[Harper County Genealogical Society]
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Last Updated: Thursday, January 23, 1997
lucindaw@pe.net
Page 2 - Genealogy on the Internet. (This Page)
Page 3 - Credits (Sources for this article)
There are many benefits to doing your genealogical research using the Net. In this article, I will give some examples of data and resources available, and discuss communicating with others interested in their family history. As fast as the Internet is growing, this is sure to be incomplete. However, it will get you started and give you ideas on how to find your family on the Web.
Data
Considering all the computers connected to the Internet, there is an abundance of information to be found. And with all the people connecting to those computers, there is a tremendous potential for even more information becoming available. Many agencies, such as the
Texas State Archives,
Illinois Secretary of State, and the
Illinois State Archives, have taken the time to digitize information so it would be available to view and use. Individuals have typed
census pages, bible records, customer lists, tax lists, wills, obituaries, biographical sketches, cemetery lists, civil war rosters, ship passenger lists, and more from their own collections. Volunteers have banded together to organize some great projects for making our searches easier and providing us with more information. When you find something that is useful, it can be saved and/or printed in part or in whole, to keep with your records. Some data available online:
Projects
There are several projects being developed that are putting more data online and making it easier to locate that data. Although these projects are in progress, they are already available for online viewing. These, and other projects, are resulting in more data and more resources available:
Do you have extra money in your genealogical cookie jar? You can spend it online by visiting a genealogical business page and ordering their products or requesting their services.
Email
Everybody with Internet access also has an e-mail address. When you send a letter or note through e-mail, your correspondent receives your letter in a matter of minutes, even if they are on the other side of the world. E-mail addresses are recognized by the symbol “@”. You can use e-mail to ask questions about certain pages, post queries, contact submitters of information, write to friends and family (who also have e-mail addresses), send information to organizations to be included in their data, or write to me! My e-mail address is
lucindaw@pe.net
(all lower case letters and no spaces).
Mailing Lists
You also use e-mail to correspond to a listserv and with others through newsgroups. Both listservs and newsgroups are “topic oriented”. Messages are written and read by people with the same interests. When you subscribe to a list, your e-mail address is put on an “electronic mailing list”. Anytime someone writes a message to that list, everybody who joined that particular list will receive a copy of that message. Many listserv topics concern genealogy. Most
genealogical lists discuss one particular surname or locale. A few of the hundreds of surname lists are white-l, arnold-l, turner-l and stearns-l. Anybody who is researching one of these names could post a message to the list, through e-mail, giving their family information. A copy of that message will go to those on that list. If anybody recognizes your family information as being the same, or close to theirs, they will contact you. The locale lists, such as the kansas-l, illinois-roots-l, far-west-l and the mid-plains-l are for the discussion about a particular area. Everybody on the kansas-l, for example, discusses not only the genealogy of people who have lived in Kansas, but also “where to look”, and “how to find” information in Kansas, and Kansas history. I have been especially interested in Kansas history (Gee, I wonder why!). You can distinguish list addresses by the -l (dash el).
NewsGroups
Newsgroups are different in that when a person e-mails a message to a newsgroup, the message is not sent to any person directly. Anybody, who chooses to do so, can read the newsgroup mail and see what you wrote. Because so many post to newsgroups, the subject heading is important. One particular newsgroup,
soc.genealogy.surnames, prefer the subject heading to read like this...
WHITE; PA,USA>OH,USA>IL,USA>MO,USA>KS,USA; 1808-1996
meaning I am researching a family with the surname WHITE, who moved from Pennsylvania, to Ohio, to Illinois, to Missouri, to Kansas. When others look at the subject headings, they can tell which messages they might be interested in.
IRC
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a whole different way of communicating on the Internet. It is not through e-mail at all.
Special software is required, but you can obtain this software by downloading it directly from the Internet. (Note: downloading is retrieving a copy from their computer to yours.) With IRC, you can talk to somebody who is presently online with this special software. Instead of talking by voice though, you type out a message and send it. Others see what you typed, and can respond. You can carry on conversations with people all over the world. Just as there are many different e-mail addresses for different topics for listservs and newsgroups, there are many different networks and channels for different topics on IRC. Only the people on the same network and channel can see what you have typed. Several different channels are set up for
genealogy discussion. They are places where genealogists, from beginner to the experienced, can gather and talk live about their research, experiences and hints, and a place for beginners to ask questions and have fun
* 6.
FAQ's
Just remember, for everything there is to do on the Internet, there will be questions, and there will be answers. FAQ’s (Answers to Frequently Asked Questions) have been written, trying to make navigating the Net easier, and more understandable. You can find these FAQ’s by using a search engine... just type in the query box FAQ, genealogy and [subject], such as newsgroup, listserv, or IRQ.
Have I really benefited from searching the Net?
I’ll say I have! So far, I have met 5 cousins through my Internet connections. While I tell you about it, keep in mind I live in California, I have only been “Surfin’ the Net” since December 1995 and have been working on my family history since February of this year.
In April, while searching through library catalogs online, looking for published family genealogy books that might contain my family, I found one called Christain Gish of Virginia. Even though I only knew of my GISH family living in Kansas, I heard they came from Virginia. The description of the book mentioned a man named Matthias Gish. My g-grandfather’s middle initial was M. Could M be for Matthias? Knowing the name of the book, the author, and the library who had it, I went to my local library and requested an interlibrary loan of that book. When the book came in, guess what!? Sure enough my family was included. All kinds of family information, from my grandmother born in 1888, back to Matthias Gish who came to America from Germany in 1733! (And yes, my g-grandfathers middle name was Matthias!) I knew the 2 weeks my library would hold it for me was not going to be long enough, so I copied the author’s name and address from the inside front cover. I wrote to Jodie, who lives in Texas, and is also a GISH descendant, told her I found my family in her book, and asked about purchasing a copy for myself. I now have my own copy and she and I have written to each other several times.
Two other cousins contacted me because they knew, from Surname Databases on the Internet, that I am researching the surname GISH. Robert contacted me in April, and Judy (from Washington) contacted me 2 weeks ago. I looked in my Christian Gish book to see if their family information was also included. Yes! Both of them were from different branches, but they were definitely in my tree! I gave them both Jodie’s name and address so they could see all the goodies included themselves!
Carol contacted me in August. She was visiting her sister-in-law, Kim, in Colorado, and showing her around the Internet, when they found my Web pages. I have my husband’s and my family information online. They were searching for information on POAGE families. A name she saw on my list, which was my husband’s gggg-grandfather, was the brother to her ggg-grandfather. Not only did we find out he had commissioned “A” company of the 2nd Battalion in 1781, and that commission is still in the family, but we also found out his father before him was appointed Sheriff of Augusta Co, VA, after immigrating here from Ireland at age 14 with his parents in 1740!
About a month ago, while looking at the Wichita Genealogical Society’s Web pages, I found a page that listed all the surnames each member of the society are researching. I found a name that I recognized as my g-uncle, Jahue WHITE. I wrote an e-mail message to Mike Ward, a member of the society and author of the WGS Web pages, asking if I could get in contact with the person who submitted that name. He gave me Allaretta’s phone number and address (after making sure it was ok with her). The same day I had written to him, he called her and wrote back to me. That night I was talking to another Kansas cousin!