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Copyright© 2003 by Richard W. Eastman. All rights reserved.

A Plus Sign (+) denotes an article that appears only in the Plus Edition of this newsletter.

- This Newsletter Is Seven Years Old!

Boy, the time does fly. It seems like only yesterday that I sent an e-mail message to about 100 people, mostly members of CompuServe’s Genealogy Forums. None of them knew in advance that the newsletter would arrive; I simply mailed it to people that I thought might be interested. Nobody objected to receiving unsolicited bulk mail; the phrase "spam mail" had not yet been invented. In that first newsletter on January 15, 1996, I wrote:

The original plan has been followed rather closely in the seven years since I wrote those words. The newsletter still consists of "events and happenings of interest to computer-owning genealogists," "mini press releases about new genealogy software or other products and services" and "a few articles about things that are not genealogy-related but still seem to be of interest to me." I have also frequently featured "editorials and my personal opinions weaving in and out of this newsletter. "

I did err in one statement: "Today's technology allows for a much faster distribution and it is done at almost no expense to either the producer or the subscribers." If I were to re-write that sentence today, I wouldn’t use the phrase "at almost no expense." I would write, "…at lower expense than publishing on paper." Since I wrote the original words seven years ago, I have received an education in the sending of bulk e-mails. I now know how much it costs to send out thousands of e-mails. There are technical problems as well. Someday I will write an article about "how get your account canceled when you repeatedly crash your ISP's mail server." I did that a number of times in the early days of this newsletter. I also have encountered significant expenses for hardware, software, web hosting, mailing list services, and office expenses.

I was amused a while ago when someone sent a message to me that started with the words, "I hope someone on your staff will forward this message to you." After seven years, my staff remains exactly the same as when I started: myself plus one very talented lady who edits this newsletter every week. I do the up-front work; she then converts my written words into real English. She has done this for nearly every newsletter since the very first edition. She has done this despite the travel schedules of both of us; we have sometimes been in different countries, and yet she and I have passed the proposed newsletters back and forth by e-mail. Thanks, Pam. I couldn’t do it without you. [Editor’s note: Congratulations, and happy birthday to your brainchild, Dick!]

In the past seven years, I have missed only seven editions for vacations, broken arms, and family emergencies. Yes, I broke both arms one day and still missed only one newsletter as a result. The following week I wrote about speech input devices as I dictated that week's newsletter into a microphone connected to my PC. In the past seven years I have written 360 newsletters for a total of 13 megabytes of text. Some day I really do have to learn how to touch type.

One thing radically different from my first newsletter is the number of readers: instead of the initial 100 e-mail recipients, about 20,000 people will read this week’s newsletter, counting both the Standard Edition and the Plus Edition.

Because of this newsletter, in the past seven years I have traveled all over the U.S. and to several other countries. Because of this newsletter, I have met many enthusiastic genealogists. Because of this newsletter, I have had the opportunity to use great software, to view many excellent Web sites, and to play with lots of new gadgets. Because of this newsletter, I have discovered a number of ancestors. I am indeed fortunate and have truly been blessed. To each person reading today’s edition, I want to say one thing: "Thank you for being there and for making it possible for me to enjoy three of my hobbies: genealogy, computers, and online systems."

Also, one other sentence I wrote seven years ago still stands: "Suggestions about this newsletter are always welcome."

Most Family Origins users are aware that the program was written by Bruce Buzbee and originally was marketed by Parsons Technology. That company was acquired by Genealogy.com some time ago, and Family Origins was added to the catalog of the acquiring company even though it was a direct competitor with Genealogy.com's flagship product, Family Tree Maker. While the two products were marketed somewhat differently, they remained as direct competitors being sold by the same company. I don't think the recent change will surprise anyone.

Bruce Buzbee remains committed to supplying powerful, easy-to-use genealogy software at reasonable prices. He has written an all-new genealogy program called RootsMagic and will be selling it directly, not through a third party. Bruce's company is called FormalSoft. RootsMagic is an all-new program that does not share any code with Family Origins.

