July 2017

Comments, News & Site Updates:

Bryan continues to improve and add to his migration mapping study. His latest draft adds huge detail to the Van Alstyne history and suggests other future study possibilities. Dave has started collecting “Knotable Knicks” and I’ll add a new section to house them. George Walker is forgoing his summer vacation at Schroon Lake to provide a Kathlyne Viele compendium.

I’ve found that Roots Magic is not suitable for collaborative genealogy building. I had hoped the newly introduced Version 7.5 with the Ancestry connection would provide an answer. It didn’t as there is no automatic synching. I believe the new Family Tree Maker software will probably work for us. I’m waiting for a release date to evaluate this new program.

What we are trying to accomplish with the new 1850 based genealogy is to connect all the Heads in that census year to the immigrant ancestor. After 1850 documentation multiplies ten or 100 fold and genealogies are quite easy to construct. The brick walls start appearing with the heads in the 1850 census.

The DNA studies are only as good as the underlying formal genealogies. Bryan suspects 95% or more of the Ancestry genealogies are flawed. If only 10% were bad that would make the entire DNA effort questionable. We pledge to provide well sourced material and any conclusions drawn will be so stated – with our reasons and supporting documentation.

The census seems to provide most of the claimed Ancestry proofs. The 1850, 60 and 70 enumerations did not provide relationships. Children could be nieces, nephews or even grandchildren. How many out of wedlock births to 14 year old daughters were listed under her mother’s name to avoid family embarrassment. All relationships have to be proven by methods other than these censuses.

Given 10 generations of Knickerbockers - with a boy and girl born to each couple and both children reaching adulthood and having a boy and girl of their own – what would the resultant population look like at the 10th generation? If I did my progressions correctly there would be two Knicks and 510 other blood relatives with 227 different last names. Don’t ignore the female lines.

It seems that given this representative calculation we are only analyzing 10-20% of the possible Y DNA possibilities. Any of the eight continuous male surnames could be proven back to the person who married the female Knickerbocker - thus proving the Knick lineage through a female line at that particular generation.

·        I’ve added some early video and audio recordings from the mansion. Storage and bandwidth limitations have been removed which allows Gigabyte material like this to be added. Link

·        I finally solved my “Solomon Search” brick wall of these many years at Salisbury, CT. I’m working on the details.

·        “The History of New York” – Washington Irving – Volume 1Volume 2