For instance, suppose you want to tell us that Ronnie Hinman has a new child. Give us the number that comes after the name (the RIN), as in "Ronnie HINMAN-30312". That way, we can go straight to the database to update the records. The RIN is fixed for each person in the database. The Ahnentafel number, the number that comes before the name, is different for each reload of the website. Let's say we add forty persons to the database and re-upload: Nobody will have the same Ahnentafel number. But each person's RIN will stay the same no matter how many times we reload the website.
A simpler solution would be to copy (Ctrl-C) the name-number and paste (Ctrl-V) it into your e-mail!!
One of our earliest commitments was genealogical research. Some of this we have paid for, but most of it we've done ourselves. We've published nine reports. Eventually, we'll have all of them here on the website. Meanwhile, here are numbers 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, and a new unnumbered report we'll keep for a while.
"As a matter of interest I'm showing the text of the letter I mailed out in 1974. I included a business reply envelope, a membership "application", and a form for listing the names and addresses of other Hinmans. I paid a student at San Jose State University to list all the Hinman names he could find in the US and Canadian telephone directories. He produced 600 names. I mailed to them, and received back about 500 more names, and mailed to them also. Of the 1,100 Hinmans who got the original mailing, more than 250 joined to become the "charter members" of our Society. Some of them are still with us!" - MBH
Set aside the last weekend in September 2006 for our great reunion in Colorado Springs! Reunion director Ken Enright has provided the following information:
September 28 - Thursday evening - optional ice breaker our home
September 29 - Friday all day, with a "formal" group dinner that evening
September 30 - Saturday all day, with a business meeting following breakfast
October 1 - Sunday morning - optional brunch our home
The focus will be on moving genealogy into the digital age. Folks will be asked to bring any CDs, DVDs, etc., they want to share. I will have a CD/DVD burner available, plus a couple of computers that are on line for people to use. The reunion will be held at the Castaways Inn, which is actually located in Manitou Springs where 25 rooms have been reserved for us. There are camping facilities within walking distance, other motels within walking distance, and a very fancy 5 star hotel available close by. I just think it is too expensive for most folks, but some might want to splurge and stay there. -Ken
It was a blast!! We had 54 people there -- the largest reunion ever -- and a wonderful gabfest Saturday in the conference room. Everybody said we should have more gabfests, and we will.
At the business meeting Saturday we voted to have the 2006 reunion in Colorado
Springs, CO, some time in September, date to be determined. We elected Richard Burr
Hinman as president; Al Hinman as vice-president; Joan Hinman as secretary-treasurer,
Phil Hinman as bulletin editor, Munson Hinman as archivist, and Ken Enright as director
of the 2006 reunion. Shown below at the left are Ken and Jan Enright. In the
right-hand photo are our current officers: Munson and Phil in the back row and Al,
Richard, and Joan in the front.
Here's a photo of everyone (except me) taken on the Woodbury bus trip Sunday. (I
missed out on the photo because I took a snooze in the bus!)
Some 450 Hinmans in our database are not connected to John or Sgt. Edward because we haven't been able to find their parents. For this reason, these people can't be seen on our website. Yet, it's possible that we already have their parents: we just don't know who they are! They could be descended from John, from Edward, or from any other immigrant. You yourself may be listed here!
Here's a chance to do some genealogical research yourself! As an experiment, we've uploaded several of these "parentless Hinmans" to the website, with all the documentation we have and all their descendants we know about. If you live in the area where these folks lived, or if you are related to them, or if you have access to church records or vital records from those areas, maybe you can help us find their parents. The secrets probably lie in family Bibles, unpublished family histories, probate, and land records. Some of these parentless Hinmans are:
These sources started our database with some 3,000-plus names. At present we have more than 43,449 names and more than 15,558 marriages, most of which have been contributed by members. We've added more than 8,000 names in just the past year! As a matter of interest, we have 108 pairs of twins but only one set of triplets! Direct descendants of the gateway ancestors so far number more than 24,600.
I want to pay special tribute to Donald Gerard Hinman of Endicott, NY, and Betty K Barry of Grants Pass, OR, for their tireless efforts all these years. Betty flew down to San Jose in 1975 and spent several days with us making the original family group pages, and Donald has sent in hundreds of pages of data he has collected from libraries, vital records, microfilm, and other sources.
The Association has blank forms for anyone who wants to add records to our databank. For information on how to do this see the paragraphs below.
Most source notes in the following pages are self-explanatory, especially
those citing books and page numbers. Many notes come from vital records and
old land record books and are usually abbreviated. For example,
Stratford LR2-248 refers to Stratford (CT) Land Records, volume 2,
page 248. In the early days, births, marriages, deaths, and christenings
were recorded in the land records. In some Notes you will see the initials
SSDI. They stand for Social Security Death Index, a database of more than
68,960,000 names
maintained by Rootsweb.com.
Where death dates are not given to us, we can sometimes retrieve them from the SSDI.
We would especially like to receive your data if you have made a connection to someone already in our files. But, even if you haven't established a connection, we'll be happy to enter the data for you. If you are in the database, please include the number after your name in your correspondence.
You can go right up your ancestral line with these forms. After doing one family, start a new form with the parent of the previous family as the child.
Finally, if you don't know who your earliest ancestor connects with, send us your data anyway and we'll do our best to make a connection for you. Sometimes we have your ancestor in our database but show him/her as unmarried with no children. Suddenly, your information arrives and we then have a more complete pedigree.
It's important to provide dates and places if you know them. This is a great aid to research. For instance, if we don't have the county where a person was born, in which of the 3,660 counties should we look for a birth record? It even helps to know where a person lived, as we leave paper trails almost everywhere. If you don't know where someone was born, but you know where he lived, just type "lived in Rockland County" or wherever.
Let us hear from you!
When we organized the Hinman Family Association in 1974, we wanted a logo for our stationery and other literature. We decided to adopt the coat of arms published in Burke's Peerage for some unknown Hinman. We omitted the mantle and the crest, and simplified the style of the blazon. But we did follow to the letter the description published by Burke:
Vert, on a chev or, three roses gules, slipped and leaved of the first.The field color is always named first, then the charge, then the lesser things. Translated: Green, on a chevron gold, three roses red, slipped (that is, the stem cut at an angle) and leaved (with leaves left on) of the first (that is, the first color, which was green).
This design was adopted as the logo of the Hinman Family Association. We show it on all our publications, including the web pages. Feel free to download it to your own computer for your own use. Place the cursor on the image, right click, and select "Save image as", then put it anywhere on your disk.
Graphics and guest book designed by Chris Sigrist of Santa Rosa, CA.
Please report any errors to thinman(at)hinmanfamily.com
This web page produced 23 Dec 2005 by Ancestral Quest 2002, a product of Incline Software, LC.