Wow! Another year has come and gone! Where did the time go?

It seems like only yesterday that I decided to start writing a genealogy newsletter for a few of my friends and acquaintances. Well, it wasn’t yesterday… it was exactly 27 years ago!

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that 27 years would be so interesting, so much fun, and so rewarding. 

Twenty-seven years has slipped by in almost the blink of an eye. It seems like only yesterday that I sent the first e-mail newsletter to about 100 people, mostly members of CompuServe’s Genealogy Forums. (Do you remember CompuServe?) The last time I looked, this newsletter now has tens of thousands of readers tuning in every day! If you would have told me that 27 years ago, I would have never believed you.

This little newsletter started as a way for me to help friends to learn about new developments in genealogy, to learn about conferences and seminars, and to learn about new technologies that were useful to genealogists. I especially focused on what was then the newly-invented thing called the World Wide Web. In 1996 many people had never heard of the World Wide Web, and most people didn’t understand it.

None of the first recipients knew in advance that the newsletter would arrive; I simply e-mailed it to people who I thought might be interested. In 1996 nobody objected to receiving unsolicited bulk mail; the phrase “spam mail” had not yet been invented. I shudder to think if I did the same thing in today’s internet environment.

The word “blog” also had not yet been invented in 1996, so I simply called it an “electronic newsletter.” Some things never change; I still refer to it as an “electronic newsletter” although obviously it is a blog.

Here is a quote from that first newsletter published on January 15, 1996:

“Well, it’s started. This newsletter is something that I have been considering for a long time, but I finally decided to “take the plunge.” I’ve subscribed to several other electronic newsletters for some time now and have found them to be valuable. On many occasions I have said to myself, “Someone ought to do a weekly newsletter for genealogy news.” One day the light bulb went on, and I decided that perhaps I was that someone.

“I hope to collect various bits of information that cross my desk and appear on my screen every week. Some of these items may be considered ‘news items’ concerning events and happenings of interest to computer-owning genealogists. Some other items will be mini press releases about new genealogy software or other products and services that have just become available. I may write a few articles about things that are not genealogy-related but still seem to be of interest to me and probably to the readers. This may include articles about online systems, operating systems or other things that affect many of us.

“You will also find editorials and my personal opinions weaving in and out of this newsletter. Hopefully I will be able to clearly identify the information that is a personal opinion.

“The expected audience of this newsletter includes anyone in the genealogy business, any genealogy society officers and anyone with an interest in applying computers to help in the research of one’s ancestors

“I chose to distribute in electronic format for two reasons: (1.) it’s easy, and (2.) it’s cheap. In years past I have been an editor of other newsletters that were printed on paper and mailed in the normal manner. The ‘overhead’ associated with that effort was excessive; I spent more time dealing with printers, maintaining addresses of subscribers, handling finances, stuffing envelopes and running to the post office than I did in the actual writing. Today’s technology allows for a much faster distribution, and it is done at almost no expense to either the producer or the subscribers. I want to spend my time writing, not running a ‘newsletter business.’

“Since the expected readers all own computers and almost all of them use modems regularly, electronic distribution seems to be the most cost-effective route to use. It also is much lower cost than any other distribution mechanism that I know of.”

The original plan has been followed rather closely in the 27 years since I wrote those words. The newsletter still consists of “events and happenings of interest to computer-owning genealogists,” “mini press releases about new genealogy software or other products and services,” and “a few articles about things that are not genealogy-related but still seem to be of interest to me.” I have also frequently featured “editorials and my personal opinions.”

One thing that has changed is that the newsletter was converted from a weekly publication to a daily effort about 22 years ago. I now send both daily and weekly summations of all the articles by e-mail.

I am delighted with the change to a daily format. There is a lot more flexibility when publishing daily and, of course, I can get the news out faster.

