Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

A Weekly Summary of Events and

Topics of Interest to Online Genealogists

Vol. 3 No. 35 – August 29, 1998

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Copyright (C) 1998 by Richard W. Eastman and Ancestry, Inc. All rights reserved.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

- Presidential Family Forest and Other Databases
- A Visit to Bath, Ohio
- More on the GEDCOM (Future Direction) Document
- Irish Surnames Index On The Web
- New Meyer’s Directory Of Genealogical Societies
- Broderbund Software Signs Deal With Excite
- Home Pages Highlighted

- Presidential Family Forest and Other Databases

In last week’s newsletter I mentioned that a new free genealogy CD-ROM disk for Windows called the Presidential Family Forest is available. I like free. Free is a good thing. But the obvious question that follows is "How is the company going to make a profit?" In this case, the Presidential Family Forest is a "loss leader" that shows the sort of products available from Millisecond Publishing Company. In fact, this database about the U.S. Presidents is an excellent one, and Millisecond Publishing expects that many people who use the free database will be motivated to purchase one of the additional databases that Millisecond Publishing sells. But there is nothing "low-powered" about the Presidential Family Forest database; it is not stripped down or crippled in any way. In fact, I am amazed that the company gives away a database like this. This is high-quality information, complete with references to all the sources and with the relationships of thousands of people linked together. If you have, or think you might have, a U.S. President someplace in your extended family tree, you will appreciate the information here.

Millisecond Publishing describes the database this way:

The Presidential Family Forest is the fourth CD-ROM title in a series of lineage-linked databases that digitally connect people with each other, and with the history they created, in a fun, educational, and exciting new format.

This title was started by entering the names of all of the Presidents and Vice Presidents of the United States, along with the names of their wives. Then, other people who are related by birth or marriage (ancestors, descendants, and other relatives) are connected to these people.

Whenever dates and facts about any of these people are found, they are entered along with the exact book and page location where that knowledge has been previously stored.

By not limiting this database to just ancestors and descendants, as books are forced to do because of the limitations of paper, scores of millions of Americans will find that they share ancestors with the famous people who have occupied the highest positions in our great nation, and they will feel connected in a beneficial and empowering way.

The Presidential Family Forest digitally maps out and connects recorded knowledge about the family ties of U.S. Presidents, Vice Presidents, and their wives, and makes the results available almost instantly. In addition to many of these leaders being connected to a thousand or more of their ancestors (ancestors are only parents of parents, etc., and not aunts, uncles, or cousins) over the span of twenty centuries, many are connected to six thousand or more cousins.

What does it mean to be a cousin (no matter how distant) of someone? Basically it means that somewhere back in time, maybe many centuries ago, there were two people who were ancestors of both you and your cousin. It also means that each and every ancestor of those two people, all the way back to wherever the beginning was, was also an ancestor of you and your cousin.

While the Presidential Family Forest is very much about genealogy, it is primarily about U.S. history, and more than 1,500 years of Old World history leading up to the birth of the United States. It is a fun and very easy to use reference source that should be readily available to every student of history, young or old.

The "people-centered approach to history" of Family Forests makes history come to life in a most engaging manner.

I took this CD-ROM out for a "test drive" this week and must say that I enjoyed it. In the March 3, 1997 edition of this newsletter, I described the previous "Founders and Patriots" CD-ROM by Millisecond Publishing, which required Family Tree Maker to be installed first; that CD-ROM’s data was in Family Tree Maker format. Millisecond Publishing has since switched to Progeny Software’s Family Explorer software, which is included on the CD-ROM disk. Again, there is no charge for the software. Family Explorer works on Windows 3.1 or later; no Macintosh version is available.

Installation of the needed software was simple, and I was running the program within a couple of minutes. The "search engine" software is copied to the PC’s hard disk, but all the data remains on the CD-ROM disk itself. To start the program, you double-click on "Family Explorer" and then use this program to open the Presidential Family Forest database. A window prompts for the surname and (optional) first name of the person you seek.

