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Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
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KindredKonnections Research Center |
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Click Here for Dick Eastman's Archive |
| February 16, 1999 |
- KindredKonnections Research Center KindredKonnections has been known for some time as an online database where users can submit their GEDCOM files and match their entries against GEDCOM files of other KindredKonnections members. This fee-based service has been popular, and I have heard a number of success stories where one KindredKonnections member has discovered another member who already had information that the first member was seeking. KindredKonnections' employees recently added several completely new services to their online service. I had a chance to use KindredKonnections' new offerings this week. The first new thing that I noticed was the addition of more databases. I looked first in the free area of the site and found the entire 1871 Cornwall (England) Census as well as the U.S. Social Security Death Index. I searched the Social Security Death Index first looking for some recent deaths; this is an indication of how up-to-date the information is. I found records of the deaths of some relatives that are missing in some other versions of the Social Security Death Index. Therefore, I know the copy at KindredKonnections is a recent one. The 1871 Cornwall Census was interesting. You must specify a last name as well as a beginning and ending year for the dates of birth. A first name is optional. Here is a typical entry from the 1871 Cornwall Census: Parish STOKECLIMSLAND; District 6; Schedule 074 Name Position in Family Marital Status Age More info on above names: Name Occupation Approximate Birth Year Birth Place Next, I searched KindredKonnections' free index to more than 28 million names contained in the company's databases. I typed in the name of the earliest-known person with my surname in America and found many listings for information about him. Here is a typical entry: EASTMAN, ROGER (goff1) The free service simply indicates that information about the person is within the database. In order to find the details, including pedigree charts, you must sign up and become a member of KindredKonnections. Other free services include a Research Desk, where you can find others who have previously registered their interest in the same surnames that you are searching, as well as a list of professional genealogists and a list of libraries with significant genealogy holdings. Several services are available to "free members," that is, individuals who have registered with the site and provided some information about themselves but have not paid any fees. One that caught my eye was My-Tree Online, a Web-based genealogy program. In effect, you can enter your own genealogy database into My-Tree Online in much the same manner as you would with any genealogy program. You can search your own database, print reports and do many of the same things you would expect to do in other genealogy programs. The difference in this case is that both the program you re using and the database you create are stored on KindredKonnections' Web server, not on your local hard drive. You use your favorite Web browser to enter and retrieve information. One big advantage of using a Web-based genealogy program is that it works equally well on Windows, Macintosh, UNIX or on older computers that are not capable of running today's latest high- powered genealogy programs. You can even do all this with WebTV, an Internet service that operates on your television set. You do not need a hard drive since the data is all stored at KindredKonnections. Another advantage is that the producers of the program will install any new version of the program on the server and then everyone can use the updated version immediately. There will be no need to purchase software updates. One other nifty feature is that My-Tree Online works well in non-European languages and alphabets. It handles Russian Cyrillic characters as well as Hebrew, Japanese and Thai text. If you specify Hebrew, the data even goes from right to left as you type it in. Obviously, a Hebrew keyboard and appropriate software is required on your end, but most people who are literate in Hebrew will already have that. KindredKonnections will be adding more languages in the future, including Chinese. All the above services are attractive, but the best databases are in the area restricted to KindredKonnections' paid members. The first one that I tried was the Ancestral Archive. This database is a 27-million name collection of pedigree-linked family trees from submitters around the world. I entered the name Roger Eastman, the same person that I had used earlier in my searches in the free service. This time there were additional fields available to narrow down the search. I could specify the father's first and/or last names, the mother's first and/or last names and a spouse's first and/or last name. I could also specify searches that include alternate spellings as well as searches only for certain events (birth, marriage, death, etc.). All of these extra fields are optional. This time the search displayed a pedigree chart directly on my computer screen. It displayed not only the name and information about the person whose name I entered,but also a pedigree chart showing parents and grandparents. I was able to click on icons to go up and down the pedigree chart. I found the immigrant's great- grandfather listed, along with his date of birth in 1515. Another option that I found useful is the ability to directly download a 6-generation GEDCOM file to the user's PC or Macintosh. You can directly import