[The reason your opening graphic does not work is because you have it entered as
<CENTER><DT><IMG SRC="https://members.tripod.com/~N_C_Keegan/BRIDGE2.JPG" HEIGHT=230 WIDTH=340><BR CLEAR=BOTH> </DT></CENTER>
and the name of the image you want to show is in fact "Bridge2.jpg" -- although HTML is itself not case sensitive, file names are. As I said to you on the phone and in writing too, the first thing to do is to impose a little consistency on yourself -- like deciding on one way of naming all of them. Easiest would be to have only all caps or only all small letters for all files, including images. All caps is considered "SHOUTING" in cyberspace, so I prefer all small letters and the "html" ending, but you can do whatever you like. Then what you need to do is to go through your paper and make sure every single internal link conforms to whatever consistent pattern you choose. The computers can do a great deal, but they are very unforgiving about incorrectly entered data ... "pretty close" does not count. It's either right or wrong. Some things in life are like that, like pregnancy for example ... either one is pregnant, or one is not pregnant. There's no such thing as "a little pregnant" or "somewhat pregnant." Also, in order to add new line breaks (without losing them), and "Nonbreaking spaces," just click "Insert" from Netscape Gold's editor, or use the keyboard. It's Shift+Spacebar for the spaces, and Shift+Enter for line breaks.]
Introduction
This internet history project will initiate a genealogy quest. The subject is a new one to me, and the search techniques will certainly be new. In both cases, the learning experiences should be invaluable.
Questions
1. How do I "dig" for these roots? What is a good metaphor?
Links
Seamus Heaney used a pen for Digging
[The reason this link does not work is because you cite it as "authors4.html"
-- some things to do ... check that the file is at your site, that it is
properly spelled, and use the complete URL address for links and images,
even if they are in fact local. What is happening to me is that it is searching
my D drive for the file, hence I am getting an error message because I
have no "authors4.html on my D drivee. The complete address in your
case would be "https://members.tripod.com/~N_C_Keegan/authors4.html."
If I try that as a link
here, you can see that it does indeed work.]
to memorably link himself with the earth in his family's Irish past.
My tool for digging will be the internet. I will "surf the internet"
to connect with a heritage close to, and at times surrounded by, water.
If we go back far enough, our pasts can always be traced to places across
an ocean. My first known origin lies in the well known Massachusetts Bay
Company. William Sprague and his brothers, Ralph and Richard, of a County
Dorset family, probably from Holland in the time of Queen Elizabeth, paid
their own passages on one of the company ships. It may have been the "Abigail"
in 1628 or the "Lyons Whelp" in 1629, both bound for Salem, Massachusetts.(1)
[Footnote #1 in fact takes the reader to footnote #3. It's the correct
information, but the wrong number. You will just cause yourself unnecessary
confusion by linking numbers to text (in this case the number (1) to "#Sprague
genealogy") instead of a number at the end of the paper. You are just
inviting problems because it is certainly easier to remember that note
(1) goes to the 1. at the end of the paper than it is to remember that
it has something to do with "#Sprague genealogy." I find that
doing things "backwards" works best for me. After I write a draft,
I know how many footnotes I am going to have, so I create a page at the
end of the document and just write the numbers 1. 2. 3. on line after line
-- the number, a period, and a space after the period, then I set the "target"
right before the number. Then when it is time to make the note, the internal
links are all available to you already, as #1 #2 and #3, so I insert the
note in the text, link it to the target, and finally add what I want to
appear in the note itself, whether it is a book or Net citation, or just
an informational footnote. Once again, in my view it is best to be consistent,
and in this case even traditional. A person reading a book sees a footnote
in the text and its a number referring the reader to a number at the bottom
of the page -- endnotes are all but useless -- so the reader looks down
at the bottom of the page for the corresponding number, not for some sort
of text. The web and HTML let us do the same thing, but more easily, with
electronic text.]