As I always do, I entered my own surname into the program and found one occurrence: someone named Eyvind the Eastman (also known as Eyrind Eastman) who lived in the mid-800s. I suspect that this is not an ancestor of mine, especially as surnames had not yet been invented at that time.

I next decided to search for someone whose name was likely to be in the database: William Clinton. Within a few seconds I was looking at a family group sheet showing President Bill Clinton, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton and their daughter Chelsea Victoria Clinton. Also shown on the same page was information about President Clinton’s parents, his date of birth, marriage and two "facts." I clicked on the SOURCES button that appeared to the right, and it displayed the source references for the fact. For instance, one fact reads, "Birth name was William Jefferson Blythe IV" and the accompanying source notes, "6th Edition, Facts About the Presidents, by Joseph N. Kane, page 293."

For anyone who has not heard about this fact, President Clinton was born a few weeks after his father was killed in an auto accident. His surname at birth was Blythe. His mother later was remarried to a man named Clinton, who adopted young Bill Blythe. The adoption included a legal name change to Clinton. So Bill Clinton does not have any known ancestors named Clinton.

While Bill and Hillary Clinton’s family group sheet was displayed on the screen, I clicked on "Ancestors" and a full six-generation pedigree chart appeared. I randomly clicked on the records of several ancestors and found that each one was listed with full references. For instance, great-great-grandfather William James Russell is shown as born in 1825, according to "American Presidential Families .............., by Hugh Brogan and Charles Mosley, page 756." All the sources that I saw were actually secondary sources, not primary sources referring to original records.

The number of generations available in a pedigree chart is user-selectable. With some of the Presidents there may be 40 or more generations documented, and certainly people will want to print some of this information. Of course, search engine supplier Progeny Software is well known for having some of the nicest-looking printouts available among genealogy programs. The printouts from the Presidential Family Forest use the same software. I printed out fan charts, pedigree charts and family group sheets. They all looked good; the fan chart especially is an eye-catcher. Not bad for a free CD-ROM disk! Next, I selected a "Kinship Report" and was soon looking at a printout listing 26 people and the relationship of each to President Clinton. The listing is in alphabetical order, showing the surname, first names, and relationship to Bill Clinton and their most-recent common ancestor.

The folks at Progeny Software told me that the Kinship report for George Bush lists more than 4,000 people. Not only are relationships shown, but source references as to where the information on each person was derived is also available. These source citations do not appear in the printed Kinship Report; to see the references, you have to move the mouse around on the screen and click on various icons.

Another printout Progeny’s Family Explorer can create is a Register-Format report of the descendants of any individual in the database. It also can create a report of ancestors in a similar format. These reports are generated as files which then can be read by Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Windows Write, WordPad or AMI Pro. Here is an example showing three generations of Bill Clinton’s ancestors. Keep in mind that the original has formatting that may have been changed when converted to HTML code for use on this Web page:

I have focused on Bill Clinton for the sake of convenience, but this CD-ROM contains similar information on all the U.S. Presidents. I generated a Register-format report for the ancestors of George Washington, which produced hundreds of pages documenting 69 generations of President Washington’s ancestors. The entire CD-ROM database contains about 27,000 records. Again, this is a free CD-ROM disk although you do have to pay about $7.00 for shipping to a U.S. address.

There are three other databases on the same CD-ROM disk. They are encrypted (locked) so that you cannot view the data when you receive the free CD-ROM disk. However, if you would like to unlock one or more of these databases, you call a telephone number and give the operator a credit card number. He or she bills your card and then gives you instructions over the phone on how to unlock the database(s) you have paid for. The other three databases are:

• Founders and Patriots (77,000 records) – this appears to be an updated version of the database I wrote about last year only it has been moved to Progeny Family Explorer software
• Pittsburgh Family Forest (2,200 records)
• Delaware Family Forest (4,700 records)

One interesting feature is that you preview each database before you unlock it. In this preview you can see the names along with the birth and death dates and places of each person in the database. What is missing in preview mode is the relationship links and the sources. These two critical items are visible only after the database is unlocked. The preview mode is good for first checking to see if a particular person is listed in the CD-ROM database before you pay for the unlock key.