Another thing that has changed is the delivery method. In 1996, this newsletter was delivered to readers only by email. The reason was simple: most computer owners in those days didn’t use the World Wide Web. In fact, most of them didn’t even know what the World Wide Web was.

Tim Berners-Lee proposed a new service of hypertext inter-connected pages on different computers in 1991, when Web servers were unknown. By January 1993 there were fifty Web servers across the world. A web browser was available at that time, but only for the NeXT operating system, a version of UNIX. Web browsers for Windows and Macintosh systems were not available until June 1993. Even then, the World Wide Web did not become popular with the general public until the dot-com boom of 1999 to 2001.

Prior to the dot-com boom of 1999 to 2001, email was the best method of sending information to others.

One feature that I like about the current daily web-based publication is that each article has an attached discussion board where readers can offer comments, corrections, and supplemental information. The result is a much more interactive newsletter that benefits from readers’ expertise. The newsletter originally was a one-way publication: I pushed the data out. Today’s version is a two-way publication with immediate feedback from readers.

The 2023 newsletter does differ from one statement I wrote 27 years ago:

“Today’s technology allows for a much faster distribution, and it is done at almost no expense to either the producer or the subscribers.”

If I were to re-write that sentence today, I wouldn’t use the phrase, “at almost no expense.” I would write, “…at lower expense than publishing on paper.”

Since I wrote the original words 27 years ago, I have received an education in the financial implications of sending bulk e-mails and maintaining web sites, complete with controls of who can access which documents. I now know that it costs thousands of dollars a year to send thousands of e-mail messages every week. There are technical problems as well. Someday I may write an article about “how to get your account canceled when you repeatedly crash your Internet Service Provider’s mail server.”

The truth is I did crash mail servers a number of times in the early days of this newsletter. And, yes, I got my account canceled one day by an irate internet service provider. I was abruptly left with no e-mail service at all. The internet service provider discovered that their mail server crashed every week when I e-mailed this newsletter, so they canceled my account with no warning. I now use a (paid) professional bulk email service to send those messages. I also hope that internet service provider has since improved the company’s email server(s)!

In the third issue of this newsletter, I answered questions that a number of people had asked. I wrote:

“I hope to issue this [newsletter] every week. … I reserve the right to change my mind at any time without notice. Also, the first three issues have all been much longer than I originally envisioned. I expect that the average size of the newsletter within a few weeks will be about one half what the first three issues have been. Do not be surprised when you see it shrink in size.”

Well, I was wrong. The first three issues averaged about 19,000 bytes of text. The newsletter never did shrink. Instead, the average size of the newsletters continued to grow. The weekly e-mail Plus Edition newsletters of the past few years have averaged more than 500,000 bytes each, more than twenty-five times the average size of the first three issues. In fact, each weekly newsletter today is bigger than the first ten weekly issues combined!

So much for my prognostication!

In fact, you receive more genealogy-related articles in this newsletter than in any printed magazine. Subscriptions for the Plus Edition of this newsletter also remain less expensive than subscriptions to any of the leading printed genealogy magazines. Also, there aren’t as many printed genealogy magazines today as there were 27 years ago.

In 27 years I have missed only twelve weekly editions for vacations, genealogy cruises, 2 broken arms, multiple hospital stays, one airplane accident (yes, I was the pilot), and family emergencies.

I broke both arms one day by slipping on an icy walkway and still missed only one newsletter as a result! I found typing on a keyboard to be difficult with two arms in casts. (There were a number of other things that proved to be difficult to accomplish with two arms in casts!) The following week I wrote an article about speech input devices as I dictated that week’s newsletter into a microphone connected to my PC.

Several months later, I suffered bruises and wrenched my neck severely when I had an engine failure in my tiny, single-seat, open cockpit airplane. The plane and I landed in a treetop and then fell to the ground about eighty feet below, bouncing off tree limbs as the wreckage of airplane and pilot fell to the ground together. I landed upside down with the wreckage of the airplane on top of me. (Landing upside down in an open cockpit airplane is not the recommended landing procedure!) Yet I missed only one issue as a result of that mishap even though the following issue was written while wearing a neck brace and swallowing pain pills that made me higher than that airplane ever flew.

