Rootsweb Web Site Highlights

As part of the Chula Vista Genealogical Society Beginning Genealogy class this week, I was asked by the instructor to provide a list of some FREE genealogy web sites that can help researchers find information.

One of the genealogy sites I selected was the Rootsweb (part of the Ancestry.com domain) site at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/. This web site has significant genealogy resources, including:

1) Search all Databases on Rootsweb: http://searches.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

* WorldConnect Database at http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ -- Contains user-submitted research data from GEDCOM’s for over 500 million names. Being user-submitted it is error-prone. However, it is very useful to determine if other people are researching a specific individual or family line. Ahnentafel and descendant reports for up to six generations can be created.

* Social Security Death Index (SSDI), post-1937, at http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ -- Contains government data for deceased persons whose names were submitted to the Social Security Master Death Index (note it doesn't include every person with a Social Security number). The web page permits you to write and print a letter to the Social Security Administration to obtain the person's SS-5 Application which may include the person';s parents names, an address at the time of application, and the person's birth date and birth place.

* Death record indexes for California (1940-1997), Kentucky (1911-2000), Maine (1960-1997) and Texas (1964-1997)

2) Mailing Lists – Subscribe to Surname, Locality or Interest Mailing Lists via Email. There are over 31,000 Lists – see Index at http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/. You can sign up to receive one or more mailing lists by email and you can contribute your own posts by email to a specific mailing list. Even more importantly, you can search the Mailing List Archive by key word or time frame at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/search

3) Rootsweb/Ancestry Message Boards at http://boards.rootsweb.com/. There are over 160,000 boards for surnames, localities and special topics. To see the Message Boards requires a free registration. You can also search all of these Message Boards using Names or Keywords, or find a specific message board and search only the posts on that board.

4) Web Sites at Rootsweb at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~websites/. These include regional resources and web sites (including many genealogy society web sites), surname websites, major projects hosted by Rootsweb, and Freepages created by registered users.

5) The Rootsweb Guide to Tracing Family Trees at http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/. This is a 31 part tutorial for beginners to start their genealogy work.

There are many more pages at Rootsweb that can help you find your ancestors and your family history. Check out http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/. Note that, even though Rootsweb is part of the Ancestry.com domain, all web pages, past and present, that are identified as Rootsweb are free to access and use.

Searching the Rootsweb Mailing List Archives

One of the most interesting genealogy tasks I pursue every year is to search the Rootsweb-sponsored and archived Mailing Lists. This used to be very difficult when you had to select a specific list and search it month-by-month.

Now, you can search one specific or all of the lists at Rootsweb using a search box at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/search. If you choose the Advanced Search tab, you can specify search terms that are in the body of a message, in a subject line, on a specific list or posted on a specific date (such as June 2005, 2005, or a range such as 2005-2007).

If you just input a surname in the "Body" section of the search box, you will receive a list of every post with the surname in the text of the posts, including the submitter of the post.

I use this Mailing List Archive Search box on a yearly basis to:

1) Find information submitted about my major family surnames - Seaver, Carringer, Vaux, Auble, Dill, etc. I go through them one by one and determine if I need to add the information to my database. Who knows, I may discover a distant cousin in the process.

2) Look for information about a specific person, especially for common surnames like Smith, Miller, Johnson, etc. If you get too many hits, for a common given name and surname, you can add a town or county to narrow the search.

For instance, I can search the entire mailing list database for "Ranslow Smith" (using the quote marks) and find that there are only 3 posts with that search term, all of them mine, unfortunately! If I search for "Russell Smith" I get 2,218 matches, but if I specify "Russell Smith" AND Jefferson NY, I get 10 matches in the specific area I'm searching for him.

3) Look for information posted by a specific person. You can put the person's name or email address in the "From" line. This can be useful if you find an older mailing list post and want to contact the author, but the given email address doesn't work. If you input the author's name in the "From" box you may find a more recent email address.

The Search of the Rootsweb Mailing List Archives is really pretty useful and time-saving. And it's FREE!

I noticed that, as of today, there are 33,668,488 documents in this Rootsweb Mailing List Archives, dating from the early 1990's.

This is a fantastic resource, especially for researchers just starting their search.

The posts are also found using a Google search using appropriate search terms.

Rootsweb - FREE and WONDERFUL data

I posted a list of my Top 10 favorite genealogy web sites here back in April. Number 2 on my list was the Rootsweb Genealogical Cooperative.

My humble opinion is that the www.Rootsweb.com suite of products and services are the best FREE genealogy resources on the Internet. I use the following all the time:

1) WorldConnect database - over 480 million names (some duplicated) in over 400,000 databases (some duplicated, all user-submitted, at http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/

2) Rootsweb/Ancestry Message Boards -- over 161,000 boards, with 17 million posts - at http://boards.rootsweb.com/

3) Social Security Death Index - 79 million names - at http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/

4) Free Web pages at Rootsweb - these include the FreePages (user-submitted), regional resources (including genealogy society) and other pages - at http://www.rootsweb.com/~websites/ There is a surname index when you click on a first letter range.

5) USGenWeb Archives searching - at http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/newsearch.htm

6) Rootsweb Mailing List Threaded Archives at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/.

7) Rootsweb Mailing List Search at http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl

8) Surname Resources at Rootsweb at http://resources.rootsweb.com/surnames/

9) US County Resources at Rootsweb at http://resources.rootsweb.com/USA/

10) The Rootsweb Guide to Tracing Famly Trees - articles at http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/

These are all very useful FREE resources that anybody, at any experience level, can use effectively to search for research performed by others. The USGenWeb Archives are the only resource listed that provides transcriptions of primary information, however.

Have you used the Rootsweb databases to their fullest? If not - try them out and you may be pleasantly surprised.