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General Information

Contact and About

I welcome comments and corrections and I thank you for your time. This is truly a collaborative effort! My name is Craig Rhombs. You can email me at craig@281connections.us . Although you will not see much source information in these pages, I have in fact collected much source information and I am willing to share it.

Revision History

  • rev 37, 01/2024: There are a few minor corrections/additions, the addition of a report on the performance of a residential solar photovoltaic array (!), and the inclusion of seven snapshot files as noted in the following text. - The whole website (at rev 36) has been copied into seven volumes for archival purposes. There are no plans to update this snapshot. The website will always have the most recent information. Each volume of the snapshot is in PDF form with page numbers. A given volume contains the appropriate web page(s) as well as associated PDF documents. Some of these volumes are rather large. The total extent of all volumes is about 1300 pages and 200 MB. You can find them through the links below, and they have been accepted at some archives, including the South Dakota State Archives, the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library (Ft. Wayne, IN), and the Family Search Library in Salt Lake City. ->
    • Volume 1: General Introduction, about 30 pages and 9 MB
    • Volume 2: South Dakota Roots: Bates/Moodie Ancestors, about 190 pages and 30 MB
    • Volume 3: South Dakota Roots: Loy/Allen Ancestors, about 430 pages and 53 MB
    • Volume 4: South Dakota Roots: Rhombs/Kessler Ancestors, about 440 pages and 59 MB
    • Volume 5: South Dakota Roots: Thompson/Olsen Ancestors, about 70 pages and 14 MB
    • Volume 6: South Dakota Roots: Memorials and Mysteries, about 100 pages and 20 MB
    • Volume 7: Texas Roots: Kosub/Kokott, Long/Gill, Marsch/Fincke, Mihalski/Kosub Ancestors, about 65 pages and 25 MB
  • rev 36, 08/2023: This release includes updated family tree data, information about a quest to trace Snyder relatives back from OH to PA (Snyder Family Research), updated class offerings information (Education page), and some reorganization (e.g., addition of the page entitled Early Rombs Family History). As a side note, just before this release, the website was ported to a new web hosting organization, and my contact information was updated (earlier on this page).
  • rev 35, 03/06/2021: Updated information about community education classes and new research into people in Baden, Pfalz, and Alsace in the 17th and 18th centuries. Updated family tree data.
  • rev 34, 06/01/2021: Site generated with a revised version of the template. Small changes to font specifications to increase readability. Minor content tweaks. Embedded search changed to DuckDuckGo.
  • rev 33, 05/25/2021: updates to Education, Memorials, and Rhombs-Kessler sections. There is a new doc about 19th century Russian ancestors in the latter section. All genealogical data has been brought up to date with my current research. And, there is an added WWII tractor story about my uncle Vern Rhombs in the memorials section, thanks to my cousin Robert.
  • rev 32, 12/7/2020: updated Education section to list classes planned for May, 2021; included a link to a draft summary document about Mary Gill and John P. Long (Texas Families).
  • rev 31, 10/15/2020: Updates to dynamic fan and ancestral-collapsible pages for Loy-Allen. Some corrections to the document about Sam and Anna and the one about John Loy.
  • rev 30, 08/16/2020: Updated the education section for online classes in October. Added text to SD Families section. Updated the linked pdf about Sam Loy's father, Johann Georg Lay, based on newly discovered information about his relatives in the vicinity of Göbrichen, Baden, and Crawford Co., OH.
  • rev 29, 02/02/2020: added more text in the memorials section (e.g., for Joe Rombs); in the section describing the Rombs-Kessler family, I added a pdf describing the story about the transfer of the Rombs family from Catholic to Lutheran churches. Added a fairly extensive "source" document to each section devoted to a pair of South Dakota great grandparents. See documents for Johannes & Barbara Rombs, Ole & Caroline Thompson, Charles & Agnes Bates, and Sam & Anna Loy (preliminary).
  • rev 28, 12/15/2019: nerdy changes related to templates and reports employing javascript to make the site work better with recent browser releases that are more security conscious.
  • rev 27, 12/8/2019: added header image, minor cosmetic changes, added memorials section for South Dakota Families, added timeline document for Johannes and Barbara Rombs, updated the "education" page, added a separate privacy policy page.
  • rev 26: 05/12/2019: A few cosmetic changes; added "Ancestral Collapsible" family trees to South Dakota Families sections.
  • rev 25: 04/08/2019: Added a new document to the Mysteries page to suggest further research directions into the Allen/Pierce family that lived in Fabius, NY. Added another document to the Bates-Moodie page that describes information about James Moodie and his families. Updated descriptions for South Dakota families to reflect the most recent information/understanding.
  • rev 24: 02/24/2019: Created a new section devoted to the work on mtDNA inheritance starting with "Ellen."
  • rev 23: 02/10/2019: Created a new entry in "South Dakota Families>Mysteries" to explain recent work on mtDNA inheritance.
  • rev 22: 01/10/2019: Added "head shots" for great grandparents based on photos that I have. Updated handouts for many offerings on the "Education" page. Thanks to the receipt of two photos from Ferdinand Kotzur, I was able to enhance the sections of the Texas families of Kosub-Kokott and Mihalski-Kosub. Thank you Ferdinand!
  • rev 21:11/13/2018: Changed navigation titles slightly. Added pictures of Agnes Moodie and Anna Allen. Added a new education topic regarding organizing photos and documents and notes.
  • rev 20: 9/10/2018: Added site search facility. (It is a Google form because it crawls the site better than others that I tried.) Added new educational materials on publishing.
  • rev 19: 9/1/2018: Added "privacy practices" text. Added "education" section. Added Wisconsin travel report to the "Bates-Moodie" section.
  • rev 18: 8/8/2018: removed dates on pages; changed license to "cc-by-sa."
  • rev 16: 8/6/2018: added Creative Commons license.
  • rev 15; 8/5/2018: added SSL support and changed template used to generate site to support a wide range of environments. Added some documentation to describe unsolved SD mysteries.
  • rev 14; 7/31/2018: Added an "Unsolved Mysteries" page and associated documents to the SD Families section. Modified some of the text characteristics in the template used to create the website to improve readability.
  • rev 13; 7/5/2018: Added a link to a pdf that describes what is known about the life of John Loy, Sam Loy's father. Associated text changes to remove the explicit reference to the possible third wife of John Loy.
  • rev 12; 6/6/2018: Revisions to Sam Loy's history, that of his first wife, Margaret Rower, and that of his father's suspected third wife, named Maria Catherine Augenstein(??). A little new info about Ed Olsen, Caroline Olsen Thompson's nephew. Better information about the death & burial of Sittina Bates Tupper.
  • rev 11; 05/25/2018: The major change was the addition of a pdf describing the circumstances surrounding the connection of Anna Allen and Sam Loy in Campbell Co., SD.)
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Backlinks:
281connections Wiki
281connections Wiki:Education
281connections Wiki:South Dakota Families
281connections Wiki:Texas Families
281connections Wiki:South Dakota Families:Rombs-Kessler
281connections Wiki:Texas Families:Kosub-Kokott