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Genealogy and the Internet

Not too many years ago the pace of doing genealogy was slower. We wrote a letter, and we waited for a reply. We visited libraries, and we took notes by hand because there were no copy machines. With the advent of the Internet, times have changed, but the "recipe" for doing genealogy has not. There are still steps that need to be followed. What's different is not so much the "what" but the "how."

Surname & Cousin Searching

One of the first things a genealogist does is try to find someone else who has researched the family surname. We reach out to our family and to cousins. They usually have information and documents that we do not have. If grandma had five brothers and sisters, each of these siblings probably had correspondence with relatives. They made family photos. They collected family items. Perhaps one of these items is the family Bible that extends the family back three generations. A cousin, the descendant of one of those siblings, may be willing to share family treasures with you. So contact all of them. Ask them to help you clarify dates and fill in missing names. Ask them if they will share photos and documents.

After we contact all the family members we know personally, we seek out  distant cousins.  Before the Internet, we read queries that people placed in magazines, hoping to find a cousin who had the family history. We wrote to libraries and genealogy societies. Sometimes we found someone who was researching our family. Sometimes we found a library with a surname file that matched our family.          

With the Internet, we do this same step, but it is now much faster, and there are more resources available. When you first use the Internet for your Family History research, you will be absolutely overwhelmed – don’t let this put you off. Take a deep breath, slow down, and start again in bite size pieces. There are now so many aspects of the Internet that you can use, and so many exciting leads to follow – you will never run out of new sites to try.

As you race along, gathering information on the family, it is important to write down where you found the information. In the excitement of finding one fact after another, it's easy to lose track of where you were.  At the minimum, record the URL where you found information, the title, the author, and the date you downloaded the data. Websites come and go, so look for additional contact information for the author.

It is also important to evaluate what you found. The quality of the information on the Internet varies from excellent to just plain wrong. Did the author of the Web page say that Grandpa was born in 1870 and have his first child in 1880? According to the author, did Grandpa live to be 120 years old? Finding this type of improbable information should make you question the reliability of everything on the web page.

Mailing Lists and other "Cousin Finders"

A good way to get genealogy information and ask questions about your family tree is to use genealogy mailing lists. A mailing list is basically the same as email, except that anything you send to a list is broadcast (via email) to all other subscribers of that list. At last count there were more than 27,000 genealogical specific mailing lists.

Genealogy mailing lists cover a range of subjects, the main ones are either surnamed based or regional area based. To get information, you simply post a query to the list. You might ask something like, "Does anyone have information about Robert James Brooks, born about 1811 in Greenbrier County, WV?" Be sure to include as much information as you can about place & date of birth, spouse, children, etc. Your hope is that someone else on the list is researching the same family, or has other pertinent information such as census data, a genealogy book , or access to some of the genealogy vital records listings. Part of genealogy is helping other researchers, and mailing lists are a great way for genealogists to collaborate with each other.

Subscribing is free and it is easy to do. For example, to get on the Brooks surname list, all you have to do is to send an email to "brooks-l-request@rootsweb.com" with the single word "subscribe" (don't put in the quotes) as the body of the message. That puts you on the list. To get off it, it is the same procedure with the word "unsubscribe". It doesn't get much easier. Make sure there is no other text in the body of the message (turn off your email signature line if you have one).


Mysteries of the GEDCOM


One of the great things about the Internet is the ability it provides to share information with people all over the world. This particularly applies to genealogy. An easy way to give and receive genealogical data is through the use of a GEDCOM file. GEDCOM is an acronym for GEnealogy Data COMmunication. All good genealogy programs have the ability to read and write GEDCOM files. You will usually be able to create a GEDCOM file by using the "Save As" or "Export" feature of your genealogy program.

GEDCOM gets around the problem of compatibility between computer programs. It is a format specifically designed for genealogy, containing all the significant text information stored in a genealogy program. Since it is a standard, there are many GEDCOM resources available on the Internet, many of them free. A GEDCOM file is a simple text file. To see what makes up a GEDCOM file, simply load one into your word processing program and have a look.

The most obvious use of GEDCOM is to exchange information with other family tree researchers or with relatives who may be living hundreds, or thousands of miles away from you. You don't even need to own a genealogy program to view a GEDCOM file sent by someone else. There are several free GEDCOM viewers available on the Internet (see below). If you do own a genealogy program, a word of warning is to always load the GEDCOM as a separate file so that you can verify the information prior to merging it with your existing database.

