Many years ago Brian Bonner made his line of descent from Thomas Stanton and Anne Lord available to others via an early dial-up bulletin board system (FIDONet) and called his site Roots-BBS. It was the second electronic bulletin board in the United States to devote itself to genealogy and the only one that continues today. As electronic communication evolved and moved to the internet so did his genealogy and Roots-BBS and it became Genealogysf.com. From its very beginning Brian encouraged people to send in information on their families. He then combined it with his and others’ contributions and the Thomas Stanton database grew.
In the 1980s his cousin Marge Field presented him with a copy of the Thomas Stanton book (Stanton, William, PhD. A Record, Genealogical, Biographical, Statistical of Thomas Stanton of Connecticut and his Descendants. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell’s Sons, Pub., 1891). It was an incredible boon as there were daily inquiries “my grandfather was so-and-so and I think we are related, can you help me?”. The Thomas Stanton book became “the source” for helping people connect their known ancestors with Thomas.
But as anyone knows, the index to the Thomas Stanton book is an aid to finding individuals, not relationships and it is silent when it comes to locations. It quickly became obvious to Brian that not only could the computer make information available to other researchers, it could help clear up relationships -if- the Stanton book was online. So he began entering all the information into the software Roots (later moving it to Ultimate Family Tree and to The Master Genealogist). That task was finished in 2007.
As the internet grew the database evolved. It currently is maintained on Ancestry.com (Society members get free access to it there.) Brian periodically makes a copy of that data and makes it available here through the links below.
- Click on the surname link. All the surnames will appear in a list with a number after the surname indicating how many people are in the database that have that surname.
- Click on the surname of interest. You will see a list of all the individuals with that surname followed by the known birth/death dates. [NOTE: Brian carefully tries to protect privacy by not publishing on the web any information on living people.]
- Click on the person of interest. You will see all the information in the database about that person, parents, important dates, and sources for the information. Sometimes there are photos of individuals and documents.
Brian hopes that society’s members find this useful. And he encourages you to 1) point out corrections that need to be made – a link to contact him is on each page, and 2) send in your additions. He will add your information citing you as the source.