ROOTSWEB REVIEW: Genealogical Data Cooperative News Vol. 1, No. 26, 9 December 1998; Circulation: 239,000+ Copyright (c) 1998 RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative Editors: Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG * * * * * CONTENTS. News and Notes from RootsWeb (RSL December Release; Donations to Help Support RootsWeb; HelpDesk Tips; IIGS: Membership, Site Map, Translation Team, December Newsletter, and Global Village Birth/Death/Marriage Exchange Index); Connecting through RootsWeb; Mailing Lists; Web Sites; Letters to the Editors; Behind the Scenes at RootsWeb: Excerpts from the Staff Diary; USGenWeb Archives; GenConnect Boards; Successful Queries; Humor; Reprint Policy; Unsubscribe Instructions * * * * * NEWS AND NOTES FROM ROOTSWEB ROOTSWEB SURNAME LIST (RSL). The December 1998 release of the RSL, including 568,617 surnames submitted by 85,892 researchers, can now be searched at RootsWeb: . There are 36,549 new surnames in this release. In addition to the RSL, RootsWeb now hosts: o 3,404 independent Web sites including the USGenWeb Project, the USGenWeb Archives, the WorldGenWeb Project, the ROOTS-L State Pages, the International Internet Genealogical Society (IIGS), the Olive Tree, and Cyndi's List . o More than 4,900 independent locality and surname mailing lists with searchable archives. * * * DONATIONS TO HELP SUPPORT ROOTSWEB ARE GREATLY APPRECIATED. For details about support levels/benefits and payment options, please visit: or send e-mail to: . RootsWeb's snail mail address is: RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative, P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798. (Please include your e-mail address on all correspondence and checks.) * * * HELPDESK TIPS. Are you unsure about what search engines are and how to use them? The RootsWeb HelpDesk FAQ "Archives, Databases, and Search Engines" offers basic information on using RootsWeb's search engines, including how to search the mailing list archives. Please see: . * * * INTERNATIONAL INTERNET GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY (IIGS). . IIGS membership is free and open to all. The IIGS home page may be read in Dutch, English, French, German, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish language versions. Fluent in these or other languages? Please consider joining the TRANSLATION TEAM. The more the merrier! Languages currently supported are English, French, German, Dutch, and Swedish. . The IIGS SITE MAP provides a quick way to access the Web pages of all IIGS teams. The December 1998 issue of the IIGS NEWSLETTER is available at: . Articles in this issue include: "The Melungeons Revisited," "Keeping Track of Online Projects," "Research Hints," "A Great Online Research Source," "Free BMD," and "Help Wanted." IIGS GLOBAL VILLAGE BIRTH, DEATH, MARRIAGE EXCHANGE INDEX. . The aim of this project is to provide a free resource to genealogists who wish to share information about details contained on birth, death, or marriage certificates. Entries for the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Benelux region (Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands), and Ireland are now being indexed. Exchanges now being hosted include Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Suriname, Switzerland, and the U.S.A. The Global Village acts as a central indexing site and continues to add new exchanges for unrepresented countries. * * * * * CONNECTING THROUGH ROOTSWEB: Thanks for sharing your stories. I'm just so tickled, I have to tell the strange events that led me to the cemetery location of grandfather Ashford DRUMM, who brought his family to California in 1886. No one in my line has known his whereabouts since. I knew that my grandmother Constance Ruth Drumm was buried in "Woodlawn," wherever that was in the forbidding hodgepodge of Los Angeles County, and assumed her husband was there as well. I posted a query to the SOCAL-L mailing list and within an hour received an address and phone number in Santa Monica, where they had lived. I called the number and asked about "any Drumms." The man on the phone came up with James, Constance, Herbert, Pearle May, and Edna, gave me all the information on the phone, and said "Send me an envelope. I'll copy the cards." I had put this off for five years, and now in ten minutes I had three more people than I had looked for -- my grandfather and his brother and his family, and my grandmom. Amazing. Heady stuff. But no Ashford. The 1900 census showed a Pomona home, with James and Constance, and her mother and sister, the RUTHs. No one seemed to know about cemeteries in Pomona, so I used a search engine and found three. I picked the "earliest" phone number, and BINGO! "No, we have no Alonzo Drumm, but Ashford, Mary Eber Drumm, and Henry are here, from 1896 to 1915. Tell me your address, I'll mail copies." I feel like I threw a rock 160 miles and hit his gravestone! Now I have e-mail from a person who was at Redlands