I have received lots of e-mail over the years about researching family roots. Not having a ton of free time (with eight kids, two dogs and a job or two), I have been working on mine only as time has permitted.
Recent tramping through a cemetery on Chicago's South Side got me thinking, however, of just how cool the Internet has become for researchers. In recent research, I have rediscovered how nice people really are.
First of all, members of the Mormon church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) have taken it upon themselves to travel the world and type information into databases, a pretty cool ministry if you ask me. I have managed to find lots of information about my ancestors at Family Search www.familysearch.org. It even offers links to a pay site where you can see scans of the original documents. When you see how your relative actually filled out the 1880 Census form, it's a pretty cool thing.
Then there is Rootsweb www.rootsweb.com. This is another free site that offers a mother lode of data, both from official sources and the fruit of the labors of tens of thousands of people who have genealogy as a hobby. On this site, I discovered one of my ancestors actually was born on the boat coming to America in the 1800s; I also discovered links to the ship manifests. I was able to strike up e-mail conversations with a couple distant relatives and share all kinds of data back and forth. It is really nice that people who spend years compiling data are so free to share it.
If, like mine, your relatives passed through the gantlet that was Ellis Island, that organization has put immigration records online as well. At www.ellisisland.org you can do basic searching; full access requires a $45 contribution to the maintenance of the Statue of Liberty. Immigration records also are available elsewhere.
Of course, accuracy is paramount here. Some serious genealogists don't trust any information if they can't touch the original record. But for the rest of us, imagine life without the Web.
I have found entire Web sites devoted to various surnames in my lineage. I have found people who make it their hobby to travel to cemeteries and type the information they find there into databases. I have found people who photograph tombstones and log those. This helped since most of my relatives are buried in a cemetery on the South Side of Chicago that currently is the resting place for more than 180,000 souls.
There actually is a site called "Find A Grave" www.findagrave.com where volunteers submit the data from thousands of cemeteries worldwide and let others search for free. They also have "photo volunteers" in hundreds of communities who will take digital photos of headstones for you. One woman has cataloged more than 110,000 graves herself, with many others in the tens of thousands.
In short, I think the Internet has given us a tool to research our roots more easily than ever before, and computer programs make it simple to keep it all straight. I am sure there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other sites out there as well. My point: now that the Web is here, research doesn't have to mean traipsing through cemeteries or old books in the library.
Take a cybertour of your roots and see what you find.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: For the best in paid searches, try the site www.ancestry.com. It has a lot of nice features for a decent price.
James Derk is new media editor for The Evansville Courier & Press. His e-mail address is jderk@evansville.net.