ROOTSWEB REVIEW: Genealogical Data Cooperative News Vol. 1, No. 18, 14 October 1998; Circulation: 219,500+ Copyright (c) 1998 RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative Editors: Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG * * * * * CONTENTS: News and Notes from RootsWeb; Census Project Uploads; Connecting through RootsWeb; Letters to the Editors; Mailing Lists; Web Sites; Ultimate Family Tree Platinum Edition; The English Language as it is Spoken; Humor; Reprint Policy; Author Guidelines; Unsubscribe Instructions * * * * * NEWS AND NOTES FROM ROOTSWEB FASTER PAGES AT ROOTSWEB. As some folks may have noticed, access to has been slower in recent weeks than it has been in the past. The reason is that so many genealogists are simultaneously using it that we are very nearly exceeding the amount of bandwidth we have available for transmitting Web pages through the Internet. To remedy that problem, RootsWeb has just signed a contract with Concentric.NET to obtain direct access to the Internet's backbone, and we will be moving the main Web server sometime within the next week. There will be about a four-hour downtime as we move the server. The great news is that this should allow us to serve pages as fast as the very best commercial sites on the Internet; the bad news is that this contract adds another $4,000 per month in expenses to our already extremely tight budget. Dr. Brian Leverich * * * PRESS RELEASE FRAZIER PARK, CA -- October 12, 1998 -- The RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative, the Internet's oldest and largest genealogical information clearinghouse, today endorsed the SAFEeps e-mail preference service introduced by American Computer Group. "Spam, or unsolicited bulk e-mail, is far and away the most dangerous problem that we face on a daily basis," said Tim Pierce, senior system administrator for RootsWeb. "When you handle the volume of e-mail that we do, it's entirely possible for a single spam attack to bring your entire operation to a halt." Electronic mail comprises the core of RootsWeb's information services. Among these is the RootsWeb Surname List, at more than 500,000 entries the fastest-growing collection of surname data anywhere on the Internet. RootsWeb also hosts one of the most active communities of electronic mailing lists in the world, supporting more than 4,000 genealogical mailing lists. The systems deliver over 100 million messages to 216,000 genealogists each month. "Dealing with spam on this scale is incredibly expensive for us," explained Pierce. "Because unsolicited advertising imposes such a huge cost on the recipient, we believe strongly that it should be treated the same way as junk faxes, and banned outright. However, in the absence of such a law, Rodney Joffe is one of the few people truly qualified to run a 'global opt-out list.'" "SAFEeps promises to be a revealing experiment," Pierce added. "Junk e-mail purveyors have always claimed to honor 'remove lists' -- now we're asking them to put their money where their mouth is. SAFEeps will separate the responsible marketers from the scam artists." * * * WANT TO HELP BRING MORE GENEALOGICAL RESOURCES ONLINE? RootsWeb is entirely community-supported: your membership is crucial in enabling RootsWeb to continue to add more genealogical data, Web sites, and mailing lists. The degree of community support directly affects RootsWeb's ability to grow. For details about levels of RootsWeb membership and sponsorship, please visit: * * * ROOTSWEB HELPDESK. For answers to your questions about RootsWeb, visit the HelpDesk at: . * * * * * NEW FILES UPLOADED THIS WEEK TO THE USGENWEB ARCHIVES BY THE USGENWEB CENSUS TRANSCRIPTION PROJECT [N.B.: These refer to the federal census unless stated otherwise. Also note that several of the URLs are too long to fit on one line here and so are not "clickable." All of the material between a set of angle brackets represents a single URL.] Iowa, Clayton Co. (Mendon Township), 1850, by Mike Petersen Indiana, DeKalb Co. (Butler Township) 1850, by Sue Sablic Louisiana, City of New Orleans, 1820, by Carol Walker Louisiana, Ascension Parish, 1810, by Carol Walker Missouri, Holt Co., 1850 Slave Schedule, by Judy Casper North Carolina, Ashe Co. (Morgan Dist.), 1800 by Amy Hatcher Ryan * * * * * CONNECTING THROUGH ROOTSWEB: Thanks for sharing your stories. * * * After playing around with my new Internet service, I found Cyndi's List and the RootsWeb surname lists. The first message I sent out was for my mother's family SNEADE. I put what I knew of her father and said I was looking for information or connections. I never really expected a response, but within one hour I received a message from England that said "Hello Cousin Barbara." I started to cry and shake all over. It was from descendants of my grandfather's brother -- a brother that my mother did not even know about -- the youngest brother who was left in England when all the others immigrated to the U.S.A. That contact found for me a living relative on my mother's maternal CORBETT side also. This led to a successful three-day reunion in Sturbridge, Massachusetts this summer with family members attending from England, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New York. The second success was through a