Back Home Again
This week’s newsletter was written on airplanes and in a hotel room. I just returned home form several days in Boca Raton, Florida. Unfortunately, this trip was not related to genealogy. While Boca Raton is a lovely area, I spent most of my time inside a conference room at a customer’s location. Maybe I will get back there for a vacation someday.
Wiltshire (England) Parish Records on CD-ROM
This week I had a chance to use a new genealogy CD-ROM disk: "Wiltshire Parish Records, Volume 1 – Salisbury." The records on this disk include:
St. Thomas 1570-1812
St. Edmund 1559-1837
Baverstock 1559-1812
Norton 1663-1812
Colerne 1560-1575 and 1640-1651/2
The Wiltshire Parish Records disks are produced by S&N Genealogy Supplies in England. I was quite interested to use Volume 1 since the first American immigrant of my name came from Downton, a tiny village just outside of Salisbury.
The "Wiltshire Parish Records, Volume 1 – Salisbury" CD-ROM was created with Adobe Acrobat, a great choice as far as I am concerned. All the required software for Windows 95, 98 and NT is included on the CD-ROM itself. Anyone using Macintosh or UNIX or other operating systems can probably use the same CD-ROM by first downloading the appropriate free software for the needed operating system from http://www.adobe.com. I tested this CD-ROM on Windows NT version 4.0.
The "Wiltshire Parish Records, Volume 1 – Salisbury" disk requires a password in order to view the information. The required password was included with the disk, so that wasn’t any problem. I assume that the password is used to discouraging illegal copying of the disk. (The entire disk is copyrighted by S&N Genealogy Supplies.)
The Wiltshire Parish Records CD-ROM disks contain W. Phillimore's transcripts of marriages from various Wiltshire registers. These transcriptions first appeared in a set of books printed in the early part of the twentieth century. The Wiltshire Parish Registers that I looked at were originally printed in 1907. S&N Genealogy Supplies has scanned the books, creating images of each page. These images have been electronically enhanced to improve readability and then placed onto CD-ROM disks. An index of every name was also created.
Looking at the CD-ROM is more or less the electronic equivalent of reading the printed book. You can either leaf through the pages one at a time or else look up a name in the index and then go directly to the referenced record. All of the images that I looked at were very clear and easy to read. I printed a few pages on a rather ancient LaserJet printer, and they all looked very good, much better than a typical photocopy made from a printed book. I wasn’t able to copy and paste with the normal Windows Clipboard commands, however. The same is true of most other genealogy CD-ROM disks that I have seen, with a few exceptions.
To test the software, I did a search for my own surname. I didn’t find the original progenitor of the American Eastmans, but I did find a reference to some familiar-looking names. I have not seen the printed version of the Wiltshire Parish registers but have previously searched other materials from Wiltshire. The names and dates of several people found on this CD-ROM matched those of the records I searched earlier. The other Eastmans mentioned apparently were the sisters, brothers, cousins and other relatives of the man who came to Massachusetts in 1638.
I was pleased to see that searching for a name always resulted in a "hit" in exactly the right place on the resultant page. Some other genealogy CD-ROMs I have used have similar indexes, except that they only take you to the required page. The user then has to read the entire page to find the item of interest. However, the "Wiltshire Parish Records, Volume 1 – Salisbury" not only takes you to the page, but it also highlights the name in blue. When searching through hundreds of "hits," that one little feature can save a lot of time.
I only examined Volume 1, the disk for Salisbury. Looking at S&N Genealogy Supplies’ catalog, I noted that they also have similar disks for many other areas of England. The company will be releasing still more records on CD-ROM in coming months.
"Wiltshire Parish Records, Volume 1 – Salisbury" sells for £19.95. That is roughly $33.00 in U.S. funds. Surprisingly, that price includes shipping to any place in the world. If you purchase by credit card, there is no need to obtain a check or money order in British pounds. The credit card companies will handle the currency conversion for you.
Wiltshire Parish Records on CD-ROM are available from S&N Genealogy Supplies’ Web site at: http://www.genealogy.demon.co.uk
Virtual Ireland
Saint Patrick’s Day is just a few days away. It seems appropriate to research Irish ancestry at this time of year. One online site can help.
Virtual Ireland is site that is about all things Irish, not just genealogy. However, the owners have produced a rather large genealogy section, including information on how to research Irish ancestry, the meanings of hundreds of Irish names and even information on how Irish descendants can claim citizenship and obtain an Irish passport. The site includes message boards devoted to Irish genealogy topics.
