Archive info

Begun

2 October 2026

Compiled by

Jordan Ellingwood, with help from Claude

Holds

1,467 people · 948 sources · 582 places · 15 lines · 265 pictures · 4 books

Last compiled

11 October 2026

People lists everyone by surname, women under their maiden names. Type in the box at the top to narrow it by name or year; press / on any page to jump straight there. Lines shows the same people a family at a time: each line walks back from one ancestor, with its story, its people oldest first, and their lifelines across the centuries.

Each person's page has their record (every fact with the sources behind it), a pedigree of three generations, their family, pictures and notes, and the questions still open about them.

The Tree opens on the youngest generation with their parents and grandparents. Drag to move, and scroll or pinch to zoom. ▲ on a card adds that person's parents; ▼ under a couple shows their children. Select anyone for their profile, and then Center the tree here to start again from them. A person's own page has a button that does the same, Family tree. The address keeps what is open, so a view can be bookmarked or sent, and Back steps back a person.

Any line can be the seed. Start the tree where a line begins, then follow ▲ up through it:

For every ancestor at once, the Rings, under Projects, draws them as a fan chart, one ring per generation; the ring number on an ancestor's page counts out from its centre.

The Map draws each person as a path across a globe: every place they are on record, in date order (born, married, where they lived, each child, died), with an arc for each move. Add someone by name, or a whole line from the list. On a person's own page, the button Migration map opens it with their path drawn in, and each place in their record opens the map on that place. A person's card lists their parents and children, and a name adds them in the same colour; Migration steps through their life one place at a time. The buttons at the bottom go to the world, Britain, New England, the Midwest or the Pacific Northwest, and Fit frames everyone shown.

The address keeps who is on the map, so a view can be shared: for example, the families of the book Molata, the Collins and Reed lines.

Books holds two kinds. Some are written from the research: Molata, on the Collins and Reed lines from colonial Virginia to the Pacific Northwest, and the still unfinished The Ellingwood Line, both with linked footnotes. The others are the family's own, scanned page by page: Mollie (Holbrook) Pfeiffer's typescript genealogy of the Holbrook and Low families, from the 1930s, and Cudge, the memoir of Richard Everett Ellingwood Sr., dated Christmas 1970.

In a scanned book each page sits beside its transcription, and Text shows the whole book as running text, to read straight through or search with the browser's find. Cudge's memoir has its curiosities flagged under Of note. Mollie's claims are checked against the records under Checked, with a coloured flag on the page for each, and the people she names show what was found on their own pages.

The Gallery keeps the family's pictures: portraits, photographs, documents and clippings, maps, and images of records. Show one kind at a time, or choose a person to see every picture they are in. Each picture gives its date, place and where it came from, and on group photographs, who is who. A person's pictures also show on their page and in the tree's profile.

The research isn't finished. Research follows the most important questions as research threads (10 open), each with the case so far, a dated trail of every record found and ruling made, where it stands, and what to look for next.To-do lists the rest, rebuilt from the data every time it changes: every open question, the weaker links between parent and child, and events still waiting for a source.

Every fact, and every link between parent and child, carries two labels: how we know it and how sure we are.

A compiled source alone is at most probable, and a documented fact can still be only probable when the record might belong to someone else of the same name. In the pedigrees and the tree, the line to each parent is drawn to match: solid for documented, dashed for compiled, dotted for inferred.

Anyone in the family can add to the archive. Photographs, letters, certificates, a family Bible, a name written on the back of a picture, a story told at the table: send them to Jordan Ellingwood at [email to be added]. Records are transcribed and cited, pictures go into the Gallery, and each is credited to whoever shared it.

A story with no record behind it is still worth having. It goes in labelled as tradition, and it often points to the record that proves or corrects it. And if something here looks wrong, say so: the reasoning behind every conclusion is kept, so a correction can be checked and the page put right.