Philly list. My father was orphaned at eight years old and we knew nothing of his family. As he had been born in Philadelphia, but lived most of his life in New Jersey, I signed up. Browsing through the messages one day, I noticed at the bottom of one there was a note "Searching for Turner in Gloucester County, New Jersey." As the subject line was in regard to a school, I was lucky to spot it. That message led me to a person who volunteers at Gloucester County Historical Society and whose husband, it turns out, is my sixth cousin. I now have information on many lines of the TURNER family and the wives' lines back to 1612, and on two historical homes. I am soon to go to New Jersey to visit. One historical/librarian tells me I was their "missing link." The third success was when recently you added some New Jersey lists. I had a great-grandmother, Amy Clark, about whom I had not found information. The first time I put a request for her on the New Jersey list, I had a response telling me who her parents were, and that person kindly proceeded to send me so much information, generation reports, wills, stories of our Revolutionary War patriot ancestor, etc. that I had it all bound into a book. That person turns out to be my fifth cousin. Thank you, RootsWeb. I never would have found all this without you. Barbara Turner Spadea * * * * * LETTERS TO THE EDITORS * * * I spent more than 10 years researching my tribal genealogies and all of the main lines of tribal group descent back to 1350 A.D. from one ancestor. These I published on the Internet with all of my references and resources along with contact addresses listed on the same page. This was so other tribe members in England, Australia and the U.S.A. may be encouraged to post or research their genealogies freely and openly. Genealogy among Pacific peoples is normally reserved to our meeting houses, and is a closed affair to outsiders, including European and other non-tribal members. Then someone leaves a message in my guestbook saying "I think I may be a cousin... I have a B.Sc. and have copied all of your information for a master's thesis I am doing at university." I go to her pages and there are no references to the resources that I used, there are no references to my page, not even a mention of ANY names. This implies that she did the research all by herself, and that she, who wishes to become a tribal historian, is a fount of all knowledge. A huge mistake, our tribal genealogies are directly linked to land. I have a bachelor's degree. What we were taught was to use or attempt to find, and name the source of all research that we use, unless the person specifies that they wish to remain anonymous. The genealogies have been reduced so that it falls in direct line to her, and her alone. Frankly, instead of handing out degrees and qualifications -- they should teach manners, forethought and courtesy, then maybe chuck in a degree or two as an afterthought. Carol Whyte (Te Ma Waiata), Auckland, New Zealand PacificGenWeb: P.S. All tribal genealogies are by word-of-mouth, hence the reason why it is so hard to find them on the Internet. * * * Re: Newfoundland's Grand Banks. Last April, I was posting notes to NFLD-LAB@rootsweb.com and explaining I had transcribed and posted portions of the 1921 census for Newfoundland for my South Coast Genealogy Site. People began to ask why various censuses weren't "on-line" for other districts, and the only explanation I could provide was that someone would need to transcribe them to have them posted. One Sunday evening I made an offer to this list and said that since I had access to the entire census I would copy the census for any individual as long as they paid for the copies and postage. The next morning 75 people had responded, many asking for overlapping entries. Knowing there were approximately 9,000 pages in this census and nearly 234,000 entries, it occurred to me that if I could get 25 more people that would be enough to transcribe the entire census. So I made another posting asking if people would be willing to transcribe an area other than what they had requested and we'd put the whole census on-line. By the next day I had plenty of volunteers to complete this. At that time it was labeled Project21. Now six months later it is nearly 99% complete and has been so successful, two other gentlemen have joined in and we are now transcribing censuses and directories from 1675 through 1945, as well as church and cemetery transcriptions, and have renamed the site Newfoundland's Grand Banks (NGB or a play on words for Newfoundland's Genealogical Beginnings). I am writing you to explain that if others took this route it may be a way to help all genealogical groups to get massive on-line reference material. If you would like I would be more than happy to help anyone get a project like this off the ground, in a manner of DOs and DON'Ts. There are now approximately 200 people transcribing material from all over the world and we think this may be one of the largest genealogical and historical projects ever undertaken; an estimated one million entries will be at this site in a year. Bill Crant Newfoundland's Grand Banks Newfoundland and Labrador Genealogy Research Forum * * * EDITORS' NOTE: We received a great deal of mail in connection