The site also contains Irish news, sports scores and travel. Most recently, VirtualIreland.com received extensive media coverage on television and newspapers for its Valentine's Day "lovebirds," a couple from Ireland and Philadelphia who met on the site.
To celebrate your Irish ancestry, look at: http://www.virtualireland.com
The Scotsman Online
Interested in "do-it-yourself genealogy" in Scotland? The Scotsman Online has an interesting article this week that describes the General Register Office for Scotland in Edinburgh. The GRO is the central archive of the statutory civil registers of births, deaths and marriages throughout Scotland.
The article describes Scots Origins, a service that provides Internet access to more than 25 million index entries from the statutory registers, the OPRs and the 1891 census. The article goes on to describe searches by microfilm and on the Mormons’ Web site.
I don’t know how long this article will remain online. However, as I write this, the article is available at: http://www.scotsman.com/cgi-bin/t3.cgi/taf/families.taf?function=detail
&Scotsman_uid1=TS00009106&desk=
Newweekend&cat=families&sec=0
My thanks to Jacques Tucker for letting me know about this online article.
The Online Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies
A new online site will be of interest to many with Canadian ancestry. The Online Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies is dedicated solely to Loyalist information. What is a Loyalist? The new Web sites describes a Loyalist as "any inhabitant of North America, from Newfoundland to Nicaragua inclusive, plus the islands of the West Indies, Bermuda and Jamaica, who served in a military capacity for the British, or provided services of a military nature or other beneficial services to the [British] Crown. This definition includes those who fought in the war and remained in America afterward, those who deserted, those who settled outside of America afterward, and those who were discharged or died during the war."
The material available on this Web site includes a sampling of manuscripts relating to the Loyalist military, including muster rolls, orderly books, regimental documents, courts martial and memorials. There were, of course, Loyalist civilians, in numbers probably greater than the military, but the material contained within the site is geared predominately towards the military. A special section is devoted to the role of Black Loyalists. The site also has a bit of information about the role of Native Americans. It also has some information about the British Regiments that fought in the American Revolution.
The Online Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies includes a search mechanism to search the 1,200 pages of information available on the entire site as well as message boards devoted to Loyalist topics. The Institute’s newsletter is also available online.
I spent some time looking at this site and was fascinated by what I found. There are official records, personal journals, land claims made after the war and also records of court-martials. The information often details the hardships endured both by these soldiers and by their families.
The Online Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies is available at:
http://www.royalprovincial.com/
Ancestry.com to Attempt Online Reconstruction of the 1890 U.S. Census
The following announcement is from Ancestry.com:
Ancestry.com is undertaking a historically-significant project to reconstruct the immense amount of information lost when a 1921 fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. destroyed nearly all of the 1890 census. Part of the MyFamily.com, Inc. network of sites, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com) is using numerous sources to create an online substitute census with information to which hundreds of millions of Americans can trace their roots. More than 20 million records have been identified for inclusion in the census substitute and additions will be made regularly as records become available for posting.
"Few records shed as much light on individuals, families and communities as census records. The 1921 fire destroyed insight into an entire generation's occupations, family origins, birth information and much more," said Andre Brummer, general manager of Ancestry.com. "The project goes far beyond trying to reconstruct a historically-significant set of documents. We are determined to provide millions of people a powerful resource for discovering information that has long been out of reach."
Ancestry.com is working with the National Archives and the highly regarded Allen County Public Library to acquire portions of the vast amounts of information necessary to offer the first substitute for the 1890 census. The substitute census will consist of information from fragments of the original 1890 census that remained after the fire, special veterans schedules, several Native American tribe censuses for years surrounding 1890, state censuses (1885 or 1895), city and county directories, alumni directories, and voter registration documents.
"When fire destroyed the original census it was a huge loss not only for family historians, but for sociologists, historians, economists and many others," said Loretto Szucs, vice president of Publishing for Ancestry.com and co-editor of best-selling reference book 'The Source.' "By merging 1890 information from several sources, Ancestry.com intends to make the census substitute an unparalleled resource for understanding a culturally and politically diverse period in United States history."
A large portion of the census substitute consists of city directories, which list the head of household and other working adults at a particular residence. The reconstruction will reference city directories from multiple years, making it possible to determine if a person or family moved to a different location during the years referenced.
NEHGS Announces a Web Catalog for the Circulating Library
The following announcement was written by the New England Historic Genealogical Society:
The New England Historic Genealogical Society founded in 1845 in Boston houses one of the premier genealogical research libraries in the world. These resources are available to both members and non-members alike. Probably less well known is the Society’s Circulating Library available to members only.
