California and San Francisco 1890 Great Register of Voters
Review by
Richard S. Wilson

Published by Heritage Quest; P.O. Box 540670; North Salt Lake, UT 84054. 2002. CD-ROM. System Requirements: Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP; Pentium 166 or higher; RAM 16 MB or higher; 4X CD-ROM Drive; Minimum 15 MB drive space; Color 16 bit, 800 x 600; Windows compatible mouse and keyboard. $29.95 each plus shipping.

Heritage Quest has released two new CD-ROMs containing data from the California 1890 Great Register of Voters. Although they do not contain the names of women or children, they are still a great substitute for the 1890 census schedules that were destroyed by fire. The San Francisco CD-ROM can be very useful because of the greater number of records that were lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

The first CD-ROM is the California 1890 Great Register of Voters. This CD was prepared by the California State Genealogical Alliance Volunteers. It contains an index of 311,030 men living in California in 1890. The information contained on the CD includes name, home address, naturalization code, age, county, page number, birthplace, and registration code.

The second CD-ROM is the San Francisco 1890 Great Register of Voters. This CD was compiled by the California Genealogical Society. It contains an index of 59,712 men living in San Francisco city and county in 1890. The information contained on this CD includes name, home address, naturalization information, age, occupation, birthplace, registration code, district, and precinct.

Only males age 21 and above were allowed to vote. The voting lists include many Hispanic residents; however, Asian and African Americans living in California could not vote in 1890. In addition, women did not receive voting rights in California until 1911.

To install the viewer software, simply insert the CD. The program will check to see if the viewer has already been installed. If the viewer has not been installed, it will launch the Install Shield program. (Installing the software is the same as any other Windows software.)

To start the viewer, select the icon on the desktop, or use the Start icon. When the viewer starts it will check for one of the databases in your CD-ROM drive. If it does not find a database, it will prompt you to insert a disk. Once the database has loaded, you will then see the main screen appear.

To search the database, you can use the various pull-down selections across the top of the screen. These are:

You can use the various selections to perform very sophisticated searches.

Genealogy Via the Internet 2nd Edition
Review by
Elissa Scalise Powell, CGRS

By Ralph Roberts. Published by Alexander Books; 800 Macedonia Road; Alexander, NC 28701. 2002. 288 pp.; illustrations; index. $16.95.

On the back of this book, the author claims to have proved himself related to all of the U.S. presidents: “… you can do it for yourself. Is your family descended from royalty? Almost certainly! Find out and document your descent from kings and queens in an evening. Add hundreds of relatives a week!”

The author advocates a method of “full genealogy” that includes collateral lines in order to accomplish these claims. He distinguishes this from “ancestor genealogy” to which “old-line professionals and serious researchers” adhere in their search for proof of only direct ancestors, a “slow and painful process.”

Repeatedly telling readers to evaluate what they get from the Internet and online cousins, he advocates that the speed of collecting names is the best use of the computer's power and should be valued above meticulous methods of proving each piece of information. This sounds very satisfying to those accustomed to instant answers, instant mashed potatoes, and instant messaging. But disregarding proof in the rush to collect names spreads the errors inherent in that system.

The Internet and computers are tools that genealogists can use to further the goals of their hobby or profession. To do only direct-line “ancestor genealogy” is to limit oneself from the fun and possibility of meeting cousins and sharing research, which is why “traditional” genealogists have been teaching for years that full family genealogy is the way to not miss anything, including the distant cousin with the family Bible.

Part I of the book includes a lineage chart of President Bush back to his 43rd great-grandfather, the Prophet Muhammad (570–632 A.D.), among other celebrity charts. The following chapters, which are sprinkled with spelling errors, include basic computer and genealogy terms and concepts, software, the history of the Internet, and how to download GEDCOMs.

In his own style, the author deftly explains simple computer operations but gets extremely technical, devoting several pages to the Unix shell commands, which few genealogists will ever need or encounter.

The “Basics of Genealogy” chapter gives good advice on how to start out, referencing basic websites. The bibliography includes many standard books, most dating from the 1980s. There is no hint of available online census data, or of databases such as EllisIsland.org or the Bureau of Land Management's land patents.

This book is for people who want to collect names by the thousands without much regard to actual relevance to their family tree. The author encourages sharing these large collections, promoting the idea that name collecting should be placed before accuracy because accuracy can come later. Anyone who has ever attempted to “recall” data they have placed on the Internet quickly realizes that the minute the data leaves the computer, control over it is lost forever and is virtually impossible to correct.

If you care about finding your true ancestors and cousins and would like up-to-date information about how to accomplish genealogy on the Internet, it would be best to find another source of instruction.

