time on it working on different ways of analysing the data).

Now I've been rather overtaken by the availability of other data sources to add to my database. Notable ones are the Australian War Archives that have recently come available (and which contain some very detailed information), and I've also recently acquired a collection of newspaper cuttings from the Ayrshire Advertiser of the 1830s. I shall work my way through them but it all takes time! Also, I haven't managed to update the website at all this month. Never mind, August is well known to be the news industry's silly season.

Recent correspondents

2006-08-06T23:32:00.000+01:00

I've been a bit busy over the last month! Still haven't completed entering the Scottish Death Indexes, but I took a bit of time out to go back over the email correspondence I've received recently to see whether I could resolve some of the queries that beat me at the time.

In one case I succeeded in extending a family line back from the enquirer's father and grandfather for a further two generations, using the American Census, and as a result identified the correspondent as another member of the Maryland/Delaware line and hence another relative of John N Shankland. I sent him an email (copying John), describing all my findings and the fact that as a result he had a line of descent going right back to the 17th century (which was quite a major development from what he'd started with, going back only to his grandfather.) What a pity that he didn't have the good manners to respond - although he did send a "dear cousin" note to John. Not a word to me!

In contrast, I have been in correspondence with another enquirer who turns out to be distantly related to my own Shankland line, who is charm itself and who writes to thank me for every thing I've been able to do. It's people like her who make this correspondence really worthwhile, as I feel I'm contributing something.

The Shankland DNA Project

2006-07-03T00:37:00.000+01:00

This has been a rather busy weekend in that the website articles about the Shankland DNA Project went up last week and then I sent out a note to all previous contacts saying "The web site has been redesigned, have a look at the new version". Predictably, a lot of my messages bounced as people have changed email addresses, but well over a hundred got through and I've had lots of very nice messages in response.

Two people stepped up to say they'd like to take part in the DNA Project (which offers free DNA tests to qualified testers), but after they'd submitted their known genealogy I had to reluctantly decline, since both of them turned out to be distant relatives of John N Shankland, who's running the DNA Project. He is descended from William Shankland, 16th-century immigrant to USA, who founded what we are calling the Maryland/Delaware family line. He already has two individuals from his line who have submitted DNA for analysis - so that anyone else from this line is unlikely to extend our knowledge.

Shankland / Shanklin Roll of Honour

2006-07-03T00:27:00.000+01:00

Still working through Scottish Statutory Record Indexes for deaths, but I took a little time out to add a new article to the website: The Shankland / Shanklin Roll of Honour, i.e. details of all those people named Shankland or Shanklin or Shanklyn who gave their lives in the two World Wars. Details are taken from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, and the American Battle Monuments Commission website. The latter is, I believe, incomplete, so I might find people emailing me to say I'd missed someone.

Death statistics

2006-06-18T23:34:00.000+01:00

Working through these Statutory Death records for Scotland, I'm struck by how many neonatal deaths (age less than 1) there were, and how many deaths of young people, especially young women. In the year I've just finished, 1876, there were 14 deaths of which only three were over 31 years old! No fewer than 8 were for young adults between the ages of 15 and 31.

I don't remember this kind of pattern in the death records for England and Wales (most were for Wales), although the age at death is given from 1866 onwards. I remember getting a vague impression that child mortality was much lower in Wales, but never did a formal comparison.

It would be interesting to collect the death statistics for the Scottish population and the Welsh/English population and see if there are in fact differences in mortality at different ages. And if there are, what caused them? Why should Wales be different from Scotland?

Data entry

2006-06-16T10:55:00.000+01:00

And now I'm taking advantage of a temporary lull to go back to the Scottish Statutory Records again. I've finished the marriages, they're all entered in the database, so now it's just the deaths to do - but there are over 100 years worth of these, since they start at 1855 like the births and marriages but go right up to 1955 (while the births and marriages go only up to 1905 and 1930 respectively).

I still have plenty to do on the website, and masses of other data to enter, but I feel that the Statutory Records are the basis of everything else so I really, really want to get these completed.

Updating website

2006-05-30T00:09:00.000+01:00

I've finally completed preparing the new material for the website - four articles altogether submitted by two people - and I'm ready to add the new web pages. I've got a couple of other additions of my own to make, too, and a few favours to ask from various researchers to write articles for me.

I thought it would be nice to have a "Roll of Honour", celebrating the names of all Shanklands who died in the two World Wars. In fact I could extend this - to more recent wars, and maybe modify it to include people who fought but survived (possibly a little difficult to get this information though).

