ROOTSWEB REVIEW: RootsWeb's Genealogy News Vol. 2, No. 36, 8 September 1999, Circulation: 355,641+ (c) 1999 RootsWeb.com, Inc. RootsWeb.com, Inc., P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 Editors: Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG RootsWeb HelpDesk: CONTENTS. News and Notes at RootsWeb (SSDI Updated through July 1999; RootsWeb Home Page Redesigned; Banner Contest; RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees, Lessons 13 and 14; New Community Mailing Lists; What Data Do You Want to See at RootsWeb?); African Americans in Missouri (Marion Wilson Slave Data Project; Missouri Frontier Families); Connecting through RootsWeb; Mailing Lists; Web Pages; USGenWeb Archives Project; Letters to the Editors; Humor; Reprint Policy; Back Issues; How to Subscribe/Unsubscribe * * * * * NEWS AND NOTES AT ROOTSWEB LAST MINUTE ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM THE CEO by Bob Tillman SOCIAL SECURITY DEATH INDEX (SSDI) UPDATED. The SSDI at RootsWeb has been updated with July 1999 data. It now has 61,966,018 records, an increase of 287,992 records. While we are sorry that these individuals have been added to the SSDI, we thought you might wish to search it again to see if anyone you know has shown up. I check my own name regularly to make sure that I am still among the living (so far, so good). Check it out at: . ROOTSWEB'S HOME PAGE REDESIGNED. RootsWeb changed its home page design yesterday, 7 September 1999. Our main goal with this new design is to make navigating the site far easier. As you can imagine, there has been much debate on the staff about the new home page. No one likes it, but neither has anyone come up with anything better. Maybe you can help. Please send your comments and suggestions to the CEO at . Check it out at . You will almost certainly find RootsWeb features that you never knew existed. BANNER CONTEST. We were pleased to receive 40 very creative banners (soliciting contributions to RootsWeb) from RootsWeb users and staff and are now running them on the RootsWeb home page. The winner will be decided by the highest percentage of click-throughs during the month of September. Check it out at . * * * ROOTSWEB'S GUIDE TO TRACING FAMILY TREES. . Lesson 13, "Military Records," discusses the availability of records for Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, France, and Germany. Lesson 14 is "American Military Records." * * * NEW COMMUNITY MAILING LISTS. New community mailing lists are listed at as soon as they are established. You can subscribe to a list at that page. Arts Community PAINTING Collecting Community AUCTIONS Education Community PARENT-TEACHER Garden Community HOUSEPLANTS Humor Community G-RATED-HUMOR Literature Community MYSTERY-COZY Living Community GIFT-IDEAS Money Community PERSONAL-FINANCE Nature Community ZOOS Sports Community OLYMPICS, SOCCER * * * WHAT DATA DO YOU WANT TO SEE AT ROOTSWEB? RootsWeb needs your help. Because of your continuing contributions, RootsWeb has a limited budget to acquire data. The first such acquisition was the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), which, because of a RootsWeb-designed high-performance search engine, has become very popular. We ask your help in acquiring further data with the following characteristics: (1) useful to the greatest possible number of genealogists; (2) Modest cost. For example, we purchased an annual subscription to the SSDI for about $4,500 (we consider this to be a major acquisition); and (3) already in electronic form, either ASCII text or digital images. RootsWeb has the capability of reading such data on virtually any media and in virtually any format. In special cases, we might be able to finance the conversion of data to digital form. Likely sources of such data include governments (national, state/province, county, city, etc.), native tribes, churches, genealogy and historical societies, hereditary and fraternal organizations, individual collectors, out-of-print books, etc. We will make this data freely available to RootsWeb users. If such data is not already in the public domain, we will ask the owner(s) only for a non-exclusive license to display such data on the Web. We have the capability within RootsWeb to develop search engines that can make such data most accessible. Please help. Contact your national, state/province, and local governments and your local genealogy and historical societies, hereditary and fraternal organizations. Ask your friends and dig in your attic. Please send your suggestions to RootsWeb's president and CEO, Robert R. Tillman, at . * ADVERTISEMENT * ANIMAP PLUS CD SALE FROM FAMILYSTOREHOUSE.COM. Save $20. Retail $79.95 but get it here for $59.95, while inventory of 142 lasts. AniMap shows county boundaries for all years, by state, for the 48 contiguous U.S. states. Print color or b/w, store images on disk for word processor, other use. Find those old towns and counties. Look up names of 200,000 U.S. places, 100,000 