The Internet has been a boon for researchers to find and link with others to uncover facts about their ancestors and to discover the ever growing number of databases available online. What is not online, however, are the thousands of family genealogies, regional and local histories which are available for loan through the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s Circulating Library.
The Circulating Library ships its nearly 30,000 books and non-print media all over the United States, Canada and overseas. Members who are unable to come to Boston can select the books available in the Circulating Library and research them in the comfort of their homes. The holdings consist of family genealogies; histories of counties, cities and towns; vital records; church records; cemetery inscriptions; biographical profiles of prominent citizens; abstracts of probate/deed records; passenger lists of German, Russian, Irish and other immigrants; numerous "how to" books about conducting genealogical research and much more. Most of these volumes had very limited production runs and they represent a unique resource housed in one location. A recent generous donation will accelerate our acquisition program well into the future.
The collection contains over 7500 family genealogies from Aaker to Zuber. The geographic coverage of our collection includes the entire U. S., Canada, England and Ireland. Other countries are represented on a smaller scale. The library is strongest in the New England states, but has significant coverage for other regions.
Our new website http://www.newenglandancestors.org has an online searchable database for the entire collection of the Circulating Library. This site is available to members and non-members alike. Click on Borrow a book found under the heading Library Index. When you have your search result, click on the title and the call number will appear. To ensure your selection is in the Circulating Library, look for the words "also loan" following the call number.
In addition, a new, updated, enlarged edition of our printed Circulating Library catalogs (two-volume set) will be available through our online Book Shop or the Sales Department (call tollfree at 1-888-296-3447). Search our holdings; and if you decide our collection has research possibilities for you, click on Membership or call tollfree 1-888-286-3447 and join our 18,000-member family.
The Circulating Library is offering an inaugural special celebrating the launch of our new website. Members can order 1, 2 or 3 books at $6.00 each plus shipping at $3.50 for the first book and $1.25 each for the next two (three books per order). All orders will be shipped by UPS for prompt delivery throughout the United States.
Members will still be able to order books by mail, fax (1-617-624-0325), or phone (1-888-906-3447) at the usual rate of $14.00 for three books plus $4.00 for library postal rate or $5-8.00 for UPS, depending upon location. The Circulating Library processes most orders within 24 hours. Members have two weeks to use the books from time of delivery.
Genealogy Detective
I have received quite a few advertisements lately for a program called Genealogy Detective. This program is advertised as the "easy, fun way to create your family tree." Unfortunately, the name sounds very similar to Internet Detective, a program I described several weeks ago. I didn’t like Internet Detective very much, but I decided to take a look at Genealogy Detective to see if it is similar.
Genealogy Detective is for Windows 95, 98 or NT users only; there is no Macintosh version, nor will it work on Windows 3.1. It also requires a standard TCP/IP connection to the Internet; you must be online first before starting this program. The best way to obtain Genealogy Detective is to download it online. There is no "free trial" version; the only method of trying the program is by paying for it. However, the company does offer an unconditional money back guarantee for 90 days.
Genealogy Detective’s Web site is quite strong with advertising hype. A few of the site’s claims include:
- Locate missing links in your family tree.
- Find rare family genealogy files.
- Search your surname worldwide.
- Create a family Web site and have it hosted free.
- Share online discoveries with family and friends.
- Discover the easy way to create a family tree.
- Find the true and hidden meaning of your surname.
- Exchange information with other family historians.
- Discover royal ancestors on line.
- Access over 5,000 databases instantly.
Join your family genealogy groups and correspond with other family members.
There were quite a few more claims beyond those listed above. My favorite claim in that advertising was, "Explore secret genealogy web sites." I am not sure what a "secret genealogy web site" is, nor do I understand why anyone would create one.
I went to the Genealogy Detective Web site, entered my credit card number, and then downloaded the program. However, you can also obtain the program by sending a FAX or by old-fashioned mail by mailing an old-fashioned envelope containing a check.
Once installed, Genealogy Detective adds three new items to your computer’s list of available programs: the Genealogy Detective program itself, a Word document that describes how to get started in genealogy, and a "freeware" program for creating genograms. These are charts that can display a family tree, including pictures of the individuals. The genogram charts can also show medical history, which is especially useful in plotting inherited medical conditions. You might diagram your medical history to show what genetic traits may have been passed from one generation to the next.
