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Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
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FamilySearch.org is a Huge Hit |
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Click Here for Dick Eastman's Archive |
| June 01, 1999 |
- FamilySearch.org is a Huge Hit As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, the LDS Church officially announced its FamilySearch.org website last Monday. The news media has been full of stories about this huge new genealogy resource on the web. The result was predictable: the site became swamped. FamilySearch.org received up to 40 million hits a day. At times the load peaked at 400 to 500 hits per second. My suspicion is that those numbers reflect only those who actually got through. Many people, myself included, couldn’t even reach the site. LavaStorm, the Boston-based developer of the service, reported that in addition to the 40 million hits being recorded at the site, users representing another 60 million hits were failing to connect. "And that's just an estimate," said LavaStorm marketing director Matt Romney. "We haven't really seen this thing hit its potential." LavaStorm claims that FamilySearch already is among the top 10 most popular websites in the world, with 400,000 users per day. The following announcement was placed on FamilySearch.org in midweek: FamilySearch Internet is receiving so many visits that users are temporarily being given access on a rotation basis for 20 minutes at a time. We apologize for this inconvenience. Please look at the message below to determine when you should be able to access the site. Thank you for using FamilySearch.org. Obviously this load is going to subside a bit as the publicity drops off. Many people are anxious to use this new service to look for their ancestors. After the first few weeks of operation, I suspect the load will drop back to 5 to 10 million hits a day, still a large number by anyone’s standards. What fascinates me about the huge success of FamilySearch.org is that this site runs as a totally noncommercial service. It is completely free for all users and doesn’t even have banner ads to help defray expenses. The only sites on the Internet right now that are more popular are commercial ventures that cram all sorts of advertising into their web pages. That would include AOL at roughly 1.5 million users per day, followed closely by Microsoft. Yahoo! is third with just over 1 million users per day. There is a battle for fourth place, with several companies running around a half-million users per day. Still, FamilySearch.org probably is in the top ten with 400,000 successful users per day. The executives at some of the big media houses are bound to wake up when they see these numbers. Genealogy has always been treated as a backwater activity, gathering little interest from large corporations. Published studies in the past few years have claimed that genealogy is more popular than golf or hunting or tennis. Yet those other activities all have multiple organizations, magazines, television shows and other media events, along with millions of dollars in advertising. Large corporations are eager to attract the notice of golfers, hunters and tennis players. The genealogy world has companies such as Ancestry.com or the genealogy-related division of Mattel. These are big companies by genealogy standards, but they pale in comparison to the companies involved in other personal activities. Now let me make a prediction: I expect to see some new names enter the genealogy world in coming months. I don’t know which ones, but I have to believe that executives at Time-Warner, Disney, and their competitors are looking at the numbers being generated by the new non-profit website from Salt Lake City. They must realize that there is a huge number of people interested in genealogy and that these people constitute a largely untapped marketplace. I wouldn’t be surprised to see one or two new genealogy-oriented websites appear about six months from now, backed by multi-million-dollar corporations. Books, television advertising and even a slick magazine or two at your local newsstand would accompany these sites. The new genealogy sites might have articles on how to do genealogy research, new databases, all sorts of information on ethnic heritage, etc. With their large checkbooks, I suspect these corporations will buy smaller companies that already have established genealogy product lines and then add those products onto the new websites. Establishment of such sites will only encourage more people to research their heritage, who will add to the genealogical databases available today. I think we will see an upsurge of activity that will be a boon to genealogists everywhere. - Online Images from the 1850 US Census For years genealogists have dreamed of examining images of original genealogy-related documents while seated in the privacy of their own homes at any hour of the day or night. A few weeks ago that dream became reality when many images from the 1850 U.S. Census became available on GenealogyLibrary.com. This week I spent some time on the site and can tell you that it is a winner. This was worth waiting for. I first had a brief look at the site while attending the National Genealogical Society’s annual conference a few weeks ago. The Learning Company was at the conference, proudly showing their new website. In that week’s newsletter I wrote about their new census images: "GenealogyLibrary.com is starting with scanned images of the 1850 U. S. Census records for a number of states with high populations (New York, Pennsylvania, etc.)" Well, I was half-right. They do have Pennsylvania records available, but