If we look at the charter
for the company, it does not tell all the reasons for the emigration. Why
did my Sprague ancestors come? The Stuart monarchy of James I and Charles
I had problems with money, foreign policy and religion. Robin Winks, et
al, suggest that the individual personalities of these two contributed
to the unrest.(2) An internet
account provides an insight into conditions
[This link is inoperative because you have linked it to
"file:///C|/WORLDNET/CNDITENG.HTM"
which means a file called CNDITENG.HTM" which resides on your C drive
in a subdirectory called \/WORLDNET. It may work for you at home, but it
will not work for readers who do not have that file, in precisely the same
directory, on their own terminals. The link should in fact be something
like
"https://members.tripod.com/~N_C_Keegan/CNDITENG.HTM"
but that won't work either because you do not have that file at your site. Here's a list of what is present at your site. What's there, what it's named, is not for others to guess.]
and the emigrants themselves.
Governor Endicott commissioned the Spragues and three or four others
to explore an area which soon became the new town of Charlestown, Massachusetts.
William later moved to Hingham to play a part in the early history of that
town. Over time his descendents travelled to Block Island, Rhode Island,
to Islesboro, Maine, to Union, Maine, and finally, to Swan's Island, Maine
in 1820 in the person of James T. Sprague.(3)
[The reason that footnote (3) does not work is because you have attempted
to link it to a target called "HS200-2.HTM#Sprague genealogy"
which of course does not exist. What you've done is to try to link a text
footnote to a file called "HS200-2.HTM" which may or may not
exist at your site, but it is all mixed up with the target you chose for
footnote (1) above, the one called "#Sprague genealogy". I repeat
... a person reading a book sees a footnote in the text and its a number
referring the reader to a number at the bottom of the page -- endnotes
are all but useless -- so the reader looks down at the bottom of the page
for the corresponding number, not for some sort of text. These are conventions
that have developed over many years, more than you could imagine. We have
these new electronic toys, but the methodology is medieval, when scholars
wrote what were (and are) called "glosses" -- themselves comments
and links to other sources. These consisted of marginal notations in medieval
manuscripts, and as the years went by other scholars did further "glosses"
on the ones that were already there, generation after generation. A medieval
saying said that "Even a dwarf can see far when he sits on the shoulders
of giants." The famous Irish poem about Pangur the White Cat is just
that, a wholly unrelated "gloss" in the margin of a manuscript
dating to the tenth century. The monk was supposed to be commenting on
the scriptures (I think it was Mark or Matthew) when he wrote that poem
about his cat ... just marginalia, but the name lives on, and is the oldest
known cat name that we know. We've no idea of the name of the monk, but
we do know the name of his pet. There are those who might see a sort of
strange contradiction in the notion of a medievalist keen on the latest
sort of modern technology (gadgetry? wizardry?), i.e., computers and telecommunications.
But I see none. Medieval people were themselves great tinkerers - addicted
by their own limitless curiosity. There is, in my view, a certain hubris
in thinking that we can do all things better than those who came before
us, which is why I think we should follow the roads so often travelled.
They had ink and sheepskins. We have electronic terminals and HTML. We
have it easier. They did it better. Just some food for thought.]
In 1898, H.W. Small, M.D., a marvelous amateur historian, published A History of Swan's Island, Maine. The well researched book tells us much about the remote history, the industry, and the intermingling of families on this 5800 acre island, four miles off the coast. My mother's birth here in 1915 allows me the fanciful comparison with waters in this paper.
Another leap of the imagination puts us in contact with a ship leaving Greenock, Scotland in June 1841. The "India" was bound for Australia, but many of the same conditions existed for my great-grandfather, James McHenan, who left this same port.
Here is the ship itself. 
[The preceding link is simply called "line4.gif" and it does
not work. Referring back to the list of files at your site, however, we
can learn that there is such a file, but it is not at your site. There
is another file, though, one called "HS200-2.HTM," whcih I assume
is some earlier version of your efforts. So I took a look at that page,
and gues what? I found a link in it. The link is
"http://www.gil.com.au/~bbiggar/line4.gif"
What this shows is that the complete and proper URL address is for your ship is nothing at your site at all, but is instead a place in Australia (the "au" in the address tells us that) so that if I make a link with the address
"http://www.gil.com.au/~bbiggar/line4.gif"
I will in fact get the image you intended.]
