| Date | Description |
| April 2004 | Added Benjamin! Also, various other updates. Removed all of the 'Unknown' given/surnames. They are now simply blank. |
| November 2003 | Added dates of death and burial for great great grandfather, George S. Bonfield, of Scranton, PA. |
| October 2003 | Added quite a lot of information about the White Star Steamship Germanic, on board which our Swales ancestors arrived in the USA, 22 May 1891. Included there are the pages from the Ship's manifest, showing the Swales and two cousins named Sanderson. The Zhao family tree now goes back to the very first Zhao, C.1000 B.C. |
| 9 July 2003 | Fixed bugs in the clickable tree generations when more than 31 generations are present. Added lots of generations of Jing's father's ancestors, from the "Jia Pu" I received from her cousin La La in Shanghai. Also several minor updates to Steve's ancestry. |
| 29 May 2003 | Added "Ancestral Nationality" to the pages. This is an accumulation of the earliest known nationalities of ancestors (or the person themselves, if the ancestor's nationality is not known). This is mainly for fun. Other minor updates. |
| 11 May 2003 | Several additions from the 1891 census. |
| 9 May 2003 | Lot's of cleanup. Moved What's New to this separate page. Lot's of little additions all over the place. Found George Bonfield and family in London in 1891, to my great surprise, since he (seemingly) was in the US in 1890. |
| 25 Jan 2003 | Site moved to at home server. |
| 9 Dec 2002 | Temporarily removed the forms for submitting changes to save space on the website. Added many images and data from the 1930 census, as well as other census images and data. Added census images for ancestor Andrew Matteson, 1820 census image for John Phillips, ancestors of Aunt Eleanor (Smith) West, and others. Continuing to clean up the West/Woolever data. |
| 19 Nov 2002 | Added a lot of census data from the 1930 NY census (the index just became available). Also added pictures from Diane Marshall of graves at Pekin Cemetery in Orwell and Lee Valley Cemetery in Lee. Also added 1855 census images for Ira and Lcy West, parents of Benjamin West, and Benjamin's brother Ira West Jr. Also updated a lot of the West and Woolever data based on data sheets from the Orwell historian. Had to reduce the resolution of the online images slightly to fit everything onto the limited space at the website. |
| 24 Oct 2002 | Added entries for a bunch of Simpson relatives on the Swales side in England provided by Jacqueline (Simpson) Barnaby. Also, 1901 census images for Eliza (Collins) Bonfield, and Alice (Swales) Simpson. |
| 23 Oct 2002 | Census entry for Granby 1865 shows Great Grandfathers William W. West (2) and George E. Dopp (10), Great Great Gradnparents, Charles West (25), Frances (Dopp) West (22), George Dopp (45) and Elizabeth (Phillips) Dopp (40) all in the same Household. Charles would have just returned from the Civil War, or perhaps even just been home on leave, depending on when in 1865 the census was taken. Diane Marshall located the entries. Also, updates on the Swanage Bonfields, including death certificates for John (Moriston) Bonfield and Jane (Saunders) Bonfield from the database of Bob Twyford. |
| 15 Oct 2002 | Information about the likely husband of Alice Bonfield, Scranton, PA. |
| 14 Oct 2002 | New information about another Sickler connection, on the Swales side. |
| 12 Oct 2002 | New census data for Bonfields in Scranton for 1930, which revealed that Esther & Georgina's sister Eliza came to the US and married Bryce H. Sickler. In 1920 and 1930, they lived next door to Georgina in Scranton. Also, modified place list to include pictures and flags. Added maps of Prospect Hill Cemetery in Peckville, PA and St. Peter's Churchyard in Brotton, Yorkshire and others. |
| 9 Oct 2002 | Added some data for John F. Phillips, son of Henry Champion Phillips. |
| 3 Oct 2002 | Added references for all the census-based entries, and generally cleaned up. Also, continued to improve the GEDCOM output, and updated the rootsweb database. |
| 30 Sep 2002 | Moved Samuel and Hannah Stearns to the main tree as parents of George W. Stearns. With the addition of the 1855 census, showing George Stearns with them in LeRay, we have enough evidence to be pretty certain they are his parents. Also added details from Diane Marshall about the marriage in 1830 of Samuel and Hannah (Cummings) Stearns. Added references for most of the census entries. Also improved the GEDCOM write capability and exported a version of the database to rootsweb in GEDCOM format. This version excludes all details (including first names) of living persons, and does not include any pictures, links, Chinese names or notes at this time. |
