Genealogy

* Outreach - finding cousins and other relatives * Research - answering questions and solving mysteries * Paying respect - finding and telling the stories of those who can no longer speak All of these aspects of family history research have energized my interest in the past, and I'm liking the new tools available to support that. A few years ago I was fascinated by the new use of DNA in genealogy research, and have used 23andme, Ftdna, and Gedmatch. I started using MyHeritage because 23andme chose to use that site to display family trees. When MyHeritage offered a special deal ($99) for one year of access to their research resources, I bit. One feature I particularly enjoy is that when you find a person in, say, the census, the MH software queues up the rest of the family as well. You can quite easily not just link the family together, but also attach the source attribution to each of them. Another nice feature is their software matching each person in your tree to resou...

Surname Navigator : http://www.kuijsten.de/navigator/ - SUPER way to do a quick surname survey Another - ExpertGenealogy Websearch Wizard : http://expertgenealogy.com/websearch/ The pre-eminent Rootsweb Surname List : http://rsl.rootsweb.com -- don't just search it, also list your surnames! GEDCOM index : http://www.gedcomindex.com/ Linkpendium's Surnames - Web sites, obituaries, biographies, and other material specific to a surname: http://www.linkpendium.com/genealogy/USA/sur/ TNG Network Search for Names : http://tngnetwork.lythgoes.net/index.php UK Office of National Statistics database of surnames in use in England, Wales and the Isle of Man , September 2002: http://www.taliesin-arlein.net/names/search.php Surname Profiler: The Geography of British Names : http://www.spatial-literacy.org/index.php?p=familyname Online English Names Directory : http://www.list.jaunay.com/engnames/ Yournotme.com , also UK, 2001: http://www.yournotme.com . You can leave messages on this sit...

There is still lots of free info on Ancestry. In fact, recently two Census indexes have been added; the US 1880 every-name index, and the 1881 UK Census. The Message boards are free, as is the Ancestry World Tree. The My Ancestry Search Profile is pretty cool, and is free, although the results may point to subscription databases. The Learning Center is still free, which has loads of great articles. They also offer the free trial program, Family Tree Maker, although you do have to register to get that. Finally, the Research Registry is free for all. Two census indexes for free searching: the 1880 U.S. Federal Census and the 1881 England, Wales, Isle of Man, and Channel Islands Census. The 1880 U.S. Federal Census is an every-name index and the last census available census for the 1800s. More about this: http://genweblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/1880-us-census-free-to-search-at.html . The 1881 census every-name index includes enumerations for England , Wales , the Isle of Man , and the Cha...