Nine years ago, an emergency appendectomy caused me to miss one weekly mailing of the newsletter. I have rarely taken time off for vacations.

Over the years I hopefully have become more cautious: I stopped flying tiny airplanes, and I have now moved to Florida in order to avoid the ice. I also have published more than 75,000 newsletter articles. Someday I really do have to learn how to touch type.

Because of this newsletter, in the past 27 years I have traveled all over the U.S. as well as to Singapore, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Israel, and Ireland, and have made multiple trips each to Canada, England, Scotland, Mexico, China, and to several Caribbean islands.

Because of this newsletter, I have met many enthusiastic genealogists. Because of this newsletter, I have had the opportunity to use great software, to view many excellent web sites, and to use lots of new gadgets. Because of this newsletter, I have discovered a number of ancestors. I am indeed fortunate and have truly been blessed.

I’ve always tried to make this newsletter REAL and from the heart. I don’t pull any punches. I write about whatever is on my mind. And if that offends some people, then so be it. I don’t expect everyone to agree with all of my opinions. There is plenty of room in this world for disagreements and differing viewpoints amongst friends. There are too many watered-down, politically correct newsletters and blogs out there already. I plan to continue to write whatever is on my mind. If you disagree with me, please feel free to say so.

To each person reading today’s edition, I want to say one thing: From the bottom of my heart, thank you for tuning in each day and reading what I have to say.

Also, one other sentence I wrote 27 years ago still stands: suggestions about this newsletter are always welcome.

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

TheGenealogist has today released 371,400 Kildare Catholic Parish Registers covering 323,923 records of baptisms, 46,914 marriages and 563 burials to make it easier for its Diamond subscribers to discover their Irish ancestors from this eastern part of Ireland.

Also released at this time are more than 29,000 individuals recorded as Irish Tithe Defaulters. These records from 1831 can be a useful stand-in for the 1831 Irish census which was almost completely destroyed in 1922. 

The Irish Anti Tithe Agitation The Affray at Carrickshock, 1831

Tithes were levied on all occupiers of agricultural land, no matter what their religion was and the Roman Catholic population of Ireland particularly resented paying these tithes to the Church of Ireland (the Established Church) on top of often supporting their own priests. Refusal to pay the tithes came to a head in the years 1831 to 1832, beginning what is known as the ‘Tithe War’ in Ireland.

To alleviate the Church of Ireland’s shortfall The Clergy Relief Fund was established in 1832 by the Recovery of Tithes (Ireland) Act 1832. This provided the affected clergy compensation in return for providing the government with the names of the defaulters.

Many of the non-payers named were ordinary folk such as labourers, farmers and widows who would most likely have been Roman Catholics and so not part of the congregation at their local Church of Ireland parish church, but surprisingly there are also Magistrates, Peers of the Realm and even Knights.

These new releases, now available to all Gold and Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist will be a welcome resource for those family historians wanting to research their Irish ancestry.

Read TheGenealogist’s featured article: Can’t Pay or Won’t Pay – The Tithe Defaulters at https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/cant-pay-or-wont-pay--the-tithe-defaulters-1651/ 

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

Where your ancestors lived can cause Autism? That seems ridiculous but a recent study by University of Utah Health scientists found a connection:

University of Utah Health scientists, using a unique combination of geographic and population data, recently concluded that when and where parents and grandparents of Utah children were born and raised could contribute to an increased risk of autism among their offspring.

The scientists think this new approach could be used to explore time and space aspects of any disease where family pedigree information is available.

The study, published in the International Journal of Health Geographics, is among the first to assess the influence of time and space (when and where) across generations on the increased risk of autism.

In time, the researchers say, this finding could lead to the identification of environmental factors, such as exposure to pollutants, that could have disruptive effects on genetic information passed between generations.