| 21 Sep 2002 | Restored Ira and Lucy (Curtis) West to the main tree as (most likely) parents of Benjamin West. Still trying to get absolute confirmation, but I think there is enough evidence to convince me that this is right. Also restored and added to data for Ira's other children, and also for the Benjamin West who married Sarah Albina Whitney, who I believe is not related to our family, but was listed as the son of Ira & Lucy for the Orwell historian. He can be found in the tree of possible relatives linked below. |
| 18 Sep 2002 | Changed the website so trees of dependents are only generated back 7 generations rather than for every "leaf" ancestors. This is mainly to save space, since the many image maps being generated consume a lot of disk space. It also saves time when generating the website. |
| 14 Sep 2002 | Filled in a bunch of information about cousins from old clippings, census records and information from the Prospect Hill Cemetery in Peckville. |
| 6 Sep 2002 | Added more census images from 1901 British census for Wards/Swales. Determined that William and Mary Ann (Swales) Ward's daughter Priscilla married a Job Allison in 1889, and they lived in Wilton, north of Guisborough. A number of William's sons became drapers (cloth workers/dealers). Thomas Swales sister Catherine may have married a man named James Cook, and lived just a few doors down from the Bonfields at the time of the 1881 census. She might just be the link between the Swales and Bonfields, prior to them both coming the the USA. Also located Alice (Swales) Simpson, who was Thomas' aunt, living in Durham in 1881. Added images of Dopp/West graves from North Volney and Lewis cemeteries, taken and scanned in by Tom & Diane Marshall. |
| 2 Sep 2002 | Added census images from 1901 British census for William Ward. Updated family of "the other" Thomas Swales, who settled in Nanticoke. See the Possible Relatives link below. Purged the website and re-built. |
| 19 Aug 2002 |
Updated entry for George W. Stearns to show birth in Jefferson County.
Added possible parents for him, Samuel and Hannah Stearns, to
datebase of possible relatives. Added a portrait of William A. and Gertrude Stearns. Added a map showing farm of J. Wright in Mexico in 1867. Added will of Thompson Phillips and 1930 census entries for Ed & Ida and Milo & Viva Bingham in Granby, George & Sarah Phillips in Granby and Alice (Swales) Hartman at 337 Keystone Ave in Peckville. |
| 15 Aug 2002 | Added pictures from Peckville visit, and updated entries for Swales extended family from Peckville area. Added census data for Grandpa Swales in Vestal in 1930, and Great Grandpa Swales in Peckville in 1930. Added pictures of William A. Stearns' popcorn wagon form the Georgetown (Madison County, NY) Museum. |
| 27 Jul 2002 | General cleanup and unifying of the HOME/HELP buttons. Added lists of people by generations to the clickable trees. Fixed bugs in the links to places. Some minor corrections to the data. |
| 19 Jul 2002 | Added ancestors and relatives of Elizabeth Phillips, found in the database of Betty Adams and Joyce Hansen. Only George W. Stearns remains a mystery from that generation on Steve's side. Added a way to organize references and add notes, pictures, etc. to the references and places. Also added a way to associate flags with places. The pages will now show the flag associated with each country and time mentioned in an event. I've tried to include the flags of each country as they appeared over the course of my family's history. France, Canada and Germany did not have official national flags, it seems, during much of the time that my ancestors were there, however. |
| 10 Jun 2002 | Added many ancestors of Harriet S Chapin, wife of Harvey Wright. Also, updated and added ancestry and decendancy of Viva Naracon, wife of Milo Bingham. And, added information about William A. Stearns and Gertrude Morrow Stearns of Georgetown, Madison County, and her ancestors. |
| 9 May 2002 | Added probable parents & grandparents for Jeanette Powell Swales. Also, began a major re-work of code to allow web pages to be localized in different languages. Nothing should be visible from this yet, except perhaps some formatting changes to allow localization. |
