Choice of software: doesn’t matter as long as it includes GEDitCOM data (I want to call it GENDATA, but it is usually called a GEDCOM file) (but see the foot of this page, please). It looks as though a GEDCOM file can be quite easily converted to html and uploaded that way. I’m using – when writing this– an Apple G4 (big enough to go under a desk, not on it) using OS X 10.7.x (Lion, not Mountain Lion) and it is a dual-core Intel machine; I use dual 23” screens.
How to display this stuff? We will see what happens as I work through one of the Mac-based s/w packages – I’m looking at what is offered as free download, but most of those turned out to be demo packages.
Heredis(Mac) [free download turns out to be not supported, new version (Lion) not yet released]
Reunion [looks quite good and flexible, but $100 and $60 for upgrades]
(Mac)Family Tree [$60].
I refused to pay that sort of money and went for Gramps from SourceForge. Some of the input techniques are a bit irritating, but:
• it costs nothing
• it works
• it allows a lot of input possibilities
• it allows many input & output transfers, with only a little likely loss of info.
Problem of security: no living family members can be included in stuff for general access. That requires sensible suggestions to be made as to how—as a family—we can record additions. Supplying someone’s mother’s maiden name to outsiders is not a good idea (thinking of security questions for other systems’ access). Sharing should be within the family. Obviously, any Scoins should have access; it seems to me that most non-Scoins shouldn’t have access. I don’t know how to do that sensibly and I’d like some helpful suggestions. What I’m going to do is leave out a lot of data for the live (dates, addresses, jobs, etc) and only supply names and (implied) relationships.
I have, in 2014, two suggestions to include thumbnail photos.
I have no suggestions what to do about the living, yet there is interest within the (very much) extended family. Perhaps the problem only arises when publishing?
Files: label by oldest relative with birth year. Runs up to but not including those still alive. I show below the separated stubs of the tree:
external URL internal URL
Onesimus 1722 connecting to John and Robert Onesimus
John 1789 showing 4/8 generations John
Richard 1799 showing 5/9 generations Richard
Robert 1820 showing 4/7 generations Robert
In the middle of 2015, while the spouse was in China, I had a bit of a blitz on the data, with huge help from the family Scoins FB group page. This makes my mass of collected data rather firmer and I report that it is a great assist to have people to ask and to share questions. Sometimes they’ve answered this, sometimes you raise a question that resolves an issue they have been having. I have a very much larger database than I am prepared to show on here, in line with the issues raised above.
However, the wider we confirms belief that Onesimus Skoines (Onn-EE-sih-muss) is as far back as we can go with any reliability, and that the others pooh-pooh my suggestion of Huguenot escape, pointing to the large numbers of Skoines around when Onesimus left traces.
So I could publish that earliest part….
Sources of information:
1 mostly the extensive work Eric Stanley Scoins [ESS] did in the period 1975-1990 while we corresponded together.
2 other members of the extended family who are interested, met via a closed group on Facebook
2.1 Mabel Scoins, Redcar, Cleveland, 1982 (the family came to visit)
2.2 Oh, I wish people would communicate.
DJS 20120824
Picture is of ESS and DJS; 1988
Minor edits 20141105
Repost with minimal edits 20171113
Interaction with the Facebook group has enlarged the information, denying some points I had held to and confirming others I had disregarded. So there is the link back to Onesimus to declare here, not yet done.
2017 still not yet done, on the list for 2018. I note here that when I tried to load Gramps to check the state of the files, not only did Gramps fail to load, there was nothing at all of the data files. Perhaps they are on a different computer (and its accompanying disks). Considering how many hours I put in for the small return of having the filers printed in the next three pages, this is disappointing.
This means that I have lost the GEDCOM file until such time as I can wind up the older machines and see if something survives.
2014-8 I used three screens, though the centre one - and the driving CPU - changed more than once.
20180720
I have generally returned to just one screen on a much faster iMac, using the (now seen as huge) G4 for back-up. I added a page about Onesimus, deferring to the group as a whole, now convinced that Onesimus is the right guy identified and connected. The latest suggestion is that his, Onesimus’s, parents have been labelled Nanscowen. He is in various records as Skoins and Skoines – basically we’re rubbing up hard against the failure of education, where presumably Onesimus nor his parents were not able to tell people how the name should be spelled. I wonder what the modern equivalent is - it must be something to do with computer-based data. In effect, what we now hold is that Onesimus was the first Scoins. How appropriate. DJS
20201005
I don't see the data held as likely to change. I'm also unlikely to put any effort into this unless some member of the immediate family (downwards from my parents) provides some enthusiasm. It can stay as it is unless and until that moment occurs. meanwhile it is possible that access to old records continues to improve, making it very much easier to extend the tree. What is needed, im my perception, is an agreed form of presentation, even if only a classification of filetype. DJS
20221205
Contact from Dan (another DJS) prompted a review of what is on here. External links renewed and I don't see the complete connection from Onesimus to the three longer pages linked above. While I see the connections from Onesimus to John and Robert, (and so their linked pages), I do not see the implied connection from Onesimus to Richard at all. I hope to discover more.
All I have—that I can see today—is that Richard starts with his marriage to Sarah Parr (and eight children, three of whom produced more Scoinses).
Consensus (by default, what there is in Files there) on the Family History forum is to use Word (.docx) files.
DJS