CLICK & DOUBLE CLICK: INTERNET PROVIDES FAST AND EASY ACCESS TO RESEARCH FAMILY TREE (COLUMN 141)

It's family reunion time, a time to think about family history and genealogy.

The Internet has been buzzing with the introduction of a brand new genealogy site from the Mormon church, which contains links to 400 million names of people dating back to the 1500s.

The Internet has been a boon for genealogy, and this site will only intensify the interest.

www.familysearch.org

Joni: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says it will continue to add more names from its records on 2 billion dead people. Surely we all can find some relative from that list.

Peggy: The site has been busy. Some reports show it averaging 7 million hits per day. What's nice is it's free, and they won't accept any advertising.

Joni: They not only use their Web site, but they link to thousands of other Web sites in their searches.

Peggy: The search seems easy enough. I searched for my name and came up with 21 possible links to genealogy research.

Joni: Somewhere down the road we may discover we are related. Peggy's maiden name is Brockmeier and my grandmother's maiden name is Brockmeyer.

Peggy: You never know. You can also browse categories, census records, court and legal records, military records, land and property deeds, migration information including passenger lists, vital records. You can search by surname or Heraldry and Nobility records.

Joni: Oh, I'm sure those royalty records include our families, Peggy. You can also add you own genealogy Web site or collaborate with others. You must be a registered user, but it's free.

Peggy: Lots of other Web sites offer information for family researchers. Let's go to the government.

www.nara.gov/genealogy/genindex.html

Joni: Genealogists are the biggest users of the resources of the National Archives and Records Administration and their Web resources.

Peggy: The Web site offers information about what is available and where to find it. You can't actually search records on their site yet. Maybe that will come.

Joni: Another well-used genealogy site on the Web is Genealogy.com which boasts a database of more than 325 million names.

www.genealogy.com

Peggy: In addition to searching for names, you can also get tips. For example, never take your only copy of a record or document with you on research trips. Losing a document can be costly and photocopies are cheap.

Joni: This Web site will help you create your family tree online. Starting is easy. Where and when were you born? Add your spouse and kids. To register, you need an e-mail address.

Peggy: They also have genealogy news, like a new research facility that will be located at Ellis Island. It's expected to open in the fall or winter of 2000.

Joni: They also have online research lessons, with new lessons posted each week. You can become a genealogy detective and learn things like how to use census information or how to use newsgroups to do research.

Peggy: They include links to other hundreds of helpful Web sites. They are also affiliated with another site we visit during our Internet classes called GenForum.

www.genforum.com

Joni: This site is really good because you can search by your surname. It's simple. You can post messages, view the latest messages or search the postings. Most of these are messages from researchers seeking information on a particular person or family name.

Peggy: We recently wrote a news story about genealogy researchers in Cape Girardeau who found the owners of two portraits by posting a message on GenForum. The family saw the posting and reclaimed the pictures and the lineage written on the back of each.

Joni: GenForum also lets you personalize the site with the pages you use most often. They too link you to lots of other genealogy sites.

Peggy: Another site you might want to visit is the USGenWeb. This project units volunteers who are working to provide Internet Web sites for genealogical research in every county and state of the United States.

www.usgenweb.org

Joni: This site pools such resources as local Web pages that list family reunion bulletin boards, state histories and maps showing changing county boundaries. Peggy: One interesting part of the project deals with tombstones. The aim is to place transcriptions of all cemetery tombstones online. They are seeking volunteers to physically walk the cemeteries to copy the information on the stones for inclusion online.

Joni: There's also a Kidz project to help introduce younger people to the wonders of genealogy.

Peggy: There's also how-to section for kids that provides lots of good advice on digging up family roots. There's a glossary of terms and some good information about the history of surnames.

Joni: It points out that the three name system that is fairly standard among the English speaking countries is a relatively recent development. The author says that the Romans had an elaborate system of three names. But by the 4th century A.D., middle names and even last names were hard to find. Cher and Madonna would have felt right at home.

Peggy: A number of sites also offer genealogy help worldwide.

www.worldgenweb.org

Joni: This site boasts of 3 million visitors since it went online in 1997. The project is divided into 15 world regions. Each region is then divided by country and then provinces, states or counties. This could provide some helpful links to families who traveled from abroad.

Peggy: The nice thing about this site is the emphasis on free. It would sure beat long-distance phone calls to some foreign lands.

Joni: What's your favorite genealogy site? E-mail us at click@semissourian.com

See you in Cyberspace.

Joni Adams and Peggy Scott are members of the Southeast Missourian online staff.