How the OGSPI Website Works

QUICK OVERVIEW

Our major challenge in designing a Genealogical indexing system is making it work even though a person's name is not the same on every piece of paper or source document.
The Irish Rovers said it best in their song "The Orange and the Green":
"I was christened David Anthony but all in spite of that -" "To me father I was William while me mudder called me Pat"

Edmund MILLSON Junior and wife Elizabeth SYER had a daughter born in Hope_Township Durham_County about 1858
She shows in the census records as:
   Bisheba age 4 in Hope Township 1861 census page 50
   Bursheba age 13 in Hope Township 1871 census family 213
   Berthshaba age 23 Hope Township 1881 census family 054
   Bersheba age 33 in Hope Township 1891 census family 183

Etienne LAROCHELLE and Adelaide LAPIERRE were married 1841 in Ottawa.
They moved during the 1850's to Rolph Township in Renfrew County
One daughter, born about 1847, later married Joseph BOURGEOIS
She shows in the census records as:
   Ermine age 14 with parents in Rolph Township 1861 census page 01
   Armoni age 24 with Joseph on her parents farm in Rolph Township 1871 census family 042
   Adeline age 34 with Joseph Rolph Township 1881 census family 091
   Delaina age 44 with Joseph in Rolph Township 1891 census family 116

Take a closer look at all the underlined text in our two examples above.
Test a few with your mouse and see what happens.

Surnames like MILLSON  SYER  LAROCHELLE  LAPIERRE  BOURGEOIS are all clickable links into A-Z alphabetic lists.
Locations like Hope_Township  Durham_County  Rolph Township  Renfrew County are all clickable links into geographic files.
Every census family in OGSPI has a unique and clickable target link so cross references are fast and smooth.
Every marriage in OGSPI has a unique and clickable target link so married 1841 takes you to the Letter "L" 1841 Marriage by Groom Surname file and then scrolls down to Etienne & Adelaide.

All information is pre-sorted and sequenced before uploading so you never wait for search results.

Consider indexing examples of Hamilton, Bruce, Lindsay, and Wayne. Each can be a surname, a given name, or a geographic location.
   surname:       Beatrice Hamilton - wife of humourist and author Stephen Leacock,
   given name:  Hamilton Burger - district attorney in the Perry Mason series,
   location:       Hamilton Township in Northumberland County, Ontario,
   location:       City of Hamilton in Wentworth County, Ontario.

OGSPI has the simplest immaginable method of distinguishing each:
   SURNAMES - HAMILTON BRUCE LINDSAY WAYNE
   Given Names - Hamilton Bruce Lindsay Wayne
   locations - @ca.on.wentworth_county.hamilton_city @ca.on.northumberland_county.hamilton_township @ca.on.bruce_county.lindsay_township @ca.on.victoria_county.ops_township.lindsay_town @us.mi.wayne_county.detroit

Computer logic detects the @ca.on. sequence at the start of Ontario place names so it is relatively easy to automatically link through to Ontario Genealogical Society Branches.

In OGSPI we organize information in text paragraphs with CAPITALIZED SURNAMES.
Text to HTML conversion logic scans each line from right to left and builds a list of the CAPITALIZED WORDS.
After scanning a paragraph the logic clones the paragraph so it repeats for every contained surname.
After sorting and converting all paragraphs the logic builds an All Categories front end ( master surname index ) for everyone.
This approach automatically takes care of details like:
   Maiden names of married women,
   Sponsors or godparents at a baptism,
   Witnesses at a wedding,
   Strays in a census family,
   Stepchildren with a different surname,
   Interconnected names on a cemetery family plot.

In each of our Famous Canadians group examples the second given name is an ancestral surname ( his mother's maiden name ) so we capitalize it as well giving:
   Reverend Thomas CLEMENT DOUGLAS aka Tommy - Baptist Minister and Premier of Saskatchewan
   Stephen BUTLER LEACOCK - author and humorist
   Lester BOWLES PEARSON aka Mike - aviator, diplomat, Prime Minister
   Pierre ELLIOTT TRUDEAU - lawyer and Prime Minister

Source documents that we want to index can have the names as above or surname first like TRUDEAU Pierre ELLIOTT or LEACOCK Stephen BUTLER. OGSPI logic works independent of the sequence.