with the privacy issue. We plan to publish parts of some of the letters we received in future issues of RWR. * * * * * MAILING LISTS: To subscribe or unsubscribe from any RootsWeb mailing list, send an e-mail message with only the word SUBSCRIBE (or UNSUBSCRIBE) in the subject and the body of the message to [name of list]-L-request@rootsweb.com (for mail mode) or to [name of list]-D-request@rootsweb.com (for digest mode). For example, if you have research interests in County Kerry, Ireland, send your SUBSCRIBE message to: IRL-KERRY-L-request@rootsweb.com For an index to most user mailing lists hosted by RootsWeb, visit . NEW MAILING LIST REQUESTS. USGenWeb and WorldGenWeb hosts may have FREE locality mailing lists for the areas they host and for that purpose may ignore the "Sponsors-only" warning on the list request page. Please request new mailing lists at: NEW SURNAME MAILING LISTS ANIBA FERGUSON-John (includes Farguson, etc.; descendants of John Ferguson of South Carolina) EzekielFULLER (Descendants of Ezekiel and Deborah FULLER of Isle of Wight County, Virginia) GRASBY GUIDRY (includes Guidrey, Guedry, Gaidry, Guildry, Gaitry) KLAGES LEAVENWORTH MCCORMICK (includes McCormack, etc.) MCKAMEY SHRIVER SPENCER (includes Spenser, Spincer and Spenser) TOOMBS (includes Toms, Tombs, etc.) NEW REGIONAL MAILING LISTS IRELAND: IRL-KERRY -- County Kerry SRI LANKA: SRILANKA U.S.A.: GAELBERT -- Elbert County, Georgia INFULTON -- Fulton County, Indiana INLAGRAN -- LaGrange County, Indiana INPULASK -- Pulaski County, Indiana KSCHAUTA -- Chautauqua County, Kansas KSCLOUD -- Cloud County, Kansas KSCOWLEY -- Cowley County, Kansas KSMITCHE -- Mitchell County, Kansas KSSEDGWI -- Sedgwick County, Kansas MDSOMERS -- Somerset County, Maryland MDWICOMI -- Wicomico County, Maryland MOATCHIS -- Atchison County, Missouri OKCANADI -- Canadian County, Oklahoma OKWASHIN -- Washington County, Oklahoma TNDICKSO -- Dickson County, Tennessee TNMCNAIR -- McNairy County, Tennessee NEW MAILING LISTS (ETHNIC, SPECIAL INTEREST, MISCELLANEOUS) GAGENWEB -- Georgia GenWeb DisasterRelay -- Telephone relay volunteers, for use in the event of natural disasters SCBATTLEGROUNDS -- Ancestors who participated in military battles in South Carolina * * * * * NEW WEB ACCOUNT REQUESTS. To request a Web account please e-mail the information to: NEW WEB SITES: Some of these might not yet be accessible. If one that interests you isn't up yet, please check again in a few days or a week. (the ~[tilde] before the name is required) will work for most of the following. If not, you will find most of them at the USGenWeb Project or the WorldGenWeb Project . For example, to visit the Sri Lanka site, go to: AUSTRALIA auswgw -- Australia WorldGenWeb SCOTLAND sctban -- Banffshire SRI LANKA srilanka -- Sri Lanka WorldGenWeb U.S.A. mtblaine -- Blaine County, Montana mtlibert -- Liberty County, Montana mthill -- Hill County, Montana HOMEPAGES CLAN SCOTT LONG CANE Website STICE Family Page * * * * * ULTIMATE FAMILY TREE PLATINUM EDITION by Tony Paruszewski Helping people research and record their family history is what Ultimate Family Tree is about. And the new Ultimate Family Tree Platinum edition is chock-full of "must have" items for the genealogist. For years, the wealth of information on passenger lists has been difficult to obtain. Many of these lists of people arriving in the United States were not indexed. Yet these lists are valuable for making the link with your overseas ancestors. With the free one-month online subscription to the Ultimate Family Data Library (UFDL) you can explore passenger lists of many U.S. ports in the 1800s. Additionally, you will have access to the first UFDL release in the 1910 U.S. census series -- the Richmond County portion of New York City. Don't overlook the collection of early Virginia and Pennsylvania records -- 17 record groups in all. The passenger list series and census series will be constantly expanding. We added an exciting new tutorial. With the Ultimate Family Tree Platinum edition you receive the Basic Genealogy Records tutorial, the Immigration and Naturalization tutorial, and the brand-new tutorial on English and Welsh records. These multi- media tutorials explain what information is on these records and where to find them, and like the other tutorials, include images of the actual documents. Not everyone traces their lineage through Europe. We have doubled the number of countries in Records Requester so that it includes Latin America. You can quickly select the country to which you want to write, enter some basic information, and generate a letter to the proper authorities in 37 countries in one of 13 languages. Of course, keeping track of those letters is equally important and the Records Requester includes a correspondence log for tracking replies. A more recent version of the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) has been added. That tried and true source of information for the United States now contains 55 million names. The SSDI has an easy letter-writing tool so that you can easily request copies of detailed records from the Social Security Administration. Having spent all the time to assemble your family history, you want to print a variety of reports and share the information. We added more historical