“Looking back at families and where and when they lived helped us detect clusters of individuals who seem to have a higher subsequent risk of autism among their descendants,” says James VanDerslice, an environmental epidemiologist in the Division of Public Health at U of U Health and senior author of the study.

“Knowing that the parents and grandparents of these children with autism shared space and time brings us closer to understanding the environmental factors that might have influenced this health outcome.”

You can read more in an article published in the neurosciencenews.com web site at: https://neurosciencenews.com/autism-location-time-22242/.

Julia Roberts has discovered a family secret: Her world famous last name isn’t exactly accurate.

The “Pretty Woman” actress, 55, was shocked to learn on a recent episode of Ancestry’s “Finding Your Roots” that her great-great-grandmother Rhoda Suttle Roberts had an affair with a married man after her husband, Willis Roberts, passed away. 

“Digging into Georgia’s County archives, we discovered that sometime in the 1850s, Rhoda married a man named Willis Roberts,” Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. explained.

“Julia carries Willis’ last name, but Willis passed away in 1864, over a decade before Rhoda gave birth to Julia’s great-grandfather, John, leading to an inescapable conclusion.”

Through DNA archives and genealogical work, Gates discovered Willis “could not possibly” be the “Notting Hill” actress’ great-great-grandfather.

“He was dead,” the historian revealed.

You can read more in an article by Emily Selleck published in the PageSix.com web site at: https://pagesix.com/2023/01/12/julia-roberts-stunned-to-learn-shes-not-a-roberts/.

NOTE: This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it is about another interest of mine: Chromebooks. I also believe that many readers of this newsletter share my interest.

From an article by Joshua Goldman published in the CNET.com web site:

Whether you got a new Chromebook for the holidays or you're looking to do more with the one you have in the coming new year, you should know that there are still quite a few misconceptions about what Chromebook computers can do. One of the most prevalent is that Chromebooks can't run Microsoft Office. While it's true that Windows or Mac software can't be directly installed on a Chromebook -- including the desktop versions of Microsoft Office apps -- that's not the only option when it comes to using Microsoft's suite of productivity software. 

I'm not talking about the Android versions, either. Although Chromebooks can run millions of Android apps from the Google Play store, the Android versions of Microsoft Office, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive are no longer supported on Chromebooks. However, when the Android apps stopped being supported on Chromebooks, another option (and in my opinion, a better one) took their place.

Progressive web apps are like mobile app versions of a website but with more features, such as offline use, the option to pin them to the taskbar, support for push notifications and updates and access to hardware features. You can find Microsoft Office 365 PWAs like Outlook and OneDrive, and they work great on Chromebooks. Here's where to find them and install them so you can still use Office on a Chromebook.

You can read the full article at: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/actually-your-chromebook-can-run-microsoft-office/.

From an article by Ony Anukem published in the creativecommons.org web site:

Join Creative Commons, Internet Archive, and many other leaders from the open world to celebrate Public Domain Day 2023. As of January 2023, a treasure trove of new cultural works has become as free as the moon and the stars — at least in the USA and many other countries. And what better way to get us feeling inspired than recalling those timeless lyrics of the 1927 hit musical composition: “The Best Things In Life Are Free“. We agree! That’s why we made it our theme. 

This year ushered in a wealth of creative works published in 1927 into the Public Domain, which now contribute to our cultural heritage. Iconic authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf, silent film classics like the controversial The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson and Fritz Lang’s dystopian Metropolis, and snappy musical compositions like “You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream”.

You can welcome new public domain works and celebrate with us in three ways:

You can read the full article at: https://creativecommons.org/2023/01/09/celebrate-public-domain-day-2023-with-us-the-best-things-in-life-are-free/.