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- The Ships List: Passenger Ship Arrivals to Canadian Ports

This week I had a chance to use a new CD-ROM disk that will interest many people with Canadian ancestry or at least ancestors who traveled through Canada. The full name of the CD is "The Ships List: Passenger Ship Arrivals [in] Canadian Ports, 1865 – 1899." Macintosh users will be pleased to know that this disk works on their platform as well as on Windows.

This disk lists the names of ships and provides a lot of information about them. This particular CD-ROM lists more than 6,900 records of ship arrivals in the database. It also describes each voyage and often gives a brief hint about the passengers on board. For instance, the "Elizabeth Bright" is listed as arriving in Quebec in May, 1868, with a remark of "Homeless Boys' Institution, London." However, most of the listings on this disk do not provide lists of the passengers' names. Some passengers are named in "special groups" and in the "remarks" fields. Nonetheless, armed with information about the ship's name and arrival date, you may be able to find passenger lists in the National Archives of Canada or possibly elsewhere. This disk can be a valuable key that opens the door to more information.

The ships information on this CD will be important to genealogical researchers and to historians alike. The original records that the CD references provide written evidence as to who traveled to which port, when they departed, and when they arrived. Various authorities required the Master of the ship to file a list of passengers upon arrival at a port. At the beginning of this practice, the purpose usually was to determine the amount of "tax" to be applied for landing passengers and to check whether the Master was complying with the "Passenger Act," which limited the number of souls (equal to X number of adults) the ship was entitled to carry. The practice of archiving these lists for immigration purposes did not begin until 1865 in Canada.

I was impressed that no software had to be loaded onto my computer. All the required Windows and Macintosh software is included on the CD-ROM and runs directly from this disk. One exception is that QuickTime movie software must be loaded on your hard rive in order to watch the introductory movie. However, this movie is optional; so, you still do not have to install any software in order to get to the data.

To use this disk, all I had to do was insert it into the CD-ROM drive and then follow the instructions that appeared on the screen. The new CD sports one of the nicer user interfaces I have seen. Everything seemed intuitive at all times. Upon loading the CD-ROM for the first time, a short video clip is optionally viewable to introduce the user to the idea of sailing ship travel. Once that is completed, the user goes to the main introductory page. There you will find several "point and click" options, including Basic Search and Advanced Search.

I first tried the Basic Search mode. I was prompted for:

I filled in a few fields, including Arrival Year and Arrival Port, leaving the other fields blank. Clicking Search then produced a list of all the ships known to have arrived in that port during that year. Each listing typically provides the following information:

The content of the Remarks section varied quite a bit in the entries that I looked at. The remarks often contained a count of how many passengers were on board. Many of the remarks stated "no list," meaning that no passenger list was found. The Remarks often include the name of the Captain as well as births and deaths at sea, if such information is included in the ship’s manifest.

The microfilm number will be the key to many genealogy researchers. The information contained within the CD-ROM typically is limited to whatever fits in the database fields. Most of the microfilms referenced will contain ships’ manifests from contemporary records, often with much more information than what can be found on the CD. Passenger lists might be available, as well as information about the ship's size, cargo carried, other ports along the way, and more.

Sources for the data include authorities such as:

• The National Archives of Canada - RG76 - Immigration, Series C-1-a and Series C-1-b

• Sessional Papers, Canada: (multiple publications-selected annual immigration reports)

• Montreal Gazette (1865-1899)

• Selected editions of other contemporary Canadian and Norwegian newspapers

• Montreal Port Authority, "The Gold Headed Cane"

The Advanced Search is similar in operation to the Basic Search but allows for Boolean searches. Not only could I enter data as in the Basic Search, but I found that I also could enter searches of "contains," "word equals," "word starts with," equals" and "starts." I did a search of "Special Groups" for the word "Scotch" and found entries of "219 'Scotch Colonists' to New Brunswick" and other similar comments.

