ORIENTATION & TOOLS

This set of WWW pages is intended to provide you with the following:

This page is available on all 5 sites in my WWW network. Look for the globe logo. To go to the various components of this collection of navigational aids and tools, click on the hotspots in the list above, or look below.


Finding your way around the Harper Family WWW Network

There are several WWW sites in this network, summarised in this diagram:

The "base camp" is the site on Demon Internet. Four pages directly leading off from here are owned by various other members of my family, but, as yet, these have very little content. The page shown as Wicken/greg is the gateway to a series of interlocking sites providing genealogical data, provided by Greg Harper. It is these pages that are described in this Orientation & Tools page.

These sites contain the following information - use the hot-links to go directly to the site or page of interest to you.

X-stream site

Geocities site

Spree site

Tripod site

Fortune City site

Family Tree Maker site

Main Massingham site and "home base" for genealogy data Satellite site for Massingham genealogical data Photographs of people and places in my family tree Bloom genealogical data Genealogical data for other surnames in my family tree Deposits of some Massingham, Bloom and Harper family trees
Files for the:

families, but many other surnames are included

+ how the various strands of my family tree come together in my own nuclear family

(only a very limited amount of data can be deposited here, due to the restrictions applied by the makers of FTW)

Many of the sites are "anchors" for genealogy-related Web rings, as an aid to making them accessible to genealogists browsing the Web. The sites are in the process of being registered with the main Web search engines.


Navigating from site to site on my WWW network

You can use the hotlinks in the previous section or click on the icons shown here. These will take you to the home page (sometimes called the index or default page) for each site:

X-stream - Massingham genealogy and genealogical "base camp"

Geocities - Massingham satellite site

Tripod - Bloom genealogy

Spree - photographs (people and places from my family tree)

Fortune City - Genealogy for other surnames in my family tree


Format of the Word files

These tend to be very verbose, as the sources of each piece of information are given, even at the risk of repetition. The text also contains discussions and speculations behind my interpretations of the raw data. To see source information, you need to show Hidden Text (a facility within Word). Each individual who has been linked to my family tree has a unique code (their initials followed by a unique 7-digit number). The Roman numerals after these names are purely to help distinguish different people with the same given (first) name and surname - the numbers are assigned in the order of finding a reasonably reliable genealogical connection, and do not signify generational links or seniority (John XXI can thus be the father of John III, or vice versa, and William XIV may be only very distantly related to William XV). Massinghams not linked to the main tree are not yet assigned such Roman numerals, nor the unique initials + 7-digit number code. Each Word file is indexed separately (see end of each file).


MASTER INDEX FILE

This is a zipped (compressed) Word file that lists all the names in all of the genealogical data files available on this Web site. Because of limitations in Word, the index is in the alphabetical order of the given (Christian) names of the family members. As this master index is created by combining the indices from each of the genealogy files, a name appearing in more than one genealogy file will create multiple rows in the master index, but they will be adjacent to each other. Each page reference is prefixed with a code, which tells you which genealogy file to look in - thus, for example, m4a-27 means page 27 in mass4a.doc. The codes are explained at the beginning of the index file.

For the Master Index, click here

As the raw data files (the separate Word files available from various sites in my WWW network) are updated fairly often, there may be a lag before the Master Index is updated to reflect the latest cumulative data. This means that there may be data in the original Word files that are not indicated in the Master Index: if possible, therefore, you should search for the names of several people of interest to you to maximise the chances that you'll find the correct Word file to examine in more detail. The indices at the end of each separate Word file are completely up-to-date, as these are generated automatically by the Word software.


Software to unzip and read the genealogy files on this site

LINKS UPDATED January 2000

Many files are available on my network of Web sites as compressed "zip" files. To access shareware to unzip these files, I recommend WinZip, available from the WinZip WWW site, which you can reach by clicking here

To be able to read Microsoft Word files on your computer if you don't have this software installed, you can download free Word viewers provided by Microsoft. Some Word files on my sites are in Word 6 (in the Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups 3.11 16-bit operating systems); increasingly, more are in Word97 (in the Windows 95/98 32-bit operating system). To get Word viewers, go to Microsoft's Converters & Viewers page by clicking here.

If you have other word-processing software on your computer, many programs will convert and read files automatically from Microsoft Word formats.

If you really can't access any of the files on these WWW sites, email me with details of your computer system and the relevant software you have, and we'll try to find a way to share these files. Please don't email me until you've tried to use the tools and conversion suggestions given above, and any others available on your own computer or within the software you already have, since these will certainly be the quickest and easiest options. Let me know if any of the methods described above don't work properly, so I can correct any glitches.

To be able to read the Family Tree Maker for Windows file, you can download a free FTW reader (and demo) from the Family Tree Maker site. I cannot offer alternative ways to read these files, since their format is proprietary to Family Tree Maker.


"Rules of Engagement"

If you want to download a copy of everything I've recorded, that's fine by me - I know how useful insights can be from parts of the tree you've not yet explored in detail, and I don't regard my collations of information as things to be grudgingly shared only on a pound-for-pound exchange basis! (I'm constantly amazed by the self-righteous indignation expressed by some writers to genealogical magazines about this - as if sharing the data somehow diminished its value/interest to its discoverer.) Self-evidently, I hope you'll be equally forthcoming with anything you have too - including any errors of fact or interpretation you spot in my data! This last point is especially important for areas where I've transcribed notes and data provided by others - it is easy to misinterpret these and/or the original information may be ambiguous, so confirmation and clarification is always welcome. My only reservation is that I'd expect my input to be appropriately referenced if you pass on my data to others (which you're free to do).

One caveat: my records contain notes about areas where my interpretation differs from that of other researchers. I hope I have always recorded these politely and with the appropriate tone of mutual respect, since I never mean to imply personal infallibility or criticisms of others. Please read any such comments in this light: I could edit them all out, but this would mean maintaining 2 separate copies of all my records (time!) and also, unhelpfully, imply certainty where there is doubt.

Also, neither I nor anyone else is responsible for the apparent oddities of behaviour of our ancestors (at whatever point we individually judge normal behaviour to move into what might be regarded as unusual actions!), so no moral judgements are expressed or implied. If anything recorded in these documents offends because it is inaccurate, I will correct it if informed; otherwise, it presumably stands as fact but it is not intended to upset anyone.