Rick Dondo's Family Tree
What's New (past 30 days)
Date of Last GEDCOM Import: 28 May 2024 06:51:59
2024/05/28
This is the fifty-third full refresh of this site which uses a specialized website building application and it is based on data taken from your host's Ancestry tree on 2024/05/26 starting at 10:26 CDT.
As will be the case for the foreseeable future, that data was transformed considerably to ensure that more information pertaining to sources and citations is available to demonstrate why I believe what I have published.
Think I'm wrong? Bring your evidence and we will discuss your suggestions!
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*** My Main Tree:
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This update features the results of an effort that extended over weeks to upgrade the utility I use to transform the data I can retrieve from my tree on the Ancestry service for use on this website. That effort has resulted in much more detail being available here for the hundreds of thousands of citations I have gathered to support the conclusions you will see here.
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Further, this update reflects a level of attention to personal profiles over the past several months that was occasional, at best. This is largely due to the fact your host became engaged in a project with members of the Manitoba Genealogical Society's Cemetery Committee. This work is intended to develop a complete list of locations and contacts for cemeteries in Manitoba. Given the fact there are on the order of 1,470 such places in the province, we have much work ahead of us. Visitors here will benefit from the fact your host has already begun using the available processes to update the descriptions of cemeteries across the province.
In fact, there are updates that reflect activity related to two main areas of focus aside from the occasional change to simply reflect recent events affecting family members. Those are:
- specific research related to interest expressed by or identified to me by cousins or other family researchers with common interest
- new information contained in the 1931 Canada Census
*** Locations ***
This update reflects few of the effects of my continued efforts to normalize place names used in people's stories in order to leverage best the powerful feature of this website that relates to the map-based display of information about them.
As a reminder: this feature is the basis for the "Heat Map" option on many lists, a map that highlights the number of places mentioned in the stories of the people or places on a list. It also means it is possible on many displays to see pins placed where events took place and thus visualize how a person might have moved about during the course of their lives.
In the time since the last update, your host's focus has been to reduce the variety of spellings of some of the names of places in key Rural Municipalities in Manitoba. This is complicated by several factors, not the least of which are source usage of federal election ridings as a way to group locations in the province and the fact boundaries of many if not all of the RM's have changed over time, with some being absorbed and amalgamated. This process will take time to complete. For now, the results are beginning to be seen on the main "Places" page for Manitoba.
There is certainly work left to do.
As a bonus to all of us, this process of reviewing place names results in feedback resulting in changes to the profiles of the people whose lives or some portion of them are associated with the place(s) being reviewed. Thus, this update also includes some changes and additions to the information pertaining to various people and families that were already on my tree AND the addition of new ones.
Your host will continue to apply effort to improve both the accuracy of the place names and the assignment of appropriate GPS codes and level indicators to them (e.g., country, state / province, county / region, city / town, etc.). The statistics below now reflect the existing gap at the time the data was captured. Your host expects the NUMBER of unique place names to decrease for the next while, as redundant spellings of the same name are identified and eliminated.
*** Ongoing ***
This update also reflects changes to a variety of profiles on my tree that really centre around six ongoing activities:
- capture of current events observed by your host
- extension of the heritage my tree records for selected people based on expressed interest
- rendering visible more details from certain sources to enhance the understanding of why my tree reflects certain events and people
- rendering visible more of the citations my tree holds to support the events it reports (including other Ancestry Family Trees)
- adding more entries in the "Media" section, especially links to the "local history books" that are part of the University of Manitoba's Digital Collection and pertinent to the families on the tree
- an ongoing low-level effort to "normalize" place names for events that happened prior to Canadian Confederation in places that were NOT to become Manitoba
*** Cemeteries ***
As has been for some time and will continue to be the case: My work to catalogue graves and other final dispositions represents my contribution to bringing closure to as many people as possible by ensuring access to the virtual versions of the tributes made to those who have gone ahead. In my opinion, these efforts may assist many in planning visits to the physical locations in which the physical tributes persist. I expect to continuously improve this asset as I uncover misalignments between the best definitions of those places and many profiles on my tree. Correcting them will always improve the records offered here, and to Ancestry offering me new information about the affected people and their families. The tree is better for it. I invite you to browse the available list of cemetery definitions.
*** Public Sources ***
My work includes an interest in making available to all, selected information from my Ancestry tree that can be readily accessed via free and public resources. This is especially true of the links to memorials on the Find a Grave service, but extends to some of the Government of Canada resources organized by its "Library and Archives" department, in particular, and other departments.
I invite all visitors to seek out and read carefully the descriptions of those resources here. These are wonderful places to start your OWN research!
*** Subscription Sources ***
Also -- Still the case and expected to be this way for a long time:
Many of the records (items) specifically cited, regrettably, are stored in databases as part of the Ancestry service; to view them, an active Ancestry account is required. However, as part of my efforts to transform the data provided to me by Ancestry, an effort is made to make much more of the "descriptive" information about them available on this site.
That being the case: should you identify a SPECIFIC document or record cited to be of high value to you in remembering and honouring your ancestors, please feel free to get in touch. I will very likely be both willing and able to provide you with a digital copy of some kind.
*** Current Status ***
My research continues and new information and connections are revealed on nearly a daily basis. For the foreseeable future, as was the case for the past many months, I plan to continue to update this site on an irregular basis; one that I expect to be no less than once a month.
The site allows anyone to see all of the information I have recorded about deceased people. Without an account and specific privileges assigned to it, access to information about living people other than their name on this tree is restricted. Even with such privileges, at your host's discretion, they may give you access to only information about people with whom you share direct ancestors. In the event you want to see more, please get in touch.
Histories
| Thumb | Description | Linked to | Last Modified |
|---|---|---|---|
 | KanKan - Surnames in Austrian Galicia A summary of regional history with background on family namnes of the area, with an emphasis on the evolution of names as expoerienced by the local community of Jewish heritage | 2 Dec 2024 |
Individuals
| ID | Last Name, Given Name(s) | Born/Christened | Location | Tree | Branch | Last Modified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I400163965068 |
 Iwasienko, Theresa |
b. 5 Sep 1924 | Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada  | Rick Dondo's Family | 7 Dec 2024 |
| I402441911894 |
Frobisher, Thomas |
b. 1815 | Red River Settlement, Rupert's Land, British North America | Rick Dondo's Family | 30 Nov 2024 |