My E-mail Address

(In order to give other parts of my life priority, I sometimes go for several days without reading my e-mail. So don't be alarmed if my response is slow!)

Thank you, all my correspondents, for not adding this address to any newsletter lists, or posting it on message boards.

I have limited time

I'm the only "employee" here at Fabulous Pedigree, and I'm a part-time unpaid employee at that! It's a pleasure to incorporate input from Dim, who spends much time constructing detailed pedigrees from his sources, by hand. Some input is more difficult to work with. I will probably just start ignoring the Pdf and Jpeg attachments I get by e-mail. Yes, I realize this may be the original and "best" form of data; but frankly I have trouble keeping up with just the data I find myself, or others send me, which is presented in an easier-to-use format.

Before Mailing Me

I can answer a few of the most common questions right now, and save you the bother of e-mailing. Perhaps the most common question I get is the first one in the following list. It does not have an easy answer, but the only answer I can give is shown here.

• When a page states something like Lady Diana's 11-Great Grandmother, you may wonder about the details of that descent. The descent is always shown at the website, but unfortunately you may have to click link by link to see the details. (If the page shows only one child, then that child would be the 10-Great Grandparent, and so on. With more than one child, click on each to see which one is the 10-Great Grandparent. Sometimes there will be a list of Great-Grandchildren at the bottom of the page; clicking on them is a way to save time.)
• I especially often get asked about lines in the header like "U.S. President's 19-Great Grandmother". Unfortunately, there is no easy way to tell which President(s). I realize it's very tedious, but the only way is to click on his child, then on the child's child and so on, following down until you reach a President ... or in some cases a page where the Presidential connection is unclickable but shown on the page, e.g.
      "Child: Thomas (poss. 7-g grandfather of Pres. J.F. Kennedy)"

  If you click to a page with two or more children, you may have to try each to see which is the ancestor, the others being just great-uncles or great-aunts. (Occasionally, clicking on the child of a 17-g grandfather will take you to a 19-g grandfather. This isn't a mistake; it means two or more Presidents are involved, on any page it is the closest President mentioned.)

  If you do get desperate enough to pursue one of these Presidential descents there is a possible shortcut. At the bottom of the page, where there is something like "His (poss.) Great Grandchildren:" checking those one-by-one may save time compared with clicking through children.

• The list of children on any pedigree page is not complete: the only children shown are those who are in my database. (That is, I show children who are ancestors of myself or Winston Churchill or European royals. Occasionally, children not in my database are shown (in a darker color with no clickable link) but even on those pages I usually make no effort to make the list of children complete.)
• All the information I have is already on display on the site.
• My data is not in GedCom format and cannot be converted. A good place to get GedComs is The Rootsweb WorldConnect site.
• Yes, I know the ancient mythical lines are ... mythical! I know many of the dates in the prehistoric Irish genealogies don't make sense. If you want to study these legends, just use my site as a sort of index, and research using more thorough references.
• I'm very grateful when people send me new information, but cannot respond to offers to ``trade information'' -- All my data is already on the site for public display.
• If my data is very puzzling, I don't mind trying to answer a question about source, but in most cases my sources are uninteresting third-hand Internet sites. Usually a few minutes spent doing Google searches will provide you with more information than I can give.