I unlocked these three databases and used them for a bit. Unlocking the databases is simple; the first time you open the database you are prompted for a PIN number and Unlock Key. You enter the information given to you when you purchased the Unlock Keys. You only need to go through the unlock procedure once; after that, the database opens up without prompting you for any additional data.

The Founders and Patriots database first is based upon the published records of the Order of the Founders and Patriots of America, then it is supplemented by data obtained from many more books. Again, all the information is documented with sources that point mostly to secondary records. I found the immigrant ancestor of my surname and then printed a 35-page register-format report showing nine generations of some of his ancestors. My own branch wasn’t listed, however. These records do not show all descendants, just those documented in the particular books that have been searched.

I also tried the smaller databases of Pittsburgh and Delaware records. These are not extracts from original vital records; the data is extracted from various books of published families. This would all be secondary sources. For instance, here is a partial list of the books searched to build the Delaware database:

Ancestral Records and Portraits, Colonial Dames of America. 1910. New York. Found at: Mathews, VA Public Library.

(The) Ancestry and Posterity of John Lea of Christian Malford, Wiltshire, England, and of Pennsylvania in America, by James Henry Lea and George Henry Lea. 1906. Published by Lea Brothers & Co, Philadelphia, PA and New York. Found at: Delaware Hall of Records, Dover, DE.

(The) Ancestry of Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States of America 1889-1893, in Chart Form Showing Also the Descendants of William Henry Harrison, President of the United States of America in 1841, and Notes on Families Related, by Charles P. Keith. 1893. Published by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. Found at: New England Historic Genealogical Society (CS/71/H32/1893), 101 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116, 617-536-5740.

Annals and Memorials of the Handys and their Kindred, by Isaac W. K. Handy, D.D. 1992 Published by William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, MI. Found at: Wicomico County, MD Public Library, Salisbury, MD.

(The) Ancestry of Richard Milhous Nixon, by Raymond Martin Bell. 1970. Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA. Found at: Delaware Hall of Records, Dover, DE.

(The) Armistead Family, 1635-1910, by Mrs. Virginia Armistead Garber. 1910. Published by Whittet & Shepperson, Printers, Richmond, VA. Found at: New England Historic Genealogical Society (CS/71/A72/1910), 101 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116, 617-536-5740.

The Pittsburgh records would be quite similar in nature.

In summary, I have to say that this is an excellent CD-ROM disk. The data is good, reference to secondary sources is included with every entry, the software is easy to use, and the printouts are excellent.

Again, the Presidential Family Forest CD-ROM is free except for a modest shipping charge of a few dollars. Even the telephone call is free. The extra-cost databases are also on the same CD-ROM disk although they are encrypted. They cost about $20.00 to $30.00 each, but you do not have to pay for them until you want to access them. To order your free Presidential Family Forest CD-ROM disk, call 1-800-565-0018.

- A Visit to Bath, Ohio

Have you ever received an advertisement from Halbert’s of 3687 Ira Road, Bath, Ohio? I suspect that you have, given the volume of advertisements this company sends out every year. These are bulk mailed to addresses in the United States and Canada. Halbert’s and their "partners" also send similar advertisements to thousands in England, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and maybe other countries, too. However, these ads normally carry a local return address within each country.

I have written several times before about Halbert’s and their competitors, including a full review of one of Halbert’s "books" in which I said:

Halbert’s of Bath, Ohio, is the most notorious of the mail order companies that send out ads offering to sell you "an astounding new book" with insinuations that the book tells all about your family name. These letters, as well as the "books," are all mass produced by computers with family surnames and your name inserted in appropriate places. For instance, a letter sent to me will say:

I have exciting news for you and all Eastmans! Though we are probably not related, I want to tell you about extensive work done throughout the world on a project relating to the distinguished Eastman name. What might be the oldest facts about Eastmans in North America have been discovered. Now, an astounding new book, ‘THE NEW WORLD BOOK OF EASTMANS,’ is about to be published for you and it features Eastmans back to 1620."

