Contacting
the Project Developer
Please
note that a response may not be immediate. The Project Developer has a large backlog
of unanswered e-mail messages, published works, and material presented by mail.
If you wish to contribute to the project
or report an error on the Sprague website, there are two approaches you may use.
1. A Suggest button is available
on any personal information screen. Clicking on the Suggest button causes a report
form to be displayed where you can provide the details of your suggestion If you
need to send information such as a Register Report or Family Group Sheet, then
you will need to send an e-mail using your e-mail system and sending the appropriate
information/report as an attachment.
2. For your convenience, the two
links that follow can be used to generate an e-mail to either the Sprague Project
Developer or the Sprague Website Webmaster. The Project Developer should be selected
if reporting genealogical data corrections or additions. The Webmaster should
be selected if reporting problems in navigating the Sprague website.
To contact the Project Developer, click here.
To contact the Webmaster, click here.
When the Project Developer sends information from
The Sprague Database to a correspondent, it usually will be sent in PDF format.
You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader (version 5 or later) installed to view PDF
files. The current version may be downloaded from Adobe. (See red/yellow Adobe
link below.)
Anyone who has updated information for the Sprague Project
should submit the material as an RTF (rich text formatting) document. RTF documents
are preferred because they can be read and updated using virtually any word processing
program.
If you wish to submit such corrections, contact the Project
Developer and identify the Sprague line that you’d like to update. I’ll send you,
electronically, an RTF Register report covering the line you wish to update. Then
you can, at your leisure, edit, preferably in RED, the RTF document and return
a copy to me electronically. I can then quite efficiently work through the document
making the changes indicated in red to the Sprague database.
Reports will be in the form of an Ancestral Report
for you or your direct ancestor. To avoid releasing information about living individuals,
descendant reports will not be provided.
The Project Developer does not fulfill requests
for GEDCOM files for a number of reasons. Because of the enormous size of the
Sprague Project database, GEDCOM files take much longer to generate than do comparable
PDF reports. Even though GEDCOMs can be produced to the existing GEDCOM standard
(GEDCOM 5.5), inconsistencies between various genealogy programs cause errors
when exporting from one genealogy program for import to a different genealogy
program. Finally, and most significantly, differing user standards create undesirable
results when moving data via GEDCOM from one user to another. For example, place
names may be defined by one user in the form of "Boston, Suffolk Co., MA, USA"
and by another user as "Boston, Suffolk, MA". Thus, importing from one to the
other results in two entries for Boston in the location file. The project developer
never imports GEDCOM files to the Sprague Database and prefers not to provide
such information.
Policy on Use of Information
from this Website
The Sprague Database was established as a respository
of the Sprague
family line and its history. We gladly share the data contained
in this website, with certain restrictions. Anyone may
use the genealogical data in his or her personal research,
but the data must not be distributed to any commercial
website or commercial entity. Commercial websites/entities
may not use the contents of this website without written
permission, nor may the contents be used for any commercial
genealogical project without the written permission of
the Project Developer.
Hundreds
of Sprague cousins have contributed the results of their
research to this compilation. The information on this
website represents countless hours of research, dozens
of boxes of data, voluminous correspondence, and considerable
expense.
Policy on recording current
generations
The Sprague Database contains extensive information
on current generations and living individuals. However, the policy of the Sprague
Project prohibits making that information available on the Sprague website, thereby
protecting the privacy of
these
individuals.
Notes from the Project Developer
(August 26, 2005)
As I write this, Arnold Sprague, our webmaster is
doing those steps necessary to bring our new Sprague Website to the public.
The new data section replaces
the indexes and data portion of the old web site. It uses a software product, “The
Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding” (TNG), which allows searching
of The Sprague Website.. Please visit the TNG website, <http://www.lythgoes.net/genealogy/features.php>,
to learn about the features provided in our new website. Thank you to the
individuals that offered to beta test the new website and gave freely of
their time to
make it better.
In providing the new website, we had two objectives. First, we wanted to provide
access to all deceased individuals recorded in the Sprague Database. Second,
we wanted to provide much more powerful research tools for visitors to the
Sprague Website. There are significant differences between the old website
and the new:
- The old site contained only deceased Sprague descendants and their spouses.
The new site contains those individuals, plus about 65,000 additional
deceased people from associate lines and Sprague spousal ancestral lines.