I also did a search of Remarks, looking for any entries that contained the word "born." I found several, including the ship Belgian, which left Liverpool on Sept. 21, 1865, stopped in Londonderry, Ireland, departing that port on Sept. 22, and arriving in Quebec City on October 3. The entry lists:

I chose this entry to show that passenger names do sometimes appear on this CD-ROM and to illustrate that you will find more than English, Irish, and Scottish passengers. In this case, the German man and his expectant wife apparently made their way to Liverpool or to Londonderry and then purchased tickets to North America.

The Ships List: Passenger Ship Arrivals [in] Canadian Ports CD also contains multi-media elements that include sound, music, ships' pictures, ships' histories, and a short movie of a period sailing ship.

This new CD-ROM is a "must have" for many genealogy libraries, and I am sure it will find its way into many private collections as well. The fact that it is dual-platform, working with both Windows and Macintosh, is a nice touch.

I like this disk. I only wish I had some Canadian ancestors who arrived in those years so that I could use this disk some more!

"The Ships List: Passenger Ship Arrivals [in] Canadian Ports, 1865 – 1899" is produced by the The Ships List of Wellington, Nova Scotia. It sells for $49.95 in Canadian money, equivalent to $32.53 in U.S. funds. Anyone in any country may purchase it on TheShipsList Web site and charge it to a credit card, thereby avoiding the cumbersome and expensive requirement to purchase a check in Canadian dollars. The credit card payment is made by PayPal's secure and safe shopping cart system.

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The following announcement is written by Matthew Helm of FamilyToolbox.net, Inc.:

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Looking for current obituaries for certain last names or places? Whether your interest is in a particular surname, town, college, or some other group or affiliation, ObitMessenger will alert you to current obituary notices matching your search criteria, the same day they appear in one of the participating newspapers across the United States.

ObitMessenger will search all of the site’s U.S. Newspaper Affiliates for obituaries and death notices with last names that you designate. (e.g., Johnson, Miller, Smith). You can select up to 5 last names and then may modify that list whenever you wish. You can also search by keywords, such as the name of a college, a town, or other words typically found in obituaries.

If ObitMessenger finds information matching your search criteria, you will receive e-mail notification on the day the paid obituary first appears online. These e-mails will contain the full text of the obituary (with your keywords highlighted) plus a link to the notice that will let you access the Guest Book, find directions to services, or send flowers.

ObitMessenger is a service provided by Legacy.com, a site that promotes the recording of life stories. Legacy.com should not be confused with the genealogy program called Legacy. The genealogy software is produced by Millennia Corporation, a separate company that is not related to Legacy.com.

ObitMessenger is a "for-pay" service. An annual subscription for searching only family names costs $19.99, while a quarterly subscription is available for $7.99. The company also offers a free 30-day trial enrollment.

More extensive searches cost more money. The service that also searches for keywords within obituaries costs $59.99 per quarter or $199.99 annually. Again, a free 30-day trial is available. There are other options to search only one newspaper for a lower fee. The company's Web site provides the details.

This week I signed up for a 30-day free trial. When enrolling, the ObitMessenger service asks for your mother's maiden name. That's a ludicrous example of poor security. If you sign up for ObitMessenger's service, I suggest that you not enter your mother's real maiden name. Use a fictitious name instead. There is no legal requirement to use the actual maiden name, and the owners of the Web site won't care anyway. I entered "Fudpucker." I doubt if my mother would approve, but I did maintain a bit more security.

ObitMessenger searches more than fifty affiliated U.S. newspapers. Most of them are in metropolitan areas. Most of the family names and towns that I want to monitor are in rural areas, so I doubt if I will find an obituary of interest to me in ObitMessenger. However, your parameters could be different from mine. If so, this could be a valuable service for you.

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Marvin Kusmierz has created a nice-looking Web site that focuses on history and genealogy in Bay County, Michigan. The site has more than 230 pages and 300 photographs.

I took a look at the site this week and was impressed. I found pictures of cemeteries, fire departments, lumbering operations, and old homes, as well as pictures of many area residents. Many of the pictures are more than one hundred years old. The images are thumbnail size when you see them on the Web page. However, you can click on any of the tiny pictures to see a larger picture on your screen.