The advertisement then goes on in breathless prose with lots of exclamation marks scattered about. It claims to present facts about early Eastmans and also asserts that it includes an up-to-date international directory of Eastmans. If your name is Smith, then the letter sent to you will have the name Smith inserted in every place where my letter says Eastman. If you live in England or Germany or some other country, then the geographic references will be changed to match. (Halbert’s is an international operation.) All of the advertisements will claim to be "a one-of a kind book."

If you are gullible enough to order the book for $34.50 plus another $4.88 postage and handling, you eventually receive a booklet of general information about how to get started researching genealogy plus many pages of extracts from old telephone directories listing people with the same last name as yours. The Eastman "book" that I looked at last year had names and addresses listed for some of my relatives who had been deceased for years. The "one-of-a-kind book" lives up to the description; it actually has a cardboard cover and looks like it was glued together on someone’s kitchen table. The pages in the 1996 Eastman "book" weren’t even aligned properly.

I don’t know when Halbert’s started this business, but I know they were already notorious in genealogy circles in the mid-1980s. They have frequently received legal injunctions from postal authorities, but that doesn’t seem to slow Halbert’s down very much; apparently they continue to send out thousands of these advertisements every week despite legal efforts to shut them down.

The Halbert’s ad I received in 1989 was signed by "Doris Eastman, i.a." Now, Doris never claimed to be a relative of mine in that advertisement, but the fact that the letter was signed by someone named Eastman lent credence to the "book" title of The New World Book of Eastman. I was intrigued by the letters "i.a." that appeared after Doris Eastman’s name. After a fair amount of research, I discovered a Legal Dictionary that listed it as an abbreviation for the Latin words "in absentia" or, translated into English, "in absence." In other words, Doris Eastman wasn’t present when the letter was written, and someone else signed her name to it in Doris’ absence.

In 1989 I called Halbert’s and asked to speak to Doris Eastman. I was told that "Doris isn’t here right now, can someone else help you?" I was suspicious that Doris was a fictitious name and later court documents proved that my assumption was accurate.

I’ll point out that calling Halbert’s is difficult. Their telephone number isn’t in the ad. I was later told that Halbert’s mailing address in Bath, Ohio is simply a mail drop; there are no offices at that address for a company called Halbert’s. In fact, Halbert’s is one of the trade names owned by Numa Corporation in nearby Akron, Ohio. Apparently, mail delivered to the Bath, Ohio, address is simply forwarded to Numa in Akron. I eventually found a number for Numa and called their offices looking for Doris Eastman. Not surprisingly, she wasn’t there, either.

A few months ago I received another ad from Halbert’s, much like the ones I had received in 1989. Again, it was signed by "Doris Eastman, i.a." and was from the 3687 Ira Road, Bath, Ohio 4410-9953. I purchased this year’s "book" as I wanted to see what had changed. To be blunt, I don’t see much difference in the 1998 edition. It is the same old stuff. It still has extracts from old telephone directories. It still lists my uncle at his residence in Auburn, Maine despite the fact that he sold that house more than ten years ago and then died about seven years ago.

While planning my route to last week’s Federation of Genealogical Societies’ conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, I noticed that I would be driving within 5 miles of Bath, Ohio. So I said to myself, "Maybe I’ll stop at Halbert’s and ask to see Doris Eastman, i.a.."

I found Bath easily. It is a rather picturesque little town that consists primarily of two streets: Ira Road runs east-west, and the North Cleveland – Massillon Road runs north-south. The address of 3687 Ira Road is within a couple hundred feet of the intersection of these two roads. But there is no sign there for Halbert’s. In fact, I couldn’t find any trace of them at all. The address of 3687 Ira Road should have been alongside Rurs-Puel Real Estate or Bech & Tabeling Architects. But there was no hint of Halbert’s there. This seems to confirm what I had been told earlier: the name and address shown in the Halbert’s ads is only a mail drop.

