About this Site

How did we get here?

This project began as what I expected to be a fairly fast and simple exercise to create a “coffee table” photo book displaying three generations of my own ancestors at most, for gifting to my children and grandchildren. That would have focused on the Rucker and Davis branches of my family tree.

In trying to create a balanced big picture, I had to consider my first wife Patsy’s heritage, since we produced three children and now have three grandchildren and two great-granddaughters. Every one of those descendants is a treasured fruit of our family tree. There is very little information to be found about her heritage, so that album chapter would be pretty thin. Of course, my second wife Judy brings her Stauffer-Coffman family tree into the picture. There is a lot of material available for that family.

In creating a repository for the collection and curation of those photos, I was led to genealogical software to help organize the material. So, the coffee table picture story has evolved into an attempt to publish a more detailed genealogical history book to expand upon the three-generation photo album.

That coffee table picture book is still a possibility.
SPECIAL NOTE TO COUSINS & OTHER’S
OUTSIDE KEN & JUDY’S DIRECT LINE

The front-end here focuses on the Rucker-Stauffer ancestry and descendants. However, your personal tree and those of your own parents and siblings can be found here as well. Just click through to the “HuMo Genealogy” subsystem to discover full details on your own branches. Everywhere you see a name on that system, there will be a little folder icon at the top left corner. Hover over or right click on that folder to see the listing of documents and charts providing details on the person selected. You can “walk the tree” in any direction with just a little exploration to learn that subsystem’s navigation.

Genealogy Programs Integration
This site uses Legacy PC software to aggregate discreet data from multiple sources. Our initial dataset came from Ancestry.com. After that initial load, Legacy exchanges person and family details with FamilySearch. Our system, as well as Family Search, also draw upon dozens of external network connected repositories.
HuMo Gen is a very feature rich genealogy web application that I have chosen to integrate into our own interfaces.   (http://humogen.com)
Corrections and additions to this data are also provided by our family tree peers who provide valuable first hand intelligence.

All information in our master files managed by the Legacy application must be manually synched with this web site, so there can be substantial delays in making updates visible here.

External References
Legacy Application
  • Hinting – Legacy 9 searches through billions of records from key websites – FindMyPast, FamilySearch, GenealogyBank, and MyHeritage.
  • Stories – Preserve the stories of your ancestors or your own. The new Stories tool lets you record, organize and print multiple stories for any of your ancestors.
  • Hashtags – Create unlimited hashtags to describe your ancestors. Then search for or print a report of everyone who shares that hashtag.
  • FindAGrave.com Searching – One-click access to your ancestor’s Find A Grave memorial. Create a list of people in your tree with or without Find A Grave IDs.
  • And much, much more!
Legacy 9.0 Deluxe (software for PC via download, PDF manual) (familytreewebinars.com)
Family Search
When it comes to ease of use and the depth of its tools, FamilySearch is perhaps the best free genealogy website on the web. First launched in 1999 and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the ancestry website lets users search through over 2,000 collections and records in order to find their relatives. Its search pages permit a number of finely grained searches through birth, deaths, marriage, and residency records, and it also has a family tree tool that lets you quickly add ancestors you find to your own genealogical tree.
Family Search Home
HuMo Genealogy
HuMo-genealogy is a free, open-source and multilingual server-side program that makes it very easy to publish your genealogical data on the internet as a dynamic and searchable family tree website.
HuMo-genealogy was created and is being constantly developed by Huub Mons in the Netherlands and all credits for this wonderful program go to him.  HuMo-genealogy is classified as a Gedcom to PHP program. This means it knows to take a Gedcom file (files that can be created and exported by all major genealogy programs) and convert it to PHP files, that display dynamic webpages on the internet.

HuMo-genealogy software

If you Wish to Participate

Details on what is available to help you build out your own branch of this tree will be posted here soon. We do have many helpful aids and pathways available to guide you in data collection and submission. Watch the “Documents” section of this web site for some examples. Applying for “Editor” status here will open some other resources for you. Contact [email protected] if you’d like to dig deeper.

  • Update your Family’s data

  • eMail or Message me

  • Update via FamilySearch