Welcome Home

OGSPI uses letters of the alphabet to organize information into categories for indexing:
   a  - Surnames in Cemeteries
   b  - Birth, Baptism, Birth Announcement
   c  - Census
   d  - Death or Monumental Inscription ( actual date and location of death, or funeral, or burial, or tombstone )
   e  - Education, Election, Employment ( includes athletics )
   f  - Family History, People in Books
   g  - Marriage by Groom Surname
   l  - Land
   m  - Marriage, Engagement, Anniversary
   o  - Obituary or In Memoriam ( usually referenced to a newspaper, place of publication, publication date )
   p  - Photograph
   q  - Query
   s  - Ship's Crew and Passsenger List
   u  - United Empire Loyalists
   w  - War and Military

OGSPI text & html filenames normally start with a category letter and then a 3 digit number for the decade - for example:
   m190durham.txt     for 1900-1909 Durham County marriages
   b187j000.htm     for 1870's births J.. surnames
   w191i000.htm     for World War One I.. surnames
We also use three digit decade numbers to subdivide the OGSPI website into folders as: www.ogs.on.ca/ogspi/187/b187j000.htm and www.ogs.on.ca/ogspi/191/w191i000.htm

Welcome Home

The popular abreviation St. can be Street or Saint. The French Ste. is short for Sainte meaning a female saint.
OGSPI volunteers normally expand St. and Ste. to full words as part of the transcribing and typing process to give:
   Saint Joseph's Hospital in a birth notice or obituary.
   Saint Catharines, Saint Thomas, and Sault Sainte Marie as Ontario place names.
   Main Street in the 1901 or 1911 census

OGSPI uses the underscore character when it is important for the computer to tie two or more words together as one:
   SAINT_AMAND or SAINT_AMANT or IN_FLANDERS_FIELDS
Welcome Home

We start with two tombstone photographs taken 2009-11-20 and uploaded to folder www.ogs.on.ca/ogspi/2009foto

We could describe the location as: Sudbury Anglican Cemetery, Sudbury, Sudbury District, Ontario, Canada.
but OGSPI takes a different approach. We call it an alphageographic address.
@ca.on.sudbury_district.sudbury.sudbury_anglican_cemetery.
Note that the OGSPI alphageographic address format:
   starts with the @ symbol, then the country,
   is always lower case without spaces,
   sequences the locations left to right from largest to smallest,
   uses the period . symbol as a separator between locations,
   uses the underscore _ symbol when it is important for two or more words to stay together for indexing.

OGSPI source file information is always organized as paragraphs of text.
The vertical bar character | is used as a separator between paragraphs.
|
d@ca.on.sudbury_district.sudbury.sudbury_anglican_cemetery 1948
Caroline May STULL ARTHUR     Born May 5 1882    Died Sept 9 1948
Photograph of stone taken 2009-11-20 by John Allan of Ontario Genealogical Society Sudbury District Branch
|
We combine the category letter, d for death , with the alphageographic location, and the year 1948 to produce a header line that tells the computer logic how to sort and sequence this paragraph
Note also that upper case CAROLINE MAY on the stone becomes proper case text Caroline May in our source file.
We also add a credit line at the bottom of the paragraph that links to the photograph and to Ontario Genealogical Society Sudbury District Branch

This next example is a little more complicated - husband and wife with death dates in different decades:

|
d@ca.on.sudbury_district.sudbury.sudbury_anglican_cemetery 1941
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Hugh ARTHUR M.D.C.M. 1861-1941
Anna Louise LOCKWOOD Beloved wife of R. H. ARTHUR M.D. 1862-1925
Photograph of stone taken 2009-11-20 by John Allan of Ontario Genealogical Society Sudbury District Branch
   ( abreviation M.D. is Medical Doctor. M.D.C.M. is Medical Doctor Canadian Militia )
|
Note that we expand Lieut-Col. to Lieutenant-Colonel and add a line explaining M.D.C.M. and M.D.
The comment line is indented and smaller than the other text lines so it doesn't distract.
We force OGSPI to index this paragraph twice ( 1920's and 1940's ) by copying, pasting, and then changing the header date:
|
d@ca.on.sudbury_district.sudbury.sudbury_anglican_cemetery 1925
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Hugh ARTHUR M.D.C.M. 1861-1941
Anna Louise LOCKWOOD Beloved wife of R. H. ARTHUR M.D. 1862-1925
Photograph of stone taken 2009-11-20 by John Allan of Ontario Genealogical Society Sudbury District Branch
   ( abreviation M.D. is Medical Doctor. M.D.C.M. is Medical Doctor Caradian Militia )
|

Most of these other websites have a front end with boxes where you type SURNAME, Given Name, Province, County.
Designs like this quietly ignore the ugly reality of life before typewriters - A person's name is not always spelled the same way on every piece of paper that gets indexed ! !