Rosilla Hooper had been only seven years old in Franklin, Maine when
her father died in Georgia of "congestive fever" during the Civil
War. There is no record of when James and Rosilla married, but their third
son, Ernest Gerald, was "one of the paving cutters who invaded the
Maine islands and coast"(4)
[The reason this note does not work is the same as earlier. This time
the link, or target, is HS200-2.HTM#Personal notes, EMC" which of
course is nonsense. I repeat ... a person reading a book sees a footnote
in the text and its a number referring the reader to a number at the bottom
of the page -- endnotes are all but useless -- so the reader looks down
at the bottom of the page for the corresponding number, not for some sort
of text. These are conventions that have developed over many years, more
than you could imagine. If it's necessary to say the same thing time after
time, I guess I should be grateful for "cut and paste." But the
problem with that is the matter of real life pasting, isnt't it? It's rather
like these spell checkers ... my now retired friend JoAnn sent me this
the other day: "... reading the last batch of term papers ever is
a salutary corrective to any lingering sadness I felt when I gave my last
lecture Monday night. I too have pondered over the new class of errors
created by the computer as I have watched all two meany rulers loose there
throwns."]
just after the turn of the century.
Quarrying became an important industry on the rockbound coast. My mother swam in a quarry pond when she was growing up. Grammy Rosa's brother, Benjamin Franklin Stinson Hooper, was killed in a quarry accident. A quarry in Stonington, Maine where the McHenan name flourishes to this day, supplied the stone for John F. Kennedy's memorial.
The internet supplies us with a fair description of what working in a quarry was like. The same account, gleaned from a WPA document,
[The WPA document link is inoperative. To make it operative, use the complete URL address, as in "https://members.tripod.com/~N_C_Keegan/IMIGRHST.HTM" which in fact is a document at your site. Making a link with the complete and correct address will provide readers with the document you intend them to read.]
gives an insight into other ways of earning a livelihood, as well as a measure of the diverse ethnic groups arriving on these shores. What H.D. Little, M.D., preserved of the history of Swan's Island, the government-created Works Program achieved during the depression years. A variety of these oral interviews and documents are intact on the internet, revealing ways of life that might have been lost forever.
One interview from 1938 helps fill a void from another part of my family. An Old Town, Maine resident
[Once again an inoperative link because the address is wrong. This time you have entered "file:///A|/WPAOLDTO.HTMl" when in fact you should have entered "https://members.tripod.com/~N_C_Keegan/wpaoldto.htm." This time the document is in small letters. As noted, making a link with the complete and correct address will provide readers with the document you intend them to read.]
with French Canadian roots, tells of the ease of entry at the border. My father was born in Dalhousie, Nova Scotia in 1911. His parents brought him at the age of six to his maternal grandfather's home in Bethel, Maine. The known Jodrey family connection began in Maitland Forks, Nova Scotia. Less is known concerning the Cunningham origin in Canada..
Border crossing apparently required little documentation, and naturalization was not a priority. The internet provides directions for obtaining records, but I was unable to get archives online to research my father's naturalization in 1942. Even a phone call to the New England Archives in Massachusetts did not provide more. The required information on an application did not include date of entry or family history--merely marital status and number of children.
The United States allowed its immigrants opportunities and freedoms not found everywhere, but it did not guarantee a life of ease. My grandfather McHenan moved into shipyard work and construction projects, supervising a group when he worked on the Waldo-Hancock Bridge in the early 1930's. The bridge crosses the Penobscot River from Prospect to Verona Island.
When the Cunningham family, which now included my Aunt Dorothy, moved from Bethel, my grandfather worked for a farmer. Later, Henry rented a place on Verona Island and farmed for himself and the family as well as for others. It was a hard life, but not unusual for that time. A team of horses to get out wood, cows to supply milk, hens to provide eggs: this was the country life of those times. In this case, it was subsistence living.
About the time they moved across the smaller bridge connecting Verona Island to Bucksport, my father's mother died of pneumonia. He left school after the seventh grade, and was essentially on his own. His experiences included time as a cook's helper in a lumber camp (the biscuits were tough enough to hurt if the cook got mad and threw one), and numerous trips as a shipping hand on a freighter. Again, we can tap the internet for accounts of similar activities and learn more about that life than he ever told.
