The Crawford Family Web site

This Web site documents the descendants of John Crawford, Sr. (1804-1876). It was created by Brian Crawford and is intended for the use of the members of the family, to serve as a central site for genealogical information and for the current addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail of the members of the family so we can better keep in touch. If anyone has any additions or corrections to the information on this site, or if you have suggestions as to how I might improve it and make it more useful, please e-mail me at Brian@BrianCrawford.info.

Security: For privacy reasons, I have protected the genealogical data with a password so strangers and telemarketers can't see our addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. To see the genealogy, you must enter David Crawford Sr.'s middle name as a password. If you don't know what it is, call or e-mail me and I will tell you.

What is the history of this genealogy? How do I use the genealogy? What are the most recent revisions? Is there another site where I can see this data in another format? What news is there for the family? Brian's Home Page

I have also published the entire Crawfords genealogy to RootsWeb, an international clearing house of genealogical databases (don't worry, the first names and addresses of all living family members do not appear). This is a great place to research our ancestors. It's very easy to just search their entire database of seventy-five million names for any specific ancestor. This is how I've pushed our tree all the way back into the 16th century. If you feel like playing with it, it's free and fun. Let me know if you turn up any more of our ancestors. Other good genealogy sites are Cyndi's List, FamilySearch.org, FamilyHistory.com, Genealogy.com, and FamilyTreeMaker.com.

Origin and Purpose

Origin:

Most of this information was originally collected over several decades by my father, Ken Crawford. After his death in 1977, I organized his material and put it into digital form. After my son Nathan Crawford was born in 1988, I was inspired to learn more about our family. My aunt Gladys Crawford Schleich provided a great deal more information, and most importantly, she had addresses and phone numbers for many of the people. She and I tried to contact one member of each branch of the family and asked them to review and correct their information. I updated the genealogy with their responses and mailed it out to everyone who responded to our initial requests. During a family reunion in August 1999, those present corrected their own family's data. At that time I was asked to put the genealogy online so we could all have access to it. Since then I have been calling relatives and getting updates to the various branches of the family. This will no doubt be a continuing project.

Purpose:

The site was built to serve several purposes:

1. To serve as a repository of all available information about our family. Wherever possible, it would include full names and the date and place of births, marriages, and deaths. Anyone interested in delving deeper or following other lines of descent would know where to go to find official documents for further genealogical research.

2. For living family members, to provide a handy central location for addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, so members of the family can contact one another.

3. Where possible, to include pictures and biographical data to give faces and stories to relatives who otherwise would only be names, in an effort to give the younger members of the family a sense of belonging to a larger group, extending across almost two hundred years and a good part of the globe.

4. To include a notices section to announce significant events within the family, proposals for future reunions, etc.

Structure and Use

Structure of this genealogy:

Every known member of the family has an entry containing their full name and the date and place of birth, marriage, and death, if known. The same information is provided for their spouse(s). Their children are listed in birth order. For living family members, their address, phone number, and e-mail is provided if I know it. In a few cases I have included pictures and biographical data.

Navigation:

From a person's entry page, you can click on any of their children's names to bring up their child's own entry. A button is also provided to go back up to the person's parents. You can use the BACK button on your browser at any time to return to the top of the file.

Finding a name:

You can click on a name on a person's list of children to go down the generations, and click their parent buttons to go up. If you are searching for a particular person, use your browser's FIND function (usually control-F on the keyboard) to search for that person's name.

Numbering scheme:

Because many names occur repeatedly and it can all become confusing, I have assigned a number to every member of the family. The system is simple and based on birth order. For example, George Crawford, the patriarch's ninth child, is number 9. George's first child David is 91. David's sixth child Kenneth is 916, and I am Kenneth's second child, so I am 9162. The number of digits then represents the generation - I am in the fourth generation from John Crawford, Sr. In the cases where there are more than nine children, I continued numbering with the letters "A","B", etc. If you find all this confusing, ignore it.

History of Revisions

Revisions (most recent first):

MyFamily.com

Description:

I have created a second site for the Crawford Genealogy, as a guest page on a commercial site called MyFamily.com. The site is free, paid for by mildly annoying advertising banners, and has several advantages over this site. I have the actual genealogy in a program called Brother's Keeper, which can then put out a file in a standard format known as GEDCOM. This format is universally used to exchange genealogy data. I can upload the GEDCOM file directly to the MyFamily site, so I don't have to type updates into an HTML document, which is much more time-consuming.

You must be invited:

The other great advantage to the MyFamily site is that it provides a less-laughable security firewall than this site. To access the site, you must be specifically invited by a member of the family, and MyFamily will then e-mail you a user ID and password, which you can then customize and use to access the site. Once you are a registered member you can then invite others, post news items, pictures, whatever you'd like, so I don't have to be contacted for every little item you want to post to the rest of the family.

If you'd like to be invited:

Just e-mail me at the address at the top of this page, and I will add you to the MyFamily registry. You will be notified by e-mail immediately. Once you get into the site, you might want to customize your member options, otherwise you may be notified every time anyone posts anything to the site, or even if you haven't visited it for the last two weeks.