Cemetery, not 20 miles from Pomona, and saw a Drumm marker from the 1800s, "and here's the phone number." I'll just bet it's the two children who died early. All this from SOCAL-L@rootsweb.com. I don't know why, but it's got me three feet off the ground. James Drumm * * * I cannot find the words to express my sincere appreciation for Eleanor Glenn Tenbarge, and would like to thank her with a "Virtual Bouquet." My father died when I was six years old, and I had lost all contact with that side of my family. After some research for the last couple of years I had been able to trace back three or four generations but was having trouble acquiring the proof. Eleanor happened to see my posting on the BURNS mailing list and went right off looking for my ancestors in Indiana. She has provided me with more information than I think I could have ever found without her. She is truly a saint. I will never forget her kindness and giving nature, and I can never repay her. In the past I have been labeled as (I confess) one of those people who have used RootsWeb but never subscribed, but tonight I will be putting a check in the mail so that all of us will continue to benefit from this great service. Hopefully, everyone will find their own Eleanor. A big thank you to all of you. Cass Garcia * * * For fear that she would be overwhelmed with correspondence, I will not mention the name of the German-based individual whom, in response to my simple RootsWeb request for related information, volunteered her research assistance on my behalf. As a result of that assistance I have already received information dating back to the 15th century from a retired minister of the family church in Germany. I know in my own mind I will never properly compensate her for the many e-mail messages, phone calls, letters and translation efforts; to say nothing of the personal value of the family information I am getting. Thanks for bringing us together and for your dedication to genealogy. Keep up the good work. Don Purfeerst * * * * * 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 interests in Mobile County, Alabama research, send a SUBSCRIBE message to: ALMOBILE-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 ARTHUR BLANSHAN (includes Blanchan) BOLLES (ancestors and descendants of Joseph BOLLES, 1608-1678, of Wells, Maine) DRYER EAGLE (includes EIGLE, IGEL, IGLE) EASON FAWCETT HANLON (includes O'HANLON) HECK HOLBERT (includes HALBERT, HAUBERT, HURLBURT, HOWBERT) HOLDEN-NEWSLETTER (Holden family from England, Ireland, Canada, etc.; includes variant spellings of HOLDEN and HOLDING) HOMMEL (includes HOMMELL, HOMEL, HUMMEL, HUMEL, HUMBLE) ISENBERG (includes EISENBERG) JOYCE KINTER LANDON LAVALLEY (includes LAVALLE, LAVALLEE, LA VALLEY) LEVINESS (includes LAVINESS) LUDDINGTON (includes LUDINGTON) MACFARLAND MARSTON MCGLAUGHON (includes MCGLAUN and variants) MCMAINS (includes MCMAIN, MACMAIN, MCMANIS) MCMINN MERRILL (includes MERRELL, MERILS, and variants) MIESS (especially of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania; Wythe County, Virginia; and Pulaski County, Tennessee) MOREHOUSE (includes MORHOUSE and variants) NEVISON (includes NEVINSON, NAVISON, NEVERSON) ODEN OKENNEDY (includes O'KENNEDY, CANADY, KENEDY, KENNEDY) PEARSON-THOMAS (descendents of Thomas Pearson and Susannah (BLANDE) PEARSON of Cambridgeshire, England and Virginia) QUICK RAPSKE RUNNELS SAFFELL (includes SAFFLE, SAFFEL and SAFFELS) SHOEMAKE (families of French and/or Cherokee origins) SPEESE (includes SPEES, SPIES, SPEECE, and variants) STARRHRY (descendants of Henry STARR of Maryland and Georgia) NEW REGIONAL MAILING LISTS AUSTRALIA AUS-NSW-MANNING-VALLEY -- Manning Valley of New South Wales including the towns of Wingham and Taree and surrounding villages DPS-CHAT -- Sydney Dead Persons Society. Family history and genealogical computing in Western Australia ENGLAND CORNISH-GEN -- Companion list to CORNISH-L with a strict focus on genealogical research DUR-NBL -- Northeast of England genealogy research; general genealogy discussions are not appropriate GEN-TRIVIA-ENG -- List for ENGLAND ONLY where one can share ancestral recipes, poems, rhymes, ditties, slang words, sayings, etc., so that other English mailing lists are not cluttered by such postings SFHG -- For members of the Sussex Family History Group only SCOTLAND DUNBARTONSHIRE-GENWEB -- Dunbartonshire SCT-ISLAY -- Research and information exchange for those with ancestors from the Isle of Islay U.S.A. ALMOBILE -- Mobile County, Alabama CARIVERS -- Riverside County, California CASACRAM -- Sacramento County, California CASANBER -- San Bernardino County, California CASHASTA -- Shasta County, California COLARIME -- Larimer County, Colorado GADOUGHE -- Dougherty County, Georgia GAHOUSTO -- Houston County, Georgia MAFRANKL -- Franklin County, Massachusetts MEWALDO -- Waldo County, Maine MISTCLAI -- Saint Clair County, Michigan MOCLAY -- Clay County, Missouri MOHOWELL -- Howell County, Missouri MOJACKSO -- Jackson