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| EOGN Note: The information in this archived copy was accurate on the date of publication. Since then, Web sites have appeared and disappeared, companies have been merged and many other facts have changed. You may find references in this archived copy that are no loner accurate. Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter A Weekly Summary of Events and Vol. 4 No. 41 – Oct. 9, 1999 This newsletter is sponsored by Ancestry Publishing, To learn about Ancestry's Past issues of this Newsletter Copyright © 1999 by Richard W. Eastman. All rights reserved. Do not reply to this email. This is a post-only mailing; mail sent to this address cannot be answered. You can obtain a free subscription to this newsletter or change or cancel a present subscription at: http://rootscomputing.listbot.com If you do contact any of the companies or societies mentioned in this newsletter, please tell them that you read about their services in this newsletter. IN THIS ISSUE: - Internet World - Internet World I spent a few days in New York City this week. One of those days was spent at Internet World. This event lived up to its reputation for hype and glitz. The Jacob Javits Convention Center was filled with people and exhibit booths. The exhibit hall seemed crowded and noisy all the time. Various booths had flashing lights, loud music, actors, magicians, and whatever else the vendors could dream up in an attempt to stand out from the crowd. One company was giving away a BMW Z-3 sports car, another was giving away a "Hummer" all-terrain vehicle, and a third company was giving away a Cadillac sedan. These folks are serious about advertising! Hmmm, why don’t we see BMW giveaways at genealogy conventions? As I walked up and down the aisles at Internet World, I realized that the interest this year was focused on two topics: e-commerce and wireless messaging. E-commerce is generally defined as the selling of products and services on the Web, and there were several hundred display booths exhibiting products and services for this topic. Wireless messaging has moved far beyond simple pocket pagers. Several booths were showing devices such as the 3COM Palm Pilot with wireless modem attached, Motorola PageWriter 2000 Smart Pager wireless terminal with full keyboard, and a variety of wireless modems to be used with laptop or palmtop PCs. At least two companies were advertising wireless Internet connections with unlimited time for $39.95 a month. I purchased a Motorola PageWriter 2000 Smart Pager about a week before the Internet World show and was delighted to see it prominently displayed in several booths. Perhaps I will write about this "computer terminal on your belt" in a future newsletter. The only genealogy-related booth at Internet World was the Ancestry.com booth. Resembling a house, this was the same booth that they have sent to several genealogy conventions. Ancestry.com was promoting their primary Web site of the same name plus their popular MyFamily.com site. I didn’t count the number of Ancestry.com employees present, but it looked like half the company was there. The booth was obviously successful; every time I walked past it was filled with convention attendees interested in finding more about their roots. I was a bit disappointed when I was unable to find any other genealogy-related vendors exhibiting at the show. Internet World is one of the premier shows in the online computer business, so I had expected to see other genealogy-related companies at the show. - eBay’s Policy on Questionable Merchandise Last May I wrote about grave markers being sold on eBay. In the article, still available at: http://www.ancestry.com/columns/eastman/eastmay11-99.htm, I wrote:
I also wrote:
In that article I said that the sale of such grave markers is certainly in bad taste and possibly illegal in some states. I urged readers to contact eBay any time they found such items for sale on the site. This week I had a chance to listen to a speech by Meg Whitman, the CEO of eBay. She described many of the challenges and successes of eBay in the past two years since she has been at the helm. She said that eBay has always prohibited the sale of illegal items, but now they also have to make decisions about other products that may be legal but controversial. She talked at length about their recent decision to ban the sale of firearms on eBay and about the sale of "adult materials" on the site. Ms. Whitman did not talk about grave markers in her prepared remarks. However, in the question-and-answer period that followed, she assured the audience that any questionable items should be reviewed by eBay. She pointed out that eBay does not "censor" in advance. While anyone may post any item for sale, items that are questionable are usually reviewed within a very few hours. If found wanting, these items are then removed from sale. Ms. Whitman reported that eBay’s community of users is its biggest asset. Community members usually report prohibited, questionable and infringing items much more quickly than eBay employees can find them. She invited everyone to report such items at: http://pages.ebay.com/services/safeharbor/report-infringing.html. Once again, the task of policing the Web becomes a shared responsibility of users and hosting vendors. We cannot assume that these hosting sites monitor every detail of their customers’ uploaded sale descriptions. If you see a grave marker for sale on eBay or any other Web site, it’s a small effort to send the vendor a message expressing your concern.
