Frequently Asked Questions:
What software do
you use to create your genealogy charts?
MS-Paint to "draw" the chart, using the text tool for the
names and dates, and the line tool to draw the lines. HTML to
display the chart as an Image Map with embedded hyperlinks to preceding
or following charts. Photoshop to add transparency to the
blank areas of the charts\gif files, so that the background image shows
up behind the chart. I don't use any type of commercial genealogy
software to create my pages. I prefer my own visual approach over their
databases or gedcom files.
Can you export your data to a gedcom or other database file so that I
can add your data to my database?
No; The current GEDCOM standard format was developed by LDS in 1996, a
year after I had placed my initial genealogy pages on the Web (in 1995). I share my data
online, and if you wish to add it to your own database, then I have no
problem with that, whatsoever, but it was just never part of my agenda to populate
other people's databases, and since my programming approach does not
generate exportable data, I have no method to provide such data in
exportable/importable format. I'm just trying to document my own
genealogy, and let other Marcotte descendants find their place
in the larger family tree. Since many others do add my data to their
databases, gedcom files should be available elsewhere on the Internet
from those who prefer that approach. Ancestry.com did not launch its Web presence until
1996, so i did not want to have to re-enter all of my data into their database, nor did\do I
believe in paying to share my own data, nor making others need to pay to access it.
What are your sources?
For the Marcotte family, the sources are almost always
posted near the bottom of the page, or on the page that precedes or
follows it. The genealogical dictionary of the Marcotte
Families, by father Jean Marcotte, published in 1983, in Montreal, by
Editions de l'Echo, is used for many branches, but many have been
corrected or updated by direct contact from immediate descendants of
said branches. See also the "About" tab on my genealogy page. The
aforementioned dictionary is now out of print, but I am slowly
adding all of the names from that source into my charts.
Are you still adding to your charts, and may I send you my
family's data?
Not so much, anymore. May main goal was to provide enough information so
that almost any Marcotte who knew their great grandparents names could find his
or her Marcotte branch and trace backward. Adding additional names is fairly
time-consuming and this is just one of many hobbies for me.
Since my site is primarily a single surname (Marcotte) genealogy site, I typically add all
individuals contributed surnamed Marcotte, along with their spouses (if
any), but for females, I generally stop with children of a non-Marcotte
surname after that first non-Marcotte generation, else I would have to
turn away most everyone. I will add dates for living
individuals, if asked, but highly recommend leaving off the dates
for minor children. I still add a few dozen names from the Marcotte Genealogy
Dictionary, every once in a while, but I am increasingly slowing down with that task, as I age.
What is the purpose of displaying all those remotely-related
celebrity relations in your "Famous Cousins" page?
Novelty and self-amusement.
Are there Native Americans in the Marcotte bloodline?
Maybe. There are proven Native Americans in the
bloodline direct descendants of Jean-Baptiste Marcotte (son
of Jean-Francois "Petit Jean"), and of Francois Marcotte and his wife Madeleine Larche, and very possibly others, but the
Marcotte family is a French family, not Native American. The Amerindian
blood in any such line would have originated from
a female spouse, or the ancestor of a female spouse of a
Marcotte. If you are not directly descended from that particular line
or another that has a Native American, then you can't claim Amerindian
ancestry just because a great-great-great-etc-aunt or -uncle married a
Native American. I am descended from one of Petit Jean's
other sons, Antoine Marcotte, so I have no Amerindian descent from
Jean-Baptiste's wife Marie Neskech, an Ottawa woman. I had to find mine
from another line that you may not share, even though you are a
Marcotte, too. The Y-DNA haplogroup for the Marcotte family
is R1b1b2a1, which is a very common Western European haplogroup, which
very nicely fits our Norman French origins.
Are all Marcottes descended from the same family?
All Marcotte families who originated in Canada have been
shown to be related and descend from Charles Marcotte of Fecamp,
Normandy, France. There are other branches of the Marcotte family in
the Picardy and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais regions of France and in Belgium
who are believed to be related, but the definitive connection has never
been found. Virtually all Marcotte families in the United
States derive from migrations of French-Canadian Marcotte descendants
of those same Fecamp roots.
What do the different color lines and the arrows on some of your charts mean?
In order to connect some of the individuals on my charts to their parents
or to their children, I sometimes need to cross over or under another line. To make it
easier to trace one line back or forward, I simply change the color of one of the
criss-crossed lines to make it easier for the eye to follow.
I sometimes do the same when there are numerous parallel lines very near one another.
How reliable are the Descents from Antiquity that are displayed on a few of your pages?
Frankly, not very much at all. They exist solely as a frame of reference from their mythic origins. If you were look up Descent From Antiquity (DFA) in Wikipedia or any source, you will discover that virtually every
single published descent from antiquity is viewed by qualified historians as at best precarious and speculative, and at worst, utterly worthless.
Even though we are all, quite obviously, descended from individuals who existed in antiquity, once a lineage reaches back much farther than about the early 12th century,
the historical documentation for such lineages vanishes rapidly and is drawn primarily from folklore, legend and mythology. Any such DFA displayed on my Web site is intended
not to be viewed as historically accurate or proven, but rather as extracted "as claimed' from those legends, sagas, folklore and mythologies. While unproven,
if I or someone else is try to look up who the heck was Ragnar Lodbrok, or Zaida, or Makir Theodoric Aymeri, King Priam, or Mundzuk, Alexander the Great or any other legendary figure from antiquity, it is only my
intent to share what ancestry and descent those legends and speculative sources claim, so that I and others may have some frame of reference for those supposed genealogies and the relation of those individuals to others of the same era.
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