I am writing this post to make readers aware of a website that I put together a few years ago while working with one of the members of the Ackley Surname Project that I administer at Family Tree DNA. After doing a Y-DNA test that led to the discovery that he was a descendant of Johan Hendrick Eckler on a line that had changed their name to Ackley (see this post for a discussion of that line), he put together a family tree for the Eckler/Ackler/Ackley family using a genealogy published by A. Ross Eckler in the 1970s as a starting point. He painstakingly went through the entire genealogy and added every individual to his tree and then expanded many of the lines to more recent generations, adding many sources for each individual along the way. The result is a well-documented, quite comprehensive tree for the Eckler/Ackler/Ackley line
Before discovering the Eckler connection, he had also started work on a tree for the Nicholas Ackley family, using the same meticulousness he had used to build the Eckler/Ackley/Ackley tree. That is to say, he found as many sources as he could to support the individuals he put into the tree, and didn't add anything he couldn't support. He granted me edit permissions to the tree, and I have continued to add individuals with the same care that he used. While this tree is in no way comprehensive at this point, I believe it is a good starting point that will only get better.
Both of these trees were built on Ancestry, and we thought it would be helpful to make them available on a website not tied to any subscription service so that anyone could view them for free. I created a website using the outstanding "The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding" software, and it has been available online for about two and a half years. We didn't publicize it at all because we considered it a work in progress, but it occurred to me that we aren't helping anyone if they don't know about the site and we also can't enlist the help of all you Ackley researchers to make the trees better if you don't know about it.
The web address for the website is:
and the home page looks like this:
The header and color scheme should look familiar -- I tried to make it look as much like this blog as possible within the parameters available on each site.
The functionality of the website is pretty self-explanatory. There are several different ways to view the tree structure, and each individual has their own profile page with the usual vital dates and references to supporting sources. Photos and documents for each individual can be viewed on their profile page as well as in a master list of documents and photos that can be accessed from the main menu. In addition to the supporting documentation for each individual, we have uploaded several reference documents that are useful for researching the Ackley surname.
The website currently has only the trees for the Nicholas Ackley family and the Eckler/Ackler/Ackley family. I am in the process of researching British Ackleys and Canadian Ackleys as well as a couple of other U.S. Ackley lines that appear to be unrelated to either of the known U.S. Ackleys. As this research gets further along, I will add trees for these other family groups to the website.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I believe genealogy is more fun when people collaborate. I would love for this website to grow with the help of anyone who is interested in the Ackley surname. If you have pictures, documents, or any other items that you'd be willing to share on the website, please send me an email. Additionally, if you have information on Ackley individuals that are not found in our trees that you would like to share, we would love to have that as well. If it is a large number of individuals, you can share a GEDCOM file with me and I can merge it into one of our existing trees.
Ackley One-Name Study
I have recently registered the Ackley surname with the Guild of One-Name Studies, and the new website announced above will be useful in publishing the information I learn as part of that study. I have already been doing many of the activities typically undertaken in a one-name study, so it seemed like a no-brainer to register the Ackley name and make the data available to a wider audience.
The Guild is based in England, and members are committed to assisting each other with their studies. Although the usual genealogy techniques are used, a one-name study is a bit different from regular genealogy in that all occurrences of a surname are studied rather than just your own line. Here is a description of the elements of a one-name study from the Guild's website:
A One-Name Study (ONS) is a project researching all occurrences of a surname, as opposed to a particular pedigree (ancestors of one person) or descendancy (descendants of one person or couple).
A one-name study may concentrate on aspects such as geographical distribution of the name and the changes in that distribution over the centuries, or it may attempt to reconstruct the genealogy of the lines bearing the surname. A frequent aspiration is to identify a single place of origin for the name, especially if the name appears to derive from a place name. However, for many names – for example those indicating an occupation like Butcher, or a patronymic-type surname such as Peterson – there will not be a single origin. Some one-namers also run an associated DNA surname project to assist with the analysis of origins.
The objective of a one-name study is not just the collection of data; collection is a means to an end. A one-name study aims to research the genealogy and family history of all persons with a given surname (and its variants). As part of this, it attempts to ascertain such things as:
- The origin of the name or early references
- The name’s meaning: is it patronymic, topographical, toponymic, occupational, etc? Or a mix of these? (See Surnames for more information on this.)
- Relative frequency
- Distribution in geography and time
- Patterns of immigration and emigration
- Name variants and “deviants” [1]