New York is not yet online. That was my error, caused by scribbling notes in a hurry and not paying enough attention to details. GenealogyLibrary.com currently offers images of the 1850 U.S. Census for the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. That is a total of about 200,000 images available online today. The other states, including New York, will be added in future months. I decided to search the 1850 census records for the town of Billerica, Massachusetts. This was easy to do, as GenealogyLibrary.com has both the census index and the images for the Massachusetts 1850 records. The index contains each individual's first and last name, town or city, as well as county, census roll and page number. Some index entries also indicate the age and gender of the individual. I did a search specifying the words BILLERICA and MANNING. I used the name Manning because a house in Billerica that I used to own stood on land that belonged to the Manning family from the 1690s until the 1960s when my house was built. The census index quickly found a listing for William Manning, on Census Roll 324, Page 210. I clicked on the icon, and a few seconds later I was looking at the image of the original page from the census book, showing the enumerator’s terrible handwriting. Didn’t they teach penmanship in those days? With some difficulty I was able to see the listing for William Manning, his wife Lucinda and daughter Jerusha. I tried to visualize William and Lucinda talking with the census enumerator in their home in 1850. That was rather easy to visualize since the home built in 1690 is still standing today, and I have been inside it often. The image on the screen was large and easy to view. In fact, the experts at GenealogyLibrary.com successfully produced an accurate image of the original page that I could view on my screen. The only drawback was the handwriting of the enumerator! Several useful options are available. One that I used immediately was "View Smaller Image for Printing." This displayed a "zoomed out" image with writing so small as to be unreadable on the screen. However, I clicked on print, and a few seconds later an excellent reproduction of the original page issued from my ancient laser printer. The printed copy was easier to read than the printed copy I made from microfilm a few years ago. All in all, I’d rather use the computer images than the microfilm images. Another very useful option is the ability to save the image to the local hard disk. The image is saved in .TIF format, which then can be imported into most leading photo editing programs. In cases where the handwriting is difficult to read, you can use image enhancement software to increase contrast, to magnify or to otherwise improve the readability of the original image. You can’t do that on microfilm! GenealogyLibrary.com has a winner on their hands: high quality scanned images of original source documents that you can view anytime you wish. You don’t have to leave home to view them and you don’t have to buy expensive CD-ROM disks. For most people, the online version is much more cost-effective than CD-ROM disks. Nine states are available today, and more will be added in the near future. I only wish that this resource was available when I started my genealogy search years ago. GenealogyLibrary.com is a subscription-based service. A monthly subscription is available for $9.99 while a one-year subscription is $99.99. Of course, there is a lot more available on the site besides the 1850 census records, including 1773 online databases, primary resources, and family-finding resources. See the website at http://www.GenealogyLibrary.com for all the details. - Roderick Heller Receives NGS Award for Excellence The following press release was issued this week by the (U.S.) National Genealogical Society: The National Genealogical Society is pleased to announce that J. Roderick Heller, III received the 1999 NGS Award for Excellence: Genealogy and Family History. This award goes to an author of a family genealogy or family history book published during the previous three years. The book must foster scholarship and/or advance or promote excellence in genealogy. Mr. Heller is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a master’s degree in history from Harvard University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He is a former Vice Chairman of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and currently is Chairman of public television station WETA and Chairman Emeritus of the Civil War Trust. His award winning book is titled, "An Upcountry Chronicle, The Heller Family of South Carolina." It is the story of his immigrant progenitor, Johannes Heller, who arrived in Charleston, South Carolina in 1751. The style is narrative and eleven generations are covered. NGS invites authors to submit their genealogy, family history, method or source book for next year's contest. Visit the NGS web page at www.ngsgenealogy.org for details about the contest. Click on the Site Map and then on National Awards. We know there are lots of excellent books being published in our field. Perhaps your book will be selected next year. You can't win unless you enter the competition, so give it a try. - Predicting Origins of Those Who May Have Left Wales Mark Howells has added a great new section to his website. The service revolves around the work of John and Sheila Rowlands and their "Predicting Origins" system. The following is the announcement of this new service: It can be challenging to research ancestors in the "land of Jones & Davies". For those researchers with Welsh heritage whose ancestors' point of origin within Wales is unknown, the well-known Welsh research authors John & Sheila