| 3 May 2002 | Added image of 1920 census showing Ernest & Jeanette Swales in Scranton, and spruced up Thomas & Sarah Swales entries. | 21 Apr 2002 | Lots of updates. Particularly, Woolever/Wohlebens and likely ancestors of Harvey Wright. Removed ancestors of Elizabeth Phillips who proved incorrect. |
| 27 Jan 2002 | Added places of residence and occupation notes for myself. Modified to support both traditional and simplified Chinese characters, and changed Zhao family name to traditional characters for Jing's parents and before. Lots of images from 1920 NY census; Robert Gothier, Howard West, Charles E. West, etc. Also, 1870 census images for Rosetta Stearns & Angeline Woolever in Orwell. Information from Civil War pension application of Charles E. West. Information about D. W. Howard and family. Information about Mathilda Gauthier/Gochee, John's sister, who went with her father Thomas to NH and married John P. Dickinson. Also more census data on Thomas' wife Mathilda Le Claire (Gauthier/Gochee). Information about DeEtte Buckingham (Brinklow Dopp), wife of Melvin Dopp. |
| 16 Dec 2001 | Updated Charles A. Woolever and military services for Charles E. West and others. |
| 16 Dec 2001 | Converted all URLs to relative links for location independence. Also added information about Mathilda Gauthier, sister of John and Theodore, who went to NH with their father Thomas, and married John P. Dickinson around 1870. |
| 21 Nov 2001 | Added probable ancestors for Elizabeth Phillips from Steuben, Oneida County, NY. Added relations of William Swales of Skelton. |
| 25 Oct 2001 | Added images of birth records for Daniel and Alice Swales, from the Skelton Parish records. |
| 18 Oct 2001 | Added first draft of a How To page. Also, new 1850 census data for Benjamin Woolever & family in Herkimer. |
| 15 Oct 2001 | Added 1855 NY State census data for Thomas Gouthier. Updated names of Gauthier-Larouche relatives, including christened name of John Gothier (Jean Baptiste [Gauthier-]Larouche). Added birthplace for Gauthier patriarch Mathurin Gauthier, and other data from the Gauthier database at Association Gauthier. |
| 12 Oct 2001 | Added information about the Zhao family name and images of the name and a Zhao family "chop" to this page. Also, fixed some problems with the "possible relatives" referenced below, and added new images from the 1860 and 1870 federal census for James Haresign, Thomas Gouthier, and John & Betsey Patchet. | 10 Sep 2001 | Added facility for listing references for each event. Not many references in the database yet. Added a 'detail' option for each image, and re-arranged many of the census images to show the whole census page, and offer the close-up as a 'detail'. Some cemetery pictures also arranged this way. Added coat of arms for Swales & description. Additional census records of John Dopp, George Dopp, Benjamin West and others. |
| 19 Aug 2001 | Updates for Daniel Swales (death certificate), Henry Gothier (found in 1880 census), Harvey Wright (added gravestone transcriptions). More ancestors of Frank Thompson. |
| 12 Aug 2001 | More new data on Benjamin West and second wife Eunice Mosier and their family. |
| 6 Aug 2001 | New data on Benjamin West and Thomas Gothier. Also, various updates from the 1840, 1850 & 1860 census of Oswego & Oneida counties, and more stuff including grave-site pictures from a field trip to NY and NH. |
| 23 Jul 2001 | 12 generations of ancestry of John Gothier and Maria Nichols added, thanks to Mabry Benson. Also, various updates from the 1850 & 1860 census of Oswego & Oneida counties, and some stuff from a field trip to NY and NH. More to come. |
| 14 Jun 2001 | Added a number of names found in the 1850 census of Oswego & Oneida counties. Parents of Jason Wright, John Gothier, and Mary Ann Thompson, as well as siblings and other relatives. No luck finding the parents of Charles E. West, so far. |
| 6 Jun 2001 | Fixed some problems with the click-able images. Changed the layout of the images within an individual record, to lay out horizontally. Added various scanned images of records. Other minor updates. |
| 24 May 2001 | Separated the entries for possible relatives here., currently with a tree for some Swales of the Brotton/Guisborough area. New data on Robert & Nellie Gothier from the 1900 & 1910 census. Some other updates and images of census and parish records. |
| 3 May 2001 | Added more scanned images of census and parish register records for Swales ancestors and relatives, as well as images and notes from the 1880 census of New York for West/Stearns, Dopp/Haresign and Wright/Gothier ancestors and relatives. |