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Head back to school this

Findmypast Friday 

·         More school records for Yorkshire added 

·         Records for five burial sites in Middlesex 

·         Two newspaper titles updated with even more pages 

National School Admission Registers

This collection has been bolstered by a further 7,859 records, all from 10 schools Halifax in Yorkshire. You should find details such as full name, age and the years your ancestor attended school. Some may even have parents’ names and their home address. 

Middlesex Monumental Inscriptions 

A further 1,731 records have been added to this existing collection, covering five different burial sites, one of which is a prison. Typically, you’ll get an ancestor’s full name, death year, place, and even sometimes the full inscription. Be sure to check the document link to learn more information about the burial site. 

Newspapers 

Step back in time into the era of old school Hollywood glamour and beyond this week. 

Updated titles: 

·         Picturegoer, 1915-1918, 1923-1925, 1950 

·         Birmingham Mail, 1998 

Over and over, genealogists have been told that the copyright has expired for all works published in the United States before 1928. In other words, if the work was published in the U.S. before January 1, 1928, anyone is free to republish excerpts or even the entire book without obtaining permission. That statement remains correct today. However, many genealogists are not aware that the overwhelming majority of all books published prior to 1964 are also free of copyright. That's "the overwhelming majority of all books" but not all of them.

Between 1928 and 1964, a renewal registration was required to prevent the expiration of copyright.  If a work was first published before January 1, 1964, the owner had to file a renewal with the Copyright Office during the 28th year after publication. No renewal meant a loss of copyright. In other words, for all books published prior to 1964, the copyrights expired before January 1, 1992 IF THE COPYRIGHT WAS NOT RENEWED. However, a 1961 report from the U.S. Copyright Office estimates that 85% of the books never had the copyrights renewed. Therefore, those books are now public domain. 

Major corporations generally had employees who monitored copyrights and made sure they were renewed. For instance, if you have a Disney comic book published during the 1940s, it probably is still under copyright because the Disney Corporation protected the company's copyrights and made sure the copyrights were renewed on time. However, the overwhelming majority of genealogy books that were self-published by individual genealogists probably did not have the copyrights renewed. The key word in that sentence is PROBABLY.

The laws changed for books published after January 1, 1964 and we can assume that all of those books are still under copyright today unless they were explicitly released to the public domain, according to U.S. copyright laws. The laws vary widely in other countries, however.

Determining whether a work's copyright registration has been renewed is a challenge but is not impossible. Renewals received by the Copyright Office after 1977 are searchable in an online database, but renewals received between 1950 and 1977 were announced and distributed only in a semi-annual print publication. The Copyright Office does not have a machine-searchable source for this renewal information, and the only public access is through the card catalog in the Copyright Office's D.C. offices.

In order to make these renewal records more accessible, Stanford University has created a Copyright Renewal Database. The database covers only renewals, not original registrations, and is limited to books (Class A registrations) published in the U.S. As a result, the Copyright Renewal Database is a big help but is not the definitive answer to all copyright questions concerning books published prior to 1964.

If you plan on using a work that was published after 1927, but before 1964, you should research the records of the Copyright Office to determine if a renewal was filed. You can research in person at the Copyright Office in Washington, D.C., or pay the Copyright Office to do a search for you $200.00 per hour with a 2-hour minimum (see http://www.copyright.gov/forms/search_estimate.html); or pay someone to perform the search for you. 

You can read more about these copyright issues at:

• http://copyright.gov/circs/circ15.pdf
• http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/copyright-renewal.html
• http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/page?forward=home
• http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_renewal

and probably at a few dozen other web sites as well.

If you are of European descent, you are probably a descendant of Charlemagne. Once you are able to prove your line of descent from him, you will then find thousands of links to other royalty in your list of relatives.

Charlemagne had twenty children over the course of his life with eight of his ten known wives or concubines. Genealogists have shown that fourteen presidents of the United States, including George Washington, Ulysses Grant, Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt, and the Bushes are all descendants of the King of France who lived from 2 April 742 AD to 28 January 814 AD.