County, Missouri MOLAFAYE -- Lafayette County, Missouri MOMARION -- Marion County, Missouri MOPULASK -- Pulaski County, Missouri NCHARNET -- Harnett County, North Carolina (includes Lee Co.) NCMONTGO -- Montgomery County, North Carolina NCMOORE -- Moore County, North Carolina (includes Lee Co.) NEBOYD -- Boyd County, Nebraska NHCARROL -- Carroll County, New Hampshire NYBROOKLYN -- Brooklyn, New York OHSENECA -- Seneca County, Ohio OKBECKHA -- Beckham County, Oklahoma SCWILLIA -- Williamsburg County, South Carolina SDPENNIN -- Pennington County, South Dakota SDZIEBAC -- Ziebach County, South Dakota TENNESSEE -- Tennessee genealogy TXMEDINA -- Medina County, Texas VAESSEX -- Essex County, Virginia VAFLUVAN -- Fluvanna County, Virginia VAGOOCHL -- Goochland County, Virginia WIJUNEAU -- Juneau County, Wisconsin NEW ETHNIC, SPECIAL INTEREST, and MISCELLANEOUS MAILING LISTS IAGW-CM -- private list to help the monitors of the IAGenWeb Interactive Calendar keep in contact with each other USGWARCH-CEN -- For file managers and others to discuss the USGenWeb Archives Census Project * * * * * NEW WEB ACCOUNT REQUESTS. Please see the instructions at . 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. . Note that the ~[tilde] before the account name is required and will work for most. If not, you'll find most of them at USGenWeb or WorldGenWeb . For example, to visit the New Hampshire Civil War Roots Web site, go to: . CANADA abcamros -- Camrose County, Alberta onnorfol -- Norfolk County, Ontario U.S.A. laredriv -- Red River Parish, Louisiana moboonhs -- Boone-Duden Historical Society (Missouri) mscopiah -- Copiah County, Mississippi ncwwii -- North Carolina World War II nhcwroot -- New Hampshire Civil War Roots nssdp -- Nat. Soc. of the Sons & Daughters of the Pilgrims * * * * * LETTERS TO THE EDITORS Here is a new twist. While e-mailing one relative, I accidentally missed a letter in the middle initial and the following copy is the result. Talk about finding lost relatives! Hi Craig ... I haven't checked my mail in a long time and I just discovered this picture you sent to Jim Siford. You intended it for Jim Siford in Pennsylvania. Instead it arrived in my mailbox. I'm the Jim Siford you went to high school with in Ft. Myers, along with your sister Betty. So, what have you been doing for the last 35 years? Craig V Wriglesworth * * * * * BEHIND THE SCENES AT ROOTSWEB: EXCERPTS FROM THE STAFF DIARY. Friday. 04 Dec 1998. Yesterday evening I spend down at the NOC trying to coax a PPro 200 to work for Randy. Fail. I come home about 11 p.m., check the systems, munch, and start watching Tremors II (as the worm turns ... ). At 12:30 a.m. Scott Rosen calls and reminds me we have an appointment to re-cable parts of the NOC. So I drive down and work on the NOC. At 4:30 a.m. I get home, snack, and watch the end of the movie. At 5:30 a.m. I do a system check and discover bl-3 (the mail hub) is dead to the world. Ethernet board probably got confused while we were rewiring the NOC. So I go to the NOC, reboot bl-3, come home and start doing my favorite thing in the whole world: sitting and patiently deleting bounce messages from the mqueue as they come in, because you can clear a queue about twice as fast when you discard bounces. In the midst of all this, we receive a spam attack. From our own RB-65 server. Because it's the next MX, and it's been accumulating spam while the main mail hub was down. I log onto 65 to clean the queue and am immediately confused because my windowing stuff doesn't work, and my tired and overloaded brain takes a couple of minutes to realize the reason why I can't see where I am is because the .cshrc has the buggy "if" wrapped around my usual SetFrameLabel stuff. Karen and I have several hours of fun trashing bounces until the queues clear. I flake out at something like 6:30 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. and Karen carries on until the queues are cleared. I'm up again at about 9:30 a.m. and notice I have run out of disk space on bl-5 (newslocal and my mail server). This totally hoses my mail handling, so I start making space and cleaning up rubble. About 11:30 a.m. Marce shows up and tells me her dog has chewed through the phone cord over at Teton, taking RootsWeb's fax machine offline. So I take her shopping for a new phone wire and a chain to keep the dog outside. I get back to Birchwood and the disk has filled up again (I hadn't cleaned off much space before Marce arrived), and my mail is totally hosed again. I start cleaning up the wreckage from scratch again. It's 2:37 p.m., and my mail is at least working again. Still have more disk cleaning to do. Brian "Tired and Grouchy" Leverich * * * * * RECENT UPLOADS TO THE USGENWEB ARCHIVES . Linda Russell Lewis provided this information. MICHIGAN. Houghton County marriage and death records MICHIGAN. 