My mother's mother died six days after giving birth to her second son in 1929. My mother was fourteen, and although the family had moved often, Swan's Island had been their home every summer. She wrote nostalgically about taking the train to Rockland, and getting on one of the steamers such as the "J.T.Morse" or the "North Haven" to go down home. Now she was shipped to Castine to live with her little known Grandmother McHenan and go to high school.
As valedictorian (of six graduates) after four years, she qualified for work as "hired girl" for a woman taking boarders during the Depression. Work was so scarce that my father was sharing a WPA job with another man, doing road repair. The two needed lodging, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Settling in Bucksport, they remained close to the maritime heritage that was so much a vital part of the entire coast of Maine. Admiral Perry's ship, the Roosevelt, had been built on Verona Island, and the weekly newspaper, the Bucksport Free Press, always carried a logo of the ship's profile. The web page of the Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College shows the icebound ship during one its its trips before the record breaking North Pole trip.
Well before that in the War of 1812, a less successful episode with a ship left a hulk on the bottom of the Penobscot River. Fleeing the British in Castine, the Adams came to rest upriver in Hampden.(5) There is a current archeological research project associated with the Maine Maritime Academy at Castine to gather clues from this wreck.
I must gather more clues for my search. The Canadian side of the family needs exploration. The internet search results (when tabulated) will guide me. The actual name of the "congestive fever" that caused the death of my Civil War ancestor is not apparent, but the statistics of death by disease versus death from wounds are available. The state of Maine has Civil War regimental records on the web, and Virginia Tech and Louisiana State University have wonderful collections. Many of these have been uploaded in full, but in some cases, they are in the form of annotated book lists.
Never were the words of Robin Winks more applicable. In the introduction to his book of edited essays on research by historians, he notes: "Yet the routine must be pursued or the clue will be missed; the apparently false trail must be followed in order to be certain that it is false;..."(6)
The internet compounds the problem by its inherent disorganization. Speed of access is a decided benefit, but the lack of systematic storage and quality control are disadvantages. Consequently, "the adventurous search for clues.." and "the evaluation of evidence..."(7) are even more important now than they were to Robin Winks almost thirty years ago. A passionate genealogist may upload that nugget of social history that a scholarly institution has not yet done.
I have the framework for my quest. The internet river is wide, but I have the ability to navigate its waters. The words of Norman Maclean as he ends his novella, A River Runs Through It, appealed to a Scottish couple from whose web page I take this:
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but still I reach out to them....
...Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
Sunset over the water at the family house in Penobscot, Maine
[The reason your sunset does not work is because you entered the image link as
"SUNSET.JPG."
If you were to refer to the list of files at your own site, you would see
that it is in fact "Sunset.jpg." Hence the actual and complete
URL address is
"https://members.tripod.com/~N_C_Keegan/Sunset.jpg" If one uses the correct spelling and the complete address, one will indeed see a sunset.]
I am haunted by those long ago lives of my family. I do not have their words, but I can find equivalent ones. To paraphrase Seamus Heaney:
Between my finger and my thumb
The small mouse rests.
I will surf with it.
Conclusions
To restate the obvious, my family history project is in its early stages. There were too many options for servers, editors, graphics, and HTML guides. Investigation took much more time than I should have allowed. Similarly, my results comparing search engines are available--on copious scribbled pages without order.
Once the problem of my organization is overcome, there is the challenge of learning how to conquer the formless flow of the internet. The wealth of related book titles is a surprising asset. Would other search tools lead to these valuable sources?
The manipulation of all the materials is probably the most daunting task of all. Precision is a necessity. I have learned enough to move around, and to move information around, in a very basic way. My feeling of accomplishment goes far beyond that. In fact, besides learning how to spell genealogy correctly, I gained knowledge and experience that will be invaluable.
Footnotes
1. Personal genealogy search by second cousin, Avis Norwood
2. Robin Winks and others, A History of Civilization: Volume II: 1648 to the present (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1992), 424-425.
3.Personal genealogy search by second cousin, Avis Norwood
4.Personal notes, Elizabeth M.Cunningham
5. John R. Elting, Amateurs, To Arms!: A Military History of the War of 1812, Major Battles and Campaigns Series (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1991), 269-270.
6. Robin W. Winks, ed., The Historian As Detective: Essays on Evidence (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), xvii.
Bibliography
Email Distribution List