- German Emigration Records A new Internet-based "Link To Your Roots" service of Hamburg emigration records is now appearing on the Web. I looked at the site this week and found that there isn’t much information available yet. However, the site promises that much of the data will be online by the end of this year. Quoting from information found on the site:
Note that the site does not claim that original documents will be available online. Instead, it says, "the first period of years starting with 1890 should partially be accessible on the Internet" and that "…employees will enter all data as well as answer any inquiries made via the Internet." Remember that the port of Hamburg was the point of embarkation for many non-German people as well. More than four million emigrants, including about one million Jewish refugees escaping from Czarist Russia, traveled overland to Hamburg from many countries in Eastern Europe. That is why the Hamburg emigration lists are so important for many genealogists in the USA and Canada. The leading role played by the Port of Hamburg in the emigration business was primarily due to the activities of the Hamburg American Package Travel Company (HAPAG). Around 1900 HAPAG was the world's biggest shipping line and Hamburg the most important emigration port. HAPAG's strategy of employing emigration agents in Eastern Europe to praise the quality of the accommodation on the huge HAPAG ships resulted in streams of emigrants sailing from Hamburg. So it was mainly Eastern European emigrants who sailed to the States via Hamburg. Hamburg is the only emigration city in Germany that still has complete lists of all emigrants to the U.S. via Hamburg between 1850 and 1934. In other German cities such as Bremen, also an important emigration port, the ships' lists have disappeared or were destroyed in the war. In Hamburg the lists are not only complete, but they also contain details of the emigrants' places of origin -- a considerable advantage in locating ancestors from Eastern Europe. Now researchers who know or think that their ancestors emigrated via Hamburg will be able to find out for sure on the Internet. The 1890-1893 lists are already on the Net, and from now on, another year will be added every month. By 2003 all the lists with the names of around five million emigrants who left Hamburg from 1850 to 1934 will be accessible via the Internet. If you believe that any of your ancestors left Hamburg during the years mentioned, you will want to keep an eye on the Hamburg Link To Your Roots site at: http://www.hamburg.de/LinkToYourRoots/english/ - Pirates of the Whydah are now on the Web Six years ago I had a chance to watch the restoration work being done on artifacts lifted from the ocean floor off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Historians and treasure seekers had found the remains of the pirate ship Whydah that sank in April 1717. 144 men on board, including Captain "Black Sam" Bellamy, were lost. It is believed that this pirate captain was returning to Cape Cod to visit his girlfriend, Maria Hallett of Eastham, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the ship was lost only a few miles from where she awaited "Black Sam’s" return. Quoting from the Web site:
One of the two survivors was John Julian, whose ancestry was a mixture of African black and Mosquito Indian. After the wreck he was captured and then jailed in Boston. However, he was never indicted. There is no confirmed record of his fate, but he probably was sold into slavery. He was probably the same "Julian the Indian" bought by John Quincy—whose grandson, President John Quincy Adams, became a staunch abolitionist. If this was the same man, he suffered greatly. Adams wrote that Julian was an "unruly slave" and eventually he was sold to another owner. Julian often tried to escape from this later owner. During one attempt he killed a bounty hunter who was trying to catch him. In 1993 I visited in the Whydah Museum near the Pilgrim Memorial in Provincetown, Massachusetts. At that time the museum was the scene of many workers quietly restoring artifacts recovered from the ocean floor. I saw several cannons that had become encrusted in the 200+ years they had been lying on the ocean floor. The museum used an electrolysis method to remove the unwanted materials and leave the cannons in near-original condition. The same museum also exhibited the ship’s bell, plates, silverware, buttons, boots and other artifacts recovered. I well remember that one leather boot on display still contained the bones of the wearer’s shin, ankle and foot. It was a fascinating visit that provided a glimpse into a romantic part of America’s history. Today, you no longer need to travel to the outermost tip of Cape Cod to learn the story of Captain "Black Sam" Bellamy and the Whydah. You can find much of the information on the National Geographic’s Web site at: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/whydah/ - Master Of Your Domain Would you like a Web