If you wish to send someone a GEDCOM file it should be included in an email in the form of an attachment. Depending on the email program that you are using, you will have an option to "attach file" or to "add attachment". There are many GEDCOM utilities available on the Internet, several of which are free (freeware). These include utilities to view GEDCOMs (including displaying family trees), utilities to change things within GEDCOMs, and utilities that will allow you to post GEDCOM data on the Internet.

Information gathered from other genealogists should always be verified by your own examination of the sources.  Fortunately, more primary sources are posted on the Internet every day. 


Archives – Original Records Online

When an experienced genealogist makes a “road trip” a stop at the Archives is always part of the plan. Make sure your online research also includes a visit to the State Archive of every state where your ancestor may have lived. Plan to spend enough time to explore the site fully. Look for any of these words: database, online, virtual, digital.

Although the State Archives usually lead in providing online records, in some states it is the State Historical Society, Genealogical Society or State Library. The Reference Staff at the Callaway County Public Library maintains a list that  includes those organizations as well as the  State Archives for most of the states. http://callaway.county.missouri.org/archives.html

Online records posted by the official archives vary widely from state to state. Some states have fabulous resources, while others are just getting started.  Here are a few examples of states with extensive online records:


Full text History and Genealogy on the Internet

HeritageQuest Online is designed specifically for public library patrons.  It is not available to individuals but may be accessed only by library cardholders through a link on the library’s web site.  With over 25,000 books, the entire U.S. Federal Census, and other expanding collections, HeritageQuest Online gives any Daniel Boone Regional Library patron the chance to tap in to one of the largest collections of genealogy material in the country.  http://www.dbrl.org/reference/databases.html

Ancestry Library Edition is available to patrons while they are inside the Library Building. You may access Ancestry from any of the Library's Internet Computers or from your own laptop equipped with a wireless modem. http://ref.dbrl.org

USGenWeb Special Collections  provides an entry page to scanned out-of-print books on family studies, historical books and various journals permanently stored in the USGenWeb Archives for free access. Included here is the well known William & Mary Quarterly, and the Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish in Virginia, as well as many others. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/special/

The American Colonist's Library  is a site focused on  primary source documents pertaining to early American history. A valuable collection of historical works which contributed to the formation of American politics, culture, and ideals. You probably won’t find a book about your ancestors in this collection, but you will find the books your ancestors read and lived by. http://personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/

1st-Hand-History Foundation (18th and 19th century texts, mostly northwestern US and American Indian history)  http://www.1st-hand-history.org/

Documenting the American South  is a collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.  Unpublished manuscripts of first person narratives, including slave narratives, make this collection unique. Maintained by the University of North Carolina. http://docsouth.unc.edu/

The Early Americas Digital Archive at the University of Maryland  is a collection of electronic texts and links to texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. http://www.mith2.umd.edu:8080/eada/index.jsp

Making of America is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/

Mountain Men Diaries, Narratives, and Letters  These documents are accounts of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the first half of the 19th century. Most of these are  either written by, or as told by those who were actually there. http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/mmarch.html


More Full Text Books Online

NetLibrary The Daniel Boone Regional Library offers patrons access to an online collection of 15,000 eBooks through a service called netLibrary. Through the library's subscription, library cardholders have access to this electronic collection via our Web site. Rather than checking out a physical book from the library and taking it home, an eBook patron can check out and read a book online for up to four hours at a time. Most of the titles currently available are adult non-fiction or classic literature. Our agreement with netLibrary requires that you set up an account on a DBRL computer at one of our three locations, but once your user name and password are established, you'll be able to check out an eBook from home or anywhere you use the Internet. http://www.dbrl.org/readers/netlibrary/index.html

The Online Books Page, maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, is a website that facilitates access to books that are available over the Internet. It includes an index of thousands of online books freely readable on the Internet, plus directories and pointers to other archives. http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/aboutolbp.html

Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest producer of free electronic books. The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search.  http://promo.net/pg/


Selected Genealogy Sites

Genealogy Portals “everything for everybody” sites.

Government Agencies and Universities provide great FREE genealogy sites


Useful Ethnic and Regional Guides                                                                                 

 

 
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