Plans for a new Olmste(a)d Family History

For many years, I believed that I was going to publish a new Olmste(a)d Family History. I realized a couple of years ago that would never happen for a number of reasons: size (scope), still gathering information, lack of documentation, pictures, and overall cost considering potential sale.

The scope of such a work -- including all descendants even with change of surname of all possible lines -- is much larger than might be expected. My genealogical software (Family Tree Maker) counts the number of actual descendants and the number of book pages (8.5x11) that it would take to print any selected line
        Progenitor               Community                 # descendants    # pages
        Richard                   Ridgefield, CT             14,296                1441
        James                     Hartford, CT                10,974                1082
        Jabez                      Ware, MA                     7,889                  704
        Stephen                   Lycoming Co., PA         1,153                  107
        David                      Luzerne Co., PA               727                    64
        Jacob (Austutz)       Tuscarawas Co., OH         174                    24
I have over 500 other family lines extending two or more generations, thousands of single family groups, and many thousands of those that I have yet to tie to even a parent or spouse. When you also count the "non-descendants, i.e., spouses, parents of spouses, and other persons tied to the families, I have over 95,000 names. I currently project that the number could grow to the 150,000 range when all available materials have been consulted, including the 1940 census due to be released in a few years. When we indexed the 1912 Olmsted Family in America and its four supplements in 1988, we had about 32,000 entries; when duplicates were combined, due to the same person being listed in more than one place, we had about 25,000 entries.

Others have looked at publishing their work. Roger Olmsted of Georgia has spent a lifetime compiling data of the Richard line, including extensive documentation. His work easily exceeds 1500 pages without considering photographs that might be included.

It took three years just to computerize (in Family Tree Maker) the names plus the dates and places of birth, death, and marriages extracted from my files and the 1912 Olmsted Family in America. Since then I have been adding more data, including reading every available census on line (about 50% done at this time) and other indexed entries as they are located.

Documentation needs to be added to support the basic information. I skipped that in my initial effort of computerization and must now go back to include that. One of the problems here is that the 1912 genealogy has no documentation -- it is basically a "stud list" -- and has about a five percent error rate of pure typos as well as facts and lineage wrongly reported to the compilers.

Photographs and other graphics enhance such a work. Collecting and processing them is time consuming.

The cost of production of printed books for limited demand is high. For over thirty years I have been involved in the industry, specializing in local, regional, and family history and sources for genealogists (Heart of the Lakes Publishing) and fully realize that just the print and bind costs would exceed what many would be consider spending to obtain the complete work. To that end, years ago I had decided that such a work would appear in three volumes: Richard, James, and other lines. I also fully realize that the typical person who might be interested in their family history is really only interested in their own ancestral line with little or no desire to have information on individuals far removed from them, i.e.,. 10th cousins for example.

Currently, I have no plans to "publish" my genealogical collection of information on the Olmste(a)d families. In the future there may be some of the information published on the Internet but I would cut it off a hundred years back to preserve the information of living persons as so many today are worried about ID theft. That decision could be modified on a case-by-case basis with consent of specific families.

Today, we have an alternative of traditional book publishing (ink on paper) by publishing on CD. The cost is primarily associated with converting data into the format to be stored; the reproduction cost after the master has been created is minimal. For those wanting just data, this is ideal as the CD is searchable eliminating the need for indexing.

At this time, I am quite willing to share my information with individuals who request their own line. I do this sending a printed document rather than electronically as I don't want to see mass importing of information into other's computer files.

The ancestry of the family in England has been discussed for many years. Outlines and some data appeared in the 1912 genealogy and later supplements. More recently others have done some research that has been published on a limited basis. Roger Olmsted has been working on a definitive history of the family in England; as a consummate researcher with extensive documentation we look forward to his publication.