Halbert’s has been in court several times to answer charges lodged by the U.S. Postal Service. The court documents always list Halbert’s as a subsidiary of the Numa Corporation of Akron, Ohio. In fact, the Numa Corporation of 1566 Akron Peninsula Rd, Akron, OH 44313-5154 does have a telephone listing. That address is a few miles from Bath, Ohio, but it seemed rather pointless to check out Numa’s location. Besides, I doubt if I could find Doris Eastman, i.a., there, either.

I don’t think there is anything illegal about using a mail drop, but I wonder why any company would do that. The next time you receive an ad from 3687 Ira Road, Bath, Ohio, you might ask yourself, "Why do they use this address? What are they trying to hide?"

- More on the GEDCOM (Future Direction) Document

In last week’s newsletter I wrote at length about GENTECH’s new Genealogical Data Model Proposal, and I also mentioned the recent proposal from the Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I stated that the latter document could be downloaded from gedcom.org. That is correct, but several people wrote saying that they could not find the document on that site. It is available as an FTP download. You can obtain it by specifying the direct address of: ftp://gedcom.org/pub/genealogy/gedcom.

- Irish Surnames Index On The Web

The following is a press release from the Ulster Historical Foundation:

The Ulster Historical Foundation has placed a special on-line database containing the Surnames/Householders Index for the nine counties of Ulster (Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry/Derry, Monaghan and Tyrone) on its website. This database enables visitors to the UHF site, who are also members of the Foundation's Guild, to generate reports by surname that highlight the civil parish distribution of that surname in both Griffith's Valuation and the Tithe Survey. Such information can help provide a focus for a search where a specific location is unknown.

You might wish to visit the Foundation's site to view a sample report: http://www.uhf.org.uk

The site also contains a searchable database of Irish ancestors being traced plus civil parish maps for the nine counties of Ulster both of which have unrestricted access.

- New Meyer’s Directory Of Genealogical Societies

Mary Meyer was a professional genealogist, lecturer, teacher and author who passed away a few months ago. She was working on the twelfth edition of her popular Meyer’s Directory of Genealogical Societies In The U.S.A. and Canada at the time of her death. Some of her friends and relatives have now finished the directory and have sent it to the printers. If you would like to receive a copy of this reference, read the following announcement for details:

Meyer’s Directory Of Genealogical Societies In The U.S.A. And Canada Twelfth Edition (1998)

Completely Revised

We are bringing you a directory to fulfill the need of every genealogist, every librarian, and every publisher of a family history. This book tells which genealogical society services the area in which you and your genealogist patron is interested, what projects they are carrying on and what they can do for you. Now you learn which society will be interested in your contribution to the field -- your family history, your family Bible record, your compilation of cemetery inscriptions or other records; tells which societies would welcome a copy of your book for review, accept your queries or articles for publication.

The DIRECTORY lists some 2600+ genealogical societies in the U.S. & Canada, including ethnic and special interest organizations with current addresses.

The directory costs $28.00 plus shipping. For more information, you can send e-mail to Sharon McNeeley at smcneeley@dhol.com.

- Broderbund Software Signs Deal With Excite

Broderbund Software, Inc. and Internet site Excite announced that they are joining forces to put genealogy resources at the fingertips of millions of people who visit Excite each month. The new Genealogy Section on the Lifestyle channel of Excite will include co-branded content created by Broderbund's developers for leading genealogy Web sites. The following are among the tools Excite users will have free access to:

Internet FamilyFinder: the only internet search engine developed specifically for seeking genealogy information. It indexes over 130 million names from nearly 3 million web pages worldwide and is growing daily as its spiders seek out new genealogy sites. In addition, Internet FamilyFinder Agents(tm) can be commissioned to e-mail you when they find new online information about your specified relatives.

Genealogy SiteFinder: an organized listing of more than 40,000 links to other Web sites focused on genealogically-relevant topics. Brief descriptions help you determine the value of a site before you click-through from the link. In addition, the listings are searchable and indexed by keyword.

Genealogy "How-To" Guide: the equivalent to a 1,200-page book containing step-by-step advice, directories of court houses and genealogy libraries, form letters, and more.

Biography Writing Assistant: contains thousands of questions to help you interview relatives to gain valuable information, as well as fun details, about events and people that shaped your family's history.

