The site was born out of the burgeoning growth and discovery of relations all searching for the same ancestors. Hence we chose to cooperate and merge our efforts and thus the birth of this service. We originally grabbed the domain name and started this site in late 2008 with the full wiki and database online by Winter 2009.
Special Note: All research in Slovenia for people prior to 1900 has been done by Maria Velikonja with several month long visits to the Slovenian Archdiocese Archives and various cemeteries, records offices and the like. While we try to indicate this in the sourcing / notes, this is often not visible to the public who do not login. Therefore, we wish to give her the credit more publicly here.
Kelli O'Shaugnessy is a second cousin discovered by Randy while doing research on Ancestry.com in 2009. She had a fairly extensive tree already developed. Randy and Kelli have a common great-grandparents of Joseph Kosak and Anna Rogelj.
Mary Ann Evans is another second cousin who discovered Randy while she was doing her own research on the web. They have common great grandparents of Mary Evans and Joe Suhovic. (Mary only discovered the similarity in her married name and her great-grandmother after finding Randy's work.)
Maria Velikonja is yet another second cousin of Randy who was sought out after seeing the announcement of her father's passing. Key with Maria is she spends time back in Slovenia and has been doing the difficult archives and cemetery research there for before emigration as well as some new found cousins. Maria and Randy have common great-grandparents in Josef Jordan and Frančiska Baznik.
Ed Lostoski had done extensive work himself during the 1980's and early 1990's; capturing in an early DOS desktop program. His work had lagged as the original program died and the data was no longer accessible. Randy helped Ed revive the data and merge it into this tree. Ed had over 450 individuals before the merge, spent countless hours in the National Archives in Washington, DC, as well as writing letters to the Lithuanian government in the 1980's looking for his ancestors.
Barbara Fiorentino is a relation to Rachael (Dolly) Harr (nee Fiorontino). She had a similar situation to Ed in that she was running a desktop program that required Windows 3.1 to run (and we are up to Windows Vista already; well, then). Her extensive tree and research was extracted and merged in so the Pat Harr family could get the benefit of family trees covering both parents. She had nearly 100 individuals with extensive details before the merge.
Binafair Modi is a second cousin of Roshan Modi Harr, Randy's wife, and has been doing extensive research for a number of years. Her work has never been computerized and so was transcribed from a large paper tree diagram by Randy to make her research database available to Roshan's side of the family. Binni had over a hundred family members documented.
Jamshed (Jimmy) Dastur had taken Veera Modi's initial work and cleaned it up and documented it in a series of Excel files. Randy entered the Dastur family history from India from these files into the database here. They had around 75 family members documented. Jimmy is Roshan's maternal Uncle.
Walter and Betty Ann Harr, Randy's parents, have been the inspiration with remembering the many family stories and keeping in touch with all. Wally took their nearly 10,000 archive photos and slides and scanned them all in. Betty Ann then worked with him to try and identify all the people; especially in historical photos. They continue to help Randy confirm and detail information as he uses current online resources to dig deeper into their past.
Jamie Harr has an amazing knack for remembering details and names of relatives that we have barely met. He matches Betty Ann in that regards and serves as a backup and inspiration to get the data cataloged for all to see.
Ester Ritter was find via a DNA match on MyHeritage. She is a 3rd cousin to Randy's cousins due to his uncle Ed. She has been helping with the Slovak research; not only of Ed's ancestors in common,with her but even Randy's own Slovak roots. She is from Slovakia.
Randy Harr is the main site developer. He is a Silicon Valley engineer with the time and interest. His effort to make the genealogy a web-based effort is born of the fact that close relatives are scattered all over the world. So to enlist their help and interest, it has to be a collaborative effort available online at all times.
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Special Note: All research in Slovenia for people prior to 1900 has been done by Maria Velikonja with several month long visits to the Slovenian Archdiocese Archives and various cemeteries, records offices and the like. While we try to indicate this in the sourcing / notes, this is often not visible to the public who do not login. Therefore, we wish to give her the credit more publicly here.
Kelli O'Shaugnessy is a second cousin discovered by Randy while doing research on Ancestry.com in 2009. She had a fairly extensive tree already developed. Randy and Kelli have a common great-grandparents of Joseph Kosak and Anna Rogelj.
Mary Ann Evans is another second cousin who discovered Randy while she was doing her own research on the web. They have common great grandparents of Mary Evans and Joe Suhovic. (Mary only discovered the similarity in her married name and her great-grandmother after finding Randy's work.)
Maria Velikonja is yet another second cousin of Randy who was sought out after seeing the announcement of her father's passing. Key with Maria is she spends time back in Slovenia and has been doing the difficult archives and cemetery research there for before emigration as well as some new found cousins. Maria and Randy have common great-grandparents in Josef Jordan and Frančiska Baznik.
Ed Lostoski had done extensive work himself during the 1980's and early 1990's; capturing in an early DOS desktop program. His work had lagged as the original program died and the data was no longer accessible. Randy helped Ed revive the data and merge it into this tree. Ed had over 450 individuals before the merge, spent countless hours in the National Archives in Washington, DC, as well as writing letters to the Lithuanian government in the 1980's looking for his ancestors.
Barbara Fiorentino is a relation to Rachael (Dolly) Harr (nee Fiorontino). She had a similar situation to Ed in that she was running a desktop program that required Windows 3.1 to run (and we are up to Windows Vista already; well, then). Her extensive tree and research was extracted and merged in so the Pat Harr family could get the benefit of family trees covering both parents. She had nearly 100 individuals with extensive details before the merge.
Binafair Modi is a second cousin of Roshan Modi Harr, Randy's wife, and has been doing extensive research for a number of years. Her work has never been computerized and so was transcribed from a large paper tree diagram by Randy to make her research database available to Roshan's side of the family. Binni had over a hundred family members documented.
Jamshed (Jimmy) Dastur had taken Veera Modi's initial work and cleaned it up and documented it in a series of Excel files. Randy entered the Dastur family history from India from these files into the database here. They had around 75 family members documented. Jimmy is Roshan's maternal Uncle.
Walter and Betty Ann Harr, Randy's parents, have been the inspiration with remembering the many family stories and keeping in touch with all. Wally took their nearly 10,000 archive photos and slides and scanned them all in. Betty Ann then worked with him to try and identify all the people; especially in historical photos. They continue to help Randy confirm and detail information as he uses current online resources to dig deeper into their past.
Jamie Harr has an amazing knack for remembering details and names of relatives that we have barely met. He matches Betty Ann in that regards and serves as a backup and inspiration to get the data cataloged for all to see.
Ester Ritter was find via a DNA match on MyHeritage. She is a 3rd cousin to Randy's cousins due to his uncle Ed. She has been helping with the Slovak research; not only of Ed's ancestors in common,with her but even Randy's own Slovak roots. She is from Slovakia.
Randy Harr is the main site developer. He is a Silicon Valley engineer with the time and interest. His effort to make the genealogy a web-based effort is born of the fact that close relatives are scattered all over the world. So to enlist their help and interest, it has to be a collaborative effort available online at all times.
....