U.S. cemeteries. Mark a map spot, then change the year to see historic placement. Latitude/longitude grids. Mileage between points. AniMap CD $59.95. Software included. Free tech support. Needs 1 mb on hard drive, any edition of Windows, CD drive. Visit or call 1-800-725-5013 and ask for the RootsWeb Sales Department. FamilyStoreHouse.com will donate 10% of all sale proceeds to RootsWeb. Offer expires September 14. * * * * * AFRICAN AMERICANS IN MISSOURI by Traci Wilson Kleekamp My Web page at is the home of the MARION WILSON SLAVE DATA PROJECT, a Missouri slave data project, which at present has about 10 volunteers who are transcribing slave schedules, census data, and a variety of information from wills, probate, tax, and land records to track slave names and attach them to their owners. Our Missouri Slave Database includes information on slave owners, slaves, county of origin, transaction type, and the year and page number of the land deed, will, or probate record from which the information was extracted. We also have a database of MISSOURI FRONTIER FAMILIES (pioneer families), who settled and migrated from the upper Louisiana Territory. It has been an arduous but rewarding project. My goal has been to encourage researchers who come across slave-related data to post the information to this Web page, as it greatly benefits African American researchers who would not otherwise have access to such data. The process has been emotional. People discover that their families owned slaves and are either very upset or do not want to be bothered. Others have been helpful and have taken the time to transcribe and submit information to the site. More importantly, as an African American, beyond the issue of slavery and slave ownership, I want people to know that black and white people are related -- that our biological relations go far back in time -- on both sides of the fence and in every direction. Perhaps this will give us a better understanding that we are all the same people -- made of the same stuff -- mixing from all directions. In this day of intolerance and strained race relations, I think we all need to have a better understanding of who we really are. * * * * * CONNECTING THROUGH ROOTSWEB. Thanks for sharing your stories. by Teri Shaw Popp In the fall of 1998, I joined the Baden-Wuerttemberg List and posted a message asking for any contacts to my mother's family from an area near Schorndorf, Germany. I mentioned her family names of SCHOELLHAMMER and HIEBER and that the family had come from a small town called Haubersbronn. I also mentioned that I would be taking my mother to Germany in December of 1998 and that I wanted to surprise her with a visit to any of her family members who I could locate. A wonderful (yet unrelated) man named Nick Rudnick contacted me by e-mail and offered to contact any Schoellhammers and/or Hiebers he could find in the area. He did this simply because he was from Haubersbronn and not because he was related or had any knowledge of my family. I eagerly accepted his offer as Nick is fluent in both German and English. Within days, Nick contacted me again and said that he had personally called all of the Hiebers in Haubersbronn and that he had definitely located my family. I was absolutely astonished. My mother had spent 30 years looking for her family and had not been able to locate them (she is not fluent in German nor can she read or write in German, although she understands the Schwabisch dialect of her spoken heritage). Nick set up a meeting for us with the Hieber family. Last December, we flew to Germany and met my family in a restaurant in Schorndorf. As soon as my mother's cousin walked in the door, from across the crowded room he yelled out "Schoellhammer" after recognizing my mother's features! Our relatives spoke very little English and I translated with my (very rusty) German. We had a fabulous time with my mother's second cousin, Karl Hieber, and his son. After our visit, I continued to correspond with various members of our extended Hieber family and learned that the Hieber family reunion was to be held in Iowa City, Iowa in August of 1999. I arranged for my mother to meet me in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and we drove to Iowa for a wonderful extended family event hosted by John Karl and Jan Hieber of Iowa City. At that reunion, I met Bertold and Margarte Hieber. Bertold is the Hieber family genealogist and he lives in Uslar, Germany. He has spent 25 years researching Hiebers and has written three extensively researched books on the Hieber family. He is my mother's ninth cousin. Bertold and Margarte were accompanied by their son, Clemens, who is my tenth cousin and who is fluent in English. Clemens acted as a translator for Bertold. Because of Bertold's exhaustive research and great attention to detail using primary documentation from churches in Germany, I now have the Hieber family history dating back to the family farm, still owned by Hiebers since 1542. In addition, I