Site Objectives 

This site is intended to extend the research I have been working on for the last six years (with much help from others, some related and some not) on the family that descended from the marriage of John Vibert and Mary Neell in Saybrook, Connecticut on February 26, 1705/6, 300 years ago on the day the site opened for business.

It appeared to me early on that that this family's had two interesting characteristics: first, that nearly everyone living in the United States today with (or descended from someone with) one of the name variants listed above (and a few more) is descended from this one couple and, second, that no one had ever put together a comprehensive genealogy of this "Vib" family.

So, my goals became to identify as many Vibs as I can (both those Vibs in name and in blood), find out as much as I can about their history and publish a genealogy that can be considered, if not definitive, at least as a starting point.  I now have several thousand people in my files but, while some of them are well-proven to be a part of the tree, others are still fairly tentative identifications.  So I feel that the time has come to make as much of the data I have gathered public in order to test it.  There will undoubtedly be many errors and many more omissions and I am hoping that those of you who see the data will not only make whatever use of it you can but also provide feedback to me to make the picture truer and more complete.

I should mention here that the personal pronoun I that I have used throughout this introduction is merely a convenience.  I have received help with my Vib research every step of the way, from contributions on specific families from a large group of people too numerous to mention individually to a smaller group which has worked with me on large sections of the Vib tree without concern for whether they are direct descendants or not.

I would especially like to mention Barbara Baker, who is a Vib by marriage but who has contributed a huge amount of time to new Vib research and to tracking down and helping to patch the holes in what I have done as well; Kathy Kuroda, who has helped enormously with research on the very large Vibbard branch of the family; Kevin Glenn, who also specializes in Vibbard research and who brought us the storehouse of original data on the Vibbards collected over a number of years by Earl Richard Vibbard; and Phil Rhoton, whose data on the Kentucky Vibbert branch opened up a whole new research direction for me.  For a complete (hopefully) list of people who have provided data, please click here.

My plan for this website is (hopefully) pretty simple.  First, I have provided a fairly complete (to date) copy of my research in the form of a generated, fully-indexed, PDF-format book (excluding information about living persons, of course) for use as an overview.  Next, I have begun to construct a family webpage for each of the families in the first six generations.  These will provide the backbone of the site.

To flesh the site out, I have also started to include as many as possible of the actual data I have in my collection (much provided by others, of course) and linked them to the families involved.  In addition, I plan to start adding a standardized set of more comprehensive notes that will review the evidence that led me to include that family in that part of the Vib tree.  Both of these will also be extended over time as I am able to upload more and more of the data I now have and, hopefully, will continue to collect and reevaluate the evidence that relates to each family.

These research summaries are my attempt to summarize all of the evidence I have about a particular family, present my conclusions and explain the reasoning behind them.  I think it is especially important, since I am presenting a wide array of information, obtained from many sources, some good and some not so good, to a wide audience, to include a document that shows why I came to a particular conclusion.  Then you can judge for yourselves if it makes sense or not.  It also helps me to keep track of what my thinking was in the first place and gives me a way to review it when new information becomes available.

Finally, I would like to mention a couple of things about the site architecture.  The general organization is around the family pages.  First and foremost, the family pages provide links connecting the name of each child who married and had issue to their own family page.  In addition, each family page points to sub-pages which list materials relating to that married couple and their family (although material about individual children is most often stored in their family page if they married).  The buttons on the left, with the exception of the top and bottom ones are used to display these subpages which contain links to the source materials.  The top left button, if active (the font is black instead of gray), contains the research summaries mentioned above.

The bottom left button is used to display my book-in-progress.  It is a computer-generated book-format genealogy of the first six generations.  It is in PDF format so you will need the free Adobe Reader to view it.  The sections listed in the Table of Contents in the left panel of the Adobe Reader display are links to the various sections which include full endnotes (I'm working on upgrading the sources but this will get you started) and an every-name index.

Currently the site contains neither sources or an all-name index.  They will eventually be added but for the time being I felt that providing the book would serve the same purpose.  Finally, in some cases I will have updated family information in my database that is not yet reflected in the website but the book will always have the most up-to-date information.

This site is designed to display the actual source material (images of originals when I can get them or transcriptions when I can't) I have for each family.  At the moment, however, the site design does not lend itself to connecting up each fact about a person to the specific source(s) that back it up.  Someday that may be possible but for now I have tried to make up for the deficiency by providing another resource.

This again, is my book-in-progress - called Descendants of John Vibert and Mary Neell.  There is a link to it from every family page and I have also added a new link from this page on the left.  It is created, via a GEDCOM file produced from my Family Tree Maker genealogy database, as a PDF file by a program called Ancestral Author.  In the book, all facts are connected to their source citations by hyperlinks and the all-names index is also hyperlinked to the pages it cites.  This book is so quick and easy to produce that I can (and do) update it each month.  So it actually serves three purposes - an all-name index, the most up-to-date information and source citations. 

That being said, I do have to confess that my source citations are not always as complete as I would like them to be.  I am trying to improve them as I go along but, to be honest, I feel that a source citation that clearly points to where I got the information without all the details required from an academic point of view is "good enough to get on with".

I plan to update the site monthly - the updates will be available on the first of each month - so I urge you to check back often.  But most of all, I urge you to contribute.  Perhaps you have in your possession a small fact that would help us fit in a whole section of the puzzle.  Or perhaps, by providing your own family information, you can extend the picture even further.  In some cases, of course, you will have some information that causes us to question and even change how we have linked some parts of the family together.  All these facts are our friends and each of you reading this has, I am sure, at least one fact that will help.  By sharing my facts (and, in some cases, surmises), I am doing my part and I hope you will respond by doing yours.  You can reach me by email at annvwuelfing@thevibsite.com.