Here is an example from Hope Township in Durham County
Joseph Thomas CHAMBERS and wife Elizabeth MCKEOWN had a son Joseph George CHAMBERS born about 1856. Joseph George married Margaret BOYD.
The census records show:
   CHAMBERS J. George age 5 with parents Hope Township 1861 census district 046 page 071 line 17
   CHAMBERS Joseph G. age 15 with parents Hope Township 1871 census district 51a4 family 020
   CHAMBERS George age 25 & Margret age 21 Hope Township 1881 census district 127a1 family 219
   CHAMBERS Joseph age 34 & Margaret age 32 Hope Township 1891 census district 058b1 family 283
You can easily see that a search for George gives 1861 & 1881 results only
and a search for Joseph gives 1871 & 1891 results only.

We use the example farther along of Edward Walter STULL born and baptized 1904 in Sudbury.
Pay close attention and you will see him called "Ted" in his father's 1926 obituary.
Edward Walter's father is documented in the original text of our examples as:
    W. W. STULL
    Walter W. STULL B.A.Sc.
    Mr STULL
    William STULL
    Walter STULL
    Walter William STULL
    William Walter STULL
Edward Walter's mother is documented in the original text of our examples as:
    CARLEY Caroline (1904 baptism)
    Carrie CARLIE (1926 obituary)
    CARLEY Caroline May (1901 marriage)
    Caroline May STULL ARTHUR (1948 tombstone)
   
Other websites force every user to guess how a person's name was typed into the database.
Guessing wrong shows the familiar error message No records found to match your search criteria
    Welcome Home

Town Mourns Loss of Pioneer in W. W. STULL
Is Stricken at Lodge Meeting - Many at Funeral
In the loss of Walter W. Stull B.A.Sc. Ontario
 Land Surveyor, well known member of the firm
 of Demorest & Stull, whose sudden and untimeley
 death occured Wednesday evening February 10th,
 after only a few hours illness, Sudbury loses
 one of its most esteemed citizens, a pioneer
 who has played a large and important part in
 the development of the North County, and a
 thorough gentleman.
Stricken with apoplexy while he was addressing
 a Masonic Lodge meeting Tuesday night he was
 removed to Saint Joseph's Hospital but never
 regained consciousness, the end coming
 peacefully Wednesday afternoon at 5 o'clock.
 The late Mr Stull was in his fifty-second year
 and had been a resident of Sudbury for
 twenty-six years.
The funeral was held yesterday under Masonic
 auspices and was largely attended by townspeople.
 Services were held at the family residence and
 at Church of the Epiphany, which was taxed to
 capacity with sorowing friends. Interment was
 made in the English Church Cemetery.
Few surveyors in the North Country were as well
 known or versatile as was Mr Stull. His was a
 busy life to the end and he was never happier
 than when engaged upon a difficult undertaking
 that took him out into the wilds where he was
 always at home.
In April 1901 he was married to Miss Carie Carlie,
 a sister of Mrs Demorest.
In Partnership
After the retirement of Mr. Sylvester from the
 firm in 1903, Mr Stull was taken in as a partner
 and in 1904 the business required another partner
 and was known as Demorest Stull & Lowe.
 It continued under this name until 1910 when it
 became Demorest & Stull and has remained so ever
 since.
In addition to his widow the late Mr. Stull is
 survived by five children: Ted who is in the
 flying corps at Sault Sainte Marie, Wilfred,
 Kathleen, Elisabeth and Eric all at home.