have copies of all of the documentation and a wall sized Stammbaum (family tree). At the Iowa City reunion, I was fortunate enough to meet the other Hiebers from my mother's extended family whose families had immigrated to the United States in the mid-1850s (our Hiebers are still located in Haubersbronn and did not immigrate). My mother was totally unaware of the other American branches of her family. My mother met several seventh cousins, twice removed, and many, many eighth and ninth cousins. She discovered that she lives in the same town in Utah (Orem) as one of her eighth cousins, once removed. I will continue to stay in contact with this incredible branch of my mother's family tree. They are warm and wonderful and eager to share their family history and culture. As soon as he arrived home in Uslar, Bertold immediately e-mailed me to tell me about the continuation of his visit to his American cousins after we had parted in Iowa City. I feel fortunate and blessed to have this opportunity for myself and my mother. Without RootsWeb, none of this would have happened. Thank you, thank you, thank you! * * * * * MAILING LISTS. For an index to most user mailing lists hosted by RootsWeb, visit . IF YOU DO NOT HAVE WEB ACCESS but would like to know if a RootsWeb-hosted mailing list exists for a particular surname, send a SUBSCRIBE request in accordance with the instructions below, filling in the desired surname where the example shows [name of list]. If the list exists, you will receive confirmation that your address has been added to the list. If the list does not exist, your message will bounce back to you with a message advising there is no such address. Try alternate spellings. 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 "Contributors only" warning on the list request page. Please request new mailing lists at: TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE from any RootsWeb-hosted 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 are researching Choctaw Indians, send a SUBSCRIBE message to: . NEW SURNAME MAILING LISTS AUMILLER DUTTON-JEREMIAH (Descendants of Jeremiah DUTTON) EXMAN (includes ESSMAN) FARMERIE FRONGOCH-WALES (Descendants of FRONGOCH Plantation, northern Wales) KILGOUR (includes KILGORE and KILLGORE) MUGAN (includes MOGAN and MOOGAN) SERVOS SHALLA VIERLING NEW REGIONAL MAILING LISTSS SCOTLAND SCT-KINROSS -- Kinross-shire NEW ETHNIC, SPECIAL INTEREST, AND MISCELLANEOUS MAILING LISTS CHOCTAW -- The Choctaw Indian tribe in Oklahoma (McCurtain County and neighboring counties). IL-EASTERN -- Eastern region of Illinois, encompassing Champaign, Clark, Clay, Coles, Crawford, Cumberland, Douglas, Edgar, Effingham, Ford, Iroquois, Jasper, Kankakee, Lawrence, Livingston, Moultrie, Piatt, Richland, Shelby, and Vermilion counties. WV-FOOTSTEPS -- Share your original West Virginia source material: wills, deeds, Bible records, tax lists, cemetery files, pension applications, obituaries, old letters, marriage lists, etc. The digest of the mailing list will be placed in the WVGenWeb Archives * * * * * 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. FOR EXAMPLE, to visit the Posey County, Indiana Web page, go to . GERMANY deuniede -- Niedersachsen NATIVE AMERICAN nalakota -- Lakota U.S.A. arwchs -- Woodruff County Historical Society (Arkansas) inposey -- Posey County, Indiana mecupton -- Upton, Maine (city) migtags -- Grand Traverse Area Genealogical Society (Michigan) ncbcgs -- Burke County Genealogical Society (North Carolina) scfloren -- Florence County, South Carolina tnnews -- Tennessee Newspapers warhs -- Roslyn Historical Society (Washington) NEW HOME PAGES AT ROOTSWEB AUGHE Roots & Branches Family History Page of K. William BAILEY BRENDA's Branches Tawsha's BRINKLEY Genealogy Page BULLOCK Family Association BURGE Family Genealogies CLAFFEY Home Page Al COOPER's Kinsfolks CROWE/FRANKLIN Genealogy Page DEROSIER Data The ELAM Family Research Page GOLD Family Association HUME Family Home Page Twigs of INMAN and SPENCE JEREMIAH Family Page LOUIVIERE Family Home Page and Database The MONEYMAKER Family Tree MUSSELMAN's Corn Field Keith NONEMAKER's Genealogy Web Site Margaret Edmondson OLSON's Home Page PEFFLEY Family Association PRESBURY Surname Home Page [N.B. Everything between the angle brackets is part of the URL.] RAIL Roots & Branches RALPH's Genealogy and Civil War Page SCISM Family Association SHOLER Family Genealogy The SIGSBEE Family Home Page STEVENS Family Cards The THOMPSON Family Page The TROUTMAN Family of North Carolina WICHTERMAN Family Home Page Jeanette's WILSON Family Tree Page WOLFE Family Home Page * * * * * USGENWEB ARCHIVES [N.B. Everything between a set of angle brackets is a part of the URL.] COLORADO. Biographies from Stone's 1918 "History of Colorado" COLORADO. Denver County. "Notice of Vital Events" from the DENVER POST, Tuesday, May 27, 1919, p. 19. COLORADO. Larimer County. "From Butternuts to the Rocky Mountains" from the OTSEGO JOURNAL, Dec 1884, Gilbertsville, New