INTERNET GENEALOGY:

ROOTSWEB.COM AND USGENWEB.COM

©Copyright 2005 by Donald R. Snow

• Welcome and Introduction to Class
• RootsWeb.com
• USGenWeb.com
• Assignment

• Welcome
• Instructors are Elder and Sister Donald R. and Diane M. Snow, 217-453-6306 in Nauvoo, Illinois (snowd@math.byu.edu, dms34@juno.com)
• This class continues our discussion of resources for family history on the Internet.
• These notes with all the Internet links are online at http://www.familyhistorycenter.org under Class Descriptions and Notes and at http://www.uvpafug.org under Class Outlines.
• Previous class was a discussion of Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest Online -- here we discuss two other major FH web sites
  

ROOTSWEB -- http://rootsweb.com

• The largest and oldest volunteer FH web site -- hosted Ancestry.com, but is free for everyone -- Rootsweb was going to have to close or else charge a few years ago, so Ancestry.com volunteered to host them in exchange for getting to put links to their search engines and data
  
• Has lessons, helps, databases, hosts FH email lists, message boards, web sites -- a major source of FH data
  
• See their home page for categories of their data --  http://rootsweb.com
• Examples of searching, saving, and printing
• Search Engines and Databases -- includes an up-to-date Social Security Death Index
  
• Family Trees (WorldConnect) -- GEDCOM files from individuals
• Mailing lists -- surname lists, place lists, program lists, subscribing (all free)
  
• Message Boards
• Web sites hosted
• Volunteer Projects
  
• Contributing your FH info -- see Gerhard Ruf's notes on Where Should I Contribute My Data? for an informative chart of this and other sites (can also get to his notes via http://www.uvpafug.org under Class Outlines)
  

USGENWEB -- http://usgenweb.com

• Hosted by RootsWeb, but is separate
• Web pages for very state in the US and every county in every state -- all done by volunteer workers
  
• Search engines for Project Achives, National and State pages (see upper left side of home page)
  
• Examples of searching
  

1. See if there is an email list for your surname hosted at Rootsweb.  See what procedure you would go through to join it.
2. Do a search on Rootsweb for some ancestor and see what comes up.
   
3. Select some county in the U.S. that you are interested in and see what databases they have posted and links to.