The same Web page also has links to a Bay County Discussion Board that is hosted on another site. You can post messages there and read messages posted by others from the Bay County area.

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Smith College has a new online collection, "Across the Generations: Exploring U.S. History through Family Papers." This site contains materials from four family collections (Bodman, Dunham, Garrison, and Hale) that are used to track four broad themes in U.S. social history: family life, social awareness and reform, arts and leisure, and work.

Each theme has its own page. The page contains a narration of the concerns of the day, commenting on social customs of the day and providing snippets from letters and other family papers to illustrate the traditions of the day. The focus is on four families:

If you have one of these families in your family tree, you certainly will want to look at this site. The site is also valuable to anyone interested in American lifestyles across multiple generations. The site contains many items in addition to the pictures: love letters, family correspondence, many documents about the abolitionist movement, and much, much more.

When looking at the pictures, you can click on a picture to display a larger version in a pop-up Window. Make sure you also click on the "Read More" links to get the transcripts of letters and other papers.

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Online "instant genealogy" has arrived, at least for the citizens of one island nation. Any resident citizen of Iceland can go online, type in a tiny bit of information, and then see a complete list of ancestors for the past 400-plus years. The database reportedly contains records of 99% of the residents who lived within the past 400+ years.

An online database known as "Íslendingabók" was opened to the public this week. This is a nearly complete database of all available Icelandic genealogy information. That's right: nearly all known genealogy information for the island of Iceland -- and that's a lot of information! Iceland has genealogy records to be envied by residents of other countries.

The new Web site includes information about every living Icelander and his or her ancestors, going all the way back to the original settlement of Iceland in the 9th century or as far as records exist. (Privacy of information for living individuals does not seem to be an issue in Iceland.) Almost any Icelander can go online and look up his/her family tree that is fairly complete back to 1650 or so, often with some branches extending back for more than 30 generations.

Of course, there are two tiny problems anyone in other countries who is researching Icelandic ancestry:

1. The entire site is in Icelandic.
2. Access to the database requires an Icelandic ID number (I assume that is something like a U.S. Social Security Number.).

I suppose there is a good chance that people researching Icelandic ancestors are fluent in the language. However, the Icelandic ID number may be a stumbling block for descendants living elsewhere. The creators of the site say that their first priority was to get the site online and available for those who will use it the most: Icelanders living on the island. Access for descendants of Icelandic emigrants will be enabled soon, and an English interface will be provided later.

Small nation or not, it still boggles my mind that a free online database has a complete genealogy database for every living resident of an entire country for the past four and a half centuries, with many records going back 700 years or more!

Newsletter readers in the United States may be interested in a television program this week on PBS, entitled "The Journey of Man." Dr. Spencer Wells, a 33-year-old geneticist, and a team of other geneticists, traveled to every continent in the world seeking the origins of mankind. A television crew accompanied the team and made this documentary.

The team has been reading clues left behind by ancient travelers, in the blood of everyone alive today. Humans carry tiny changes in their DNA sequence — passed on by their ancestors, from parent to child in each of 2,000 generations. They are all present in the genes of the humans of today and will be passed on to the children of tomorrow. Wells tracks these DNA changes — the map of human history.

The program is called "The Journey of Man: a Genetic Odyssey" and is based on Spencer Wells' book by the same title. The program will be aired this week. Most PBS stations will broadcast it on Tuesday, January 21. Check your local listings for time and channel in your area.

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The following announcement comes from the Library and Archives of Canada:

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The annual Family History Fair is recognized as the top U.K. genealogy conference for all family and local history enthusiasts. I had a chance to attend this Fair a few years ago and loved it. I am told that last year 6,000 attendees thronged the aisles in the Conference Centre. The conference will be held again this May, and the organizers are hoping for an even larger crowd.

