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Ferrell Family Wiki
Purpose
In this Wiki I plan to document my findings tracing my heritage, and try to SOURCE it well so that others may trust and leverage it in their own searches, and do so without having to subscribe to the many wonderful online repositories.
If you would like to collaborate, please feel free to reach out to me at 
bferrell
fastmail
fm, and/or connect to my 
tree at 
Ancestry (my primary online search tool).
Organization
On the sidebar you will see a set of SURNAMES related to my ancestry, in more-or-less the closest to most distant order. This does not imply one is more important than the other, it is just convenient for me as I work my way back up my family tree.
My intent is for the SURNAMES page to have a list of the those ancestors born with that SURNAME, so for women this will be their maiden names. Since woman can marry or not, and remarry or not, I find it too confusing to classify them otherwise. In the TREES they will always show with their husbands and parents, and their married names will show as the main SURNAME with the maiden name in parenthesis (Ferrell) - I would use brackets, but those have special meanings within the wiki system and are problematic.
Thanks to Other Researchers
I will add to this as I move along, but I wanted to thank here Ms. Connie Chancellor, my contemporary Ferrell researcher for many good leads and helpful suggestions, and genealogists, historians, and family history researchers that have come before me, in no particular order.
- Henry Clay Ragland - Author of A History of Logan County, which includes the (to date) origin story of our Ferrell's in America
- Sigfus Olafson, a founding member of the Mingo County Genealogical Society, and contributor to History of Logan County Centennial: The Early Years
- Samuel W. Rogers, author of History of Logan County Centennial: The Early Years
- Mary Elizabeth Ferrell, who did a vast amount of research (and published occasionally in the "Heritage of Mingo" newsletter and her brother Rocky who provided me with her research
- Ethel Evans Albert author of Southwest Virginia Kin, a great history of Ferrell and Evans genealogy
- Rev. Grover Cleveland Musick and Egbert S. Music for their respective versions of Genealogy of the Musick Family and Some Kindred Lines
- Dora (Farler) DeHart author of A History and genealogy of Right Hand Fork, and for getting me interested in DAR, and my eventual acceptance in the Sons of the American Revolution
Living Persons
The pages of living persons are protected from view by default. If you believe you have hit a page of a deceased person that should be viewable, or are a family member and would like a login to view these pages, please email the webmaster. I'm sorry to have to do this, but some people (particularly in my family) are very private, and with identity theft and other issues, this is a precaution I feel I need to take.
Standards
On SOURCING, I endeavor to provide my sources, whatever they may be, in every record that I create here. If I have not listed a source, it is either an inference, a family story, or other "non officially sourced" data. I will try to relate, even in these cases, where I got the information, and the trust I personally place in it. Wherever possible I will also include a URL link to the original source, and if possible an image and transcription of that source, along with some sense of the sources reliability, again in my opinion. An example is the History of Logan County, WV by Henry Clay Ragland. County histories are often discounted, but I have found evidence that Ragland was the family lawyer, and wrote his history close to the period of events, so I place more faith in it than I otherwise would.
For example, a tombstone or death certificate are generally accepted as solid, reliable record types - and generally they are. In fact, they are often some of the best we have, but I have seen inaccurate gravestones, and the death certificate is filled out by persons who do not always have firsthand information about parents, maiden names, or birthdates and these therefore can be unreliable. Where I believe I have sourced someone sufficiently to be reliable, their profile picture will display with a green checkmark.
I will try, where possible, to indicate on a PERSON the overall reliability of the complete set of data I have placing them in the family TREE, including both the period of their life, relationships, and places lived. To feel confident of a placement I will choose to strive for 2 records placing the person or event. This is clearly not always possible, and sometimes a secondary source like a Family or County History book are written much later, and often from the recollections of still living persons, they are judged less reliable. I will try to make this clear so you can make your own judgements. Truth is very hard to gauge in these things, and my truth and yours may differ, but I will try to offer the data and my honest best judgement.
Again, on these pages I will use the birth/maiden name for all persons so, should they marry and/or remarry, their page is not misplaced. Please make a note of it.
I will always depict PLACES in their current (modern) context, because I find it confusing to do otherwise. I will, though, endeavor to note when a place has changed names (a city or town that is incorporated or annexed into another jurisdiction) or when a county is subdivided (as they grew) or, as in the case of West Virginia, breaks off from another political jurisdiction. This is inevitably confusing, and I know that, but it will be confusing no matter what standard I chose. People today will be, I think, most interested in how they would visit these places, though, and it would not make sense to say 'visit Logan County Virginia' today, even though many of my ancestor's records would say Virginia on them. These are housed in the West Virginia archives, because this is the current political jurisdiction.
I will show PEOPLE with their date of birth DASH date of death if deceased, and leave the date of death vacant if (to my knowledge) they are still living. I will assume anyone born more than 100 years ago to be deceased, even if I do not have proof of their death. I will distinguish between PERSONS with the same name by including their year of birth.
Abbreviations
I will use these abbreviations
| Abbreviations | ||
|---|---|---|
| DOB | - | Date of Birth |
| DOD | - | Date of Death |
| SSDI | Social Security Death Index | |
Symbols
I will use these symbols
Dates
I will attempt to maintain a consistent usage for dates as below.
| dd | Mon | YEAR |
| 22 | Sep | 1969 |
Semantic MediaWiki
We are building genealogy-specific Templates (categories, forms, and infoboxes) for 
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php 8.2.
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