Lance Mead will again coordinate events this summer.
Summer in New York
Mead Research Group Returns to Lake George
Mead Researchers gather for dinner in the Old Tavern Restaurant at Fort Edward during the 2005 reunion.
It's the time of the year when genealogists begin thinking about reunions, and the Mead Research Group is well on its way to planning the second annual get-together of its extended family in New York state over the last weekend in July.
Lance Mead of Brandon, Vermont, is coordinating activities for the meeting, which again will be staged at Lake George near Glen Falls in upstate New York the weekend of July 29, 30 and 31.
Persons planning to attend who are seeking specific information about the reunion or help in obtaining a place to stay should contact Lance by e-mail at www.lmeade52089@aol.com.
The Mead Research Group was organized by Wanda Mead-Campbell of Binghamton, N.Y., and now has more than 80 members from far-flung locations across the U.S.
Lance quotes his father to invite everyone in the area to attend. "When we were growing up in the Adirondack Mountains, we had a latch key on the cabin door. When our family wanted privacy, we pulled the latch key inside. It will be outside to welcome everyone to upstate New York. It's a special area through which many of our ancestors traveled and made their homes on their way west across the country," he said.
The group will visit some of the many museums and historic homes and forts still standing near Lake George. The area also was the site of the motion picture "Last of the Mohicans."
Deerfield, Mass., site of the infamous Deerfield Massacre in 1704 is a beautiful 3 1/2-hour drive from the meeting site near Glen Falls for visitors who plan to spend more than a few days in the area.
"We're not sure just who will be here, but we are guaranteeing a good time for everyone who wants to find out a bit more about their ancestral families and how they lived," Mead said.
The FamilyTree DNA project, which has been directed by Carolyn Mead-Hildebrand of Sanger, California, also will be discussed. Now into its third year, there are enough lines of descent in the Mead study to add credibility of blood lines extending back to early ancestors.
Between Us ...
Lee Meade, Editor
MANY TIMES, I have seen genealogy referred to as “the second most popular hobby.” I had no reason to challenge the statement, but I often wondered what is No. 1. The other day, I learned it is gardening. And, once again, I offer no protest. It certainly must be and I applaud the gardeners of the world, just as long as I am not one of them.
But, since I joined the ranks of genealogists, now some 25 years ago, I am perfectly content to be in the second position. In fact, as an auto rental agency once suggested, “Being No. 2, we try harder!”
I read an article from the Wall Street Journal last week that called attention to the growing popularity of genealogy and the online sources that are now making it ever easier to dig away at our family roots without getting our hands dirty.
The article highlighted four sources I use regularly: Ancestry.com; Legacy.com; MyHeritage.com, and Familyresearch.org.
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ANCESTRY.COM is the largest commercial venture and also claims the most records on its website. I have an Annual U.S. Deluxe membership, which costs me about $150 per year. Its features include access to a data base with U.S. Census records dating back to 1790; birth, marriage, military and death records, plus an invaluable research tool known as One World Tree.
I have my personal data base of some 15,000 names on Family Tree Maker and I have become very comfortable with it. However, another program is Legacy.com and, if I didn’t have so much time and energy invested already, I probably would list it as my preferred software. I particularly like Legacy.com’s ability to include DNA results for each individual and the method they use for printing out chronological information.
Legacy.com also claims nearly five million recent and archived obituaries from daily newspapers over the past six years. You can search free, but will be charged between $1.95 and $3.95 for each obituary you print for your files.
Familyresearch.org and MyHeritageResearch.com are both offered as free services. Familyresearch.org is a totally free subsidiary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), while MyHeritageResearch.com does charge for copies of certain documents.
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MANY OF US, who like to claim we are among the more serious researchers, warn others to be careful of accepting information off the internet. Indeed, there is probably more misinformation than information to be copied, but much of it will help lead the searcher to an ultimate goal.
Checking regularly and often also should be high on a list of protocols. With as many genealogists as there are today, data is being updated and records corrected every day.
New techniques to digitize information and easy searching with engines such as Google have greatly enhanced our ability to determine who we really are and from where we came.
As a former newspaper editor, I began my genealogical hobby to prove everybody else was wrong. Sometimes they were, but most of the time they turned out to be correct. If I had not followed a path of mistaken information, I would not have had a data base as error-free as it is today.
'de Prato' or 'atte Mede'?
NICE THEORY, MESSY REALITY
By VANCE MEAD
A nice theory often looks more attractive than a messy realty. For a genealogist, there are always loose ends -- people who don't fit, others who aren't where they're supposed to be, or too many cousins named William or John. Often, the only correct answer is: "We just don't know!"
Nowhere do people show a greater inclination to come up with nice theories than when they are thinking about the origin of their surname. Can't you just picture some whiskered Victorian gentlemen, after dinner with their brandy and cigars, dredging up their half-forgotten Latin?
While Dr. Spencer Mead achieved much in collecting the information for his genealogy of the Mead family, he is also guilty of making a number of unsupported assumptions and theories, some of which are still floating around in cyberspace.
His theory that William and Gabriel Mead were brothers has been thoroughly debunked, several times. He also relates a theory that "the name Mead is the English form of the Norman 'de Prato', and to say that a family is Norman is nearly equivalent to saying it is amongst the oldest of the old, the noblest of the nobel."
How can mere facts compete with such purple prose? Unfortunately, the reality is much less exalted. This theory is based on a misunderstanding of the records of the times, which were written in Latin. If you were a smith, known to your neighbors as John the smith, you would be called Johannes le faber in the records. That didn't mean your surname was Faber or that you were related to other people called faber. If you were John who lived "at the meadow", you would be called de prato or ad pratum in the Latin records, but you wouldn't be related to other people called de prato. And, you certainly wouldn't be related to a man named Giovanni de Prato who family came from the Italian town of Prato.