This year's event will be held May 3 and 4, a Saturday and Sunday. Doors will open at 10:00 A.M. each day and close at 5:00 PM. The location remains the same as it has been for some years: at the Royal Horticultural Society's New Hall and Conference Centre, Greycoat Street, Westminster, London SW1.

When comparing this conference to large conferences in the U.S., I believe that a couple of reasons for the much larger attendance at the London Family History Fair are obvious:

1. It is held on Saturday and Sunday, not on weekdays.
2. The entrance fee is £6 (roughly $9.65 in U.S. funds) at the door or £4 (roughly $6.42 U.S.) if purchased in advance. Contrast that with fees of $170 to $200 for weekday plus Saturday sessions at the four-day genealogy events in the United States.

There are a multitude of reasons why the SoG can produce a two-day affair with an admission fee equal to about 5% of the admission price for events in the U.S. Whatever the reasons, you cannot argue with the SoG's success!

The following description of the Family History Fair was written by the Society of Genealogists, the sponsoring organization:

• An Introduction to Scottish Research
• An introduction to Wills and Death Duties
• Fire Insurance Records (Free lecture)
• Taking it further: What can be done in the seventeenth century?
• An introduction to Wills and Death Duties
• I'm stuck. How can I localise where my Ancestors might have come from?
• Where do I start? An introduction to the Family Record Centre
• Starting Irish research: Land, Civil & Census records
• Irish church records: a general overview of all of the denominations and their records
• Getting the most from the 1901 Census Index
• Beyond Google: Advanced Internet search techniques
• Where do I start? Introducing family history sources at the PRO
• Sources in the Family History Library at Salt Lake City
• An introduction to using parish registers
• Family sources at the London Metropolitan Archives
• LDS Resources for the Family Historian
• The Society of Genealogists and its library

U.K. readers of this newsletter might also note that the SoG is still recruiting volunteers to help at the two-day fair. I suspect you might really enjoy the weekend if you contribute for a few hours or a full day.

To discuss this story further, please visit the newsletter Discussion Board at http://www.RootsForum.com and click on "Discussion Board."

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The following announcement is from the GENTECH division of the (U.S.) National Genealogical Society:

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Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, was founded by George Washington Scott and a group of progressive Presbyterians as the Decatur Female Seminary in 1889. It was renamed a year later for Scott's mother, who had left her impoverished home in Ballykeel at age 17 with her own twice-widowed mother. Agnes married and then had seven children, including her son George, who became a wealthy industrialist and was elected to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania. This son later became the chief benefactor of the new college.

This week a new $36.5 million science building will open at the college. Many of the courses taught in this new building will focus in genetics and DNA. The lobby of the new building includes a three-story-tall mural in the atrium that will serve as an appropriate tribute: it depicts a DNA double helix, the most important molecule of the recent era in science. The DNA double helix portrayed is not a theoretical example; it replicates the DNA of the school’s namesake, Agnes Scott.

When an alumna, on a tour of the building, suggested the mural show the real Agnes Scott's DNA, ''I laughed at first, and then thought, why not?'' says Harry Wistrand, a biology professor who led the effort.

Only females pass mitochondrial DNA -- that is, unmixed with a father's DNA -- to their offspring, so it remains essentially unchanged generation to generation. ''If you can find an unbroken female line, then you can be almost certain that piece of DNA is the one at the beginning of the chain,'' Professor Wistrand says. ''This type of DNA is very useful for tracing our human migrations. You can identify where people came from through it.''

To bring the suggestion to fruition, the college began searching for direct female descendants of Agnes Scott and found Lisa Lepovetsky, a 1973 graduate and great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, whose DNA would match Agnes's, molecule for molecule. Ms. Lepovetsky stated that when she was first contacted by the college, she assumed they were contacting alumnae asking for donations.She could not have imagined the kind of donation that would ensue or the resulting memorial to her ancestry.

My thanks to Don Appleby for letting me know about this interesting story.

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West Bloomfield, Michigan, bulk e-mailer Alan Ralsky is getting a taste of his own medicine.