site with your last name? How about smith.net or jones.org? Those domain names, and 14,000 more, have been snapped up by an entrepreneur who then will sell you an e-mail address and Web space. For instance, Ben Smith now has the e-mail address of ben@smith.net and a personal home page at http://www.ben.smith.net. Scott Woolley wrote an article about the company that has purchased more than 14,000 domain names. The article is available on Forbes Magazine’s Web site at: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/99/0726/6402244a.htm - Notable Women Ancestors Who is left to mourn the death of Mary Dyer, a 17th-century religious martyr hanged in Boston for espousing her Quaker beliefs? And who remembers Anne Marbury Hutchinson, the woman who inflamed that city with her political and religious speeches? Susanne "Sam" Behling of Bremerton does, and she's celebrating the contributions of these women with an Internet Web site and a quarterly newsletter. Due to social conventions, the difficulties and triumphs of many women in history were not well publicized. "These women were my 10th-generation great-grandmothers," Behling explains, "but I never read about them in the history books. In fact, I hardly read about women at all." Behling is doing a lot to change the history books. You can read a nice article about "Sam" Behling and her efforts at the Beaufort Gazette’s Web site: http://www.beaufortgazette.com/lifestyles/story/0,1465,105880,00.html. However, that article contains an inaccurate pointer to the "Notable Women Ancestors" Web site. Behling’s Web site is actually available at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/ - "War Of The Rebellion" is now Online History buffs and genealogists alike are familiar with the "War Of The Rebellion Journal." This is a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies published in 1880 through 1901 under the direction of the Secretary of War. The entire publication was published as a set of 71 volumes containing tens of thousands of pages of information. This is probably the most detailed information about the American Civil War ever published. Now the entire series is available online. The Cornell University Library Making of America (MOA) Collection is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The online collection is extensive and one of the latest additions is the "War Of The Rebellion". I spent some time looking at this online collection. Each page has been scanned as a graphic image. You can read the pages online or print them on your own printer. The pages that I printed on an ancient LaserJet printer looked much clearer than the typical photocopies made at a library. The Web site contains only graphic images. The books have not been converted to text. The only index available is the original index published with the collection in 1901. This index is available online, but it, too, is available as a collection of graphic images. The "War Of The Rebellion" is the major reference for the most troubled time in American history. The online version will be a major resource for historians and genealogists alike. You can view the online version of the "War Of The Rebellion" at: http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/MOA/MOA-JOURNALS2/WARO.html "The Official Records of the Unites States and Confederate Navies" is another great resource. This 30-volume reference is available at: http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/MOA/MOA-JOURNALS2/OFRE.html - PAF 4.0 "How To" Pages Personal Ancestral File version 4.0 for Windows is becoming a very popular genealogy program. After all, it’s free! You can read about the program in my earlier newsletters that are still available at: http://www.ancestry.com/columns/eastman/eastjuly06-99.htm, http://www.ancestry.com/columns/eastman/eastjuly13-99.htm and http://www.ancestry.com/columns/eastman/eastjuly27-99.htm. Since the program is available at no cost as a download from a Web site, the user does not receive a printed manual. To be sure, the built-in help files are excellent, but the Volusia Computer Genealogy Group thought that many users needed a bit more information. That organization has now created a Web site containing "How To" pages that supplement the program’s help files. Topics found on the Volusia Computer Genealogy Group Web site include:
The same information also applies to Ancestral Quest 3.0 since this is the program that later became PAF 4.0. To view the PAF 4.0 "How To" pages, look at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~flvcgg/PAF40/paf40idx.htm - Northumberland and Cornwall Records on CD-ROM S&N Genealogy Supplies has announced the release of two new CD-ROM disks containing valuable English records. Here is an excerpt from the press release:
Information on this and many other regional resources for the UK are available on http://www.genealogy.demon.co.uk. They provide a secure shopping facility for those wishing to purchase over the Internet. - Looking for a Society?