the data into your own genealogy program without retyping it. I will insert a strong caution here: never, never insert unknown and unproven data into your primary genealogy database! Instead, create a new database called "Work" or "Possibilities" or some similar name, and import the data from other sources into that temporary database. After you have verified the information is correct by consulting other, trusted genealogy sources, you can later move the data into your "real" genealogy database. The name, mailing address, e-mail address and telephone number of the person who submitted the information was displayed across the top of the screen. This is a major difference when compared to some other sites that hide the submitter's name and contact information or else make it very difficult to locate that needed information. In fact, with KindredKonnections you can click on the person's displayed e-mail address and immediately compose an e-mail message to that person while the genealogy information is displayed in the background. KindredKonnections does provide for protection of personal data of submitters, if desired. A different service in the fee-based section is called the Name Match. This lets you match every name in a GEDCOM file with the entire 27-million name Ancestral Archive database. You upload your GEDCOM file to the service and submit it so that it becomes a part of KindredKonnections' available databases. You then receive a report showing all the "matches" of your data to other entries already in the KindredKonnection database. The Special Collections Archive Search searches an online collection of cemetery records, birth, death and marriage records, including: - Dallas County Alabama Marriage Records, Book I: 1818 - 1845 The Source Documents Search searches a collection of scanned-in document collections (family group records, pedigree charts, census records, etc.) The 1851 UK Census and the 1871 Canadian Census records are available online. For instance, here is a typical entry from the 1871 Canadian Census: EASTMAN, JONATHAN KindredKonnections now has a genealogy index to the entire Internet. This ongoing effort is based upon a "spider" that searches the Internet looking for new documents and databases in different formats such as GEDPAGE, GED2HTML, GED2WWW, IMGMake and other database formats. With this feature you can search for one given name across the entire Internet. Another option is to run an automated name match of your family genealogy database by submitting your GEDCOM file to KindredKonnections' databases. The software at the site will then automatically search the entire Internet looking for matches for every name in your GEDCOM file. The above is a summary of many of the services available at KindredKonnections, but I did skip over a few others. A more complete description is available at the company's website. KindredKonnections has three subscription options: An Introductory Special of $5.00 U.S. for 10 days, non- refundable. The user may elect to cancel the subscription at any time. If the user does not cancel, the subscription automatically converts to a regular $15.00 per month subscription. A monthly subscription costs $15.00 each month. A yearly subscription costs $100 per year, roughly the equivalent of $8.00 per month. In addition, if you submit your GEDCOM file to KindredKonnections' Ancestral Archive database, you will receive a free one-month subscription. KindredKonnections makes this statement about their databases: The concept of "DATABASES FREELY GIVEN will be FREELY SHARED" is our policy. This organization is dedicated to the advancement of genealogical research, not to the selling of genealogical databases. Membership fees for the use of this site will be in support of software programs, computer systems, network accesses, and the management of this large database archive to insure your ongoing success while using this service. We will keep each submitter's database as a separate file within the archive to allow for convenient updates, unique submitter's content being represented. For more information about any of the KindredKonnections' services, look at: http://www.kindredkonnections.com Genealogy societies are discovering the World Wide Web. Almost every day I receive announcements of new Web pages created by local genealogy societies. Yet this week one announcement really caught my eye. This announcement was different in that it did not describe the effort of one society to create one website by itself. GENfair is a consortium of British genealogy societies that have banded together and pooled their resources to create one larger and more powerful website. Not only do these British societies promote their services; they also sell products online through a secure Web server. Anyone can go to GENfair and purchase genealogy books, microfilms or software. The GENFair website describes itself as: ... an Online Family History Fair. It provides an Internet shopping facility for family history enthusiasts all over the world. It overcomes the barriers of currency conversion and postal delay in ordering. It opens up a wider, international market for the goods and services of British Family History Societies and other suppliers of genealogical goodies. The site also says: Items for sale include the thousands of books and microfiches in the participating Societies' Publications Lists. Visitors to GENfair can buy genealogy software online and order and pay for search services and membership subscriptions to the Societies. The advantages to Societies of this innovative project is that they avoid the high costs of setting up their own webshops. They do not need a credit card merchant account as all transactions will be handled by GENfair. The minimum level of technology