It is rare indeed that the genealogy of a person of European descent, when traceable, doesn’t hit nobility somewhere. And once it hits one European noble, whether you like it or not, nearly the whole tribe joins your family. Those folks got around.

The reason is simple. First, make a guess how many ancestors you have. It may be a larger number than you thought. Obviously, you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents and so on in a geometric progression. Moving backwards, each generation introduces double the number of ancestors of the previous generation.

What is not so obvious is the size of the numbers when you go back twenty or thirty or forty generations:

20 generations: more than one million ancestors

30 generations: more than one billion ancestors

40 generations: more than one trillion ancestors!

Of course, those numbers assume there are no duplicates in your entire family tree. One problem: there are always duplicates. Next, one trillion is a much larger number than the total number of people who have ever lived.

Whatever the real number of your ancestors, you are descended from a huge number of people. Within these billions of ancestors, you will always find royalty, assuming you are able to trace back that far. It would be impossible to have a billion ancestors without some royalty appearing someplace in your family tree. 

Professional genealogists tell us that Charlemagne appears in almost every European descendant's family tree. Your challenge is to go out and document your line of descent.

WARNING: This article contains personal opinions. The intended primary audience for this article is the members and officers of genealogy societies.

There are two contradictory "facts" floating around among genealogy societies, points that I hear discussed at almost all the genealogy conferences and meetings that I attend:

Fact #1: Genealogy is more popular today than ever before. It is the second or third or fourth most popular topic on the Web, depending upon whose sources you care to cite. 

Fact #2: Attendance at all genealogy venues is down. The average attendance at genealogy conferences is declining. (Note that I wrote "average." There are some notable exceptions.) Membership in genealogy societies is also declining. Finally, the number of visitors to most major genealogy libraries reportedly is declining.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a contradiction in these two "facts?" If interest in genealogy is growing, why aren't we seeing more and more people at conferences, libraries, and society meetings?

I would like to offer some possible solutions to this quandary. 

In the past few years, I have attended dozens genealogy conferences in four different countries. I have also worked in genealogy society booths at two different non-genealogy events, one with a few thousand attendees and another with more than one million attendees. 

Over the past 40 years I have attended more than 150 regional, national, and international genealogy conferences and have visited several dozen genealogy societies. I have seen some ideas that worked well, some that did not work so well, and a few that totally fizzled. I am not sure if I am an expert in the topic of shrinking attendance, but a few observations stand out in my mind.

First of all, genealogy societies need to grow in order to succeed. To be sure, some societies have existed for years with a more or less stable number of members, or even with declining membership numbers. However, the societies that seem to succeed in producing new services and publications are those that are growing. Constant growth means new people joining with new ideas and invigorated interest levels. Newcomers soon gain experience and then become the "movers and shakers" within the genealogy community. Those who have been around for a number of years, conversing with the same people time after time, tend to settle in and enjoy the social aspects of the local society, but they do not strike out with new ideas and new energy levels. The genealogy societies with declining memberships rarely produce new and innovative products and services.

Next, when we (the long-term the members of genealogy societies) go to genealogy conventions to advertise our services and products, we are "preaching to the choir." Who goes to genealogy conventions? The long-time genealogists who already know about our products and services! Yes, the attendees at genealogy conferences typically are those who have been researching their family trees for some time. They probably already know about your society and made a determination some time ago whether or not to join. The bigger the conference and the more people attracted, the truer this seems to be. 

For instance, I have attended 32 of the last 34 annual national conferences of the U.S. National Genealogical Society. I have also attended a number of other national, international, and larger regional conferences. You know who I saw at recent conferences? Mostly the same people that I saw the previous year and the years before. Some of those faces look very familiar; in many cases I think I have been seeing the same faces for 34 years! These are the people who already know about the services of your society. Exhibiting at national and local genealogical conferences may be a desirable thing, but it does not attract many new members!