The following first appeared in the Ancestry Daily News, edited by Juliana Smith:
- Mathematics Genealogy Project and Theoretical Computer Science Genealogy Mathematicians learn from other mathematicians. In turn, those individuals learn from still other mathematicians. If you think about this for a bit, you can see that there is almost a genealogical connection here: each mathematician "begets" other mathematicians. OK, this isn’t biology. We only need one parent, not a male and female pair. Nonetheless, we can say that each mathematician has "math roots." Harry B. Coonce tried to trace his mathematical roots -- to discover the identity of his academic advisor's advisor – and he hit a wall. Mr. Coonce, a retired mathematics professor, found that no one at his graduate program had the information. His frustration led him to create a resource to help mathematicians track their intellectual lineage. The result is the Genealogy Project for Mathematicians, a Web site that lists the advisors of thousands of mathematicians. He hopes that the database, which already contains more than 27,000 names, will eventually identify everyone who has earned a research degree in mathematics during the 20th century. You can find the Mathematics Genealogy Project at: http://hcoonce.math.mankato.msus.edu/ A somewhat similar project is called the "Theoretical Computer Science Genealogy" project. It focuses on earned doctoral degrees (adviser, university, and year) of theoretical computer scientists worldwide. It lists professors and their students. You can find the "Theoretical Computer Science Genealogy" database at: http://sigact.acm.org/genealogy My thanks to Bob Anderson for the information about these projects. - eFAX Several months ago I tried a free Web service and have since become quite enthused about it. This isn’t genealogy-related, but I still thought that I would share my findings with others. eFAX is a free service that gives you a dedicated FAX number. Any FAXes sent to that number are then forwarded to you as e-mail messages. The actual FAX pages are attached as image files. You can view the pages on your screen, print them on your printer, or forward them to any other e-mail address. This free service has no set-up fees, no per-page charges, and no hidden costs. EFAX viewers are available for Windows and Macintosh systems. Users of MS-DOS, UNIX, Linux, Web TV and other systems will receive faxes in a TIFF format that can then be viewed by using third-party graphics software that is available for those systems. Keep in mind that a typical 2 or 3 page FAX typically requires less than 30 seconds to download via e-mail if you are using a 56K modem. However, receiving a FAX in the normal method on a FAX machine requires about four times as much time. To avoid long download times, eFAX super-compresses all FAXes before e-mailing them. Cheap FAX machines cost about $200 and better ones are much more. Of course, you can use your FAX modem to receive FAXes, but that means you have to leave your computer on all the time in case someone wants to send you a FAX. Then there is the cost of a dedicated telephone line for use with your FAX machine. Where I live that one line alone can cost more than $200 a year. Obviously, a free service that performs the same functionality becomes very attractive! Anyone outside the U.S. who deals with U.S. organizations and individuals will quickly see a benefit here. You can have a U.S. FAX number regardless of where you live. The free service includes only the capability to receive FAXes; it will not send them. However, most PC and Macintosh users these days already have FAX modems and the necessary software to send FAXes directly from their word processors or other programs without the use of any other hardware or services. If you also own a scanner, you can also send FAXes of paper documents. Therefore the lack of a send capability seems like a minor problem. I signed up for eFAX’s free service and experimented with it for several weeks. I was impressed. The documents that I received and printed on my laser printer looked a lot better than the FAXes produced by a cheap $200 FAX system using thermal paper. Since I travel a lot and always take my laptop with me, the capability to receive FAXes while traveling was especially valuable. I no longer need to return home to read my FAXes; anyone can send a FAX to me without even knowing that I am in Hong Kong or in Timbuktu. In short, I found that eFAX is a great service. One disadvantage to this service is that you probably will not obtain a local FAX number. While I live in New Hampshire, the FAX number assigned to me had a Florida Area Code. That meant that anyone in my own city who wanted to send a FAX to me had to pay a toll charge. Some people may find this objectionable while others will not. Like other Internet services, the free service from eFax.com has bills to pay. They obtain revenue from advertising sponsors and offers and e-commerce product promotions. If you sign up for eFAX, you can expect to receive advertising. That’s not a bad trade-off, in my opinion. For those who want a higher-level service, you can pay for eFAX Plus. This service offers several advantages: a local FAX number and the capability to send FAXes. I signed up for eFAX Plus and received