York. COLORADO. Larimer County. Extracts from the 1910, 1913 and 1917 Larimer County Directories. COLORADO. Weld County. Sligo Cemetery Headstone Transcriptions COLORADO. Weld County. Memories of the Greeley POW Camp COLORADO. Weld County. Marriage Index 1872-1885 NORTH DAKOTA. Funeral home transcriptions for Bottineau, Cass, Foster, Griggs, and Steele counties. * * * * * LETTERS TO THE EDITORS may be posted to the GenConnect board at http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/RWR-LettersToTheEditor or sent to RWR-Editors@rootsweb.com. In re "The Coming Day of Genealogy" (RWR 2:34), I'm glad to see Mr. Scism's admonishment to be sure that you document yourself for the benefit of your descendants. One aspect of documentation that many people don't recognize is the need to save electronic mail in a form that will survive. I first came to realize this in the early 1990s, when I heard yet another complaint that "people don't write letters any more!" I realized that the complaint, in my case, was nonsense. I was indeed writing lots of letters, I simply wasn't writing them with a pen or a typewriter -- my e-mail, listserv posts, and newsgroup articles were my correspondence! I began keeping paper copies then (paper doesn't become unreadable through obsolescent technology), so my great-grandchildren can have an idea of what life was like in the late 20th century. So don't buy the "nobody writes letters any more" business; simply acknowledge the letters you are writing in a new form, and their historic value for your family- that-is and family-to-be. Sam Waring * * * I started doing genealogical research through RootsWeb in the spring of this year and it has generally been a wonderful experience. On my Sanders line I was contacted by one person who wanted me to subscribe to his newsletter for people with that surname and it turned out that he was a distant relative who was able to give me information that traced my ancestors back to the 1600s. Many others have been helpful and I have made more progress in the last six months than I did with 20 years of research before the advent of the Internet. However, I am somewhat disillusioned by the attitude of many people who contact me concerning a common ancestor, and I wonder if others have the same reaction I do toward the people I call moochers, that is, people who expect me to be helpful but who deliver nothing in return. For example, often I receive e-mail from someone with whom I share a common ancestor. That person asks what information I have and I respond that I do have information, but I don't have a home computer and my files are all in paper, not computer, format. I explain that I will be happy to copy the material and send it to the inquirer if he or she will send me a mailing address, and that it would be helpful if the other person would also send me what information he has on the common ancestor. In many cases that is the last I hear from the inquirer. In other cases, I am sent a mailing address, I pay to copy my paper files on a photocopy machine, then send the material. Usually, I receive no information in return. I could understand if the inquirer had no information about the common ancestor, but at least one would think the inquirer should have the courtesy to send me by e-mail information on how the inquirer traces his ancestry from the common ancestor. I find this so frustrating, getting my hopes up that I am about to make a tremendous breakthrough in research and then receiving nothing that in the future I am more cautious about sharing information. I guess I entered this activity very naive and assumed that the world of genealogical research was different from the everyday world. Gary Sanders * * * * * HUMOR. Thanks to Bob Tillman, who passed along this story he got from a friend who works at MasterCard. We are all used to the conveniences of a modern bank. While there have been money lenders throughout the ages, full service banks are a relatively new phenomenon. Molan Cache is usually considered the man who developed modern banking as we know it today. He enlisted the aid of Tomas Benes, the Count of Prague and chief financial advisor of King Charles II. The two were able to convince the Bohemian monarch to finance this new experiment in banking. So really, ... credit should go to a Czech king, a count and Cache. * * * * * PERMISSION TO REPRINT articles from ROOTSWEB REVIEW is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, PROVIDED: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Written by Previously published by RootsWeb.com, Inc., RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Genealogy News, Vol. 2, No. 36, 8 September 1999. RootsWeb: BACK ISSUES OF ROOTSWEB REVIEW are available for download from . Back issues of MISSING LINKS are available for download from . TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE from ROOTSWEB REVIEW and MISSING LINKS, send e-mail with only SUBSCRIBE (or UNSUBSCRIBE) in the message area to: .