Ralsky is believed to be the world's biggest sender of unsolicited commercial e-mail, commonly known as "spam." He apparently is getting rich from his "business" of flooding people with junk e-mails. Ralsky owns a small company that sends millions of spam mails per day on behalf of clients. The spam mails are sent from mail servers in Ralsky's home and from leased servers in computer centers around the world. He uses a mixture of true and forged e-mail addresses in order to send millions of e-mail messages daily. If you have received messages advertising services or products to increase or decrease the size of your body parts, to increase your personal wealth, or to promote some multi-level marketing scam, there is a good chance that many of the messages came from Ralsky's e-mail servers.

A story about Ralsky, his business, and his brand-new 8,000-square-foot luxury home was published a few weeks ago in the Detroit Free Press and was then picked up by other wire services and Web sites around the world. Many people who dislike receiving Ralsky's bulk mail decided to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Land transfer records are public domain information, so finding the mailing address of Ralsky's new luxury home was a trivial exercise. Now Ralsky reports that he's been inundated with ads, catalogs, and brochures that the U.S. Postal Service delivers to his mailbox. It's all the result of a well-organized campaign by the anti-spam community. Unhappy Internet users around the world apparently have ordered catalogs, trial subscriptions, and free information from thousands of companies -- with all the requests using Ralsky's name and home address.

The Postal Service now dispatches a large truck to Ralsky's home daily to deliver all the mail. Ralsky reportedly has difficulty finding his wanted mail in amongst all the unsolicited mailings. Sound familiar?

Ralsky doesn't find it funny, according to newspaper reporters who have interviewed him. The story turned ugly when death threats were made against one of the people coordinating the campaign to flood Ralsky's physical mailbox. West Bloomfield police have not yet identified the source of those threats.

Between 1991 and 1995, Ralsky declared bankruptcy and was sentenced to three years' probation and $74,000 in restitution on a Michigan felony relating to false bank documents. In addition, he served 50 days in Chippewa County Jail in the Upper Peninsula and was ordered to pay $120,000 restitution on a plea-bargained misdemeanor of failing to deliver on contracts after he reinvested seniors' pensions in a telecommunications company. In 1996, Ralsky lost insurance licenses in Illinois and then forfeited his licenses in Michigan. Testifying to state regulators, his brother, Stuart, said Ralsky "got off track."

"He got away from those things he does best and perhaps just became temporarily enamored with what looked to be a change, a challenge, something new," Stuart Ralsky, an industrial psychoanalyst, told the Illinois Department of Insurance. By that time, Alan Ralsky had already discovered how to make money off the Internet.

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Do you think you know a lot about personal computers? How about the history of personal computers?

OK, which computer was the first one to be digital, was programmable by the end-user, was easily accessible (as a commercially manufactured product, as a commercially available kit, or as widely published kit plans), was small enough to be transportable by an average person, was inexpensive enough to be affordable by the average professional, and was simple enough to use that it required no special training beyond an instruction manual? Also, what year did it first appear?

If you guessed right, you can wear your pocket protector with pride.

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I expect to briefly announce new books every few weeks as announcements are received. Each book mentioned in this new section will be one that is newly published or perhaps is a significant new update of a book published some years ago. This listing is for books published on paper, not on CD-ROM or online. Prices mentioned typically do not include shipping or taxes. More detailed information is available at the Web sites or from the e-mail addresses given.

The PR Budget for this newsletter is $0.00. I rely upon "word of mouse" advertising in which you recommend this newsletter to your friends. This newsletter is a private project of mine, and I have a zero budget for a publicity campaign to get more readers.

Thanks.

COPYRIGHTS and Other Legal Things:

1. You do so strictly for non-commercial purposes
2. Articles marked with a Plus Sign (+) are not to be redistributed. Those articles are solely for the use of Plus Edition subscribers.
3. You may not republish any articles containing words attributed to another person or organization until you obtain permission from that person or organization. While you do have permission to republish words written by Richard W. Eastman, you do not have automatic authority to republish words written by others, even if their words appear in this newsletter.

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