1885 Colorado State Census Arapahoe County
Review by
Gordon Grey

Produced by Colorado Genealogical Society; P.O. Box 9218; Denver, CO 80209-0218. 2002. CD-ROM. $10 (tax, postage & handling included).

In 1987, the Colorado Council of Genealogical Societies started a statewide project known as the 1885 Census Index Project. It was begun to make a statewide index of names, counties, enumeration districts, and pages. This project was never completed. The Colorado Genealogical Society was assigned the former Arapahoe County, which included the present Denver and Arapahoe counties and parts of Adams, Washington, and Yuma counties.

This CD is the result of the project. It partially fills the time gap in census records due to the loss of the 1890 Federal census. The Colorado Genealogical Society extracted the data for the CD from microfilmed records at the Denver Public Library.

The Table of Contents page is well-organized and provides the user convenient access to the desired areas contained on the CD. Each entry in the Table of Contents is a live link, making it very easy and quick to access the data. Useful introductory entries include an overview on how to cite the publication in another work, a listing of resources for finding the 1885 Colorado State Census films, a map of Colorado and Arapahoe County in 1885, a description of the Enumeration Districts, samples of the census pages, and selected demographic statistics. The demographic statistics include the age, gender, and place of birth of each person enumerated.

The census contains four different schedules: Population, Agriculture, Manufactures, and Mortality. A good description of these schedules is contained on the CD with useful information on variations from schedule to schedule. To help the users of the CD visualize the 1885 period of time, there are detailed descriptions of each enumeration district, brief bios and photos of interesting people in Arapahoe County in 1885, and noted local buildings and pictures of the period from the Denver Public Library's Western History and Genealogical Collection.

The every-name index is in alphabetical order for all persons and manufactures enumerated in the census. There were 61,578 people enumerated in this census. The name index contains the person's name, sex, age, place of birth, enumeration district/schedule (ED-SCH), and page number. The ED-SCH contains the enumeration district number and a schedule number related to one of the four schedules contained in the census.

The data is presented in PDF format, and Adobe Reader 5.0 is provided on the CD-ROM. Clear instructions on how to install the CD and access the information are provided on the inside of the CD cover, including instructions for both Windows and Macintosh users.

The index makes it very easy to search the entries on this CD. This is a well-organized, professionally produced, and easy to use CD. It is a very helpful and useful research tool for anyone looking for ancestors or doing research in Arapahoe County, Colorado, in 1885.

Family Forest 2002 Edition
Review by
Barbara Schenck

Published by Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc.; P.O. Box 6168; Kamuela, HI 96743. 2002. CD-ROM. System Requirements: Windows 95 or higher, NT, Pentium class CPU or better; 10MB hard disk space. $89 plus $4.95 shipping.

Family Forest 2002 Edition (or any edition for that matter) is not your average piece of genealogical software. Very often when we consider purchasing a “genealogy-oriented” software program we have a family group or surname in mind or a location we want to explore in detail. We get linear and localize because we often can't make progress unless we focus narrowly (not forgetting those collateral relatives and neighbors, of course!). And usually that's what we want our software to help us do.

Family Forest takes a whole different perspective. It looks at individuals, yes. But its talent is for fitting individuals into the big picture. In fact, it fits them into lots of pictures by allowing users to explore their connections to places, events, social groups, and ultimately, each other. Its goal is to show links that aren't immediately obvious, to make history personal and relevant, and to allow individuals from many backgrounds and ethnic origins to find out how they and their ancestors link into the world community. If you've ever had people say to you that history has nothing to do with them, this is the software that will change their minds.

To make your journey through Family Forest up close and personal, it helps to be able to connect to a branch of some family tree that you have been able to document back for a few generations. Your chance of making an instant hit that will “connect” you to the material available here is much greater if you can do that. But if you can't—I couldn't—you can approach it from a different angle. You can look at locales or events, etc. Somewhere you will find a connection that will link you and yours into the Family Forest that is “growing” all over the world.

What you do then depends on how much time you have and how long your curiosity holds out. There are lots of paths through this forest. It is easy to “get lost.” But wherever you go, there are lots of places and people to explore and lots of connections to make. It's a great rainy-day enterprise. It's a stimulus to new ways of looking at old brick walls. It's intriguing. It's fun.

The software loads easily with directions right on the CD. While it isn't instantly obvious what you can do with it once you've loaded it, just messing around with it will take you in interesting directions. It has a very useful search engine and lots of help if you need it.

One caveat from the publisher that genealogists will appreciate: the connections are only as good as the publications they've been taken from (listed in its bibliography).

Of course we know that books and CDs are not a substitute for using primary sources and creating a documented proof. But Family Forest can open your eyes to places and possibilities you might not have considered. It's one more way of looking at genealogy and history—and marveling at all the cousins we have in the world!

Return to the July-September 2003 Genealogical Computing Table of Contents.