The name "atte Mede" originated in several places across southern England. It started to become a hereditary surname after 1300 in the counties of Somerset, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. In fact, this pattern could still be seen in 1881, almost 600 years later. Between 1300 and 1500, it is possible to trace a few Mead families over several generations: in Wraxall and Ashwick, Somerset; Hitchin, Herts; Pitstone, Bucks; and in Earls Colne, Essex. No doubt there were many other Mead families that left no trace in the records.
Are any of them the forebears of Richard Mead of Watford, the ancestor of William Mead of Stamford? I think I will pass on presenting any more theories, in case some future genealogist might be tempted to write a humorous column at my expense.
(Vance Mead is a native of Greenwich, Conn., and a direct descendant of William Mead of Stamford, the progenitor of the Meads in America. He lives in Helsinki, Finland, and is a family researcher of note, who is a regular contributor to the Mead-e Family Tree.)
Second of a Series
HOW TO WRITE A FAMILY TREE
Finally, writing the book
(EDITOR'S NOTE: It is something everyone wants to do -- writing a book about their family roots. But, Beverly Mead Brenneise did something about it. She actually wrote it! In the April issue of The Mead-e Family Tree, she explained the reservations she had and how she prepared for the undertaking. In this issue, she takes us through the process of actually completing the book.)
By BEVERLY MEAD BRENNEISE
I planned to use the information my computer program generated extensively, but I would organize my family book in a generation-by-generation format. This way I would be able to add the extra personal information — stories, wills, military data, news information, etc. — I had obtained and/or recorded that pertained to the appropriate generation, along with the other birth/marriage/death information.
At the beginning of the book I first wrote about the earliest known beginnings of the Mead family. I showed a Descendant Outline from the earliest ancestor to the most recent family members, showed the Mead Coat of Arms, and then proceeded to detail the lives of my earliest ancestors.
From that point on, each generation was treated as a separate chapter. I decided the Descendant Outlines seemed to work better if I grouped about three to five generations together, so these aren’t necessarily to be included in each chapter — yet the Descendant Outlines are close enough together to keep the continuity of the family lineage clear for the reader. Otherwise, each chapter (generation) will have its own Descendant Trees, and its own Family Group sheet, plus any personal information I have discovered.
I focus on the Meads immigrating to America with the third generation. I have records of Meads who served in the Civil War (and I hope I will be able to find information about the Meads in the Revolutionary War, if possible). Family Tree Maker enables users to make maps that record a family’s movement over the years, and I want to include this information.
I also want to include some timelineinformation to show the historical events that occurred during the lifetimes of different ancestors. The more recent generations will have pictures included in the Descendant Trees and on the Family Group sheets. I plan to use pictures of each individual as a child and as an adult, where and when appropriate. In addition, since we have pictures of homes, schools, churches, and other meaningful places and/or times (Depression era pictures, a car moving a family across the country, etc.), I plan to include some photo-album pages for these later generations. Perhaps, in some respects, this family book might resemble a school yearbook.
I also decided that scrapbooking this information would make the final version more interesting to read, but I wanted to test my theory by sharing it with relatives at my family reunion. I put together, in rough-draft form, two parallel family books — one in the basic format, and the other by scrapbooking the information in a more creative layout. Both books have the exact same information, though the one that was scrapbooked contained more pictures and varied print styles. I was very busy for the next two weeks!
By now, I was planning to have the final books printed professionally at a shop such as Kinko’s so that the print quality would be better than printing it is on my computer. This meant I had to determine what paper size to use before I began putting together the final copy of my book.
I wanted a finished book that would be larger than 8 ½” by 11”. The size of scrapbook pages I was using was 12” by 12” — a size of paper which Kinko’s did not use for printing. They did print on 11” by 17” size paper, though, and they could cut such paper down to 11” by 12” size. This meant I would only have to modify my scrapbook paper size by one inch. The cover — which will be decided later — will be more professional than one I could do myself.
At the family reunion, without exception, my relatives preferred the scrapbooked version.
At the time I showed my relatives the two different versions of the family book, I also asked them to get me their family pictures, stories about their branches of the family, and any other information they had that would be interesting. I gave them written instructions on papers that I handed out to each family, thinking this would give them an assignment which would bring them into my project and make it easier and quicker to get the information I needed. I realize getting everyone to respond is going to be a challenge.
Writing a personalized genealogy book using my Mead family lineage is a big task, but I have many sources to draw upon. But, writing this same kind of genealogy book about one of my other family lineages might prove extremely difficult as I probably won’t find nearly as much personal information.
I wonder about another problem: if a researcher unearths an earlier Mead than Richard Mead (Mede) of 1515, all of my book’s generations will be numbered incorrectly.
That’s okay. At least, I will have finally written my book!
This and that ...
We reach 100,000 for year!
"Hits" for the quarter were above 23,000
WHILE THE NUMBER of "hits" we have had during the past year soared past the 100,000 mark, The Mead-e Newsletter continues to be one of the best research sources about the families of Meads, Meades, Meeds and Meaghes who have pioneered settlement of America.
For the quarter that just passed, there were more than 23,000 readers who paused to see the news about their ancestors and descendants.
Write us at: Lee Meade, Apt. 221, 8505 Flying Cloud Drive, Eden Prairie, MN 55344 or send an e-mail message to: www.leemeaderoots@aol.com. The newsletter is published free with donations by readers. If you have a suggestion for a future article, we'd like to hear about it. Better yet, if you would like to submit a story for publication, send it along.