The number
of individuals available for study has grown from about 100,000 on the
old site to about 165,000 individuals on the new site. Researchers now will
be
able to trace the lines of individuals who married Sprague ancestors.
For example, my great great grandmother, Phoebe Sprague was a Sprague descendant
whose ancestry could be traced on the old website. Her husband, Lewis
Cole,
was not a Sprague descendant, so his ancestry could not be traced on
the old website. His ancestry CAN now be traced on the new website.
- The index function from the old site has been replaced with the powerful
new TNG index search function, which is based on all recorded information
about
an individual. This allows searches based on any recorded information,
such as place of birth or wedding date. This is a great improvement over
looking
for a name in an alphabetized list since it allows multiple facts about
a person to be combined in a single search.
- The old website had no way to search by geographic area. The TNG system
allows a researcher to display a location and then to search for all individuals
with a presence at that location. For example, you can search for Platteville,
Grant Co., WI, USA and then display all individuals who had an event
recorded
in Platteville. Please note that although TNG provides the capability
to download GEDCOM files, no GEDCOM downloads will be permitted. Where possible,
the locations in the Sprague Project are recorded in the form “town/city,
County Co., State, Country” as was illustrated in the above Platteville
example.
- On the old website, researchers could print only Family Group Sheets. The
new system offers many additional reports, such as Descendant Register
Reports, Ancestral Charts, Descendant Charts, Relationship Charts, and others.
Some
very nice reports are now available.
- A Submit function is available by use of icons (immediately below the Quick
Links) in the upper right of each data screen to allow you to report
suggestions you encounter in the new Sprague Website and to report corrections
and additions
to genealogy information.
- A glossary and help information are available from the Quick Links provided
in the upper right portion of all windows. It is suggested that you visit
each page available from the Quick Links as many of the pages have updated
content on the new website.
The Sprague Website, by project policy, MUST NOT contain data for living persons.
If you find data for any living person, or any deceased person shown as living,
please report it. We have the ability to correct information as soon as reported
to us.
One final note. The new Sprague Website will contain pictures of individuals,
grave stones and other items of interest. Please Do NOT SEND such material
to the Project Developer without first describing the material and requesting
approval forward it. Pictures are quite large and take significant time to
process and must be carefully managed to avoid an e-mail and processing overload.
We want your suggestions for improving the Sprague Website. We hope you’ll
agree that we’ve taken a major step into the 21st century of genealogy
websites and remind you that all of this all of this is brought to you without
charge as it is funded by the Project Webmaster, Project Developer and others
who have provided financial gifts to the Sprague Project. I think you’ll
agree that the combined efforts of all who have contributed information to
the Sprague Project have caused the development of a very unique and exceptional
project in support of documenting the Sprague Family History Enjoy the Sprague
website of the 21st century. Please go visit it soon at:
http://www.sprague-database.org
Then use the Suggest function to provide us your opinions of the new site
and any suggestions for improving it.
A. Arnold Sprague, Sprague Project Webmaster
Richard E. (Dick) Weber, Sprague Project Developer
(April 5, 2004): On March 31st, I sent the
First Quarter Sprague Project Update to about 1,100
individuals who contacted the Sprague Project
in the past. Fifteen of these messages were returned
because the e-mail address I had recorded was no
longer valid. A new obstacle, spawned by today's high volume
of spam mail, surfaced. Around ten of the updates
were held by spam detection software and required my quick
response to verify that I'm not a spam sender. By the time I
responded, the messages had already been destroyed.
(October 16, 2002): The Upwey Mill in Dorsetshire, England and adjacent
house are the earlier home of the sons of Edward Sprague: Richard, Lt. Ralph,
and Edward. I'm often asked about these buildings and whether they can be visited.
The following paragraph is from Susan and Richard Willet, the current owners of
the mill:
"We are now able to offer Bed & Breakfast accommodation
to visitors. There is more information (including a picture of the mill) at http://www.upweymill.freeserve.co.uk
for anyone interested."
The current mill was built in 1802. This replaced
the former mill that would have been standing at the time that Richard, Ralph
and William Sprague left Upwey. It was probably a Fulling or Tucking mill for
processing wool/cloth. The house would have been where they lived, though in the
picture on the above referenced website it is shown with three floors. In the
days of the three brothers' departure, it had but two floors and the roof was
thatched.
Adobe
Reader 8 is avaiable. It works on Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 SP4, Windows
Vista, Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later. If you need an older version of Adobe Reader,
go to the above link and clink on "Choose a different version."
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