Rowlands have provided a predictive system which may help as an aid to research. "Chapter 7 of The Surnames of Wales for Family Historians and Others (FFHS, 1996; GPC 1996, by John & Sheila Rowlands) describes a method for predicting the origins of groups of people who were drawn from the same community within Wales but who had migrated or emigrated to other parts. The predictive method is based on simple probability theory and draws on the results of a major survey of surnames throughout Wales for the period 1813-1837." Information on the Rowlands' "Predicting Origins" system is now available on the Internet at: http://www.oz.net/~markhow/sow.htm A description of the system including sample results are shown. This service is low cost (US$3.00) and is available only by regular postal mail. The Rowlands are extending their existing offer of the service to those on the Internet who may not be aware of its availability. - Boston States Site and Mail List Sharon Sergeant has released an announcement about an interesting new mailing list and website which I reworded a bit: Announcing new Boston States site and mail list - Resources to track families migrating between the Canadian Eastern Provinces, New England and New York through the centuries. News on the September 1999 "Boston States Migration Route, Immigration Workshop and Genealogy Fair" will be updated both on the website and through the Boston States mailing list. The website is available at: http://bostonstates.rootsweb.com/BostonStatesindex.htm. To subscribe to the Boston States mailing list send a message to BOSTON-STATES-L-request@rootsweb.com that contains the word subscribe and nothing else. If you prefer digest mode, send the command instead to BOSTON-STATES-D-request@rootsweb.com - Privacy Concerns of Genealogists: Nothing New Many people, myself included, are alarmed at the loss of privacy in this high tech world in which we live. We think that the use of computers and the ease of finding information have made it possible for snoops to find out too much about us. In turn, this information can be used for purposes that we do not approve of. This week Mary Jean Hall sent along a note that makes me wonder if this is a modern problem after all. Mary Jean found the following in a book printed in 1897. From the "Wakefield Memorial, Historical, Genealogical & Biographical Register of the Name and Family of Wakefield": A WARNING It is deemed proper to warn the kinfolk that genealogies are sometimes made to serve very unfortunate ends, in the hands of "confidence" men and women. Books of this kind find their way into public libraries, where they can be consulted by any one; here cunning rascals familiarize themselves with parts of the family history and impersonate a distant relative and impose on the family hospitality, borrow money, ask valuable and rare favors, on various pretenses, all to beat the selected victim. Sometimes (it is said) spirit mediums, clairvoyants, and fortune tellers consult genealogies to obtain necessary family history to bewilder and defraud their patrons. All kinds of schemes are resorted to, nowadays, for defrauding, and genealogies offer no exception to the rule. Signature of Homer Wakefield M.D. - Khrushchev to Become an American The United States has always been a land of immigrants, at least since 1620. Millions have come to this country to seek a better life or to escape oppression elsewhere. Many of these immigrants repudiated the dictates of their former homelands. One new name in the list of recent applicants for citizenship is especially noteworthy: Sergei Khrushchev wants to become an American. Sergei’s father Nikita threatened to bury America, but the son apparently is happy that the prediction did not come true. "It is not so special or a political decision any longer," the son of the late Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, said in a telephone interview. "I and my wife have been living here for eight years and we plan on living here longer. We like it here and I believe that when you're living in a country like this, you have to become a citizen," Khrushchev said, speaking from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he teaches international studies "with an emphasis on the former Soviet Union." The 63-year-old scholar and his wife, Valentina Golenko, are scheduled to take a written test at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service offices in Providence on June 23. 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: Reaves and Ford family databases with over 67,000 records. The page also contains links to slave data information: http://www.crosswinds.net/members/~tracks/index.htm. Hispanic Genealogy Web Page contains information for beginners as well as advanced researchers in Hispanic Genealogy. The site also contains information on Spanish Heraldry and armory: The Hispanic Genealogy Internet Forum is the CompuServe Hispanic Genealogy section's online forum: Upton family from Arkansas and the Thayer family from Michigan with related families: African American Genealogical Society of Northern California - on-line library, surname queries board, genealogy resource directory, calendar of events, family reunions calendar, ancestral charts, and many other genealogical research tools and how-to resources: Information about the early settlers of Argyle and Calledonia, Illinois: Descendants of John BURGESS (1711-1796) and his wife, Hannah JAMES (1719-1786). The family came from Rhode Island but lived in Sterling and Voluntown, Connecticut: Everett Families of the South: LAWFORD families worldwide website: 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.
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