a FAX number that is in the same city where I live. eFAX has local numbers available in most area codes although not necessarily local to your town or city. With eFAX Plus, I can also send a FAX as an attached file in an e-mail message that is addressed to eFAX. In turn, eFAX sends the document from a FAX server they control, and that document is sent from their location. eFAX Plus also contains OCR capabilities that will convert received typed FAX documents to text. There are some other minor features as well. eFAX Plus costs $2.95 per month and $0.05 for every 30 seconds of eFAX send time. Again, I can send FAXes to the U.S. from Hong Kong or from Timbuktu for ten cents a minute, a lot cheaper than using FAX services in that country. There is no extra charge for receiving FAXes. eFAX also offers toll-free FAX numbers for $2.95 per month and $0.10 for each page you receive. A competitive FAX service called JFAX has been around for a couple of years. JFAX charges $12.50 a month. The new eFAX service would appear to be a serious competitor to JFAX. However, JFAX has reacted by bundling more services into its offering. The number that JFAX assigns can also receive voice messages. Those messages also get forwarded to your e-mail address as attached audio files. JFAX also has a capability to handle e-mail messages by telephone. You can call a toll-free number, enter a PIN number and then the computer reads your e-mail messages to you by use of a voice synthesizer. Another option allows for the e-mail messages to be forwarded to any FAX machine. You can also reply by voice, and your recorded message is sent to the other person as an attached audio file. For more information about JFAX’s for-pay services, look at: http://www.jfax.com. For information about eFAX’s free and for-pay services, look at: http://www.efax.com. - From the Mailbox This week I am starting a new section in the newsletter: "From the Mailbox." In the 3+ years I have been writing this newsletter, I have published more than a thousand articles. In the days following each newsletter’s publication, I often receive e-mail messages from readers who give more details or supplementary information to the articles that I have written. I have decided to publish excerpts from some of these e-mails so that everyone can benefit. Assuming that I receive enough e-mail messages, I will be publishing these comments most every week. Here are the first few: Last week I wrote about the condensed version of Time Magazine’s "Trace Your Roots – Online" that is available in the current issue of Reader’s Digest. Karl R. Dalley, solring@alumni.utexas.net, wrote:
Last week I published "Upcoming Events." Carol Simpson, carols@ideafamilies.org, sent along this correction:
I also wrote an article called "English Vital Records to be Available Online?" I have condensed a long and detailed message that I received from Iain Kerr, iainkerr@clara.net:
- 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.
Walker Family Website: Extensive online data includes WALKER archives, bibles, bios, books, births, cemeteries, deaths, deeds, GEDCOMS, letters/other, military and wills submitted by members of the WALKER mailing lists on USRoots and RootsWeb: http://www.usroots.com/~sueowens/walker Home page of the Judkins Family Association. This site contains a page on the two earliest Judkins in America, Job Judkins of Boston, MA & Samuel Judkins of Surry County, VA. The same site also contains an index of Civil War Pension information on both the Northern & Southern veterans: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Oaks/1781/ The Carpathian Connection Site, an independent genealogy and historical reference area for those researching ancestors from the Carpathian Mountain regions of Eastern Europe. http://www.tccweb.org/ Vaughan/Vaughn Resource Page - Hundreds of records, marriage, obituary, birth, census, wills, deeds, (and much more) for anyone researching the surname Vaughan--Vaughn--or any of the various spellings of this name: http://www.geocities.com/heartland/meadows/1849/vaudgr.htm 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. Are you interested in the articles in this newsletter? Would you like to learn more or ask questions or make comments about these articles? Join this newsletter’s online discussion group on CompuServe’s Genealogy Techniques Forum. CompuServe members using Netscape, Internet Explorer or CompuServe 2000 can go to http://go.compuserve.com/GenealogyForum. If you are using Classic CompuServe, you can GO ROOTS. 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. 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:
Thank you for your cooperation. Subscription information: To subscribe to this free newsletter, to cancel an existing subscription or to modify an existing subscription in any way, go to: If you want to see the current issue as well as back issues of the newsletter, look on the World Wide Web at: Please feel free to copy this subscription information and pass it on to anyone else who you think might be interested in obtaining a free subscription. About the author: Dick Eastman is the forum manager of the four Genealogy Forums on CompuServe. 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
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