Important Notes

NAVIGATION: This site provides the following navigational aids, with the names of the corresponding buttons in parentheses:
   (Home) The home page for the site
   (Surnames) A surname selection index
   (Charts) A list of charts
   (Master Index) An index to the site as a whole
   (Places) An index of all places, with connected persons

IMPORTANT NOTE ON PLACES: Place names are spelled out in full detail at their first occurrence on any person page. The first occurrence is also a link to an index of connected persons. Any subsequent entries for the same place on the same page are shortened. Because of this site's focus, for Vermont places the village or town name alone is the short form. For other places, abbreviations for appropriate larger geographical divisions are included. State, province, and British county abbreviations are not official postal usage, which I find excellent for mailing envelopes and ugly in prose.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON ICONS AND SYMBOLS: Explanations for these may be found on this page or by clicking the "Icons" button where available.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON LIVING PERSONS: Information on living persons is not entirely excluded, which is in no way an accident. Most fears about the dangers of posting genealogical information about living persons are unfounded. However, I limit what I post on people born after 1982 to names and family relationships, unless I have permission in advance.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON DATES: Some genealogists express "after" and "before" dates in a way that is not understood by the great majority of native speakers of English. Their assumed understanding is that a "before" date, for example, really means "before a specific event, explicit or not". The "before" date therefore refers, not to the date itself, but to this (hypothetical) event.

One result of this usage is that when a date is expressed as "before May, 1850" even without any further qualifier or mention of the other event, it can mean any date up to, and including, May 31, 1850. This is explained by saying that the hypothetical event to which it is supposedly compared could have occurred late in the day on May 31, and therefore something that happened at noon that day, let's say, would still be "before" it.

I find this to be unnecessarily confusing to the uninitiated, and illogical.

However, I have a dilemma. It is not enough for me to write clearly and think logically, because someone might still think that I am using the nonsensical convention, even though I am not. If by "before May, 1850" I intend the meaning "at any point up to and including midnight at the end of April 30, 1850", I may still be understood to mean "up to and including May 31".

I avoid the dilemma by avoiding the terms. When I mean "before," I say, "preceding." When I mean "after," I say, "following." I intend both "preceding" and "following" to be understood exclusively.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON TOOLS: My data is maintained using The Master Genealogist^TM from Wholly Genes, version 5.11. For editing HTML code, I use Microsoft WordPad. The site as a whole is generated by Second Site; see the footer on each page.

Content and all unattributed graphics by: Darrell A. Martin

This page was created by John Cardinal's Second Site v1.8.6.
Site updated on 26 April 2005