Preparing this obituary text file for posting to OGSPI involves several steps:
   1 Adding a header line that tells the computer how to index the item.
   2 Typing the information as a simple text file.
   3 Adding quote marks to show that we are transcribing exact words.
   4 Adding <strong> and </strong> html tags so the first 2 lines show same as in the newspaper.
   5 Capitalizing surnames - in this case STULL DEMOREST LOWE CARLIE SYLVESTER
   6 Adding a simple plus sign at the end of each line for automatic word wrap.
   7 Adding a trailer credit line
   8 Saving the file as c:\00\sud\o1926sudstar.txt

The resulting text paragraph looks like:

o@ca.on.sudbury_district.sudbury.sudbury_star 1926-02-13 published
<strong> "Town Mourns Loss of Pioneer in W. W. STULL"
"Is Stricken at Lodge Meeting - Many at Funeral"</strong> 
"In the loss of Walter W. STULL B.A.Sc. Ontario Land Surveyor, well known+
 member of the firm of DEMOREST & STULL, whose sudden and untimeley death+
 occured Wednesday evening February 10th, after only a few hours ilness,+
 Sudbury loses one of its most esteemed citizens, a pioneer who has played a+
 large and important part in the development of the North County, and a thorough+
 gentleman."
"Stricken with apoplexy while he was addressing a Masonic Lodge meeting Tuesday+
 night he was removed to Saint Joseph's Hospital but never regained consciousness,+
 the end coming peacefully Wednesday afternoon at 5 o'clock. The late Mr STULL+
 was in his fifty-second year and had been a resident of Sudbury for twenty-six+
 years."
"The funeral was held yesterday under Masonic auspices and was largely attended+
 by townspeople. Services were held at the family residence and at Church of+
 the Epiphany, which was taxed to capacity with sorowing friends. Interment+
 was made in the English Church Cemetery."
"Few surveyors in the North Country were as well known or versatile as was Mr+
 STULL. His was a busy life to the end and he was never happier than when+
 engaged upon a difficult undertaking that took him out into the wilds where+
 he was always at home."
"In April 1901 he was married to Miss Carie CARLIE, a sister of Mrs DEMOREST."
"In Partnership"
"After the retirement of Mr. SYLVESTER from the firm in 1903, Mr STULL was+
 taken in as a partner and in 1904 the business required another partner and+
 was known as DEMOREST STULL & LOWE. It continued under this name until 1910+
 when it became DEMOREST & STULL and has remained so ever since."
"In addition to his widow the late Mr. STULL is survived by five children:
 Ted who is in the flying corps at Sault Sainte Marie, Wilfred, Kathleen,+
 Elisabeth and Eric all at home."
Indexed 2002-04-06 by volunteers at OGS Sudbury Branch

OGSPI headers may seem a bit strange at first. Their greatest value is for consistant and organized sequencing within a surname.
Results are posted to folder www.ogs.on.ca/ogspi/192/o192s000.htm Welcome Home

STULL o@ca.on.sudbury_district.sudbury.sudbury_star 1926-02-13 published
Town Mourns Loss of Pioneer in W. W. STULL
Is Stricken at Lodge Meeting - Many at Funeral
In the loss of Walter W. STULL B.A.Sc. Ontario Land Surveyor, well known member of the firm of DEMOREST & STULL, whose sudden and untimeley death occured Wednesday evening February 10th, after only a few hours ilness, Sudbury loses one of its most esteemed citizens, a pioneer who has played a large and important part in the development of the North County, and a thorough gentleman.
Stricken with apoplexy while he was addressing a Masonic Lodge meeting Tuesday night he was removed to Saint Joseph's Hospital but never regained consciousness, the end coming peacefully Wednesday afternoon at 5 o'clock. The late Mr STULL was in his fifty-second year and had been a resident of Sudbury for twenty-six years.
The funeral was held yesterday under Masonic auspices and was largely attended by townspeople. Services were held at the family residence and at Church of the Epiphany, which was taxed to capacity with sorowing Friends. Interment was made in the English Church Cemetery.
Few surveyors in the North Country were as well known or versatile as was Mr STULL. His was a busy life to the end and he was never happier than when engaged upon a difficult undertaking that took him out into the wilds where he was always at home.
In April 1901 he was married to Miss Carie CARLIE, a sister of Mrs DEMOREST.
In Partnership
After the retirement of Mr. SYLVESTER from the firm in 1903, Mr STULL was taken in as a partner and in 1904 the business required another partner and was known as DEMOREST STULL & LOWE. It continued under this name until 1910 when it became DEMOREST & STULL and has remained so ever since.
In addition to his widow the late Mr. STULL is survived by five children:
Ted who is in the flying corps at Sault Sainte Marie, Wilfred, Kathleen, Elisabeth and Eric all at home.
Indexed 2002-04-06 by volunteers at OGS Sudbury Branch