fonts and photos from Europe to the World Photo Studio. Now there are even more ways to add some pizzazz to your reports. You will also be able to receive a free upgrade to the next edition of Ultimate Family Tree. We are always adding features and improving the product to meet our users' requests like the newly published, "Evidence!" a book by Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG, FNGS; the CLOOZ utility for tracking your research documents; and more. Plus, the makers of Ultimate Family Tree will provide you with a free copy of the Ultimate Scrapbook Creator. This new product, a $39.99 value by itself, is the perfect thing for creating wonderful scrapbooks with customized fonts, colors, backgrounds, photo templates, theme pages, and albums for your family and friends. Whether you are just getting started in this exciting hobby or are a confirmed "scrapbooker" this product is just what you need. Not only will Ultimate Family Tree Platinum provide you with an assortment of features to help you in researching your family history, it is also an excellent value. Enjoy. * * * * * THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS IT IS SPOKEN (continued). For all the English speakers around the world, I'd like to recommend the book "The Mother Tongue, English & How It Got That Way" by Bill Bryson. Also "The Story of English" (companion to the PBS television series) by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. I always wondered why English speakers couldn't pronounce words the same and why some words weren't spelled the way they sound. These books were very enlightening. Marcy Hoover * * * Re: RWR, Vol. 1, No. 16 and those who speak "Gullah," the English dialect used in Charleston. My wife and I have a mixed marriage. I'm originally from Connecticut and she is from Charleston, South Carolina. During the bicentennial celebrations of the United States, in order to show close relations between the North and South, a pronouncing dictionary of Charlestonese and Bostonese was published by the same Ashley Cooper. We still glance at it every so often and chuckle. Using the rule that words like boat and goat in Charleston are two-syllable words, i.e., bo-et and go-et, hear is pronounced he-ah in both places. And, of caws, each Sunday we had a layet dayet ba the gayet. And the British were always prowd of the multitude of haccents they had every few miles! Thank you for the weekly update. I caught the "genealogy disease" a few years ago and the fun of putting a "tree" together is a wonderful pastime. Mike Ben-Avi, Jerusalem, Israel * * * My wife and I recently returned from a cruise to England, Ireland and Scotland. Reading in RWR, Vol. 1, No. 10 regarding the way English is spoken, I have the following: We were in Edinburgh and took a tour to County Fife. We learned that a Firth is an estuary of a river and, of course, the river there is the Forth. Therefore, the "Firth of Forth is on Fife." L. F. Beard * * * * * HUMOR. Last week's "Top 10 Indicators That You've Become a Gene- Aholic," was written by Mary H. Harris . Many thanks to Gloria Boyd for calling this to our attention. * * * HUMOR. Thanks to Charles Hansen , who forwarded this list of acronyms posted way back in May on a Prodigy Classic bulletin board by Melanie Nickel. ISDN - It Still Does Nothing APPLE - Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity SCSI - System Can't See It DOS - Defective Operating System BASIC - Bill's Attempt to Seize Industry Control IBM - I Blame Microsoft DEC - Do Expect Cuts CD-ROM - Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete Monthly OS/2 - Obsolete Soon, Too. WWW - World Wide Wait MACINTOSH - Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs PENTIUM - Produces Erroneous Numbers Through Incorrect Understanding of Math COBOL - Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language AMIGA - A Merely Insignificant Game Addiction LISP - Let's Insert Some Parentheses MIPS - Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed WINDOWS - Will Install Needless Data On Whole System MICROSOFT - Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers . * * * * * PERMISSION TO REPRINT articles from ROOTSWEB REVIEW is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, PROVIDED (1) The reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes. (2) This notice must appear at the end of the article: Written by Previously published by RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative, RootsWeb Review, Vol. 1, No. 18, Wed, 14 Oct. 1998. You may visit RootsWeb's main Web page at . * * * * * ROOTSWEB REVIEW is e-mailed on Wednesdays to all RootsWeb Members, subscribers to RootsWeb-hosted mailing lists, submitters to the RootsWeb Surname List (RSL), and other RootsWeb users. DOWNLOAD BACK ISSUES FROM . UNSUBSCRIBE INSTRUCTIONS: If you would prefer not to receive future issues of RootsWeb Review, please e-mail: RootsWeb-Review-L-request@rootsweb.com and put ONLY the word "unsubscribe" (omit the quotation marks) in the subject line and in the body of the message. THE EDITORS OF ROOTSWEB REVIEW, THE STAFF OF ROOTSWEB GENEALOGICAL DATA COOPERATIVE, AND THE HELPDESK VOLUNTEERS ARE UNABLE TO RESPOND TO REQUESTS FOR GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH HELP.