1880 Houghton County Census PENNSYLVANIA. Blair County abstracts of current obituaries. VIRGINIA. Washington County abstracts of survey records 1781-1797 WASHINGTON. Masonic Memorial Park, Tumwater, WA. Canvassed 1979 The following CENSUS IMAGES have been uploaded courtesy of SK Publications . RHODE ISLAND. 1800 Kent County Census RHODE ISLAND. 1800 Washington County Census GEORGIA. 1880 Haralson County Census (1900 coming soon) INDIANA. 1870 Pike County Census INDIANA. 1880 Pike County Census * * * * * NEW GENCONNECT BOARDS: Link to GenConnect Fun Facts at . Pam Carey Durstock provided the following information. 140 new GenConnect boards were activated 11/29 to 12/05 as follows: Archives 7 Austria 2 Canada 2 FamilyAssoc 47 USA Ca 4 Co 4 Ga 1 In 3 Id 1 Ky 3 Mi 4 Mo 4 Ms 3 NC 10 NJ 2 NY 6 Pa 7 Tn 1 Tx 28 WV 1 * * * * * SUCCESSFUL QUERIES by Sydney Ferris, Associate Producer, Palladium Interactive, Inc. Ultimate Family Tree To enhance the success of your queries and searches, you can choose from a variety of options. Most USGenWeb Project and WorldGenWeb Project sites offer the option of posting queries, at no charge, on their pages. Post your query at the site(s) most appropriate for your research. RootsWeb is a great source for posting queries. RootsWeb hosts more than 4,900 mailing lists. You can join a list sharing your surname, topic or general interest and then post your query. Researchers helping each other is one of the best tools available. You can find an index of the mailing lists at . Another alternative for queries is GenConnect. This is a search engine located at . For surname help, is a site with a searchable database of queries and surname registrations. Asking other researchers for help is a good strategy. When you post your query be sure to give lots of information about who, what, when, where, and why. Take this query for example: "SMITH; anywhere; anytime. Interested in ANY information about anyone named Smith, worldwide." Getting responses from everyone with that name would overwhelm you and is not likely to help find your ancestry. There are probably lots of people who share your surname. Provide enough detailed information so another researcher has a reasonable chance of knowing if there is a connection -- and that you will be able to absorb the information you gain. Be sure to include a name, date, and place. Including these facts near the beginning is helpful. Estimate if you don't know exact dates. Put the surname in capital letters. Many people spend years (and a big piece of their budget) accumulating information, sifting through it, and carefully documenting their history. Why would they in one fell swoop give you everything they know? Genealogy is sharing, cooperatively working on problems, and independently verifying information. Queries that offer information are more successful than "gimme" queries. The "send me everything you know" type of query is likely to go unanswered. Better would be: "SMITH, David family from Juniata County, Pennsylvania in 1780 to Greenfield, Ohio in 1810 and Vincennes, Indiana in the mid-1800s. Related surnames are Bonner and Ghormley. Will share information about this family in Pennsylvania." This query tells something about your project, encourages other genealogists to reply, and offers to share information. One way to start thinking about what information to include is to print a Tiny-Tafel report in Ultimate Family Tree and use it to formulate your query. Each line in a Tiny-Tafel has one surname and indicates the earliest date in your database for that surname and the most recent date, along with the locations. Sometimes people simply post their entire Tiny-Tafel as it is a good "snapshot" of their research -- listing all the related names as well. Printing this simple report, paying attention to the content of your queries, and remembering the importance of "share" in sharing information will make your queries successful. A small investment in good queries may result in a surprise present for the holidays. Good luck! * * * * * HUMOR: Thanks to John Fairlie , who provided the selection from which the following items were drawn. * Error! No keyboard detected. Press F1 to continue. * Error! No mouse detected. Click here to continue. * Error! Virus requires a different operating system. * Horrible Bug Encountered. No idea what has happened. * Running low on disk space. Free at least 2GB. * Keyboard Locked. Try anything you can think of. * * * * * MISSING LINKS: A Weekly Newsletter for Genealogists, edited and published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, is a free e-zine usually distributed on Fridays. Back issues are available for download from . To subscribe to MISSING LINKS, send an e-mail message that says only SUBSCRIBE to: Missing-Links-L-request@rootsweb.com * * * * * 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. 26, 9 December 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: and put ONLY the word "unsubscribe" (omit the quotation marks) in the subject line and in the body of the message. * * * * * PLEASE NOTE: 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. ____