Articles and advice: more than a hundred articles on research techniques written by well-known professional genealogists, with more added regularly.

"Excite is one of the most popular sites for people to start looking for information on the Web, and genealogy is one of the most popular online activities. This partnership will provide Excite's users with an easy way to search the Web for their family history, as well as valuable advice on how to do genealogy," said Eric Holstege, Vice President of Broderbund's Family Tree Maker Online Business Unit. "Broderbund will be able to reach new users who are just beginning to think about doing their genealogy online by gaining visibility with millions of Excite users."

 - 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. Some of these sites may charge a fee for their services:

The Walker African-American Museum & Research Center; Nevada's First and Only African American Museum: http://members.aol.com/Bigbrwnsis/index.html

Madison Co., MS USGenWeb website. Online 1850 census with links to actual images, online searchable probates and wills database linked to the full transcriptions. New project on the "Confederate Dead at Canton MS", an online database containing the names, units and death dates of hundreds of Confederate soldiers: http://www.rootsweb.com/~msmadiso/

Clayburn, Clasper and Kenyon one-name studies under the Guild of On-Name Studies: http://freespace.virgin.net/rod.clayburn/index.htm

Quill genealogy under the Guild of One Name Studies: http://www.queries.demon.co.uk

Worldwide index/dbase for missing Jones ancestors. "Sought" details are emailed to proprietor and updated daily: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jones

Hawes/Haws genealogy research: http://members.aol.com/JimHawes/Hawes.html

German Genealogy research including the names: Garbe Bursian Knorn Barske Aukstein Tarneski Thilemann Knoblauch Krieg Knoefler: http://genweb.net/~rgarbe

Information about The Benedict Family History News, a quarterly newsletter about all American BENEDICTs (and variations): http://members.aol.com/benedictnz/BenedictNews/home.htm

Russian Mennonite Genealogy - a comprehensive collection of effective links to Russian Mennonite organizational sources of information online: http://members.home.net/rempel/

Tracing the genealogy of the Chappell and Nahrstadt families: http://www.geocities.com/heartland/bluffs/8654

Ansley genealogy, specifically searching for Andrew Ansley born SC on 1845: http://www.geocities.com/heartland/village/2137

Street Genealogy Page for STREET researchers everywhere: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/2685/street1.html

Scruggs family genealogy: http://members.tripod.com/~Glenda_Bolton/Homepage-2.htm

Armenian genealogy resources: http://192.41.11.174/distantc/Links/Ethnic/Armenia.html

Herndon family genealogy: http://198.88.208.36/herndon

Descendents of Nelson Thompson and Nellie Thompson (nee) Washington, of Georgetown, South Carolina: http://www.monumental.com/aldavis/Family%20Reunion/

To submit your home page to this newsletter, enter the necessary information at: http://www.rootscomputing.com/register.htm. Due to the volume of new Web pages submitted, I am not able to list all of them in the newsletter.

If you would like to submit news, information or press releases for possible inclusion in future newsletters, send them to richard@eastman.net. The author does reserve the right to accept or reject any articles submitted.

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is being written and sent via e-mail at no charge. I expect to write one new issue on a more or less weekly basis. However, life sometimes interferes, and the need to earn a living may create an occasional delay.

COPYRIGHTS: The contents of this newsletter are copyright by Richard W. Eastman and by Ancestry Publishing and by others so designated. You are hereby granted rights, unless otherwise specified, to re-distribute articles from this newsletter to other parties provided you do so strictly for non-commercial purposes. Please limit your re-distribution to one or two articles per newsletter; do not re-distribute the newsletter in its entirety. Also, please include the following words with any articles you re-distribute:

The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 1998 by Richard W. Eastman and Ancestry, Inc. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.

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About the author: Dick Eastman is the forum manager of the four Genealogy Forums on CompuServe and is editor of Genealogical Computing magazine. He also is the author of "YOUR ROOTS: Total Genealogy Planning On Your Computer" published by Ziff-Davis Press. He can be reached at: richard@eastman.net