Watson Family Tree
Seven generations. Twelve countries. Four centuries of marriages and migrations across the Atlantic.
The Watson family, reconstructed from census returns, vital records, military service files, ship manifests, church registers, probate records, and newspaper archives.
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By the numbers
- 2,614
- people
- 2,533
- primary-source records
- 1671
- earliest verified ancestor
Stored as git-versioned markdown. Queried as a graph.
Q.When was Col. Nicholas Greenberry born?
A.The tombstone at St. Anne’s, Annapolis reads “Aetatis Suae 70” with a death date of Dec 17, 1697 — putting his birth around 1627. A 1640 baptism record at Irnham, Lincolnshire matches the name but conflicts by 13 years and is unverified. Going with the tombstone.
Tombstone (Find A Grave #12216842) · Irnham parish records (disputed)
How it's built
Four choices that make this different from the typical hobby tree.
Tiered evidence
Sources graded A through E, from government vital records down to unsourced tree data. Parent promotion requires corroborating Tier A–C records — thin-evidence ancestors stay in the research queue, not the verified tree.
Records as first-class nodes
Every census return, vital record, military file, and ship manifest is its own structured entity with key facts extracted per participant. Queryable by person, date, or place — not just a freetext footnote.
Reproducible from markdown
The Neo4j graph is derived from git-versioned markdown files. Delete it, run one command, get the same tree back. Validation runs before every rebuild — no broken state shipped.
Reasons over the data
A research assistant that reads the graph directly. Asks questions of real people, places, and records — not freetext bios. Cites sources by tier and flags conflicts when the evidence disagrees.
Tour
Research assistant
Q.When did William Watson leave England for California?
A.Last UK trace: the 1881 England Census at age 16, in his father Peter Watson’s household at Castle Northwich, Cheshire. No marriage, no later UK census, no ship manifest yet found. He next surfaces in a Berkeley, California death record dated October 28, 1951 — a 70-year window for the crossing. Open thread.
1881 England Census (RG11/3522/64/22) · Ancestry death records · FamilySearch LRQM-ZFT