Once I fired up Genealogy Detective, I was looking at a new window with numerous sections. Six tabs were displayed across the top:
- Introduction
- Genealogy Guide
- Link Database
- Surname Database
- Surname Searches
- Search Tools
The "Introduction" is exactly what you would imagine it to be: A very short text that describes what the program is supposed to do.
The tab labeled "Genealogy Guide" is a "how to get started in genealogy" tutorial. I glanced at this for a few minutes; it appeared to be a simple introduction to the topic, focusing heavily upon online searching techniques.
"Link Database" provides an organized listing of useful genealogy-related links to Web sites and other useful tools found on the Internet. The user can select a link from within Genealogy Detective; a Web browser is then launched, and the user is looking at the site referenced within a few seconds. The links included such items as the "Beginners’ Guide to Family History Research" by Desmond Walls Allen and Carolyn Earle Billingsley, a couple of Web sites that show how popular your last name is within the United States, a site that has a European Royalty database, the Afrigeneas site for Afro-American genealogy research (although the link within Genealogy Detective was out of date), the U.S. Post Office’s ZIP code database and "On This Day in History" Web site. The program also has links to all the leading online genealogy database sites, such as FamilySearch operated by the Mormon Church as well as Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com and Everton’s Online Web site. I also noticed direct links to the home pages of the Public Records Offices in England, Scotland and Ireland although there are no online databases at those sites. (The Public Records Office of Scotland does have records available online at http://www.origins.net but I couldn’t find that link in Genealogy Detective.)
The "Surname Database" tab allows you to search for surname-related web sites and forums that are available on the web. I entered my own last name and found two references to Web pages about my last name. While I had seen both of them before, this feature would be useful to a genealogy newcomer. Despite the tab’s name of "Surname Database," these were not true relational databases or even flat-file databases as defined by any dictionary of computer terminology. Instead, they were Web pages that contained a lot of text about people of that name.
The "Surname Searches" tab links to an online search capability at http://www.gengateway.com. That, in turn, took me to an online message forum devoted to my last name that is hosted on Genealogy.com.
The "Search Tools" tab provides links to three different online dictionaries as well as the Online Social Security Death Index, the AltaVista language translator, an online listing of "What Happened This Day in History," online maps, the CIA World factbook, and other useful online search tools that are not directly genealogy-related.
As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to see if Genealogy Detective is similar to the program called "Internet Detective" that I reviewed a few weeks ago. I found that, indeed, it is quite similar although produced by a different company. However, Genealogy Detective focuses strictly on genealogy sites and is therefore quite useful to anyone interested in researching their family tree. Genealogy Detective is a menu system of organized links to thousands of online sites dedicated to genealogy. It is well organized and is easy to use. I rather liked Genealogy Detective even though I didn’t care much for Internet Detective.
The real question is, "Is it worth the money?" That is a bit difficult to answer. To be sure, traditional search engines can find every single Web site referenced by Genealogy Detective. The search engines are free. The experienced Web-searching genealogist probably already knows about many of these sites and can easily find the rest. An experienced genealogist who has been using the Web for some time will probably decide that Genealogy Detective is not worth the money.
I suspect that the genealogy newcomer or the person who has only recently entered the online world will have a different point of reference. That person may find that Genealogy Detective is a good method of getting a "jump start" into online genealogy searches.
In short, if you are not yet comfortable with search engines, or if the online lists of thousands of sites overwhelm you, you may find that Genealogy Detective’s ease of use, organization of links into categories, and built-in helpful advice may justify the $24.97 purchase price.
To decide for yourself or to obtain more information about Genealogy Detective, look at:
http://www.genealogydetective.com/cgi-bin/
affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=rootscomputing
Personal History Capsule
Want to save information for your descendants? You can do so by creating a time capsule. You can print a complete copy of your genealogy research and then take steps to ensure that it is available to future family historians. Perhaps your local historical society wants to create a time capsule? They, too, can do the same.
Of course, a time capsule can be of any size and created from almost any durable material. It is possible to create a time capsule from a sealed Mason jar although I certainly wouldn’t recommend that. If you want to seal materials securely for future generations, you will want something that is rugged and weatherproof. Glass breaks easily and metal rusts. Moisture inside the time capsule can destroy the contents long before being opened. Hermetically sealed stainless steel containers are normally used for time capsules.
The next question is, "What materials should we save?" I would suggest that floppy disks and CD-ROM disks will not be very useful to future generations. Today’s technology will long be obsolete by their time. Printed documents are best but have two problems: (1.) they require a lot of space and (2.) archival-quality paper is required. Most of the paper in use today contains acids that will destroy the paper in 100 years or less. Only archival-quality paper will last into the next century. To avoid these problems, most time capsules use microfilm to store text information. Microfilm is expected to last several hundred years, and the process of reading microfilm probably will not be an issue for our descendants.