What we need is new blood. We need those mysterious people who are buying the software and surfing the web's genealogy pages and newsgroups. These people are in "stealth” mode; we know they are lurking out there someplace, but we have difficulty locating them. We need to attract these people to both local and national genealogy conferences. If they could become "hooked" at the conferences, I bet a significant number of them would join local and ethnic genealogy societies. Yes, they could energize societies as we watch membership begin to increase.

So, how do we find and interest these people? We (the old-time members of the societies) have to go to the potential newcomers. We cannot wait for them to come to us. We cannot go to genealogy conferences that keep attracting the same crowd and expect our membership numbers to grow as a result. We have to seek out the potential newcomers wherever they are. And I assure you that is not at genealogy conferences.

Some years ago I spent several days working in a genealogy society's booth at the Eastern States Exposition, an event locally referred to as "The Big E." This Exposition is similar to a state fair, except that it covers all six New England states. It was an eye-opening experience. More than one million people attended this 17-day event, and an estimated 750,000 of those people walked by the genealogy booth where I worked. To be sure, not all of the attendees stopped to talk, but thousands did. Yes, thousands. I think we (the society) talked with more people at this one 17-day event than we do the rest of the year at all the genealogy events combined.

Talking with the general public is a fascinating experience. To be sure, the conversations mostly were at an introductory level since most of these people had no idea who their great-grandparents were. We had a high-speed Internet connection in the booth and spent many hours looking at Social Security Death Index records, as well as a variety of Web sites in addition to our own. We handed out blank pedigree charts by the thousands, along with some advertising materials.

Not all of these people went home and started looking up their family trees that evening or the next day; but, a significant number did. I also believe that we planted many "genealogy seeds" that may not sprout for months or perhaps years. What we did do well is that we got many of these people to start thinking about their family heritage, people who would not have started that thought process if we only exhibited at genealogy events. I believe that some number of these people will join a genealogy society in the coming weeks, months, and years. Admittedly, I do not have an accurate yardstick to measure the success of our efforts at this non-genealogy event. All I have is intuition and some one-on-one feedback from individuals. Yet every staff member and volunteer who worked in the genealogy boot at this event has expressed satisfaction with our efforts and believes that we "did good."

Other venues that would seem suitable for a genealogy society's booth would include:

I am sure that you can add to the above list. You can probably find other potential events within the next year in your vicinity.

In short, I would urge you and every other genealogy society member to creatively find new places in which to advertise your society's products and services. While it is good to advertise to genealogists, it is even more important to generate publicity among those who never heard of your organization. In short, you need to advertise to the general public. The only way to do this is to go out and find the general public at the places where the public gathers. It works best if the people you talk to have at least a casual interest in history and/or heritage, such as the people who attend the types of events I listed above.

I am reminded of a very old joke that has been told millions of times. Many years ago, a shoe manufacturer felt they had saturated the U.S., Canadian, and European markets. They already sold millions of pairs of shoes every year but wanted to increase those sales even further. Seeking new markets, they sent a salesman to darkest Africa where there were no shoe manufacturers.

The salesman wired back to the home office, "The people here do not wear shoes. There is no opportunity to sell shoes. I am returning home rather than wasting my time any further."

Undaunted, the home office sent another salesman known to have a unique way of looking at sales situations. A few days later he wired back, "The people here do not wear shoes. The potential market is unlimited! Please send all the shoes you can spare, I am going to stay and make a fortune!"

The joke is an old one but perhaps it does point out that new viewpoints and new approaches are needed. I would suggest that it is time to throw away some of the ideas we have held for years.

How does your genealogy society "sell" its services and products? Are you seeking new members/customers in markets that are already saturated? Or are you seeking opportunities in places where genealogy is unknown? Where are you most likely to find new members?

Has your genealogy or local history society had any success publicizing its efforts and attracting new members via nontraditional methods? If so, would you mind sharing your success stories so that others could benefit from your ideas?