| 23 Apr 2001 | Added scanned images of census and parish register records for Swales ancestors and relatives. Added a field to indicate type of marriage ceremony. William & Elizabeth Swales were married by Banns (see image). This is an old practice, still in use today in some locations, of requiring a public spoken intention of marriage for three consecutive Sundays (Holy Days) in the Church in the parish where the intended have residence. Although it seems to have originated with the Catholic Church, this was actually required by both civil and ecclesiastical law, and so is not necessarily indication of a particular religious affiliation. Some records of marriage in the old parish registers also list the dates the marriage was "published". |
| 22 Apr 2001 | Added lots of data from Kim Branagan's extensive database on the Duckett/Haw ancestors. |
| 18 Apr 2001 | Added images of Sarah Ann Ward's birth certificate, and updated the front page to make it clearer where the links listed above go. |
| 6 Apr 2001 | Added links at top of home page to go to Unicode/Non-Unicode version. Also added code to allow export of data in GEDCOM 5.5 format. This is not yet available from this website, however. |
| 2 Apr 2001 | Added some data for Swales ancestors buried at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Peckville, PA. |
| 26 Mar 2001 | Added links for locations. Each location is linked back to the master list here, and there are links from that list to each person, so it's easy to see who is associated with which locations. Also added forms to each person's page, for submitting corrections/additions. Updated information about the Swales and Wards from the 1851 and 1891 British census. Fixed some bugs introduced in the last round of changes. |
| 13 Mar 2001 | Added back the Unicode variant as an option for better Chinese support with Unicode capable browsers. Click here to try it out. |
| 12 Mar 2001 | Added a bunch of newly scanned images here. |
| 10 Mar 2001 | Converted web-pages to use images for Chinese characters, and Latin-1 text for European place names, so that ordinary browsers can all deal with them. |
| 27 Feb 2001 | Added click-able descendant tree to each 'leaf' of the family. A few additions/changes to the database. |
| 15 Feb 2001 | Added links from statistics to web pages with details. Also added a list of all people in the database, sorted alphabetically, which is hyper-linked from the surnames list. Follow the link above where it shows the number of surnames to the list of surnames, and from there to the list of all people, and from there to the details of any individual person. |
| 10/11 Feb 2001 | Added more Haresign data from LDS ancestral files. Also added another form of the clickable ancestor tree (one by generations and one by birth year). |
| 9 Feb 2001 | Converted database to Unicode encoding to support Chinese and German personal and place names. Began updating German place names. Also added ancestors to the Haresign and Haw lineage, and added links to the very nice Haresign/Nobbs Family website. |
| 5 Feb 2001 | New clickable image map of ancestors here. |
| 30 Jan 2001 | New look for pedigree charts, and some additions/corrections to the data. |
| 28 Jan 2001 | Added statistics for database to front page with total entries, unique surnames, and unique place names. Hopefully resolved the "double password" problem. New data for cousins (near & distant) on both sides. Added a link to a list of needed information. |
| 24 Jan 2001 | Adjusted format of pedigree charts. Corrected typos in some data and adjusted place names to use the same spelling, etc. There are currently 103 unique places mentioned in the database, 6 countries, 10 US states, 5 US counties are specifically mentioned. |
| 23 Jan 2001 | Added Pedigree charts. |
| 22 Jan 2001 | Installed the version with hidden data, also updated some personal data and added links to some more pictures. |
| 19 Jan 2001 | Modified web pages to hide data for living persons, and require a separate ID and password for accessing that hidden data. Contact me if you are unable to access the hidden data for your family to check it. The ID will be your family (maiden) name capitalized. |
| 18 Jan 2001 | Updates from Tucker/Wiediger family. Also corrected some Haresign entries, and changed all missing names (give or surname) to 'Unknown', to make it easy to extract a list of missing information. |
| 17 Jan 2001 | Everything! In particular, see the Dopp ancestors going back 11/12 generations, and my speculative research into the Swales and Bonfield ancestors (possible ancestors back 8 generations). |
