The “Family Tree” tab (above) contains a database of all my genealogy research.  I thought it would be helpful to provide a navigational overview.

The Genealogy Menu is visible in the sidebar whenever you are in the “Family Tree” section.  It contains links to:

• Surnames includes a list of the top 30 surnames in the database, ordered by number of people, as well as links to all surnames alphabetically.
• What’s New includes recent additions and changes.
• Documents includes census images, military records, book excerpts, and more.
• Cemeteries shows where relatives are buried.  Drill down by location to see each cemetery and the people buried there.
• Headstones contains all the headstone photos I have, with links to cemetery and person pages.
• Places is a high-level overview of the locations where people lived, including the top 30 localities, ordered by number of places within that locality.  Click on the magnifying glass icon next to any location to see the people who lived there.
• Notes contains all my research notes.  Click on the link to see the complete family or person page to which the note refers.
• Dates and Anniversaries defaults to events that happened on today’s date in history.  You can search for any event on any day using the search fields at the top of the page.
• Statistics contains a summary of the database; see the number individuals, families, unique surnames, documents, sources, and more.
• Contact Us – click here to send me an email.

This post is #1 of an ongoing series about navigating and using the Tonia’s Roots website.  To see all posts in the series, click here.

This is a brief overview of what’s new on the website and in the database during the past week:

New Media:

Photograph of James Young Hemphill and Mary Elizabeth (McEntire) Hemphill.  I found this on “The North Carolina Hemphills” website (I recognize this as a scan from the book The Hemphills of North Carolina, which my mother owns).

Photograph of Major Ben Burgin’s Knife.  Found on the Burgin family website, Voices From the Past.

Photograph of Aunt Jo in the 60′s.  This is my great-aunt and looks like a faculty photograph.

Passenger List of the Johnson Galley.  Ludwig and Barbara Albright traveled to America on this ship.

Newspaper article regarding the fire in which the old Burgin homestead burned to the ground.

Source Records

1820 Census for Buncombe County, North Carolina.  The John M. Roberts household is enumerated, with likely household members including Salina Roberts, Snelson Roberts, and Rebecca Sammons.

Database Maintenance

I’ve been working on correcting faulty birth and death dates.  There were quite a few errors, such that the average lifespan in my database was in the negative 70′s.  I still have a few to fix, but the average lifespan is up to 47 years (positive), so I consider that to be much improved.

Added place coordinates for as many Georgia locations as possible.

In addition, I added about 40 TNG reports.  Most of these will be most useful from an administrative standpoint.

It’s been a very busy week. . .