needed by Societies is the facility to receive the orders by e-mail. The advantage of GENfair to family history enthusiasts, as in a real Family History Fair, is the concentration of a number of Societies' bookstalls in one place. But GENfair will be accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to anyone in the world who has a computer and an Internet connection. Currency conversion problems disappear. Orders are transmitted to GENfair almost instantaneously. The analogy to an Online Family History Fair seems appropriate. You can find almost everything online that you would find in a society's bookstall at a fair, with the possible exception of all the friendly chit-chat. While the online version may be a bit impersonal, it allows people all over the world to browse and to purchase products that they might never know about otherwise. By using a secure credit card payment system, visitors can purchase books or microfilm, pay for personalized order search services, buy genealogy software or even pay their society dues. The online environment works especially well with international sales; you simply provide a credit card number, bypassing the entire issue of currency conversions. The credit card companies make the currency conversions for you, usually at a fee that is much cheaper than purchasing international money orders. The societies presently represented on GENfair include: Calderdale Family History Society (incorporating Halifax & District) One commercial company also is represented on GENfair: GENEALOGICA (specialist suppliers of The Master Genealogist software) The services offered vary from one society to another. I chose the Essex Society for Family History at random and found that they offer six different sets of microfiche and two books for sale. They also accept new memberships and renewal fees on the website. Then I looked at the Calderdale Family History Society. They sell about 70 different books and 42 different sets of microfiche. They also accept memberships online, both new and renewals. The other societies represented on GENfair have similar offerings. I suspect that online genealogy fairs will become very popular in the near future. Setting up a secure server to process credit card transactions on the Internet is a rather expensive proposition. Maintaining hardware and software also is very labor-intensive. By banding together, several societies can share the expenses and the workload. The online mall concept suits the societies very well, and that, in turn, benefits members and nonmembers alike. To take a look at GENfair, look at:http://www.genfair.com The following is an announcement made this week by the (U.S.) National Genealogical Society: National Genealogical Society and Scholarly Resources Announce the Filby Prize for Genealogical Librarianship Scholarly Resources (SR), a leading publisher, and the National Genealogical Society (NGS) will award $1,000 to an outstanding genealogical librarian. The prize is named in honor of P. William Filby, FNGS, a nationally known librarian and author. This year's award will be announced at the NGS conference in Richmond, Virginia, 12-15 May during the Society's banquet. Candidates must be a librarian whose full-time primary focus is genealogy and local history. The individual must have at least five years experience in the field and be employed in a public, academic, or special library. Individuals may nominate themselves or others. Candidacy will be judged by the following criteria: 1. significant contributions to patron access to information, or to the preservation of historical records 2. development of an imaginative reference tool or similar outstanding contribution that fills the gaps in existing information, accuracy, scope or usefulness of genealogical and local history materials 3. publication of a book or a body of articles that have contributed significantly to the field of genealogy or local history 4. or other activities that have significantly advanced genealogy and local history. Nominations should include personal and professional contact information with illustrative examples of the nominee's performance as a librarian who serves genealogists. The completed nomination can be sent to the National Genealogical Society, 4527 Seventeenth Street, North, Arlington, VA 22207- 2399, Attention: Filby Prize. Deadline is 15 April 1999. Wood River Media is now offering many historic photographs on the World Wide Web. These were made available a couple of years ago for a fee, but Wood River Media has since switched to a new business arrangement with Lycos. Part of the arrangement includes free access to these photographs. The available American photographs are loosely organized into the following categories: General The U.S. history photographs go back to the Civil War era. World History photographs cover a wide variety of countries and historical periods. There is even a scanned image of a painting of Charlemagne. Under "Vintage Views" you can find all sorts of old photographs from around the world. The images available on this site are not limited to old or historical subjects. There are many modern-day photographs of famous people, landmarks, animals and even outer space. As the description says, "From Cindy Crawford to Leonardo DiCaprio, from aliens to zebras...". Each photograph has been scanned into a computer and reduced to 640-by-480 pixels. I found an old map of Nashua, New Hampshire, made in 1877. That's the city where I now live, so I decided to take a closer look. I downloaded the map and saved it to my hard drive. I then fired up a graphics-editing program, enlarged the image, and printed it as an 8.5 inch by 11 inch image on a inkjet color printer. The resulting map was a bit fuzzy due to the enlargement, but it was