Online sites help visitors uncover family histories
By Russel Shaw
Gannett News Service
| • | Genealogy sites
These sites are on Family Tree magazine's 2002 list of best ethnic resources: • AfriGeneas |
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Phelicia Morton of Jacksonville, Fla., met Hattie Brown, an 85-year-old woman who had known Morton's great-great-grandfather, through AfriGeneas, a Web site about African-American genealogy.
"Her reaction to my request for information was very warm," Morton said. "She was able to describe my great-great-grandfather's appearance and mannerisms."
Stories such as Morton's used to involve considerable research in libraries and court houses, writing letters and conducting interviews, but genealogy Web sites have made it easier for amateur genealogists.
Cindi Howells' Cindi's List of Genealogical Sites On the Internet (www.cyndislist.com) catalogues more than 150,000 online genealogical resources.
General sites are useful, Howells said. She recommends Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com), which maintains 3,000 databases with birth, death, marriage, Census and other records about millions of Americans.
To find what happened before your ancestors reached the United States, you'll need specialized sites.
"Once you've identified an immigrant ancestor in a particular branch of your family and are ready to 'jump the pond' to trace your family back in the old country, Web sites specific to that ethnicity or nationality will probably be the most useful," said David Fryxell, editor-in-chief of Family Tree magazine (www.familytreemagazine.com).
Fryxell used overseas sites to research his own roots.
"I posted a query about one branch of my Swedish ancestors, the Ekstrem family, on a page from the Federation of Swedish Genealogical Societies (www.genealogi.se/roots)," he said. "A helpful Swedish researcher read my posting and suggested I check the databases that my ancestors' home province of …rebro had posted online. On this site, I was able to find the emigration record for my great-great-grandparents and for my great-grandmother, (who was) their daughter."
Howells and Fryxell suggest using specialty genealogy sites to network with other amateur genealogists. Most specialty sites have online discussion forums that allow members to announce that they are looking for relatives who lived in a city, region or nation at a particular time.