I also updated the pages on the "old" website - which I intend to close down - so that they announce that the website has moved and then redirect to the new one. This is just in case there are some stale links anywhere (I found one recently in a mailing list). I shall leave the old website like this and eventually cancel the contract. But I've heard that very often websites are left "active" even after the contract has been terminated, so I didn't want to leave out-of-date material that I couldn't update any more.

Possible bug in ScotlandsPeople website?

2006-05-15T00:26:00.000+01:00

Working through the Scottish Statutory Registration Index entries on the ScotlandsPeople website, I wondered how many Shankland entries there were in the Old Parish Registers, i.e. in the Register for Births/Baptisms and the Register for Banns/Marriages. To my surprise, I got the following results:

Births/Baptisms 1553 - 1599: 0. Banns/Marriages 1553 - 1500: 0
Births/Baptisms 1600 - 1699: 7. Banns/Marriages 1600 - 1699: 7
Births/Baptisms 1700 - 1799: 154. Banns/Marriages 1700 - 1799: 154.
Births/Baptisms 1800 - 1854: 273. Banns/Marriages 1800 - 1854: 273.

I thought it extremely unlikely that the number of Births/Baptisms in each century exactly equalled the number of Banns/Marriages in that century, so I invested a couple of credits in finding out what the Births/Baptisms and Banns/Marriages for 1600-1699 gave me. Both should have given 7 matches; I got 7 births/baptisms but only 6 banns/marriages. So this means I can't rely on the number of matches it says I have (and on the basis of which I decide whether or not to spend my precious credits on them).

I sent ScotlandsPeople a note explaining this. I wonder what response I shall get.

Back to data entry . . .

2006-05-10T00:01:00.000+01:00

After the excitement of the initial website publication, and then the 1841 Census, it's back to checking through the Scottish B/M/D records and entering the data into the database. I've done all the births, and I'm currently working through all the marriages.

No URL masking any more!

2006-05-09T23:57:00.000+01:00

The "official" website address is www.shankland.org.uk but this was a forwarded URL and so the address bar always showed just this address whichever page the user had navigated to (i.e. the URL was masked).

With my ISP's help, I've just modified this so that www.shankland.org.uk is no longer forwarded but points to the genuine web space; this means no more URL masking, so the user can see the full URL of the page they're looking at. Much easier to bookmark and much easier to send links.

1841 England/Wales Census added to database

2006-05-03T01:02:00.000+01:00

Since Ancestry has made the 1841 Census for England and Wales available, I went through it to update the database. It didn't take long! there were 43 entries for the Wales Census, and although the England one listed 35 entries, no fewer than 14 of these had been wrongly transcribed and weren't in fact Shanklands or Shanklins at all - usually Frankland/Franklin or Strickland. (There were several Stricklands and I sent a note about them to the Strickland one-name group. We should probably be working together on Censuses!)

The remaining 64 entries for England and Wales have been added to the database. There were 12 entries I couldn't identify as referring to people I already had in the database - not altogether surprising I suppose as most of them would have been born before Central Registration started, but on the other hand I should have found C-R death entries for them.

Main domain redirected

2006-05-01T01:47:00.000+01:00

After getting initial comments from co-workers John and Simon, I've redirected the main domain name www.shankland.org.uk at my new website. The old one is now officially redundant.

I've got new material to post to the website already, thanks to both! It'll take me a day or so to get it ready.

Meanwhile I'm working my way through the newly available 1841 Census for England and Wales, although there are not many entries: 43 on the Wales Census, about 30 or so on the England one.

2006-04-27T17:14:00.000+01:00

The website is now online but I found a problem viewing it with Firefox - it didn't show the navigation pictures! It turned out to be a problem with the JavaScript that writes the heading out on each page - it works fine with IE, works fine with Firefox with data from the localhost, but didn't work with Firefox on data from the webserver. Fixed now.

I finally got round to completing the list of sources searched - this turned out to be rather extensive but it's worth including as a record of where my data comes from.

I'm including only those data sources where I've entered the results in the database. There are many others I've collected data from but the data hasn't got into the database yet. Maybe I should include these as the data is available? I'd rather concentrate on keeping the database up to date.

New blog

2006-04-26T22:59:00.000+01:00

Just got to the point where I can publish the redesigned Shankland website, and I decided it would be good to have a blog as well, in order to document what progress is being made. I spent some time today reading through the material on the new website and making a few cosmetic changes; the next thing will be to revisit it using some non-standard and downlevel browsers to see if they make a reasonable job of interpreting the style sheets or alternatively disregard the style sheets altogether and present an underprivileged but acceptable vanilla version.