quite readable. I live on the banks of a river and noticed that the 1877 map shows a small island just upstream from where I now live. That island doesn't exist today. One thing to remember is that while these photographs are free, they are still copyrighted. Quoting from the website's legal language: These are copyrighted photographs and may be subject to certain other legal rights. You may utilize each photograph for personal (not commercial or professional) home use only, and only in a printed paper format or for any purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (includes multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research. You may not create derivative works from a photograph, display or distribute copies of it, publish it, use it in a performance, modify it in any manner except size. If the particular photograph depicts or relates to identifiable persons or entities, you may not use it in a manner which suggests their association with or endorsement of any product, service, opinion or cause. The free online images all are 640-by-480 pixels. That's not bad for viewing on your computer screen, but it is not a very high resolution. If you try to enlarge the images for printing on paper, you quickly find that they look fuzzy, like my enlarged map of Nashua. However, the disclaimer that accompanies the online description of the pictures says, "For more information on commercial and professional licenses, or to obtain a high resolution version of any of these images, call Wood River Media at 1-415-259-9300 or 1-800-741-8570, e-mail: permissions@woodrivermedia.com." The Wood River Media photographs are available as part of the Lycos Image Gallery at: http://www.lycos.com/picturethis/ My thanks to Richard J. Yanco for providing much of the information about these online pictures. The U.S. Federation of Genealogical Societies will hold their annual conference in St. Louis August 11 through 14 of this year. This is one of the larger genealogy gatherings in the country. A complete 16 page conference registration booklet, complete with a description of each session, is now available online. You will need Acrobat Reader in order to read it. Information on how to obtain a free copy of Acrobat Reader is available on the FGS website. To read the 1999 FGS conference brochure, go to: http://www.rootsweb.com/~mostlogs/STINDEX.HTM - Internet Reunites World War II Sweethearts Here is a nice Valentine story: Audrey Hartley was 17 when she met Paul Scalcucci in 1942. Audrey was a sales girl in a local five and dime store in northern Idaho, while Paul was an 18-year old Navy medic stationed at a nearby naval base. They fell in love, but military orders separated the two. Years passed, they each married others, and they had no contact with each other for 54 years. In 1996 Hartley began searching for Scalcucci on the Internet. The now-widowed 71-year-old resident of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, searched online telephone directories, e-mail directories, the Social Security Death Records, and even websites that try to reunite old military buddies or school chums. Hartley found Scalcucci within a few months. "I didn't even know if he was still alive. And if he was, I had no idea what part of the country he might be living in," Hartley said. She described her first telephone call to Scalcucci in the summer of 1996: "It took a lot of guts. I didn't know if he was married. Maybe he was in bad health. Maybe he was in a nursing home. I really didn't know what I would find on the other end. What Hartley found was a 72-year-old man living in Huntington Beach, Calif., who suffered from heart problems and chronic leukemia. The friendship started again via telephone and a personal visit was quickly arranged. Two months later Paul Scalcucci proposed marriage to Audrey Hartley and she accepted. The following is a list of some of the genealogy-related World Wide Web home pages that have been listed recently on http://www.rootscomputing.com. Some of these sites may charge a fee for their services: Collins from Henry and Ann (Riall) in 1635 from London, England to the present: http://verncollins.webjump.com. Central site for research of the Dalton/Daulton/Dolton surname. This site also has links to other sites and services for this surname, GEDCOM files of persons researching this surname, indexes of the Dalton Gang Newsletter and the current newsletter: Saratoga Research, a full service genealogy and historical research company: Church surname genealogy and discussion group: The Complete Loy History Website is a companion to the recently published 1,300 plus page book (now out of print) of descendants of Martin Loy (to America 1741): A One-Name Study of the family of Handsakers around the world: Ancestry of Stanley Laidlaw and Mary Rickerson of Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties, NY: Mission Viejo, Calif.'s Family History Center lists its special collections and free classes on its website: Flynt and Flint family history with genealogical information, 3,000+name database and more: Pierce and side families history over 800 families listed: Swager family genealogy and researchers: DITTMAR genealogy, including the variations of DITMER / DIETMAR / DITMARS / DITTMAN or from the original: Templin family genealogy: "The Schirrhein Connection" is designed to assist family history researchers with an interest in Schirrhein/Schirrhoffen, Alsace, France and surrounding area: To submit your home page to this newsletter, enter the necessary information at:http://www.rootscomputing.com/register.htm. Due to the volume of new Web pages submitted, I am not able to list all of them in the newsletter. Click Here for Dick Eastman's Archive
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