A new online Web site is now offering small "personal history capsules" to the general public. These are stainless steel containers that can be hermetically sealed. The same company will also microfilm your documents for a charge. The result is a time capsule that your family, historical society or anyone else can store for use by future generations.
Full details are available at: http://www.personalhistorycapsule.com
DeCode Genetics to Launch IPO
In the January 15, 2000 edition of this newsletter, I wrote about DeCode Genetics. In that article, I wrote that DeCode "was formed to promote medical research by the use of computer databases. The company has been combining information from medical records to the genealogical relationship between patients with various diseases in an attempt to link certain diseases to genes. The company recently announced that their genealogy database with all known Icelanders for the last 1100 years is to be available on the net later this year."
This week DeCode Genetics Inc. filed to go public and raise $200 million in an initial stock offering. The company said it has already identified eight locations for disease-causing genes, twelve specific candidate genes, and the development of automated software algorithms for data capture and interpretation, and has almost completed a computerized genealogy database covering the Icelandic population. The firm said it would use the net proceeds of its IPO for research and discovery programs, capital spending, developing and operating its DeCode Combined Data Processing capability, and other general corporate purposes.
In 1998, the company entered into a research collaboration and cross-license agreement with F. Hoffman-La Roche through which DeCode Genetics could receive more than $200 million in research funding and milestone payments. The company also won a license from the Icelandic government in January to operate a comprehensive medical and genetic database for 12 years.
The Reykjavik, Iceland-based company had $16.4 million in revenue and $23.17 million in net losses last year, according to the prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
From The Mailbox: WorldSpy
Last week I wrote about my experiences with one free Internet service provider. Several people wrote to me describing their experiences with the various other providers of free Internet service. Some providers shower the user with advertising while others are less intrusive.
Alan Mann is writing a review of these services that will soon be published elsewhere. He pointed out his satisfaction with WorldSpy.net. This provider has no advertising at all once it is in operation. That's right -- no ads. So how do they pay for it? They make their profits as a portal. When your computer dials this free service, WorldSpy’s software automatically takes you to the WorldSpy home page, which is a news, sports, email, online shopping and search portal page. There is advertising on this portal page, but, once you leave this start page, you do not see any more ads from WorldSpy. There are no floating banners of any sort.
You can set your "home page" to anything you want, but when the service first starts, it always goes first to the WorldSpy page. WorldSpy even includes a real POP3 mail server so that you can use Eudora or Microsoft Outlook or any other standard e-mail program. You are not limited to reading e-mail in a Web browser .
The one noticeable disadvantage is that WorldSpy uses a slightly different method that takes a little longer to connect. Typical connections to WorldSpy take 90 seconds rather than the 40 seconds or so required with CompuServe. That extra time can seem like an eternity, so I’d suggest that you recite the following words over and over while waiting for the connection: "I’m saving money… I’m saving money…".
WorldSpy works only with Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT. There is no Macintosh version.
I’m looking forward to reading Alan’s review of all the free services once it gets published. In the meantime, you can look at WorldSpy at: http://www.worldspy.net/
Home Pages Highlighted
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:
Conrad Wentworth and Catherine Cecil family history. Conrad was an Indian Scout after the Civil War, serving on the Nebraska frontier. Associated surnames of descendants include White, Daniels, Stewart, Myers, and many more: http://pages.tstar.net/~jamyers/index.html
Nescopeck Website – Nescopeck, Luzerne County, PA was a small town on the Susquehanna just south of Wilkes-Barre. Its people and passions are described on a website designed to bring together the families, their lives, their data, wills, deeds, birth and death records: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/
Garden/6402/fgs/nescopeck.html
Publications regarding Skidmore/Scudamore (plus other spelling variations) families: http://www.skidmoregenealogy.com
Roster of New York Volunteers 111th Infantry, Civil War Unit: http://members.localnet.com/~kveneron/nyinft/111idx.html
Herz and Stern or Starr families of Kochendorf, now Bad Friedrichshall, Baden Wuerttemberg, Heppenheim an der Bergsrasse, Hesse, Germany, Louisville, Kentucky, Portsmouth and Zanesville, Ohio: http://www.dhc.net/~design/gedcom/josephs.htm
The home of the HERZ family name mailing list for HERZ family research of any time, any place: http://www.onelist.com/community/Herz
Dick Eastman Online
